notebook and wrote Don’t forget who you really are. He’d started out writing protest songs, but now he was gathering snippets of overheard conversations: telling phrases or tiresome, mangled platitudes or painful truths that rattled his heart with their very ordinariness. Over the summer, he’d spent time eavesdropping while he worked nights at the same steel factory as his dad, gathering bits of lives and other ideas he could use. So far, he had a song about a man whose wife couldn’t have a baby, another about a man whose daughter had stopped speaking to him, and one about a man who only met his kids once they were grown.
The money Stu earned went into the bank, and it meant that next year there might not have to be a loan at all. When he’d told his father that, expecting to elicit a little pride, his father had said, “Don’t boast, Stu. It isn’t Christian.”
* * *
On the first day of classes, Stu crossed the Lansdowne University campus feeling like an actor plopped down onto the wrong set. He recognized the quad from the brochure: the grey stone buildings nestled on the rolling green lawn, the perfect blue sky vaulting overhead an exaggerated symbol of unlimited horizons, though the colours in real life seemed muted. But standing there on the bustling, tree-lined path, he was surrounded by strident birdsong that rivalled even the lively conversation of the other students who streamed around him, carrying book bags and coffee cups. He followed the path to the river that wound its way around the edge of the campus. Its steep, muddy banks were clumped with reeds and wildflowers, and there, too, he was struck by the sheer noise of the water rushing past. Even the river was in a hurry to get somewhere.
As he headed to his first class, Stu found himself trailing a young woman into the room. She was slight with dark hair, and her smile was warm as she propped open the door. Stu was ready to follow her into the rows of desks, but she dropped her leather satchel on the large table at the front of the room, then went to the blackboard and wrote Professor Rachel Levinson in neat, cursive letters that bled chalk dust. Stu blinked and took a seat near the door, as did the student walking in behind him—a skinny guy with red muttonchops and an Anti-Flag T-shirt. Stu was just thinking of Jericho, who was wiry like that but taller, when Jericho himself loped in and sat down at the desk beside him.
“So you’re in this class, too,” said Stu, hoping Jericho couldn’t read his disappointment. For one whole minute there, he had imagined himself saying hello to someone completely new.
“Probably in all of them.” Jericho extracted a sharpened pencil from his bag. “Memory loss, much? We have the same major.”
Stu tried to assess his friend as though he wasn’t someone he had known all his life. He thought Jericho looked like the sort of guy who studied Klingon (he was) or who spent hours creating elaborate D&D campaigns (he did). But like Stu, he lionized Chomsky and had memorized the transcript of Manufacturing Consent. Unlike Stu, he owned a unicycle and three hamsters. Since the dorms didn’t allow pets, Jericho’s mother had promised to email him every evening with an update on their well-being.
A pretty young woman came in and sat down at the desk in front of Jericho. Her long, strawberry blond hair hung straight down her back, and she wore wide-legged magenta pants over a pair of black combat boots. Under the fluorescent lights, Stu could see her zebra-print bra through her cream blouse.
Jericho half stood up then sat back down. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Jericho.”
“Sarah,” she said, looking startled as she turned around in her seat to find him staring at her.
Stu wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Jericho notice a woman before, but then there hadn’t been anyone quite so noticeable in their high school.
“Welcome,” said the professor. She was soft-spoken, with the slightest hint of an accent she explained was Israeli by way of Chicago. She passed out a syllabus and said that they were going to study the very origins of philosophy and critical thinking itself. “But first,” she said, eyes glinting, “we play trivia.”
Professor Levinson divided the class into teams and pitted them against one another. Stu, Jericho, Sarah, and Truscott of the red muttonchops became a group and soon dominated. Jericho, who’d spent