Plum so wished she could be cool about it. She didn’t think she was going to cry, she just had to sit down on one of the red leather couches and put her head between her knees for a minute while her vision grayed out around the edges. She really did love Brakebills. She loved it so much. She really did. She really had.

She felt the sofa squish as Professor Coldwater sat down at the other end. He blew out a long sigh.

“Well—”

“I’m so sorry, Professor Coldwater. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to put you in danger! I didn’t mean to get you fired!”

And now she did sob: once, twice, three times. They were going to turn her out into the cold, scary world. She wasn’t ready. It wasn’t safe. What was she going to do? How was she going to live now?

“I know. Please don’t worry about it.” He said it quietly. “I’ve been thrown out of better places than this. And you might as well call me Quentin.”

“But what are you going to do? What am I going to do?”

“You’ll find something. It’s a big world. Probably bigger than you realize.”

“But I’m a failure! I’m a freak! I got kicked out of Brakebills, for God’s sake!”

The words barely had any meaning. They would soon, she knew, but right now it made her lips feel numb just to say them, as if the words were envenomed. She was expelled. She thought of having to say them to her parents and the gray came back.

“Something will come up, I promise you. Plenty of people have Brakebills degrees, but how many people can say they got kicked out? It’s a pretty exclusive club.”

She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t snort at that.

“But if you don’t mind my asking,” he went on, “what exactly were you doing back there? I sealed that corridor off for a reason. Even I couldn’t figure out where it went.”

“Oh, I told Fogg the truth. I really was pranking Wharton.”

“But why?”

“Well, he’s been kind of stingy with the wine lately. Plus it just seemed to me like there should be more, I don’t know, chicanery afoot around here. Generally. High jinks. It sounds silly now, but you know what I mean? To lighten the tone. Because basically who knows, we could all drop dead at any moment.”

“That is true.”

“Or get expelled.”

Quentin appeared to accept her reasoning at face value. Old people: you never knew what you were going to get.

“Do you still want to know where the secret passage is? To the wine closet?”

“Sure,” Plum said, though not unshakily. She managed a bitter little laugh. “Why the hell not?”