Chapter Twelve

"You really don't have to talk to me."

"No, I don't mind, really."

"This is probably awkward for both of us."

"No, I'm fine."

"It's just not the sort of thing you can talk about and solve."

"I'm sure you're right about that."

"It's nice of you, but my dad is kind of all worked up, because he assumes I'm upset because I'm not upset. You know?"

Susie was sitting very upright and stiffly. She and Hazel were in the two chairs off to one side of the desk that were where most of the business of this office took place. Across the desk, only formal interactions occurred. To one side, in the two chairs, almost knee to knee, Hazel had received donors, expelled students, and talked to weeping staff members. Right now, she was talking to a new friend's youngest daughter about internet bullying, and it felt harder than trying to get a major gift out of a disaffected alumnus.

"Susie, I had a friend in college. Her name is Abigail. She would take on challenges and do things that people would think were kind of crazy, and what really upset her was that they'd be mad at her for not reacting the way they thought she should. She said that if guys were calm and under control, they got complimented, but if she stayed cool when everything was coming apart, people treated her like she was the weird one."

For the first time in their conversation, Susie smiled, and relaxed a bit more like a teenager into the wide upholstered armchair.

"That's what I mean, exactly. I want to be like Abigail, and no one wants me to be anything other than a teenager. Or what they think a teenager is. 'Ohhhh' and 'Ohhhhh' and all kinds of stupid 'I don't know what to dooooo' kind of whining. This is something I can handle."

Hazel leant forward in her chair. "What is the something, if I can ask?"

Susie sat, silently, then squinched further sideways, looking up into the coffered ceiling of the chief librarian's office. "It's not the guys, it's the other girls. Some of them just like making fun of girls who don't run with them. I know that. I know that. And I'm not going to. But they want to make sure I know I don't belong, and so they make me think I'm one of them. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think I do."

"They can call me a slut, or tell their skanky boyfriends to call me a slut on their web pages and stuff, and they think that will make me, like, go 'waaaaa, stop it' and honestly? I don't care. What they think, what anyone thinks that's not my friend? Which is like five people? So what. So what. That's what I think."

"I understand exactly what you mean."