“I was never planning on kissing up to her,” he mutters back, but I notice he doesn’t deny his motive. “I don’t need to. She just needs to speak to me to be impressed by me, and since her mood was ruined by someone at the wedding, this is my only other chance before our college apps are due. My last chance.”

“Seriously?” I realize I’m probably staring at him the way Daisy was staring at me earlier when I described my lengthy, multistep morning beauty routine. “You want a letter of recommendation from her that badly? You couldn’t just ask someone else?”

“You don’t understand. It has to be from her,” Cyrus says, his eyes blazing with rare emotion. Then, as if catching himself, he pauses. Dials back the intensity in his tone. “It’s just that a letter of recommendation from her would basically guarantee me a spot in Stanford’s Chinese Literature program—”

“You’re set on studying literature?” I ask. “What about piano?”

“I’d thought about it,” he says slowly. “I love both—I was actually really torn between the two, and all my teachers were trying to persuade me to do one or the other. But I don’t need to study piano the way that I need to study literature.”

What a nice problem to have, I think to myself, biting back a surge of jealousy. I’m just too talented at too many things, god help me. No matter which option he ended up choosing, he would have a dazzling career to look forward to.

Still, I have to admit that literature suits him. Actually, a program on ruining other people’s lives would suit him best. Second to that, though, he belongs in a world of quiet libraries and gold-soaked classrooms, tea steaming in his hands, books piled up on desks, the margins inhabited by scribbled epiphanies.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” he’s saying. “I don’t believe that books are the cure to everything, necessarily, but it’s like—when you’re feeling unwell, and you receive a diagnosis, and you’re so relieved because now you realize that it wasn’t all in your head, that there’s a name for what you’re experiencing. On a bad day, books offer a language for your pain, and on a good day, books remind you just how precious your life is. A program devoted entirely to books feels almost like the stuff of dreams …” He trails off, a hint of self-consciousness creeping into his voice. But there’s no uncertainty, no doubt. That is his future. It’s clear, tangible, achievable. He can see it lit up ahead of him, like the shining banks of the river, and now he just needs to take the necessary steps to reach it.