THE FIVE COLLEGES of Upstate were not all built in a day. Duxbury was the oldest and most elite was originally founded as a men’s college but went co-ed fifty years ago. It most closely resembled the prototype of an eastern college: imposing limestone buildings, a magnificent brick and stone library with stained-glass windows, and of course the stadium where the five colleges played football among themselves. It took up the most real estate, leaving the other four colleges as stepsiblings. Clarion—the women’s college—was built forty years after Duxbury. Morse McKinley was erected in the postwar boom in the late 1940s when brick and concrete and straight lines were all a building needed to look modern. Now it just looked like a big dingbat apartment house. The smallest of the colleges was Kneed Loft and was nicknamed Nerd Loft because it specialized in math, science, and engineering. The architects more or less gave up on this one. It was way more bunker than building, but it didn’t stop the college from turning out brilliant students, most who went on to graduate school or government labs.

The last college was Littleton, noted for its artsy teachers, its spacey students, and its clear-cut agenda of social activism. It was considered the only college composed of co-eds who cared. It prided itself on being different. The students had palpable disdain for Morse McKinley and its greedy Wall Street ways. They were way cooler than the robotic dweebs of Kneed Loft, and of course, they were much less pretentious than the snobs at Duxbury. Clarion didn’t even factor into its equation.

Ten years ago, Littleton underwent a massive successful campaign to retrofit the college and turn it all green—from solar energy that ran the generators to the organic food in the cafeteria. Now it almost seemed like an aggie school with its numerous outdoor gardens—dead in the wintertime—and its four greenhouses happily providing tomatoes and zucchini squash to the cafeteria for its vegan entrées. The school’s four main buildings had quilted roofs of thatch reed intermixed with solar panels that frequently had to be wiped down from the snowfall.

The dorms were recycled brick boxes, nondescript, interchangeable, and named after trees. The door to Maple Hall was locked. McAdams was about to text Julia that they were in front of the door, but then a student came running up to the door, swiped her card, and all three of them stepped inside. She bounded up the stairs and left them in the lurch.

The place was a sty with overflowing garbage cans and various jackets, hoodies, boots, and other articles of clothing strewn chockablock. It was also unbearably stuffy, stale, and smelly as well as loud and cacophonous. Anyone who could study or sleep in these environs was a freak of nature.