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  X shrugged. “What’s in New York? What’s in Topeka? What’s in France?”

  “Tout le monde,” Chloe cut in, glowing.

  “I’m not coming back,” Mason said evenly.

  “And that might be what’s right for you,” X said. “It might be what’s right for all of you. But because I get paid the big bucks to convince you that Kentucky is worth your time — not just your time but your future — I’m going to try to do it. I’ve got a handful of weeks, and that’s the plan.”

  “Ambitious plan, there, X,” Chloe said.

  X nodded. “And really. Seriously. It’s not just because I’m getting paid. It’s because I mean it. I mean it when I say that this place is worth it — and if it’s not worth taking that scholarship when you graduate, then it’s worth coming back later. Your great state needs your minds and your tax dollars, ladies and gentlemen, and I promise you, before you go home next month, I will have provided you with, what, three? — let’s say three — reasons to think about staying. Okay?”

  Mason smiled. “You’re on. I dare you.”

  “Game on,” X said. “Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” Mason said. “Here’s a question. What’s all this sanctimonious proselytizing have to do with Gatsby?”

  X cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling for three excruciating thwacks of the second hand. “Look. A lot of things have changed since my days up in that Ivory Tower, during that grand romance I had with my own superior intellect. I mean, look at me! I am old and fat and have a mortgage and have not slept through the night in approximately three months. On the other hand, I love my wife and I would seriously drive a truck over anyone who ever dared to hurt my kid. I love them so much it makes my stomach hurt. What I’m saying is that my priorities have done one-eighties in ways you wouldn’t believe, in ways I never would have guessed if you had asked old Ivory Tower–brilliant me way back in the day. But man, The Great Gatsby still tears me up. It tears me up. It still works its magic on me just the way it did when I read it for the first time in ninth grade, Campbell County High School, a hundred years ago. That much hasn’t changed, and it’s worth something, it is, it is.”

  Calvin extinguished the silence that lingered after this little monologue. “Excuse me, sir?” he asked, frowning at his notes. “Was that one teachable thing or two?”

  X gave Calvin a weary smile and spread his arms wide. “It’s all the same thing, Calvin. It’s all just one big teachable thing.”

  “So,” Calvin said, staring at his hands, “what if I always wanted to stay? What if I never wanted to leave in the first place? What’s that say about me? I mean, does that say there’s something wrong with me?”

  X paused, caught like the rest of us in the spell of Calvin Little. It was something, the way that Calvin’s goodness — his remarkable way of just being absolutely nobody else on this earth but himself — could throw a person for a loop. “Maybe,” X said, “maybe it says you’re wise beyond your years. Wise beyond my years, even.”

  X zipped the copy of Gatsby into his bag and was making for the door when we heard the unmistakable clatter of puppy nails skittering down the hall. Holyfield appeared in the doorway, panting and grinning and trailing a leash with nobody on the other end. A couple seconds later Kathryn, the (visibly exhausted but still stunning) wife, appeared with baby Juliet strapped to her chest. “I’m really sorry,” she said to X. “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but you’re gonna have to take the dog. I can’t handle them both.” She looked at the four of us and waved, a gesture that seemed to require great effort. “Hi, yall.”

  “Another teachable moment!” X declared. “It’s never a good idea to acquire a newborn puppy immediately after you acquire a newborn person. Word to the wise.”

  The thought of ever acquiring one, much less both, of those things was enough to send me running headlong into the sea, but Holyfield was cute. I couldn’t help it. He trotted over to me and lifted his front paws onto my knee, digging tiny daggerlike puppy claws into my skin. “Ow,” I said. “Get down.” Holyfield lifted his ears and cocked his head to the side, like, Really? Are you serious?

  “Oh, good,” X said. “Gloria, you be in charge of Holyfield. We’re moving outside. I’ll meet yall at the Kissing Tree in five.”

  As it turned out, the romance and lore of Morlan College did not end with the curse of Thomas McGrath. There was also the legend of the Kissing Tree, which, apparently, was the very same ancient sycamore we had swung on and laughed beneath just days before. X told us the story: The tree was more than two hundred years old, and for more than two centuries people had been meeting beneath it to kiss and be kissed. According to campus tradition, a kiss under the Kissing Tree on the night of a full moon was a sign of a union destined to result in marriage.

  “Oh please,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes. “I cannot believe that we are more than a decade into the new millennium and there are still people buying into that fairy-tale, happily-ever-after, marriage-is-the-end-all crap. Have you seen the divorce statistics lately? Dude, talk to me about marriage when it’s legal for everyone.” She knocked on the tree. “Ça va, monsieur arbre?”

  I turned away so Chloe wouldn’t see me blushing. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but I liked the story. I liked that the tree had been around so long, and I liked to imagine the sweetness it had borne witness to over so many seasons and years. Surely in all that time there had been storms — there had been lightning and drought and snow and ice and the constant threat of a bulldozer coming to make way for something better — but the tree had outlived them all. I liked to think that the kissing was what kept it alive for so long. I mean, I can believe in a story like that.

  “So what we’re going to do is this . . .” X was saying. He was sitting on the grass with Holyfield in his lap. The dog, batting at a bee, looked like one of those inspirational posters they sell at elementary school book fairs. I was vaguely aware that X was giving us an assignment, that Chloe and Calvin and Mason were nodding and writing stuff down, but I was still adrift, still hooked on the story of the tree. I walked around the other side of it, running my hands along the ghostly white bark. I wouldn’t have been surprised to feel a heartbeat there. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find, there in a hollow of the trunk, just above eye level, a pocket watch or a figurine carved out of soap. Just in case, I reached in, hoping. There was nothing there, of course, but there could have been. This tree was Boo Radley’s dream.

  “Gloria?” came X’s voice. “Care to join us?”

  I got on the swing and sailed out above their heads. It was a great swing; it really was. It made you feel suspended in midair. It made you believe in the possibility that time could stop and you could be held forever in that butterfly moment just before the roller coaster plummets down the first big hill. “Sorry,” I said. “What’d I miss?”

  “The Great American Novel,” X said. “What’s yours? You have until the end of camp to make us love it with all our hearts. That’s your job.”

  I looked around, still breathless from the swing, not really getting it.

  “I’m doing Gatsby,” Chloe said with a warning glance. “I called it.”

  I used to think I wanted to be a teacher. I used to think I’d love nothing more than to get up in front of a bunch of impressionable young morons and thrill them with everything I know about Shakespeare, which is kind of a lot. Then I decided I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t teach something I loved that much — it would be like giving it away, or worse: giving some part of myself away. It’s selfish and awful and stupid, but there it is. Also, I can’t be a teacher. That would interfere with the Plan.

  “What’d you find in the tree there, Gloria?” Mason asked, grinning at me. “Spelling-bee medal, maybe?” He was holding something in his hand, and it took me a second to realize it was GoGo’s book. My book.

  “Don’t touch that,” I said. My voice came out in a raspy whisper; I didn’t feel prepared to speak. “Put it
back, okay?”

  Mason surprised me by returning the book to my pile of stuff on the ground: my bag, the GBBoE, the notebook I had bought expressly for this class, which was so far full of nothing. “Sorry,” he said, and he sounded (mostly) genuinely apologetic.

  “To Kill a Mockingbird! Great choice, Gloria,” X said, and even did this ridiculous and embarrassing clap. Holyfield yipped in alarm or approval.

  “Class is over, right?” I asked, gathering up my things. “Because I gotta go.”

  I did this very stagy march across the lawn, this really theatrical show of hurt and anger so everybody would know how hurt and angry I was. I’ve been in all kinds of plays; I’m good at this shit. Here’s the thing, though: In plays and in movies and on TV, the person who storms off usually gets followed by the person who has made her feel hurt or angry. In real life, Mason Atkinson just kept sitting there on the lawn, and his failure to play his part was the most hurtful thing of all.

  SOMETIMES I try to think back on my favorite days. The days that stand out in my mind as the best ones I’ve ever had. The thing I’ve noticed is this: My favorite days don’t happen on the days they’re supposed to — I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had nice birthdays and decent holidays, but my favorite days have always been ordinary ones. They’re those days when you wake up expecting nothing special and by the time you go to bed you’ve been handed some little piece of magic. That’s how it was for me on June 30, an ordinary day when Calvin Little turned seventeen and experienced flight for the first time in his life.

  The day started off ordinarily enough: Jessica stepped on X’s note on her way out the door. “You’ve got mail,” she yawned, tossing the envelope onto my bed. “If I’m not out of the shower in six hours, come and wake me up.”

  Field trip today, the note said. Meet at the Egg Drop at 9. Wear shoes you can walk in.

  When I arrived at the Egg Drop, Chloe was busy decking the place out in full birthday regalia. She and Xiu Li were standing on our favorite table, affixing streamers to an overhead lamp. “Hey, Glo!” she called. “What do you think? Is Calvin gonna freak out or what?”

  “Calvin’s gonna kill you,” I said. I could have hugged her, though, for remembering. She had told Calvin she would remember and she did.

  “Well,” Chloe said, lowering herself carefully into the booth, “he can thank me later. So where’s X taking us? Do you know?”

  “No idea,” I said. “But I need an omelet. What’s the omelet special, Xiu Li?”

  “Bluegrass Omelet today.” Xiu Li grinned. “Country ham with cheese.”

  “One of those with an Ale, please,” I said.

  “You know, Xiu Li,” Chloe said, throwing a casual arm around Xiu Li’s shoulder, “people from way out in the country call that old ham. It’s only the city slickers who call it country ham. Very important distinction. Take it from a hayseed, okay?”

  “A hayseed who practically lives in Cincinnati,” I added.

  “Um, practically Cincinnati by way of Mousie, Kentucky, which is exactly as tiny as it sounds, and where we call it old ham, dude, so don’t argue with me.”

  “This girl, she crazy,” Xiu Li said, throwing up her arms. Then she turned to me and winked. “You hayseed or city slicker?”

  “City slicker, I guess,” I said. “But it’s not like that’s my fault!”

  “City slicker has bright eyes this morning. Bright Ox eyes, both you crazy girls.”

  “How’d you know we were Oxen?” I asked, stunned and impressed and even more in love with Xiu Li, whom I’d pegged as some kind of prophet-seer from the start.

  “It’s all in the eyes,” Xiu Li said, winking again. “Your sneaky Rat friend, he come in now to drink all my Co-Cola. Watch out for Rat!”

  According to Xiu Li’s paper menus, those born under the sign of the Ox are Ponderous but impulsive when angry. Hello, can you say Poster Child? And then there’s the Rat, Charming and quick-witted, but narrow-minded. Well. That was the Mad Hatter.

  Xiu Li disappeared behind the counter just as Mason breezed through the door. He was whistling and wearing a camera on a strap around his neck. It was one of those old-school 35-millimeter jobs, la-la-la, so hipster cool. Before sauntering over to us, Mason paused to photograph the paper peace cranes that Xiu Li had recently hung in the front window. There were hundreds of them, and they spun in rows on long strands of silver string.

  “What’s up, Ansel Adams?” Chloe said.

  “I like to think of myself as more of a Weegee kind of guy,” Mason replied in distracted offhand, and there was that pang again: that mixed-up flare of indignation and suppressed appreciation I felt every time Mason revealed that he liked something that I myself happened to like. It had been happening alarmingly often.

  “Always at the scene of the crime,” I said, because I couldn’t — I absolutely could not — resist. “Sounds like you. Is that black-and-white film you’ve got there?”

  Mason gave me the briefest, slyest of looks. But of course.

  I mean, okay. It’s not like I have the monopoly on Weegee, any more than I have the monopoly on Boo Radley, but Mason’s apparent familiarity with those dear-to-me figures made me feel the same inexcusable, proprietary way I felt when Carol and I went to see the Magnetic Fields in concert. In the weeks and days leading up to the show I was completely on fire with anticipation, but once we got there I ruined it for myself — and for Carol, who says she’s never going to a show with me ever again, who actually left me in the parking lot that night — by feeling all this ridiculous contempt for the hundreds of jackasses who were there feigning interest in, laying claim to, my beloved Magnetic Fields. I mean, nobody else could possibly love them the way I loved them, right? The worst were the posers who came to school the next day actually wearing the Magnetic Fields T-shirts that they had bought at the show the night before. I know. I’m an asshole, just like Carol said. An asshole with a thing for Weegee.

  “I’m still trying to figure out how this focus ring works,” Mason muttered. “Is the light in here weird? Gloria, act natural.” Mason pointed the camera at me and adjusted the lens.

  “Get that thing away from me.” I covered my face with my hands and hauled off to the bathroom. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s cameras. Ever since arriving at Morlan I’d been in a heated debate with Jessica about the camera phone she was forever carrying around and poking in people’s faces. She would murder a perfectly good moment just to take a picture of it, I swear. She would take a picture of her breakfast if the spirit moved her, and seriously, the spirit did move her, because she actually said out loud one morning that she felt like a thing hadn’t really happened if she hadn’t taken a picture of it. I ask you: How backasswards is that?

  I took a look at myself in the dingy bathroom’s cracked mirror, on which someone had magic-markered the words FOR A GOOD TIME CALL IKE. They were the same words, same handwriting, same phone number, I’d seen in public restrooms all over town — in the dorms at Morlan, the convenience store just off campus, the art house theater where Chloe dragged us all to see an ancient Charlie Chaplin movie (which Chloe herself cried through and Calvin slept through and Mason talked through and I thought was completely inscrutable). Ike. Who was Ike? I had to hand it to his nemesis: She was thorough. She had put in a lot of hard work. The phone number had imprinted itself on my brain, and I made a mental note to call it later, just to see what would happen. There was my reflection looking back at me with Ike’s phone number tattooed across it. The scrawl across my face gave me a feisty little edge, but behind it I was the same me, the same as always. Not a horrible face, but also not a face I wanted preserved forever on 35-millimeter black-and-white film. Pictures never really do anybody any justice. The photograph of the thing is never as good as the picture you take with your mind. I didn’t need a picture of Xiu Li’s cranes — they were there in my mind, I had seen them, they were part of me now.

  “Girl, I thought you fell in,” Chloe announced, ba
rging through the door. “Get out here and eat your old ham. X says we have a lot of driving to do. Wait’ll you see our fabulous ride!”

  I’m pretty sure Calvin’s birthday started out as the worst of his life. After we mortified him with a public celebration at the Egg Drop, X dropped the devastating news that we were going to be taking a helicopter ride later in the day. Calvin was looking a little peaked as we climbed aboard X’s rusty old VW bus — this clunky, hubcapless maroon number that smelled faintly of pot but mostly of dog.

  “Chloe, if you sit up front, you have to navigate,” X announced. “That’s the rule.”

  “Aye aye, captain.”

  I slid onto the bench behind the driver’s seat and pulled Calvin down next to me to save him from passing out. Holyfield, having immediately zeroed in on Calvin’s anxiety, took up residence in his lap. From his station in the way-back, Mason leaned over our seat and took a series of pictures of Holyfield, who seemed — no lie — to be actually grinning for the camera.

  “Aren’t you out of film yet?” I asked. Then, to Calvin: “Relax. Nobody’s going to make you get into that helicopter if you don’t want to. I promise.”

  Calvin was absorbed in petting Holyfield — it made me believe all that talk about how petting a dog can lower your blood pressure. “No, I need to do it,” he said. “I need to do that and about a million other things. It’ll be good. A milestone. Right?” He looked up at me and grinned. “I mean, it’s not like I’ll be by myself. I’m braver with all of you around.”

  I grabbed hold of Calvin’s hand and squeezed it. “And we’re just nicer people in general when you’re around.”

  “Thanks for my birthday party.”

  “That was all Chloe, dude.”

  “Hey Chloe,” Calvin said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Thanks for my birthday party.”

  Chloe flipped the sun visor down and grinned at Calvin through the little mirror. “No problem, Cal. You can count on me to be your party planner and your navigatrix. X, where’s our final destination and what’s our ETA?”