“Have a wonderful year,” Aston said to them. “Go out into the school that is now yours!” They filed toward the exit, Ben smiling to the kids around him and keeping an eye out for Price but with no one saying anything. The doors opened into an alley of old students, who whooped all together as the first girls left the mouth of the chapel entrance into the night. Everyone walked out, and the shouting older students plunged into the line of newbs to hug them and lift them off the ground. The air was cooling fast but it still had the day’s warmth in it, and after the chapel’s stillness, just the turning breeze seemed wild to Ben. He thought he felt what he was supposed to feel. The older students were hamming it up, screaming and jumping up and down, but they meant it, too, and Ben wanted to be part of this, where it would matter if you were missing. Ben saw a line of wax run down a boy’s blazer sleeve.

Several students away, he saw Hutch, whose tawny head rose and fell with all the other students jumping around him. Ben started jumping up and down too.

*  *  *

Ben climbed the ladder to his lofted bed as Ahmed finished putting away toiletries. The rungs the workmen had made were narrow and they hurt Ben’s feet. He lay back on the sheets, familiar from his bed at home but new over this plasticky mattress.

“I feel so good,” said Ahmed from his bed across the room. “The people at my table were so nice.” They had let him know that none of the dishes contained any pork.

Ben didn’t respond.

“You know the only thing that is missing here?” Ahmed asked.

“Hm?”

“There is no swimming pool.”

“We have all the ponds.”

“But there should be a pool. For the winter.”

“I guess.”

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

Ahmed wanted to say that his father would be overjoyed if he knew that someone like Ben was Ahmed’s roommate. Someone so able to demonstrate the right ways to be.

“Please remind me to tell you about Mr. Underhill.”

“Okay.”

“I am happy that we are roommates.”

Soon Ahmed went still.

The light was still on. Ben was about to call out to Ahmed, to figure out a system of who would turn out the light on any given night. But instead Ben climbed back down the ladder and went to the wall by the door.

In the darkness Ben realized he would need a clip lamp at the end of his bunk. He kept his hands out in front of him and his steps were slow. Already he couldn’t remember what the room looked like.