“End of an era. End of an epoch. Which one? Era or epoch? What’s the difference?”

Quentin didn’t know. They would have to find something else, he thought mazily. Something new. Couldn’t stay here anymore. Couldn’t go back. Only forward.

“Do you think we were ever like this?” Quentin asked. “Like these kids?”

“Probably. I bet we were even worse. I don’t know how the others put up with us.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. God, they were so much nicer than we are.”

That winter Quentin didn’t go home for the holidays. Around Christmastime-real—world Christmas—he’d had the usual conversation with his parents about Brakebills’ unusual schedule, which he had to remind them about every year, lounging inside the old phone booth under the back stairs with one foot braced up against the folding wooden door. Then by the time Brakebills-calendar Christmas rolled around, it was already March in the real world, and it didn’t seem like such a big deal not to go back. If they had asked him—if they’d put it out there for an instant that they were eager to see him, or that they would be disappointed if he didn’t come—he might have caved. He would have, in a second. But they were their usual blithe, oblivious, glassine selves. And besides, he got an independent feeling from coolly informing them that he had other plans, thanks very much.

Instead Quentin went home with Alice. It was her idea, though as it got closer to the holidays Quentin wasn’t exactly sure why she’d invited him, since the prospect obviously made her suicidally uncomfortable.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” she said when he asked her. “It just seemed like the kind of things boyfriends and girlfriends do!”

“Well, whatever, I don’t have to come. I’ll just stay here. Just say I had a paper to finish or something. I’ll see you in January.”

“But don’t you want to come?” she wailed.

“Of course I do. I want to see where you come from. I want your parents to know who I am. And God knows I’m not taking you back to my parents’ house.”

“All right.” She didn’t sound any less anxious. “Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.”