Chapter  1

WOODWARD COURT

 The radiator in Woodward Court dormitory wheezed in fits, fell silent, then started up again, as if to remind me it was still there. Outside, April rain slid across the Gothic spires of the University of Chicago quadrangles, pooling beneath the lamps and turning the puddles amber. It was nearly midnight, and the wind off Lake Michigan carried that thin chill that always found its way through the window cracks, no matter how tightly we sealed them.

I sat at my desk, hunched over an economics problem set, my breath fogging the window on the other side of the table. The equations refused to balance, and I didn’t care enough to force them. Somewhere below, a door slammed; the echo climbed the stairwell and dissolved into the building’s low hum. Woodward Court had that kind of institutional, cinder block sound. A collage of small noises that made it hard to forget other people were nearby.

I turned as the door creaked behind me, and my roommate, Dan, stepped in, shaking the rain from his hair. He looked like someone from an American college brochure: instant smile, calming voice, blue eyes, and the kind of blond locks that turned golden under any light. In 1980, everything seemed to be breaking Dan’s way—at least that’s how it felt then. USA hockey had beaten the Soviets, Reagan was destined for the White House, and Dan had somehow started dating the sharpest pre-med student either of us had ever met. He kept telling me that the whole country felt like it was tilting toward a future he wanted for his own life.

He tossed his jacket over the chair, pulled off his boots, and collapsed into bed.

“Long night?” I asked, turning back to my work. “Marathon session in the Reg. I think the reference librarian hates me now,” he said, muffled in his pillow.

“I’ll hit the sack in ten minutes,” I said. “Just want to finish this last one.”

“Don’t rush. I don’t have class till ten-thirty.”

Dan could sleep anywhere. Through noise or light, even through an apocalypse. I, on the other hand, had a mind that refused to shut off. He’d been the only socially competent person I’d met since arriving on campus, and by some divine intervention, we’d ended up freshman-year roommates. Without him, I might have gone feral, lost among highly educated social misfits who wore their anxiety like credentials.

It was Dan’s idea to borrow outfits from two girls in the dorm and go as cheerleaders to the Halloween party. This turned out to be a mistake, since Dan was, by consensus, the best-looking girl there, while I landed squarely in the middle of the bell curve.

Later that year, at the biennial campus-wide Lascivious Costume Ball—where the Ida Noyes Hall pool was opened for skinny-dipping and anyone adjudged naked got in free—Dan was forced to pay admission. I, meanwhile, wearing only a proper English hat, sunglasses, Top-Siders, and a scandalously long scarf, was waved through at no charge. Unfortunately, even that small victory was overshadowed by the girl who went as Eve, whose entire costume consisted of an apple and a live snake that seemed calmer than anyone else there. The hired male stripper—who until then had commanded the full attention of the crowd—was none too pleased when Eve drifted too close with her serpent.

I stared at the paper, pretending to think. The truth was, I’d finished the problem set ten minutes earlier. Despite my pretense of productivity, I was searching for distraction. Anything to push back the restlessness that had settled in me since the start of spring quarter.

I clicked off the lamp, and the room slipped into a quiet darkness, that moment between thought and sleep. Upstairs, someone was blasting Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours for the tenth time that week. The needle must have been dirty, because the vocals kept cutting out into this low, rhythmic scratching. I turned toward Dan’s outline, just visible beneath the blanket.

“Hey, Dan,” I whispered.

He groaned. “You’re about to get weird, aren’t you?”

“What do you think about Erica?”

He rolled over. “In relation to what?”

“In relation to me.”

His teeth flashed in the dark. “You’re asking if you’ve got a shot?”

I laughed, embarrassed at how transparent I must have been. “Something like that. We walked back from the library. She smiled. I think.”

“She smiles at everyone.”

“Not like that,” I said, more defensively than I meant.

Dan propped himself on one elbow. “You realize I dated her for, like, three weeks, autumn quarter.”

“I remember.”

“I even sent her flowers. Never got past first base. Then she dumped me for a math major.”

“That was months ago.”

He fell back onto his pillow. “You’re impossible. You’ve been different ever since winter break.”

“I’m fine,” I said, though even I could hear the lie.

He let the silence sit. The radiator hissed again. “You ever gonna tell me what your deal is? Or is this just how you are?” he said finally. “You never tell me about your past. For all I know you’ve got a wife and three kids in Jersey.”

I smiled. “If I did, she’d have excellent taste.”

“You’re impossible to figure out. You don’t talk, you don’t screw up, and you don’t let anything show. It’s unsettling.”

“Alright,” I said, pushing the blanket aside. “You want real info? I’ll give you real info.”

“Proceed,” he said, his teeth flashing again. “Father Confessor at your service.”

“It’s just one story. But it’s enough.”

“Oh God, it’s about the girl, isn’t it? There’s always a girl.”

“There was. London, 1978.”

He shifted under the covers, clearly intrigued. “Your high school trip? You’ve never told me that one.”

“Because it’s the story that explains the rest.”

“Lucky me. I can skip morning class.”

I stared at the cracks in the ceiling. They were deep and jagged, looking like they might actually give way if the radiator hissed one more time. It was a mess, and looking at it made me feel like I was right back there. It felt fitting. Somewhere past that ceiling, beyond two years I couldn’t undo, waited the seven-teen-year-old I used to be. And in my memory, he was about to live a week that changed everything, leaving something in him that never quite closed.

Rain ticked against the window. I took a breath.

“Alright,” I said. “It started on a St. Patrick’s Day when it snowed at the Jersey Shore.”

His week in London is about to change everything.

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