Now Rosie Barton and a friend no one really ever noticed came up the path from the Schoolhouse, walked around to the front of the PO, and went inside out of sight. Everybody held a different opinion on Rosie. She was extremely pretty, with light hair and a good face, and she definitely had a decent pair, but a lot of guys thought she had no sex appeal. She had never had a boyfriend and she seemed girlish in a slightly blank way. To Hutch and Evan, it was a waste for such a good-looking girl to be someone sex just never occurred to. Ben was sort of ginning up his agreement with them but he didn’t really care.

Hutch had already started hooking up with Tara Oliver, but they hadn’t seen each other in a few nights. Now he was talking to Ursula Childress, but her name. Evan had been going to Emma Ponsolt’s room but hadn’t made a move yet.

“What’s up with you, Weeksy?” Hutch turned to him. “Where’s your beaver, man?”

“Playing the long game,” Ben said.

“You’re not that long,” said Hutch.

“How would you know?” said Evan, and they laughed routinely.

Ben looked for Alice. He found himself waiting to see her most of the time now and trying to calculate what he would say. Sometimes Ben would get the pang of recognizing her from far away, but then it would turn out to be Laurel Oppenheimer, who had similar coloring and posture. Ben now hated Laurel.

He couldn’t imagine what he would ever say to Alice, and when he did see her across a lawn or at the end of the Schoolhouse hallway, she was always wearing her baggy green fleece with her arms crossed in front of her. Her shoulders hunched forward and her spine curved as though she were trying to suck her breasts into herself. Ben saw her with Ian a distressing amount. Once she was riding piggyback while he wove back and forth through the staked saplings in the Dish courtyard, and once they were standing near the rear entrance of Paige and she seemed unhappy.

Now Ben and Hutch and Evan were watching intently for Rosie to come back outside, and so they all saw Ahmed when he moved out of the PO reading a postcard. He was wearing a loden-green cashmere sweater and a long crimson scarf. Ben saw him squint as the card came into the bright sunlight. Everyone liked physical mail, but it seemed to be a delicacy with Ahmed, who cultivated a number of pen pals around the world.