Alex had tried to choose the easiest subjects possible—English lit, her Spanish requirement, an introductory sociology course, painting. She’d thought at least English would be easy because she liked to read. Even when things had been really bad in school, she’d still been able to fake her way through those classes. But this English was an entirely different language. She’d gotten a D on her first paper, with a note that said, This is a book report. It had been just like high school except she’d actually been trying.

“I love you, but this essay is a mess,” said Mercy from the common room. “It would probably be better if you spent less time working out and more time working.” No shit, thought Alex. Mercy was going to be in for a real surprise if she ever asked Alex to jog somewhere or lift something heavy. “We can go through it over breakfast.”

All Alex wanted was sleep, but going back to bed didn’t seem to be the thing people did after a run, and Mercy had done her the courtesy of editing her awful English paper, so she definitely needed to say yes to breakfast. Lethe had provided Alex with a tutor, an American Studies grad student named Angus who spent most of their weekly sessions bent over Alex’s work, snorting in exasperation and shaking his head like a horse plagued by flies. Mercy wasn’t exactly gentle, but she was a lot more patient.

Alex yanked on jeans and a T-shirt, then the black cashmere sweater she’d prized so much when she’d picked it out at Target. It was only when she’d seen Lauren’s lush lavender pullover and foolishly asked, “What is this made of?” that she’d understood there were as many kinds of cashmere as there were of cush, and that her own sad sweater pulled from the sale rack was strictly stems and seeds. At least it was warm.

She gave her coat another spray of cedar oil in case any Veil stink lingered, hefted up her bag, hesitated. She opened her dresser drawer and dug around in the back until she found the little bottle of what looked like ordinary eye drops. Before she could think too much about it, she tilted her head back and squeezed two drops of basso belladonna into each eye. It was a stimulant, a strong one, a bit like magical Adderall. The crash was brutal, but there was no way Alex was going to make it through the morning without a little help. The old boys of Lethe had all kept diaries of their time in the society, and they had plenty of tricks they used to cut corners. Alex had discovered this one after Darlington was gone.

Back into the morning cold with Mercy beside her. Alex always liked the walk from Old Campus to the JE dining hall, but the quad looked less beautiful with a gray day on it. At night, the grubby packs of snow gleamed vague and white, but now they were grimy and brown at the edges, heaps of dirty sheets ready for the wash. Harkness Tower loomed over it all like a melting candle, its chimes sounding the hour.

It had taken Alex a few weeks to realize why Yale looked wrong to her. It was the complete lack of glamour. In L.A., even in the Valley, even on its worst days, the city had style. Even Alex’s mother in her purple eye shadow and chunks of turquoise, even their dumpy apartment with its shawls over the lamps, even her no-money friends, gathered at backyard barbecues, recovering from the night before, girls in tight shorts, midriffs bare, long hair swinging to the small of the back, boys with shaved heads or silky topknots or thick dreads. Everything, everybody, had a look.

But here the colors seemed to blur. There was a kind of uniform—jocks in backward baseball caps and long loose shorts they wore regardless of the chill, keys on lanyards that they swung like dandies; girls in jeans and quilted jackets; theater kids with crests of sink-dyed Kool-Aid-colored hair. Your clothes, your car, the music pumping from it, were supposed to tell people who you were. Here it was like someone had filed down all of the serial numbers, wiped away the fingerprints. Who are you? Alex would sometimes think, looking at another girl in a navy peacoat, pale face like a waning moon beneath a wool cap, ponytail lying like a dead animal over her shoulder. Who are you?

Mercy was an exception. She favored wild florals paired with a seemingly endless parade of eyeglasses that she wore on glittery strings around her neck and that Alex had yet to see her use. Today she’d opted for a brocade coat embroidered with poinsettias that made her look like the world’s youngest eccentric grandma. When Alex had raised her brows, Mercy had just said, “I like loud.”

They entered the Jonathan Edwards common room, warm air closing over them in a gust. Winter light slatted over the leather couches in watery squares—all of it a coy, falsely humble prelude to the soaring rafters and stone alcoves of the dining hall.

Beside her, Mercy laughed. “I only see you smile like that when we’re going to eat.”

It was true. If Beinecke was Darlington’s temple, then the dining hall was where Alex worshipped daily. At the squat in Van Nuys, they’d lived on Taco Bell and Subway when they were flush, cereal—sometimes dry, sometimes soaked in soda if she got desperate—when they were broke. She’d steal a bag of hot dog buns whenever they were invited to barbecues at Eitan’s place so they had something to put peanut butter on, and once she’d tried to eat Loki’s dry kibble, but her teeth couldn’t manage it. Even when she’d lived with her mom, it had been all frozen food, boil-in-a-bag rice dishes, then weird shakes and nutrition bars after Mira got suckered into selling Herbalife. Alex had brought protein pudding mix to school for weeks.

The idea that there could be hot food just waiting for her three times a day was still shocking. But it made no difference what she ate or how much of it; it was as if her body, starved for so long, was ravenous now. Every hour her stomach would growl, chiming like the Harkness bells. Alex always took two sandwiches with her for the day and a stack of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a napkin. The supply of food in her backpack was like a security blanket. If this all ended, if it all got taken away, she wouldn’t go hungry for at least a couple of days.

“It’s a good thing you work out so much,” Mercy noted as Alex shoveled granola into her mouth. Except, of course, she didn’t and eventually her metabolism would stop cooperating, but she just didn’t care. “Do you think it’s too much to wear a skirt to Omega Meltdown tomorrow night?”

“You’re still committed to this frat thing?” Omega Meltdown was part of Mercy’s Five Party Plan to get her and Alex to be more social.

“Some of us don’t have a hot cousin to take us interesting places, so until I’m offered a higher caliber of party, yes. This isn’t high school. We don’t have to be the losers waiting to get invited out. I’ve wasted too many good outfits on you.”

“Okay, I’ll wear a skirt if you wear a skirt,” Alex said. “Also … I’m going to need to borrow a skirt.” No one dressed up for frat parties, but if Mercy wanted to look cute for a bunch of guys in hazmat suits, then that was what they would do. “You should wear those boots you have with all the laces. I’m going back for seconds.”

The basso belladonna kicked in just as she was stacking peanut butter pancakes onto her tray, and she drew in a sharp breath as she came wide awake. It felt a little like someone cracking an ice-cold egg on the nape of your neck. Of course, it was at that moment that Professor Belbalm waved her over from her table below the leaded windows in the corner of the dining room, her sleek white hair gleaming like a seal’s head breaching a wave.

“Fuck,” Alex said under her breath, and then cringed when Belbalm’s mouth quirked as if she’d heard her.

“Gimme a minute,” she told Mercy, and set down her tray at their table.

Marguerite Belbalm was French but spoke flawless English. Her hair was snow white and fell in a smooth, severe bob that looked like it had been carved from bone and set carefully on her head like a helmet, so little did it move. She wore asymmetrical black garments that hung in supremely chic folds, and she had a stillness that made Alex twitch. Alex had been in awe of her from the first glimpse of her slender, immaculate form at the Jonathan Edwards orientation, since the first whiff of her peppery perfume. She was a women’s studies professor, the head of JE College, and one of the youngest people to ever achieve tenure. Alex didn’t know exactly what tenure implied or if “young” meant thirty or forty or fifty. Belbalm might have been any of those, depending on the light. Right now, with the basso belladonna in Alex’s system, Belbalm looked a dewy thirty and the light pinging off her white hair glittered like tiny shooting stars.

“Hi,” Alex said, hovering behind one of the wooden chairs.