Anoop shook his head. As soon as he caught his breath, he waved shortly and jogged away down the Dish path toward Woodruff.

Once Anoop was gone they all wanted to be gone. But far away they heard the engine of the Land Rover, and they all went flat on the leaves as the sound came nearer.

Soon it came adjacent to them, just through the low evergreen bushes, and they heard it stop. The door opened. Ben had his eyes closed and his cheek against the frost. Footfalls in the sand over the blacktop, then quieter over the dead grass. Ben had never seen Snake Eyes—almost no one ever had without getting busted—but now he imagined a man in a black Kevlar helmet bringing the pad of his thumb up to the paint on the Dragon’s side and pulling away quickly at its freshness, then looking carefully around.

Along with the others Ben tried to soak himself into the leaf-smelling ground. The engine continued to idle. Its fan came on, continued for several seconds, maybe a minute, then turned off. More footfalls against the blacktop, then the door to the Land Rover opened and thunked closed, and slowly the truck drove away.

Almost too soon there was no engine noise left. The wets lifted their heads and looked at each other, and Matt whispered, “He could be set up waiting right down the road.” They all nodded.

And so even though Hawley was just across the street, close enough to send back an echo if they shouted, Ben crept out of the little clearing with the rest of them the opposite way along the wooded Dish path. One by one each of them came to his dorm, and soon Ben was by himself, moving past the Dish, past the looming chapel, across the road to the Schoolhouse, down the hill and up again into the quad approaching Hawley from the other side.

The entire way Ben kept his head moving and eyes wide, and as he came up to Hawley, pressed against its south wall, and then around to the back entrance, he tried not to glance at the Dragon.

But in his peripheral vision he saw the crude white shapes on its side. He had to look. As soon as Alice went outside the next day, she would see it. And still, the Dragon itself seemed to take on even more dignity, like a solemn servant wearing a cone-hat at a birthday party.