Rory told Ben about another captain’s practice, but for some reason Ben had no interest in playing. After seeing the boiler on its block every day when he came and went from Hawley, he wanted to do anything but play squash.

In bed every night he would watch the glow-in-the-dark stars fade as he tried for sleep. But every morning he looked forward to Chapel. He hadn’t come any closer to believing in God, but he loved singing the sturdy inevitable hymns, he loved inhaling the five-story air, and he loved the light that erased the cames in the colored glass and traversed the room. The light found such traction in that air.

Ben still hadn’t worn the Marlboro Racing hat. Each time he had thought to put it on, he had envisioned the person wearing that hat blazing with self-regard, and he knew he couldn’t make that bid for coolness unless he was better situated. He felt grateful that the stream of school was there to distract him. He would catch himself getting absorbed in throw-in drills, the Siege of Yorktown, the endless vocab flash cards, the swing of his grade school compass. Twice that week he and Alice happened to pass on the paths while walking alone, and each time she stopped and talked to him for a minute or so as though she were inspecting a strange, lively puzzle. They would laugh and wave goodbye and Ben would be left still strategizing how to lengthen their conversation and get close enough to smell her smell. He had learned how to pick up the scent of other girls: you let your breath out as you passed shoulder to shoulder and then you inhaled in their wake. It was wonderful, and he would leave Alice wishing he could both talk to her and let her pass by.

But then he’d notice a wrought-iron chandelier with triple-twisted supports for each bulb, an owl carved in wood on top of the banister post to the Rector’s Chapel seat, the rows of computers in the language lab, the tubes and tubes of cerulean blue in the Art Building, and it would occur to him how much each must have cost. He walked into Chapel every morning, nodded to Markson and Dennett, and wondered what all the faculty knew and thought about him, about all of the students. The teachers sat there, not-quite-completely-awake just like everyone else, and their eyes landed on distinct faces as they streamed by. Spoiled, Asperger’s, slut, parents can’t pay, druggie, spoiled, monotone jock…

By Saturday a month in the air had become tight with coolness even at noon, and at lunch Hutch was excited about dinner in town.

Ben had $11.90 in his checking account. Already at the table he knew that Tyler, Todd, Mark, and Kyle were in, and inevitably Evan would be going too.