“Why did she have to tell that story?” she said. “Why? Why is she like that?”

Quentin immediately felt guilty for having enjoyed it. It was a horrible story. But there was something irresistibly gothic about it, too.

“She’s just a gossip,” he said. “She doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t she?” She pulled back, fiercely wiping her tears with the backs of her hands. “Doesn’t she? I always thought my brother died in a car crash.”

“Your brother?” Quentin froze. “I don’t understand.”

“He was eight years older than me. My parents told me he died in a car crash. But that was him, I’m sure it was.”

“I don’t understand. You think he was that boy in the story?”

She nodded. “I think he was. I know he was.” Her eyes were red and rubbed with rage and hurt.

“Jesus. Look, it’s just a story. There’s no way she could know.”

“She knows.” Alice kept walking. “It all works out, the timing of it. And he was like that. Charlie—he was always falling in love with people. He would have tried to save her himself. He would have done that.” She shook her head bitterly. “He was stupid that way.”

“Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe Janet didn’t realize it was him.”

“That’s what she wants everybody to think! So you won’t realize what a howling cunt she is!”

Howling was a big word at Brakebills that year. Quentin was about to keep defending Janet when something else clicked.

“That’s why you weren’t Invited here,” he said quietly. “It has to be. Because of what happened to your brother.”

She nodded, her eyes unfocused now, her relentless brain chewing away at this wrinkle, fitting other things into the bleak new picture it created.

“They didn’t want anything to happen to me. As if it would. God, why is everybody else in the world but us so fucking stupid?”

They stopped a few yards short of the edge of the Maze, in the deep shadow that pooled where the hedges grew close together, as if they couldn’t face the daylight again, not quite yet.

“At least now I know,” she said. “But why did she tell that story, Q? She knew it would hurt me. Why would she do that?”

He shook his head. The idea of conflict within their little clique made him uncomfortable. He wanted to explain it away. He wanted everything to be perfect.

“She’s just bitter,” he said finally, “because you’re the pretty one.”

Alice snorted.

“She’s bitter because we’re happy,” she said, “and she’s in love with Eliot. Always has been. And he doesn’t love her.”

She started walking again.

“What? Wait.” Quentin shook his head, as if that would make all the pieces fit together again. “Why would she want Eliot?”