Boston College is presented chiefly through Dessa Constantine’s studies and Dominick Birdsey’s plans to travel there to see her. Though the campus itself is not described, it becomes a point of connection between Dessa’s effort to establish independence and Dominick’s determination to keep their relationship close across distance.

Dessa’s studies and independence

At twenty-one, Dessa is a senior at Boston College majoring in early childhood education. She also works mornings at a Head Start program and waitresses, rather than returning for another summer to the bookkeeping department at her father’s car dealership. She explains her decision as a desire for change and some independence, including the chance to apply for jobs beyond her family’s business. Her education and work make Boston College more than a name in her biography: it is part of a life she is trying to shape on her own terms.

A destination for Dominick

By the time Dominick is dating Dessa, he is planning to travel to Boston College every weekend so that he will not lose the relationship he regards as the best thing in his life. His bicycle is no solution: reaching her would mean pedaling onto the Massachusetts Turnpike. Hitchhiking is cheap but unreliable, and Dominick recalls frightening encounters with drivers, including one who claimed to have explosives in his trunk. Visiting Dessa therefore becomes a practical problem as well as a romantic intention; he decides that he needs a car.

Money, distance, and commitment

Dominick has saved nearly eleven hundred dollars over the summer. He and Ray agree that he will add five hundred dollars to Ray’s loan for college costs; Dominick plans to spend most of the remaining money on a used car and insurance, keeping what is left for living expenses. At the same time, he imagines buying Dessa a diamond for Christmas and starting an engagement-ring fund once he finds part-time work. His plans place the cost of visiting her beside the larger promise he hopes to make, while his recurring fantasies of confronting the men who hurt her expose how fear of losing her is already bound up with his devotion. Boston College thus marks both Dessa’s pursuit of independence and the distance Dominick tries to overcome through travel, work, and an imagined future together.