BEN WOKE UP; HIS BED WAS DRY.

After morning Chapel, they had a day of orientation games. Ahmed loved the ha-ha game, where each person rested his or her head on the last person’s stomach and then tried not to laugh as the “ha”s came down the line, but he declined to pass oranges from neck to neck because it seemed too intimate.

The next day was Monday and every student received a thick three-by-five card with his or her schedule printed in a grid of days and hours. The newbs racing from building to building, trying to look like they knew where they were going, upperclassmen giving them good and bad directions as the spirit moved them. Ben saw the other kids from the Hawley basement, looked at them and nodded, and they gave each other half-smiles but turned toward getting through school. Ennis and the other Hawley upper-formers stood outside the Schoolhouse, laughing conspicuously as though newb boxing had been such a success that they hardly remembered it.

Ben sat in English, relishing the use of his new notebooks and pens. At lunch he sat with Hutch and Evan, and he was glad they had recognized him even though he knew that was stupid. The two of them laughed when Ben told them about the previous night; for them it had been Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Newb, where the upper-formers carried them on their shoulders and they punched from there. Ben showed them his new little chipped tooth.

Ben met briefly with his advisor, Mr. Markson, who was teaching English and philosophy. When Ben came for his appointment, Markson was at his desk wearing a beyond-insouciantly wrinkled blue blazer and a maroon knit tie with a square end. Ben couldn’t tell why anyone would ever wear that kind of tie. Markson had a ginger, armpitty beard and ginger hair long enough to pull into a ponytail but that he tucked behind his ears as he looked at Ben’s schedule. He said it seemed pretty balanced.

He asked if they might take a walk for the rest of their meeting; he had been cooped up all day. They headed out across the playing fields. Markson was six-six at least. He had a constant bend in his posture, but the hunch didn’t convey defeat as much as a willingness to listen to shorter people without forcing them to exert themselves to be heard.

There was strong sun and a constant breeze, the kind of day that seems almost coercively upbeat. They watched a heavy staff member go by on a riding mower.

They walked near the tennis courts, and just to make conversation Ben said, “They’re having captain’s practice for squash already.”