“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I tell her later.

We’re sitting in the dining hall over lunch—shrimp quesadilla for me, garden salad for her, along with some kind of veggie burger that actually smells amazing considering there’s no meat in it. Through the giant wall-size windows, the last swarms of orange leaves are chasing one another in late-October dust devils. The weather’s already changing, tilting into winter.

“What makes you think it was me?” she asks.

“The fact that you know what I’m talking about even though I haven’t said it yet. Anyway, it really wasn’t necessary.”

“Right,” Gatsby says, taking a big bite of her salad. “Because you had it all worked out.”

“Well, I didn’t say that . . .”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I take a bite of my quesadilla, which is crunchy yet tender and bursting with fresh cilantro, and realize that she’s still looking at me. “So why did you do it?”

“What?”

“Write that paper for me.”

She ponders the question, or pretends to. “Maybe I figured you could use a break after ‘falling down the stairs’ and busting up your face,” Gatsby says, using air quotes for the little white lie I had tried to pass over her in the library yesterday.

“I’m not joking,” I say. “You could get suspended for this, or worse. Why would you take a risk like that for somebody you hardly know?”

She looks at me for a long moment and then sits back, crossing her arms. “I wanted to help you. Is that so hard to swallow?”

“I mean, it’s just—you’re smart, you’re funny, you’re pretty.” My face is starting to get hot. “Okay, so you work in a library and spend your free time breaking into the rare books when you’re depressed, but still . . .”

Now Gatsby’s laughing. “You’re welcome, okay?” she says, and there’s another long silence, one that makes me think maybe I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. “Will?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s your secret?”

“What?”

“You know mine. What’s yours?”

That stops me, and I just look at her. Suddenly the whole dining hall feels like it’s gone silent, and my heart is beating very fast, but Gatsby’s merely looking at me with an expression of intelligent curiosity. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s something you’re not telling anybody, including me.”

I force a smile. “What, you’re psychic now too?”

“It’s just intuition. I noticed it the first time we talked, and it just keeps getting stronger.” She blinks. “Tell me, what was it like growing up with missionary parents on the other side of the world?”

For a second there’s just more silence between us.

“It was lonely,” I say, and a second later, I realize how corny that sounds. But Gatsby doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even crack a smile. She just stares back at me.

“Did you have friends there?” she asks. “On your island?”

“Not really.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Let’s just say I’m a lot happier here.”

“I’m glad.”

“And I do appreciate your writing the paper.”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” she says. “I like Hawthorne.”

“Why?”

“He’s cool.”

“Said nobody ever, in the history of the human race.”

“You know, the library has a collection of his original letters and manuscripts.”

“Are you sure they’re real and not forgeries?” I ask. “Like, not written on My Little Pony stationery or something?”

“Stop it.” Gatsby laughs and punches me, hard enough to hurt. “Look,” she says, “if it wasn’t for me, your precious scholarship would already be in jeopardy, so can we agree to move on?” She waits. I’m just looking at her, a little dazed from either her fist or her generosity. “Seriously, though, what was it like?”

“What?”

“Ebeye. Growing up there. I can’t imagine. I’ve never met anyone who’s lived in a place like that. Did your parents always know that’s what they wanted to do?”

I take in a breath to deliver my spiel but I feel my throat swelling up, like I’m having some kind of allergic reaction to my own lie. Gatsby mistakes my silence for reluctance, as if she’s overstepped her bounds, and draws back.

“I get it,” she says. “You don’t want to talk.”

“No,” I say, “it’s just that—”

“—he doesn’t know where to start,” a voice says to my right, where Andrea has materialized with her lunch and a stack of books. “Right, Will? That’s what happens when you’re raised by missionaries. All that humility starts backing up in your system until it floods your brain.”

Gatsby turns and regards her coolly. “Hey, Andrea.”

“Hello, Gatsby.” Andrea sips her coffee. “Happy Monday.”

“Thanks,” Gatsby says, and she’s already getting up, gathering her tray. “I’ll see you later, Will?”

“Definitely,” I say, as Andrea settles down next to me, emanating a kind of smugness that doesn’t even require visual confirmation.

“Well,” she says. “That looked cozy. Sorry to interrupt.”

I roll my eyes. “Please.”

“A word of advice, Will. Don’t get too close to her. I wouldn’t want you to start believing your own lies—especially since you’ve already tipped your hand to Brandt. Secrets don’t last long here.”

“Noted.” I regard her unemotionally. “Did you want something?”

“As a matter of fact . . .” Andrea opens her backpack and pulls out a leather-bound planner. “I just wanted to go over our little event calendar together.” She opens the book to November, where the box representing the twenty-second is circled in red pen. “Now, as you recall, our arrangement ends the week before Thanksgiving break. Today is October 28, which means we’ve got almost four weeks to get Brandt to hand over fifty thousand. You still want to go through with this?”

“Why?” I say. “You want out? Is being Brandt’s pet floozy not paying off like you hoped?”

“Oh my.” She smiles. “You really have no clue what you’re doing, do you?”

“Watch me,” I say.

“Believe me,” Andrea says, “I am. So far I’ve seen you get beat up and thrown out of Casino Night for cheating. Is that your full repertoire, or did you learn any other tricks down in New Jersey?”

“You have no idea.”

“You’re a hoot, Will.” To my surprise, when she smiles again, the delight on her face looks genuine. “No matter how this all comes out, you’ve already made my year so much more interesting. Thank you for that.”

“So glad I could be here to amuse you.”

“Oh, you do.”

And it isn’t until Andrea leans over to peck my cheek that I realize Gatsby hasn’t left the dining hall yet—she’s still standing by the door, watching us. Then she turns and walks away.

Sixteen

THE NEXT MORNING I’VE GOT MY ALARM SET EARLY so I can make it to class without running, but something totally unexpected happens—it snows.

Climbing out of bed, I draw back my curtains to discover a lunar landscape, the campus already covered by a thin but steadily growing layer of white. Thick flurries come whipping down through the branches as the wind blusters along the walkways. This is crazy, I think. Down in New Jersey it almost never snows before Thanksgiving.

“Classic early nor’easter,” Epic Phil is telling everybody when I get to the dining hall, delivering this news with such authority that you almost expect to see a satellite map behind him. “Freak system must’ve blown in off the ocean overnight. We haven’t even played the Homecoming lacrosse game yet.”

There’s an excited buzz among the students here, a sense of building anticipation that I don’t quite understand. People are filling thermoses with coffee and hot chocolate and carrying their trays out of the cafeteria with them.

“So you think this qualifies?” somebody asks.

“Are you kidding?” Phil says. “This definitely qualifies.”

“Qualifies for what?” I ask.