“What about you, Coop?” Mint asked. “We haven’t even had the family conversation yet.”
Coop looked down at the table. “My family is one person. And she’s an atheist. We don’t believe in believing.”
Frankie snorted. “How metal.” He nodded at Heather. “What’s your deal?”
With all eyes on her, Heather smiled like the cat that ate the canary. “My parents worship the one true god.” She spoke slowly, basking in our attention. “Me.” Her eyes lingered on Jack. “You should try it sometime.”
Jack turned bright red as the whole table burst into amazed laughter. Frankie and Mint shared an incredulous look, and then suddenly Mint turned across the table and grinned at me. I sucked in a breath. The world’s most beautiful boy, a foot away, and he was smiling at me, sharing a joke. The miraculousness of it did something to me. Confidence sang through my blood.
“Now there’s a pair of brass balls,” I said, and the whole table rocked with laughter, even Heather. Mint gave me an appreciative look.
I was addicted. This was all I wanted—to make these people laugh and have Mint look at me just like that, his skin glowing in the setting sun.
“Your turn.” Caro elbowed me. “How’d you grow up?”
My smile dimmed. My parents weren’t religious, but they each had their devotions. My dad’s life was a shrine built to everything I’d struggled with. He’d never said it out loud, but I knew what he believed: if you couldn’t be the best, be the winner, life wasn’t worth living, and you had to find some way to escape. He’d found a very effective way, once life started disappointing him. My mom, on the other hand, was simple. She devoted herself to anything my dad thought wasn’t worth our time. She worshipped settling, he would say. A constant tension.
How could I possibly explain that?
I cleared my throat. “Why are we spending a Friday night talking about religion like a bunch of nerd theology majors? Here’s what I want to know: where are we going tonight?”
“Hell yeah.” Frankie pounded the table. “Phi Delt Anything-But-Clothes party.” He gestured between himself, Jack, and Mint. “We got invites from one of the brothers.”
The table broke out into a heated discussion about how to fashion clothes out of trash bags and how early we should start drinking in East House before walking to frat row. I leaned back and watched. All around us, fireflies dotted the air, sparks of light, here and gone. Tree branches swayed and stalks of grass lifted with the breeze, in time to some secret song. I could feel it, humming and weaving around us, the lawn and the trees and the brilliant dying sun. Knitting us together.
It was magic. Each of them a star on earth, pulling me in with the force of their gravity. I was theirs. In that moment, I gave myself over completely. I worshipped them. I died and started new, right there in the grass, in the center of the lawn.
The next day, rolling awake in bed, trash-bag dress sticking to my legs, I finally opened Coop’s fortune. Seven strange words: Today, something starts that will never end.
I taped the fortune to my door. I thought I knew what it meant. But I was young, and so naive. I had no idea what was barreling toward us, just around the corner.
Chapter 4
Now
At night Duquette was a dark kingdom, lit by old-fashioned lamps that cast circular glows, like halos in a Byzantine painting. The cab dropped me at the edge of campus, outside the Founder’s Arch. As I walked under the imposing white stone, carved with the school promise—We will change you, body and soul—I thought of how it had impressed even my father, on his first and only trip to campus.
When I passed to the other side, the air changed. I could hear, distantly, the sound of music and voices. I took off down the path, listening for it against the clack-clack of my heels on the stone, the thump-thump of my heart.
My flight had arrived late, giving me only enough time to rush to my hotel room and presenting me with the perfect excuse to beg off on Caro’s invitation to get ready together. I knew I’d have to see her—there was no getting around it, she was my best friend. But tonight I would talk to as many people as possible, dance away, flit to different crowds. I had a plan, and it had many purposes.
In front of me, in the center of Eliot Lawn, rose the white tent. I could see them now, hundreds of my classmates in dress clothes, the tent spilling over with dark suit jackets and black cocktail dresses. Music swelled from a string quartet in the corner. I took a deep breath, smoothed my dress over my hips, and walked in.