The January days surrendered early, and streetlamps softened the landscape. A check arrived from his dad for sixty dollars, with a note that just said, Pizza. Ben kept going to wrestling practice, even won an away match against another absolute beginner from Deerfield, but several nights a week he had the urge to go to the squash courts to take a break from working. Then he remembered the new kid, and Price. He hadn’t seen either of them around campus, but then on Wednesday there was a home match scheduled against Milton on the new courts, and as Ben walked past the courts to the gym, he saw people’s sweaters pressed against the glass of the doors at the top of the gallery, and heard the noise of the cheering even as he kept walking. Squash ended up beating Milton 6–3, and Gray was the lead story on the front page of the Colony, the SJS paper. He had lost only three points during the entire match, and the paper had a quote from the Milton number one: “That was awful.”

Ben wondered whether he could just stop showing up to wrestling without anyone missing him. Ahmed stayed toward the top of the pack on the JV squash team and kept winning matches against kids from other schools. In the Dish the kids moved with the thrum of a healthy hive, and in classes Ben sat back and let the conversation wash around him. He let himself get used to his spot toward the outside of Hutch’s circle. He saw Alice in the halls a few times, and they stopped and talked and Ben managed to wrap up the conversation without making a fool of himself.

One time she said, “Hey, there’s this thing: I’ve been doing a photo project for a little while. Like I started it toward the end of last year.”

Ben nodded.

“Would you ever come sit for me?”

“It’s like portraits?” For an instant Ben thought she was asking him to help her set up the equipment.

“Yeah. Portraits sounds so ritzy, but yeah, I’ve been taking pictures of people. Think about it.”

“Sure, I will,” he said, meaning he was agreeing to sit for a photo, but he heard that it meant he would agree to think about it. He began to think he should go to her room to visit her.

In the common room after Seated, Hutch teased the girls he knew, and they rolled their eyes but laughed, and the boys with him wanted the same response but were too timid to say anything potentially disagreeable to the girls, and so they seemed to go up on tiptoes with the effort to get closer, to take part, like young dogs preparing to put their feet up on a new person’s shirt. Ben tried to hold himself back from doing the same thing but he knew he was only partially successful.