“Newbs,” said Hillary Lynch. Hutch laughed. “We’re working into the rotation, my friends,” she said. Two pairs of girls went, laughing hysterically, neither of them making it all the way to the bottom and putting footprints in the course on their way back up, but no one said anything. Ben didn’t want to make a big thing out of saying hi to Alice as they all stood there waiting to go, but he checked her face quickly a couple times so if she turned to him at the same moment it might look like a chance thing.

“Hello, Alice,” said Ahmed.

“That is an amazing hat, Ahmed,” Alice replied. “That is an Ahmed hat.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, Benny boy.”

What did he have to lose? “Hi, Alice. Nice and warm, I trust?”

“I’m gonna have to trek up this hill a few times to get warm.”

Almost before he heard it, Ben knew that a comment was coming from behind him. Barely audibly, Nick Sprague said, “She’ll have plenty of padding if she goes down headfirst.”

Hutch murmured, “They’ll tear up the course. It’s not made to handle that kind of cargo.”

They both laughed quietly. Ben couldn’t tell whether Alice had heard it. Her hunch seemed the same as always.

Alice went down with Katrina Nemadova and the rotation kept going. Ben started to feel light-headed from hunger, and twice his body was taken by shivering.

Between runs people were talking about the Dragon. The maintenance staff had ground down the entire outside surface so that not only was its graffiti gone, but its metal shone with dense zigzags in the cold sun. Everyone knew it had been wrestling, but the team had refused to say anything, and so after Aston had made a statement in Chapel excoriating the vandalism, there was now just a mute standoff between the kids on the team and the administration. No one there seemed to realize that Ben was on the wrestling team, so they weren’t looking at him full of suspicion, but the rest of the kids on the squash team now refused to acknowledge him. People said that SJS might just ask Simon not to come back for Spring Term, and that when you weren’t asked back, the letter came over Christmas break. Ben had taken six runs by now and wanted to go eat something.

But then Tommy Landon, a small but funny and very hard fifth-former in Gordon House, came over to Hutch and Evan. His gaze fell on Ben and Ahmed as well. He was the kind of upper-former who loved to take up certain newbs. He said, “You boys have interest in getting baked?”