The first time Ellery met Danny and Camp, at the informational meeting for the Harpswell Prize three weeks into the start of her first year at Preston College, she thought they were a couple.
She was sitting in the dank, mildewy-smelling multipurpose room of Honors House as her classmates filtered in all around her, her oversize flannel buttoned up tight against the chill of the basement and her half-filled sketchbook balanced precariously on her knees. Ellery considered herself a mediocre artist at best, but since she had arrived at Preston, she had started carrying the pad around everywhere, along with a zippered pouch full of colored pencils, because she had the idea that if she kept her head ducked and her hand moving, it looked more like she was absorbed in her own esoteric creative genius and less like she was a huge loser with no friends.
She was squinting at the wing of a house sparrow—she’d started doing birds since she’d gotten here, cardinals and robins and great horned owls; she was trying to get the shading right, but the light in the basement was terrible, all wood paneling and bluish fluorescent tubes—when a tall, wide shadow fell across the page. Ellery looked up and saw two boys standing next to her, right at the end of her row.
“Hi,” the shorter one said, smiling a Young Republican smile. “Is it cool if we sit here?”
Ellery looked around. There were plenty of other empty seats—the basement stretched the full length of Honors House and was filled with rows and rows of splintery wooden pews that had been taken out of the old chapel at somepoint in the distant past—and there was something about the request that made her immediately suspicious, like possibly he was intending to pick her pocket or try to get her to accept Jesus into her heart. Still, while it was undeniable that a lot of her manners had fallen away these last few weeks, Ellery liked to think that she fundamentally remembered how to behave like a human person, so she nodded and closed her sketch pad and slid over to make room.
“I’m Camp,” the future congressman said, making himself comfortable beside her. He was wearing a pair of khakis gone frayed and soft with washing and a gray cashmere sweater with a hole at the shoulder seam. His hair was a rather theatrical-looking tangle of sandy-brown curls. “This is Danny.”
“Ellery,” she said, her voice embarrassingly hoarse and creaky with disuse. “Sorry—you said your name isCamp?”
“J. Campbell Jones,” the one called Danny put in, arranging his lanky limbs on the narrow bench. His own clothes were pristine, nearly stiff looking, like they’d only just been taken out of a factory-sealed plastic bag. “The third.”
Ellery pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t laugh. “Wow,” she managed. “Okay.”
“One might say that was big talk for a person namedEllery,” Camp observed, then moved nimbly on before Ellery could fully register her own mortification. “Where are you from?”
“Oh,” she said. “Um.” Already this was the most she’d said to anyone other than her roommate, Susie, since she’d arrived on campus. She felt like the Tin Man, like someone needed to pour motor oil into her mouth so her jaw would unhinge,glug glug glug. “California.”
Camp tilted his head to the side. “Is California embarrassing?”
“I— I don’t think so?” Ellery said uncertainly, confused by the question. This kept happening to her, a vague awareness that the dialect was different here and she didn’t always understand it. “Why?”
“You look very embarrassed.”
“Oh,” Ellery said again. She was blushing; she felt that now, the heat in her face and neck. This was because on the fourth day after move-in, while trying to make conversation with Susie, she’d mentioned going to watch the surfers at Manhattan Beach as a kid, to which Susie had replied,Wow, you’re from California? I had no idea; it’s not like you’ve already mentioned it fifty times or anything like that.“I think that’s just how my face looks now.”
Camp didn’t argue. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” he asked instead, nodding toward the front of the room, where Jonah K. Marlowe, assistant professor of American Studies and head of Honors House, was fussing with an ancient-looking projector. “For the Harpswell?”
“I’m not going to do the Harpswell,” Ellery confessed.
Camp frowned. “Why would you not do the Harpswell?”
Ellery shrugged. She wasn’t going to do the Harpswell because she could barely brush her teeth in the morning. She wasn’t going to do the Harpswell because you needed peer recommendations for the Harpswell, and she couldn’t imagine asking anyone here to write something nice about her, even eight months from now. She wasn’t going to do the Harpswell because the moment she’d arrived in New England, a locomotive made of homesickness and tears had come tearing out of the woods and flattened her like a penny on the tracks before speeding off again, leaving behind only silence and trees.
“I won’t be here,” she explained finally. “I’m going to transfer somewhere closer to home.”
“What?” Camp looked positively aghast. “No. You shouldn’t do that.”
“Jesus, Camp.” Danny rolled his eyes. To Ellery, he said, “His family basically founded this college. He takes it personally when people don’t like it here. It gives him an eczema flare.”
Ellery nodded. This explained some things, certainly—Camp’s clothes and his master-of-ceremonies bearing; his patently ridiculous hair—but before she could think through the broader implications, Jonah K. Marlowe finally succeeded in connecting his geriatric laptop to the projector and straightened up inside his navy-blue blazer, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “All right, Preston College Honors House scholars,” he began. “We are here on this lovely autumn evening to talk about the Harpswell Prize.”
The Harpswell Prize for General Excellence was the capstone of the first-year Honors Program, which also included a twice-weekly interdisciplinary seminar and residence here, in Honors House. Come April, each of them was expected to submit a portfolio reflecting the sum of their achievements at Preston so far, including the fruits of a yearlong creative project.Prizewas a misnomer, technically, as there was no monetary award attached to the Harpswell. Instead the winner was seated at a table with the dean of students, the chairman of the board of Preston College, and Jonah K. Marlowe at the Honors Program Convocation Luncheon and had his or her name printed in thePreston Pageturner, the campus newspaper. The whole thing was, Ellery thought, an absolute load of East Coast horseshit, but previous recipients included two US senators, a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, and the current president of the college, so she supposed it was possible they all knew something she didn’t. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“We’re going to the dining hall,” Camp announced when the meeting concluded, everyone shuffling toward the staircase. He and Danny, Ellery noticed, had both listened intently to everything Jonah K. Marlowe had to say. “If you want to come with us.”
It took Ellery a moment to realize he was talking to her again. “Thanks,” she said, “but that’s okay.”
“Did you already eat dinner?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
Ellery almost laughed again. “Look,” she said. “This is nice of you guys, whatever you’re doing here, but—”
