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By Root 378 0

only at my mother’s insistence. As a firm supporter of any and all advancements in the cosmetic sciences, she believes that not providing one’s child with flawless skin is akin to child abuse. Accutane cured Len Levy, who was covered in pissed-off, purple pustules back in high school, so it should work for me. My acne isn’t nearly as all-over and angry as his was, but I have to agree with my mother when she points out how my complexion is never completely clear. I always seem to have one knotty cyst somewhere on my face, and when it goes away another takes its place. One after the other after the other.

My daily dose of Accutane is the standard prescription for a person twice my weight. Three squishy yellow pills. This is my third cycle of the drug—the first two times didn’t work—and I feel strangely proud when my dermatologist says that in twenty-five years of practicing dermatology, he has never seen such resilient zits. I’m a medical freak of nature.

I’d like to think that Marcus would call me unique.

Dr. Rosen also says my condition is stress related. No surprise there. Two weeks ago, I wrote four term papers and filled nine blue books over the course of five exams. In the midst of finals, I impulsively (and stupidly) chopped off my ponytail to get rid of my elastic band scalp-ache. The fix-it-up Supercut was supposed to give me a short geek chic bob with bangs, kind of like Jordan in Real Genius. But with my hair’s trademark flyaway frizziness, I look more like Mitch. The only upside to this coifftastrophe is that in my state of scalp-ache-free concentration, I nailed a 3.85 GPA for the semester, which will make my parents happy, though only temporarily so. While my stellar grades help better my chances of post-graduation financial solvency, it does little to relieve my current money troubles. My parents give me minimal fiscal assistance because, in their own words, I made the choice to go into debt by selecting Columbia over my full scholarship to Piedmont. I still stand by my choice, though less passionately now that I have a much better idea of how long it will take to pay Sallie Mae the $100,000 I’ll owe for my BA by the time I graduate. Not to mention the cost of the MA and PhD I’ll have to get if I want my undergraduate psychology degree to be worth anything at all. I’ve only got about half a semester worth of my grandmother’s inheritance left and zero summer money-making prospects because no well-paying employer is willing to hire me, train me, then let me leave for the entire month of July for my incredible, albeit totally unpaid, internship at True magazine. During my salary-free servitude, I’ll be staying in New York with my sister, Bethany (with whom I have nothing but DNA in common), her husband, G-Money (who has earned his nickname through gaining and losing millions on the stock market, yet still having enough spare scratch to buy into a local frozen custard and donut franchise in the hope of taking it national), and my niece, Marin (who is very cute, but has projectile-pooping issues), enduring yet another separation from a boyfriend I haven’t seen or touched for six months, one who lives down the hall from a nudist Buddhist (Nuddhist?) named Butterfly who thinks clothing is oppressive and can’t understand why people think nakedness always has to be sexual . . .

So. Stress? Naaaaaaaaah.

Sitting in the booth in front of me is a cutsey young couple still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. Or they’re lovers recently reunited. They’re annoying to everyone but each other and haven’t stopped pecking each others’ faces since they sat down. Back and forth and back and forth across the booth, peck and peck. I prefer juicy tongues to these passionless kisses that are as dry as my needy lips.

I just tried Marcus on my cell. Topher, one of his “cottage-mates,” told me he was out “cleansing.” He told me this the way other roommates at other schools would say someone is out partying. Marcus’s world is so foreign to me that I can’t help but feel that the person who inhabits it is a stranger. I love