“So there’s this young soldier in training, right? He catches a wolverine for food, but the trainees aren’t allowed to have any food other than the rations they’re given. So he catches the wolverine right before roll call one day, and he doesn’t have time to kill it before he has to line up, and he’s standing there as the sergeant or whoever is yelling at them and giving them orders.”

She was suddenly very excited about the story. “And he’s holding this wolverine and the wolverine is like thrashing around and biting the soldier in the stomach. And rather than scream and drop the wolverine and expose what he did, he tries to endure the pain, and just before the end of roll call he falls over dead without having made a sound.” She paused as though waiting for him to react with some gesture of wonder. “That is serious discipline.”

“Rations must have been grim to want to eat a wolverine.”

She laughed again. “Yes. But I guess I don’t really see your dad’s point. Life doesn’t seem soft to me here at all.”

“No?”

“Just the work. And I mean, my family has this guy I’m already supposed to be doing college applications with.”

“A guy?”

“Yeah, like a consultant. I had to sit down with him before coming back and like review the classes I was going to take, the sports, the extracurrics, to see if it all ‘presented a coherent narrative.’”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s exactly what I said. He said I had to think like a college admissions officer. What kind of profile would I want to see come across my desk, what kind of student would stand out, how would this person fill out a freshman class?”

“You’re already applying to college? Aren’t you in fourth form?”

“‘College applications start the first day,’ says Dale. And my father went to community college, my grandfather didn’t go at all, so they’ve been trying to get me into Princeton since I ate my first Cheerio.”

Ben decided not to mention that his dad had gone to Princeton, and they seemed to be at an impasse.

“Anything else your dad objects to?” she asked.

Ben tried to think of things that dads usually objected to. “He doesn’t like the fact that kids drink and do drugs here. I actually think he’d be fine with the drinking part, it’s just the drugs he can’t deal with.”

“Why, do you do a lot of drugs?”

Ben laughed. “I’d be cooler if I did.”

“Really?”

“Oh, come on. Kids who do drugs are all mysterious and dangerous and are having all kinds of amazing mental experiences while all the rest of us are having our regular everyday experiences.”

“Yeah, that’s true, I suppose.”

“Do you do any drugs?” he asked, hoping she would say no, definitely not.