“Emma wasn’t a cow,” Josh said. “Or if she was she was a hot cow. She’s like one of those wagyu cows. Did she ever pay you back for that dress she threw up on?” He was lying on his back, staring up into the cloudless sky. He didn’t seem to care if the spell had worked or not.

“No, she didn’t. And now she’s gone to Tajikistan or something to save the vanishing Asiatic grasshopper. Or something. Cow.”

“Who’s Emily Greenstreet?” Alice asked.

“Emily Greenstreet,” Janet said grandly, savoring the rich, satisfying piece of gossip she was about to impart, “was the first person to leave Brakebills voluntarily in one hundred fifty years.”

Her words floated up and drifted away like cigarette smoke in the warm summer air. It was hot out in the middle of the Sea, with no shade, but they were all too lazy to move.

“She came to Brakebills about eight years ago. I think she was from Connecticut, but not fancy Connecticut, with the money and the Kennedy cousins and the Lyme disease. I think she was from New Haven, or Bridgeport. She was quiet, sort of mousy-looking—”

“How do you know she was mousy-looking?” Josh asked.

“Sh!” Alice whacked Josh on the arm. “Don’t antagonize her. I want to hear the story.” They were all lying on a stripy blanket spread out over the ruins of Josh’s sand pattern.

“I know because Emma’s cousin told me. Anyway, it’s my story, and if I say she was mousy, then she had a tail and she lived on Swiss fucking cheese.

“Emily Greenstreet was one of these girls that nobody ever notices, who are only friends with other girls nobody notices. Nobody likes or dislikes them. They have weak chins or chicken-pox scars, or their glasses are too big. I know I’m being mean. But you know, they’re just sort of at the edge of everything.

“She was a good student. She kept busy and got by in her boring little way until her Third Year, when she finally distinguished herself by falling in love with one of her professors.

“Everybody does it, of course. Or at least the girls do, since we all have daddy complexes. But usually it’s just a crush, and we get over it and move on to some loser guy our own age. But not our Emily. She was deeply, passionately, delusionally in love. Wuthering Heights love. She stood outside his window at night. She drew little pictures of him in class. She looked at the moon and cried. She drew little pictures of the moon in class and cried at them.

“She become moody and depressed. She started wearing black and listening to the Smiths and reading Camus in the original whatever. Her eyes became interestingly pouchy and sunken. She started hanging out at Woof.”