Bea is the foil to moody, impetuous Erica, who sometimes gets drunk and kisses Bea’s neck, and other times disappears for days while Bea cries and wonders where she is.

“When she gave you a finger,” Bea thinks, in one of the lovely oddities preserved by Gehrman, “you wanted the whole hand.”

She’s so paralyzed by denial that when Erica and Bas, a nice-ish boyfriend Bea meets at work, each want to spend summer vacation with her, she can’t decide, and waits for them to fight it out.