Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

room and by her companions. She sat in a corner, on the floor because when she came in after an uncomfortable farewell to her mother and father and brother, still carrying the money her father had pressed into her hand and the box of cookies her mother had nearly forgotten, more girls were sitting on the floor than on chairs and because by now all the chairs were taken by girls who had obviously exercised a freer choice than Natalie had; and she looked, trying not to seem looking, at the other girls in the room.
    There was one directly opposite who had bright-red hair, and who was laughing and talking with several girls around her; more girls were listening and edging nearer, and Natalie, drawing back from that side of the room, thought,
There
is someone I will know only slightly. The girl next to her had hair that grew in an ugly line across her forehead, and when Natalie risked saying, after rehearsing it for some minutes, “Do you know any of these people?” the girl said, “No,” briefly, eyed Natalie for a minute, and then looked away. She is not looking for me, Natalie thought, and the girl on her other side was not looking for Natalie either; as Natalie turned to her, to repeat her question, she rose quickly and went to join the group by the red-haired girl. Will they all notice that I am sitting almost alone? Natalie wondered. Did the red-haired girl thank her fate every morning and night, when she looked at herself in her mirror, with a comb in her hand? Did the girl near Natalie bewail secretly the ugly line of her hair, and persuade herself that she was more aware of it than anyone else? Was someone regarding Natalie, identifying her by some extraordinary characteristic which Natalie did not know or had forgotten or had convinced herself that no one saw? Was it not possible that the girl over there, in the blue dress, had put the dress on that morning wondering if it would do for her first day at college? Because it would not, and had she spent the day concerned with it, or had she forgotten it immediately she put it on? Had the mother of the one in green told her not to forget her pills? Was the one with glasses afraid of waking in the night, alone? Which of them had come to college hoping secretly to meet a thin nervous girl named Natalie? Did she expect Natalie to recognize her first? And, worst of all, what terrible change were they all expecting so immediately, so fearfully? Was something going to happen?
    Natalie had already discovered that it was not possible to think clearly in this bedlam, any more than it was possible to act clearly. All thoughts and actions were called for so quickly, were so subject to immediate and drastic change, that she dared not try to rise to go upstairs and find her room again, and she dared not estimate finally the probable characters of the girls in the room, for fear that, in either case, someone should look at her and laugh; suddenly, permanently, seeing her as, “That girl who . . .”
    Then without warning the room quieted, and Natalie perceived that the red-haired girl was standing. “Shall I?” she said to someone sitting near her, as one who has intended to all the time and merely expects public confirmation; the girls around her nodded and spoke urgently, and the red-haired girl turned prettily to the room, spread her hands, and said, “Listen, everyone, we’ve all got to introduce ourselves to each other. After all, we’ll be living in the same house for a long time.” Everyone laughed as though, unexpectedly, she had voiced the hidden dismay of them all, and the red-haired girl said, “I’ll go first. My name’s Peggy Spencer, and I came here from Central High School in—”
    The girl next to Natalie, the one with the unpleasant hair, leaned over suddenly and said to Natalie, “Isn’t she cute?”
    Cute? Natalie thought. “She certainly is,” she whispered back.
    Around the