Free Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers by Cynthia Voigt

denuded of lifelong braids. Unprotected somehow. The same bent head, in more mellow light, was the last thing Ann usually saw before falling asleep.
    Ann noticed in Hildy a consistent attitude, to every course, to every assignment. She approached all—even after several weeks, when Stanton had become familiar—with eagerness. What was odd was that her expectations were not disappointed. Hildy woke eagerly to each morning, turned eagerly to her studies, went eagerly to meals although she was neither a prodigious nor a fussy eater. About this last, Ann asked her. “I enjoy to be hungry,” Hildy answered, “because—then I eat and I am no longer hungry. And it feels good not to be hungry.” Niki snorted. Niki, opposite to Hildy in all things, criticizedthe food in language both imaginative and vulgar; she ate out frequently but seemed to enjoy discussing the dormitory food, as if she appreciated the opportunity it gave her to make Ann laugh. Ann saw herself muddling about between the two of them. “You cover all the extremes,” she protested. “What about me?” And she would think, a little wistfully, about where she fit in, in this trio, before turning back to her own work.
    Niki studied erratically and attended classes with notebook in hand. She was most often out of the room. She developed a wide circle of acquaintances, people she met in her restless search for something to do. Niki was always available to do something, tennis, touch football, softball, bridge, Clue, take a hike, or sit around the student center and talk. “You’re making a lot of friends,” Ann remarked to her “Friends,” Niki answered, not bothering to disguise her scorn. “They’ve just got a lot of time to kill—and they think if they’re laughing they’re having a good time—and they want someone to do their thinking for them. You can’t be friends with people who don’t know anything about you—and don’t want to. Can you? Huh Annie, can you?” Ann turned away. They were alone together in their room because it was Thursday; on Mondays and Thursdays, Hildy walked up to the Observatory, two miles into the hills.
    Ann tried to figure out what they were like, Hildy and Niki. And Ann. Niki wore her intelligence like her jeans, close and comfortable. Hildy held hers like a lantern, to illuminate. And Ann? Like a string of real pearls around her neck, in the dark of night on the wrong street, she nervously concealed her mind, her unquiet fingers both cherishing and proud. Was that what they were like? What she was like? During those weeks, and always afterwards, she considered this.
    Niki demanded her attention but it was Hildy who dominated her thoughts. Niki made Ann uncomfortable, kept her alertly off-balance; but Hildy fascinated her, with her suggestion of mysterious possibility. It was Hildy she asked questions of, as if by collecting facts she could approach understanding. Hildy came from a family of four brothers and herself. Her father’s farm was three hundred and two acres, her father’s brother had a contiguous farm of four hundred acres, so that the family had substantial holdings. Hildy, as the only girl, hada bedroom to herself. She had taken the same five courses, all through high school: English, a math course, Latin, history, science. Her sports were volleyball, basketball, and track. her brothers were named Luke and Philip and Thomas and Matthew. Her mother had a vegetable garden and put up the fruits of it. Her parents were shorter than their children. All of this told Ann little. She could not attach Hildy to any of it. “What does your house look like?” she asked. “Is it a two-story one, with trees, among flat fields? With barns behind it? Is it white with a porch?”
    â€œIt is not like that at all.”
    â€œWhat is it like then?”
    â€œI don’t know how to describe it. What does it