On the way to the backstage door, a low, serious voice stopped me. I caught a glimpse between the dangling curtains at the side of the stage—everyone had come and gone, except one tall figure facing another down. Connor was nearly as tall as his father, but Dr. Caskey wielded those few extra inches of height like a weapon. After a second’s debate, I ducked out of sight and listened.
“—still remember what it was like to be here,” said Dr. Caskey’s clear, tuneful voice. “I know what it’s like, the real Kensington. Fooling around with girls in the cathedral. Getting drunk on Dom Pérignon in the woods. Going out after dark without the housemaster noticing . . . and you know, when I was in the group, we had real rituals, real tradition, none of that watered-down Kumbaya trash they have people doing now. I had a brush with death on the night of my initiation. Still got a scar or two.” He said it as if it were his proudest achievement, and I wondered what the Minuets’ old initiation might have been. What could they get away with out in the woods? Branding, maybe, like I’d heard about college frats? One of those get-blindfolded-and-lost-in-the-wilderness scenarios?
Dr. Caskey loosed a long, deep sigh. “So, I understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
A pause. “But you need to understand something,” he went on, his voice getting soft and dangerous. “You know what I’m thinking when Mr. Yu tells me I might want to talk to you, because, well, do I know your performance this semester hasn’t quite been up to your usual standard? I’m thinking I shouldn’t have to babysit you and your grades for you to perform. And I’m thinking, maybe I need to get worried about December, because maybe you’re not getting into Princeton without that tour.”
Connor was quiet.
“The rituals, and breaking the rules,” Dr. Caskey said, “it only means anything if you’re a winner. I mean—” He laughed. “It’s the difference between those guys on Wall Street doing cocaine and a coke addict, get it? The difference is control. If you’re going to mess around, pick fights, fine. Don’t tell me about it, but it’s fine. Kind of character-building, at the end of the day. But the first thing you’re going to do is be the best, or the rest is wasted time. Hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Caskey’s voice lost its last shred of humor. “You’re not going to embarrass me again?” he said, colder than sea ice. “Because if you don’t get results here, and I get wind from anyone else that you’ve been fucking around this semester, I am not going to be happy.”
“You don’t need to worry.” Connor spoke with utter neutrality. Without seeing his face, I knew the disconnected expression that would be locked into place over his steely eyes and thin mouth. I understood suddenly where and why he’d adopted it: here, a foot in front of his father, for survival’s sake.
“Good.” The sound of a hand on a shoulder. “Eyes on the prize. Now put that table up and let’s go.”
I slipped noiselessly out the backstage door, feeling like nothing of what I’d just heard could be real.
“Okay, we’re good,” Erik said, putting down his phone. “Victoria says she can get a ride to the airport with, I don’t know, Ariana something. So we have a car.”
I issued a sigh of relief. It caught in my throat as Jon Cox turned toward me. “All right, buddy,” he said. “Are you up to drive?”
Four hours there, and four hours back. For eight hours, I’d have to make sure the speedometer never even nudged the speed limit. I couldn’t risk getting pulled over. It wasn’t just driving someone under twenty that would get me busted—the cop would get curious why I didn’t match the girl on my license.
But with Isaac gone, what was the other option?
I looked around for a sympathetic face, but the guys all looked expectant. I hedged. “Just, we don’t drive in this weather in California, so . . .”
“The roads are going to be salted,” Jon Cox said quickly.
“Well,” Mama said, “not the whole way. Up in the mountains, it gets pretty snowy. You really think—”
Jon Cox hushed him and looked back at me. I understood the pleading look in his eye—we needed to get out of this place. Too many angry words hung around the Nest, cluttering our corners, perching on our rafters, peering down at us. They needed time to drift away.
But as far as my parents knew, my semester was a total non-event. All I needed was one missed speed limit sign, one cop having a bad day, or one patch of black ice, and everything was done. Nobody in my life would trust me again.
A voice came from behind Jon Cox. “I’ll do it,” Trav said.
I turned with all the other guys. “What?”
“I thought you couldn’t drive,” Mama said.
Trav pursed his lips. “I can. I just . . . don’t.” He crossed his arms. “But it’s better than Julian getting arrested. I-I can do it.”
More than anything, he sounded like he was talking himself into it. Unease flashed across my thoughts. Isaac had mentioned Trav’s anxiety. How bad was it around driving? Should I jump in? Tell him not to worry about it, not to push himself if he didn’t feel comfortable?
But Jon Cox was already saying, “Thanks, man. So we’re set.”
“We’re set,” Trav said, sounding more confident.
Under my skin, excitement and guilt grated against each other, shooting sparks.
It was early afternoon, the white sun slipping down from its peak, when Trav said, “Music off. We’re here.”
I punched the power button and leaned forward, peering out the windshield. The view made a welcome break from the phone in my lap. I kept checking it, wondering if Isaac would reply to my message. I didn’t really expect an answer, but I hoped, a little, if only for the human contact. I’d spent the car ride in crushing silence, with Erik in the backseat watching the entire Bourne trilogy on his phone, while to my left, Trav operated the wheel with the acute focus of a brain surgeon mid-procedure.
My mind kept circling back to Connor Caskey’s conversation with his father. Dr. Caskey had fit so many terrible sentences into such a short period of time that it was like he’d been trying to horrify me specifically. For weeks, Nihal’s frustration had mounted as their secret grew heavier, but I hadn’t understood before yesterday how much of a disaster it would be for Connor if word got out.
The seatbelt locked tight against my chest as Trav braked too quickly. In the back, Erik made an irritated noise. We crunched onto the spread of snow before Jon Cox’s mountain house, a three-story confection of honey-colored beams. It stood in the Adirondacks at the bottom of a sweeping slope, stands of powdered pines peeking over its snow-dusted roof. Panels of windows high on the front face of the house gazed down on a frozen river, which pooled in the crease of the valley. Crisp, untouched snow stood all around in thick drifts and layers.