“Too bad you have to leave so soon,” Mr. Bodkins says, the cigarette twitching between his teeth, and he turns to glance at me. “You are coming back, aren’t you, Mr. Shea?”

“I don’t know.” Right now I’m just hoping to survive the trip to town. I’m gripping my seat belt with my backpack tucked between my knees and praying that the road stays straight in front of us, or at least unobstructed by wildlife. If Bambi wanders out in front of the car while we’re driving at this velocity, there won’t be much left of him but a venison-flavored grease spot.

“We don’t get many scholarship students,” Mr. Bodkins says. “Besides Andrea, you might be our only one.”

I sit up and look over at him. “What did you just say?”

“Andrea Dufresne—you remember her from English Lit.” His hand fumbles in the dark for a bottle, and then, realizing that I’m watching, he takes the stick shift instead and changes gears. “Dark-haired girl? Kind of pasty? Looks like she sleeps in a coffin?”

“What about her?”

“She came here on a scholarship too, just like you.”

I’m still looking at him. Suddenly I have forgotten all about my seat belt and my backpack and the road in front of us. “Really.”

“Oh yeah. Kind of a similar story to yours, actually. She’s an orphan, technically a ward of the state. Her parents were U.S. foreign aid workers in some poor country in the Balkans, killed by friendly fire, I think . . .” Mr. Bodkins shakes his head, as if there are a couple loose facts rattling around inside his skull like Legos and he is trying to get them to attach together. “I can’t remember the name of the country now. She wrote a whole paper about it last year. Gave her a B-plus on it. Solid work.”

“And how long has she been here?”

“Came in as a sophomore. Made a lot of friends already, though.”

“I bet she has,” I say.

Mr. Bodkins must have noticed the slight change in my tone, because he turns to look at me. “Are you all right, Will?”

“Can we turn around?” I say. “Back to Connaughton?”

“I thought you had to fly home as soon as possible.”

“I do.” I just nod, staring out the windshield into the night. “But there’s something back there that I need to take care of first.”

Four

WHEN ANDREA STEPS OUT OF THE BATHROOM AT seven a.m. in a pink fluffy bathrobe and flip-flops with her bucket of toiletries in hand, I’m standing there, leaning against the opposite wall. For a guy who has been up all night and is still wearing the same clothes, I’m feeling surprisingly composed. Spiffy, even.

“How was your shower?” I ask. “I hear the water pressure here is amazing.”

“Will?” To her credit, she doesn’t show more than a flicker of surprise. It’s there, and just like that, it’s gone, a magic trick of perfect self-control. She even manages a crooked little smile. “What are you doing here?”

“What, you mean as opposed to being driven away in the back seat of a campus security vehicle?” I shake my head. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bravo,” I say, giving her a polite little golf clap, keeping it as quiet as possible. It’s early, and most of her fellow residents haven’t emerged from their rooms yet. We’ve got the hallway to ourselves, which was how I’d hoped it would be. “And here I thought I was a pro.”

She makes a little show of glancing up and down the hall. “You know,” she says, lowering her voice to the range of hushed confidentiality, “you really shouldn’t be here. This is an all-female dorm. It’s locked for a reason.”

“Yeah, well. I found an open window in the laundry room.”

“You could get in trouble just for being here.”

“So now all of a sudden you’re a stickler for rules?” I take a step toward her, just to see if she’ll retreat, but she stands her ground. “That’s really fascinating, considering you’ve been breaking them yourself for the past year.”

Andrea just looks at me. She’s not smiling anymore. In fact, I think I see a slight crease of a frown on her forehead. “Will, are you okay? Maybe you hit your head crawling through that window or something.”

“You know,” I say, “it’s no wonder you were able to pick up on my game so quickly. You’ve been running one of your own for the past year. That’s why you couldn’t wait to get me out of here, so I wouldn’t horn in on your action.” I shake my head, and the smile on my face is one of genuine admiration. “What a colossal idiot I was, thinking that I could somehow con you.”

Andrea cocks her head just slightly. The shadowed pucker of a frown has become a truly agitated scowl. “I think you better leave right now, before you find yourself in an even worse situation than you already are.”

“A poor scholarship student from a displaced village in the Balkans?” I say. “Really? Who forged your transcripts and tax records, Andrea Dufresne? And how did you really get into Connaughton?”

“That’s it,” she says, and turns to walk away. “I’m calling security.”

“Good,” I say. “That way they can drive us both to the bus station. You’ll be on your way back to Tuscaloosa by lunchtime.”

That stops her cold, just like I’d hoped it would. When she finally turns around, all the remaining confidence in her face has drained away, and she stares at me for a long moment. I realize that I’m seeing her without makeup, and she’s actually much prettier this way—even though she looks like she’s going to haul off and take a swing at my head with her shampoo bucket.

“So what do you want?” she whispers, and even her voice sounds different now, tinged with a Southern drawl. “A medal?”

“No,” I say. “Just five minutes of your time.”

Her gaze flicks right and left again, so quickly that I can barely track the movement of her eyes, and she grabs my wrist. “Come on,” she growls under her breath. “Before somebody sees us here.”

Her room is immaculate, walls decorated with Klimt prints and framed antique maps and black-and-white Ansel Adams shots of the Grand Canyon. Hardcover leather-bound books with silver and gold titles embossed on the spines sit on bookshelves. It’s totally Crate & Barrel by way of Restoration Hardware. There’s a cello case in the corner, next to a metal stand with sheet music spread out on it, all of it very deliberately arranged and, to my newly enlightened sensibilities, totally fake. But at least the room smells like girl, like hair product and moisturizer and Yankee Candle, and when I sit down on the already-made bed, she gives me a grimace of distaste.

“Don’t bother making yourself comfortable,” she says. “You’re not staying.”

“Oh, you’re not going to kick me out,” I say.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I’ve got your number and you know it.” I unzip my bag and pull out my laptop, powering it up. “First of all, admit to yourself that what you’re running here is a dead-end game.”

Andrea blinks at me, then nonchalantly turns to the mirror to begin brushing her still-damp hair, combing it out in long black waves. “How do you figure that?”

“Think about it,” I say. “What’s your real payoff here? You’re going to graduate this year, and then what? Your GPA isn’t exactly Ivy League.”

“Excuse me?” She stops brushing her hair and turns to stare at me. “How do you know about my GPA?”

“Let’s not kid each other,” I say, and turn the computer so that she can see the page I’m on. “I told you I’ve already hacked into the school’s mainframe. Security around here is strictly Chuck E. Cheese. I practically sneezed my way through their firewall.”

“Let me see that,” she says, but I pull the MacBook away from her, beyond her reach. “You can’t just snoop through people’s transcripts.”

“You’re right,” I say. “It’s dishonest. I feel so dirty.” I look around the room. “Got any coffee?”