Chet returned to Wintertree 79 to find Dick sprawled out again on the loveseat, staring blankly at a Simpsons rerun. He became aware of a small shift in the room's atmosphere from its state when he left seven hours earlier. "Are the new kids here?" he asked. Dick grunted in the affirmative.

Chet didn't fuck with rope ladders (a formerly fat child, he had a healthy distrust of any structure meant to hold his weight that swayed or bent; you couldn't pay him enough to set foot on a rope bridge), so he climbed up the sturdy wooden ladder to the second landing on the north side of the loft and stepped down to the platform that served as 79A's porch. He stuck his head through the door and said "Hello?"

"They left," said Dick.

"Where?"

Dick shrugged. Chet and Dick had roomed together in 79 last year, thrown together by DUH's Random Roommate Assignment Supercomputer or whatever, and though they hadn't exactly become best friends forever, one would have to be insane to give up such palatial digs as 79 Wintertree. So he agreed to maintain the arrangement for a second year. Chet liked Dick all right, generally – the kid was smarter than he looked, though Chet had to admit he did look pretty fucking dumb - but his patience for Dick's default monosyllabic passive-aggressive hick mode was wearing pretty darn thin.

"What are their names? Where are they from? What are they like?"

"I don't know, man. Tim, I think? Drew something. I'm trying to watch TV."

Chet stepped into 79A. Whichever one of the new kids claimed the good bed had a lot more stuff. But he had also left his Handbook behind. Chet peeked at the cover: ANDREW DUNCAN BOYD. The other guy, Tim I Think, he only had one bag, but he was smarter. They made the Handbook small enough to fit in your pocket for a reason. Chet patted his left thigh, feeling its reassuring heft.

Chet stepped back out onto 79A's porch. Dick was right across the room on the TV landing, slackjawed and slack-bodied, not even enjoying the instant-classic Simpsons he was watching, the one where Marge joins the country club. Chet watched along in silence for a minute, getting sucked in, before realizing that he'd sit here and watch cartoons all night if he didn't stop himself. "Where'd they go?" said Chet.

Dick sucked some phlegm up his nose and back to his throat with a disgusting shwork. "Weston, I think."

"Come on. Let's go eat."

It was dark by the time Chet got Dick off the loveseat and outside, but the freshmen were still hauling in their bags and boxes, all the precious crap from home they couldn't live without. They'll learn, he thought. Or some of them will. And the ones that don't, you don't really need to worry about.

For 8:00 on a Thursday, Weston was pretty deserted; most of the freshmen were surely downtown with Mommy and Daddy, getting one last restaurant meal paid for in exchange for one more hour spent as children who need taking care of. Once classes started, the dining hall would be packed.

Dick wandered off in search of KRÜMMFAUVEN!, which was rumored to be among Weston's inaugural cereal selections for fall quarter. Chet spotted Tim and Drew, or who he assumed were Tim and Drew, easily enough. One was a bronzed god, lean and muscular, the blue of his eyes and white of his teeth vivid even from across the room. The other was an afterthought of a person: neither tall nor short, shapeless in ill-fitting clothes, hair of no particular color. He hunched over his plate of Chicken Supreme, while the other sat up straight and proud, seemingly lit from within. Chet had a hunch he knew which was the smart one. As Chet approached the table, he saw the familiar purple brick of a Handbook next to the tray of the less impressive kid. "You must be Tim," Chet said.

The kid looked up at him and blinked. Golden boy's smile turned down at the corners a bit. "I'm Chet. Dick's roommate? I hear you guys are our upstairs neighbors."

Drew shook hands like he was trying to win a contest, Tim like he had already lost. He pulled his Handbook closer to him as Chet sat down. "What's the deal with our room?" Tim asked.

"I'm not real clear on the details," said Chet. "It's just the way Wintertree's built. There's probably something about it in your Handbook."

"Yeah, about the Handbook..." Tim flipped through the book, looking for a specific page. "I saw this...this girl, and I looked her up...here." Tim held his Handbook, open to the middle, to Chet's face. Chet had to unfocus his eyes, will himself not to read anything. He gently pushed the book away.

"Yeah, you don't read somebody else's Handbook."

"What is that, like one of the school rules?"

"No, it's just a good idea." Everybody figures it out eventually, Chet later than he would have liked. He could try to spare the kid that pain, though he knew it was a futile gesture. He may be smart, but no freshman is that smart. The first time he has a girl alone in his room, they'll be in each other's Handbooks so fast it'll make your head spin.

Dick joined them, carrying a tray loaded with two bowls of Lucky Charms and a glass of murky soda that Chet knew must be a Regicide. "No KRUMMFAUVEN!?" Chet asked him.

"Fucking bullshit."

"What's KRUMMFAUVEN!?" said Tim.

Dick lowered a heaping spoon of Lucky Charms and stared at the freshman, then looked at Chet, like, Can you believe this idiot? He shoved the spoon in his mouth.

Drew watched Dick chew the cereal, his perfect nose wrinkling ever-so-slightly in disgust. Dick noticed him watching. "What?" he said in a spray of half-chewed marshmallow.

"Nothing."

Dick took another bite. "Don't watch me eat."

"I wasn't 'watching you eat.'"

Dick inclined his head toward Tim. "You want to watch somebody eat, watch this guy."

Tim's eyes widened in alarm. "What? I don't..."

"I don't want to watch anybody eat," Drew said.

"I hope not. Fucking perverted, watching somebody eat."

Chet's mood soured. Bringing Dick was - as it usually was - a bad idea. Chet had worked hard freshman year to housebreak him, to make him not just a bearable roommate but someone you wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with, since Dick insisted on tagging along with Chet pretty much everywhere. Chet was pretty certain he was Dick's only friend. After a while that just got exhausting.

Chet stood up. "Sorry, guys, just remembered I need to run by the Student Union before it closes." Dick tried to protest, but his mouth was too full of tiny marshmallows.

Chet felt bad about leaving and bad about lying, but only so much. Dick would be mad about being left with the freshman, but it was hard to find a time when Dick wasn't mad about something. It'd be good for him to try to bond with them.

For once it wasn't too hot outside, so Chet turned right on Martin instead of staying straight on Hollister to take the long way back to Wintertree. Magnolias lined the street, obscuring the small brick buildings on the north side of the road. Chet had never been inside any of these buildings, which housed classrooms for majors he couldn't even name. Two minutes' walk from his home for the last year, and they might as well have been foreign countries.

Two girls in purple T-shirts brushed past. Propelled by a bubbly, overcaffeinated energy, they talked in a clipped, stop-start cadence that Chet didn't even try to listen in on. The backs of both girls' shirts read "WE ARE EVERYBODY" in white block letters, and white cardboard boxes dangled from both of their right hands by white strings, as if they were coming from a bakery. Chet knew where they were actually coming from: the Tower.

If he turned his head just a little to the left and looked to the southeast, he'd be able to see the Tower jutting above the trees and the other buildings of East Campus, the lights on its top floor always lit in apparent defiance of DUH regulations. But Chet always made an effort not to look at the Tower - not to let it sully his field of view the way it sullied the UNWG campus.

The fourteen-story Meadows Hall was opened for business a year earlier, and as an incoming freshmen Chet had been offered the chance to be one of its inaugural residents. But something about Wintertree had spoken to him from the welcome brochure, and he had chosen the squat gray cube over the gleaming high-rise, and he had given thanks every day since. The Tower was the stomping ground of the wannabe frat boys, the failed athletes, the aggressively average; Chet imagined the simpering sounds of the Dave Matthews Band constantly echoing in its bland, featureless halls. Wintertree wasn't perfect, true, but it was home.

The Everybody were born in the Tower, an "antidote" (their words) to the likes of the Nine Dead Men and the other "secret societies" that plagued campus; never mind that the bulk of the student body believed the Nine were a myth invented by the Handbook's authors. A secret society that wasn't a secret - to Chet, that seemed about par for the course as far as the Tower's denizens were concerned.

The Everybody girls soon outpaced Chet, heading for Suttledge Drive and the Student Union. They held their Box Socials there, in one of the cavernous ballrooms on the first floor. "All Students Welcome," they said, though Chet didn't know anyone who'd been to one, or what was in those little white boxes that looked like they should be full of cake. The purple T-shirts were all over campus, though. Maybe that just meant Chet needed more friends.

As Chet walked, the magnolias on the north sideof the street gave way to the facade of Sluke Hall, glowing an unearthly whitethanks to a dozen floodlights hidden in the bushes surrounding its little frontyard. Sluke was supposed to be some sort of architectural masterpiece, designedby a former student, Molly something, who killed herself or ended up in amental hospital or was otherwise some flavor of mixed nuts. It was an exact replicaof Mary Rutherford, the dorm Molly Something lived in when she was a student,made entirely out of poured concrete. Chet had never been inside, though if hewas honest he couldn't say he was in all that big a hurry. The whitewashed concrete made it look like a fortress made of ice, and the students who lived there had the glassy eyes and pallid skin of frozen corpses, and personalities to match. That is, Chet thought, when they ever ventured forth from their gleaming stronghold.

They were all foreigners. Chet hated the way that sounded in his head. Got-dang furriners. No, but they were: the disappointing second and third sons and daughters of wealthy Europeans and Asians, sent here for UNWG's world-class diplomatic training program. There was this one chubby kid from one of the Balkans, he'd just stare at you with these death-ray eyes, unless somebody mentioned Michael Jackson, and then he turned into a giggling fangirl. Chet was pretty sure he'd turn on CNN in five years and find out the guy had just gassed a million Serbs or something.

The one thing Sluke had going for it was its view of the Box, the quad bounded on the east and west by Hayes and Mary Rutherford, and on the south, directly across the green expanse from Sluke, Wintertree. The gray cube was studded with orange lights in its tiny windows; there was a pattern there, though Chet had not yet been able to decipher it. A few freshmen and their parents continued to haul boxes into the dorm; a couple of barefoot, shirtless kids threw around a frisbee. Sluke was slightly uphill from the Box, so you could take in the whole scene at once, like a shoebox diorama. An idyllic little snapshot for you to remember when you're old and useless and you dream not of the future but the past.

Chet crossed Martin and hopped down the stone steps to the Box itself. He kicked off his shoes and let his bare feet sink into the soft, springy grass. Soon the quad would turn brown with fall, and the grass would be trampled by the frisbee players and the drum circlers and the endless crisscrossing traffic of students, but for now it was still new and beautiful.

The frisbee sailed close and landed a few feet ahead of him. "Little help," called the dude to his right, over by Mary Rutherford, a lean kid with a farmer's tan, his head an unruly nest of brown coils. Chet picked up the disc. It was white and new, not even a scuff on it yet from sliding across a sidewalk. He considered keeping it, just because. Instead he gripped it with two fingers snug against the rim and flicked it at Little Help. It flew in a flat straight line and hit him right in the hands. Chet picked up his shoes and walked toward Wintertree, feeling whatever it was in the earth that pulled him to his home.

Jay was leaning against the railing of the stairs at the east end of the lobby. He nodded at Chet, as if it hadn't been three months since they'd seen each other, and even longer since they spoke. He pointed toward the west side of the room. "God, remember that?"

Chet took a look. Using the west lobby stairs as a stage, the RAs in their DUH shirts were putting on their Welcome Night show for about two dozen of the most timid, socially awkward freshmen. Big dumb Dragan and Holly were engaged in what Chet figured must be the safe-sex skit. Dragan was playing the Ambassadors' quarterback (you could tell because he was wearing a helmet that didn't even begin to fit his giant square head) and he was trying to pressure Holly into having sex despite his lack of condoms. "I am being American footballer hero yeah, so we are not having no need for prophylactics okay. You are safe with footballer hero okay. I am being so clean. So clean you eat off me."

The Welcome Night show is eminently skippable, presuming you have any idea how to spend your time, now that you have time to spend. But if you did, you wouldn't be reading this, would you? Watch the show. At least if you're in the lobby, near but not with other people, instead of alone in your room, there's a chance that something could happen. A spark could set off a reaction. See the girl six feet to your left, her hair a corona of fire, throwing sparks in every direction. You could say hello to her. There's no reason you couldn't. She is here. You have that in common, at least. Your hand reaches out of its own accord. The worst that can happen is you get burned. "Hi," you start to say.

A wall of plaid steps between you and the girl. A meaty hand takes your hand and shakes it. "Hi," he says. "I'm Reese. This is Jay." He points to a skinny Indian guy beside him. "God, what the fuck are we watching?"

The redhead turns and eyes the three of you – already, you are a trio – with a look of mock disapproval. "Show some respect. In some cultures, virgins this pure would be revered." She grins, lopsided and conspiratorial, fireworks popping behind her eyes. There are things in her she cannot contain, things you cannot hold. "Any of you guys holding?"

"Why am I so disappointed that Holly became an RA?" Jay said.

"Because you want her to break the rules, not enforce them." He remembered the smell of smoke in cold fall air. When he closed his eyes, sometimes he still saw the flames.

Chet took the three steps all at once and peeked in 79's mailbox: nothing, not that there's any reason there should be something there. "Who'd you get stuck with this year?"

"Some freshman, I don't know," said Jay. "He seems like a dork, but at least he's not down here watching this." Across the lobby, Holly slapped Dragan's helmet so hard it flew off with an audible pop. "They stick some freshmen in your attic?"

"Yep."

"MiloBall prospects? The horde needs replenishing."

"We'll see." The security door was officially locked for the semester now. Chet swiped his card and scanned his hand. It was too hard to talk to Jay. There was too much Chet couldn't tell him.

The dour little RA Ben was manning the checkpoint on Tier 3. "Ben," Chet called out from the end of the hall, "you didn't get cast in the play?"

"Stardom is not my lot," Ben said in his flat monotone. He opened his thick DUH binder and ran his finger down a small-print list. "Do the living shun the dead?"

"Yes," said Chet, not even stopping for confirmation. To his surprise, Ben didn't open the gate.

"Well," the RA said. "That appears to be incorrect."

"What do you mean, incorrect? The answer's always yes."

Ben was at as much of a loss as Chet was. "I don't know what to tell you. I can't let you through."

Chet instinctively reached for his Handbook and patted it to make sure it was still there. It was, but for the first time in a long while that knowledge failed to reassure him.