They did their best to be good sports about it. On the first day of classes they sat patiently in the library as the new Physical Kids went through the ritual and broke into the Cottage. They’d debated long and earnestly about what to serve the newcomers when they came in, finally settling on a goodish champagne and—not wanting to be selfish, even though that was exactly how they felt—an obscenely expensive array of oysters and caviar with toast points and crème fraîche.

“Cool!” the new Physical Kids said, one after the other, as they made their way inside. They goggled at the oversize interior. They inspected the bric-a-brac and the piano and the cabinet of alphabetized twigs. They looked impossibly young. Quentin and Alice made small talk with them, trying to be witty and knowing, the way they remembered the others having been when they first got there.

Sitting in a row on the couch, the Third Years squirmed and sipped their champagne too quickly, like children waiting to be excused. They asked polite questions about the paintings and the Cottage library. Do the books circulate outside the building? Did they really have a first-edition Abecedarian Arcana in the hand of Pseudo-Dionysius himself? Really. And when was the Cottage first constructed? Really! Wow. That’s old. That’s, like, ancient.

Then, after a suitable interval, they disappeared en masse into the pool room. They showed no particular desire to be chaperoned there, and Quentin and Alice had no particular desire ever to see them again, so they stayed where they were. As the evening wore on, the sounds of adolescent bonding could be heard. It became apparent to Quentin and Alice that they were relics of an earlier era that had worn out its welcome. They had come full circle. They were outsiders again.

“I feel like an elderly docent,” Quentin said.

“I already forget their names,” Alice said. “They’re like quadruplets.”

“We should give them numbers. Tell them it’s a tradition.”

“And then we could always call them by the wrong number. Freak them out. Or we could call them all the same thing. Alfred or something.”

“Even the girls?”

“Especially the girls.”

They were sipping tepid leftover champagne. They were getting drunk, but Quentin didn’t care. From the pool room came the glittery tinkle of breaking glass—a champagne flute, probably—and then, a little later, the sound of a sash being raised and somebody throwing up, hopefully out the window.

“The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you’re grown up, people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.”

“We should have burned this place down,” Alice said gloomily. They were definitely drunk. “Been the last ones out the door and then torched it.”

“Then walked away with it burning behind us in the background, like in a movie.”