But instead Harry stood there in the last snow, trying to accept that this was his real course, that all the branching decisions had shunted him here. He had expected himself to do so much more than make money; just making money and nothing else was a failure. But before you can lead or give back or spread excellence or let culture thrive, you have to earn. He stayed there and waited to lift the maul again and to feel the pleasure of it falling.

Helen and Ben let the phone be quiet between them.

“Okay,” Ben said.

“I’m just glad it’s done with. So let’s talk about what’s best: staying up there on aid, or…”

Ben told her about the arrangement he had made. She couldn’t say anything for several seconds.

“Mom?”

“We should never have waited so long! Oh god! I’ll never forgive myself, forcing you to this. We just, we’ve never met them, we know nothing about them, and they’re extending this much? I knew we left you exposed but, augh, it kills me to think—”

“It seemed like the best way.”

“We can’t keep doing this, though. I mean, your father will never agree to it.”

“When is it not his decision anymore?”

“It’s just so embarrassing, Ben. I’d never be able to look Ahmed’s father in the face, ever.”

“What if we don’t have the luxury of looking everyone in the face?” He paused. “We don’t have to decide now.”

“No. We do have to decide. You’ll just go on financial aid.”

“What if I came home and went to Leaford High?”

She paused. “We’re not asking you to do that.”

Ben went back up to his room. He ate half a PowerBar. The light was fading across the walls, and as he looked out the window at everyone under their backpacks coming back from dinner, he had to remind himself that he had come down from the chapel tower earlier that same day.

He left the dorm with his long bag, and as he came up to the courts he saw heads through the lit windows and heard the tremor of a crowd. He opened the vestibule door into the sound, and walked down the stadium steps through all the people, through Hutch’s gaze and Price’s gaze, and Ahmed’s gaze and Alice’s and Teddy’s and Russell’s and Thomas Weeks’s, through all of them, through his own, and on the court he saw Gray’s tall form turn. He went through the glass door into that incinerating brightness.

Acknowledgments

This book has many authors.

Before anyone, my parents and sisters, who saved my life and whose love was never contingent on results.