the summer studying everything on the reading list, kept shooting his hand up, and Sarah seemed to know just as much. Truscott, who turned out to be British, managed to call out a few answers as well.
“I’m already failing the class,” said Stu, “and it’s only the first day.” He was joking, but his ignorance felt like evidence of just how far he was overreaching.
“Both my parents teach philosophy here,” said Sarah with a touch of apology. “I can’t help knowing this stuff.”
As Professor Levinson confirmed the right answers, she spent a few minutes explaining each one, sketching out in miniature the trajectory of Western thought. Her cheeks flushed and she spoke quickly as she bounced from one topic to the next. Stu wrote down what she said until he noticed he was the only one. He put down his pen.
At the end of the game, Stu’s team was declared the winner. He high-fived the others without sharing in their jubilation.
“Thus concludes the fun part of the course,” said Professor Levinson. She tossed their team a bag of Skittles that Truscott caught in one hand. “Just kidding. It’s all going to be fun. See you on Wednesday.” As the professor erased her name from the blackboard, Stu accepted a handful of Skittles from Truscott. Each one tasted as sweet and sickening as mediocrity.
* * *
At the end of the following week, Stu’s mother called and proposed an arrangement she had discussed with Jericho’s mother.
“Jericho needs to switch rooms, honey,” she said. “So we thought maybe he could move in with you?”
Jericho suffered from insomnia, and his roommate had complained to the resident advisor that Jericho stayed up all night reading and laughing. Stu knew the laugh, which was more of a bark—an exultant cry of excitement that was symptomatic of one of his more irritating moods.
“It’s better for both of you this way,” said Stu’s mother. “Now neither of you need to share with strangers.”
“Okay, Ma.” Stu’s assigned roommate was a quiet young man majoring in religion whom he’d barely seen.
Now Stu sat on his bed and strummed his guitar while Jericho arranged his figurines on the bookcase. He turned a miniature Luke Skywalker to face Stu and wiggled him slightly.
“I’m not going to go to the philosophy welcome party,” said Luke Skywalker in Jericho’s voice.
“Oh no?” said Stu. He watched as his new roommate expanded Luke’s posse with a wizard, a Stormtrooper, and the Incredible Hulk. When they were kids, Jericho had been the deviser of all games and chief explorer of imaginary lands. Stu would return from playdates at Jericho’s house with the disorienting sensation of having spent three hours inside his friend’s brain—an odd place filled with fantastical lore and the peculiar detritus of Jericho’s current obsessions. Stu wondered if it was still the wild place it had seemed then.
“No,” said Jericho. Having positioned one final winged superhero, he extracted his linguistics textbook from a pile on the floor and hunched on the bed to read it.
“You might meet some girls,” said Stu. Before they graduated from high school, they used to joke about Jericho’s virginity as his incurable condition. But Stu wasn’t sure Jericho would find it so funny anymore.
His friend grunted without looking up. “Lots of studying to do.”
“Sure,” said Stu. “It’s the first party, though. It might be good to make some other friends besides me.” He regretted how it sounded, but Jericho didn’t flinch. He had always regarded Stu’s high school drift into the orbit of the popular kids as nothing more than a naive lapse of judgment.
Jericho grunted. “Busy.” Then he cringed as Stu began rehearsing a song. “Can’t you see I’m concentrating?”
* * *
—
The house party was in full swing by the time Stu arrived. Motown was playing on the stereo, and the kitchen and living room were full of people. He squeezed past some guys he didn’t know and helped himself to a beer from a cooler in the kitchen. There was a sign posted on the wall that said ONLY CONSUME ALCOHOL IF YOU ARE 21+. Over the din, he could hear Truscott in the far corner talking to some girls about spending his summer on tour as a replacement guitarist for a band Stu was surprised to realize everyone had heard of.
“Good money for a summer gig, but I couldn’t stand those pricks,” Truscott was saying. “They wouldn’t know real art if it bit them in the arse.”
Stu moved into the hallway, where Professor Levinson was sitting