John had already waited five minutes outside his house and was starting to grow impatient and cold. A crow suddenly called out, and he startled. Typically, his parents would have wanted to see him off, but it was early in the morning and they were so confident in his abilities that they didn't even supervise him packing his suitcase. Before he thought about going back inside to warm up a little, a van pulled up, and Tom waved from the passenger's seat. John could see Tom's father shout something at him, and Tom stepped out to help John move his suitcase into the surprisingly voluminous trunk. Tom and his father had spent a few minutes the previous night planning out their route, minimizing travel time in the order they picked up Tom's friends.

"Feel free to sit anywhere you like," Tom's father shouted in no particular direction when John squeezed himself inside the van.

"Thank you for doing this for us, Mr., uh..." John realized suddenly he did not know Tom's last name.

"Langley, but please, call me Steve. Bulldog, if you think that sounds cooler. I'm off the clock," Mr. Langley interrupted with a smile, offering his hand for John to shake. Tom frowned slightly—his dad never let Tom call him "Bulldog," which definitely did sound cooler. John always preferred to sit in the middle seat, or whichever would give him the most leg room. He always felt tense on long car rides, something about the space being confined. John wanted to initiate some small talk with Mr. Langley, but he scared him for some reason; there was just something innately wrong with calling someone else's parent by their first name.

They drove through quiet streets through a commercial area and then to a gated community by the water. Lilac trees were in full bloom, even though it was early in the morning, and some geese wandered on the lawn. Mr. Langley ignored the posted signage politely asking all guest arrivals to wait at the entrance and instead drove straight in, past a line of cookie-cutter houses to an address that Tom confirmed on his phone. John looked up to see Beth lithely squeeze past his legs to sit on his right, waving hello before yawning dramatically. Without any delay, they kept driving, picking up Regina, who sat to John's left and immediately started talking with Beth, leaving his head aching in the crossfire, and Alan, who seemed disappointed that he wasn't sitting in the back with the others.

On long road trips, John typically amused himself by staring out the window and imagining what stories took place in the decrepit houses, gloomy caverns, or endless expanses of green they passed. Seeing a deer or an attractive bird would cheer him up for hours. Unfortunately for him, his view was obstructed by the people sitting next to him, and even though he could stretch his legs, he still felt trapped.

Regina was bursting with excitement—her parents did not believe in road trips, as they believed there were so many interesting sights locally that one could never get bored. This was true, to some degree, but a new exhibition at a local art museum did not qualify as "interesting" in her mind. She was with people who were her friends, or at least partially so—it did not take her long to warm up to Tom's enthusiastic stories of childhood memories, opening presents around the fire, and going swimming in the lake, which all served to convince her that Tom was so generous for bringing her to the best place since Disneyland. Alan struck her as boring, and since he immediately fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the car, he had no way of defending himself. She needed to share her excitement with John at once:

"What are you looking forward to doing most, John?"

John thought sagely, still staring straight ahead, and remarked: "Yes, this will be very relaxing. I am looking forward to it." He turned to Regina, expecting her to make some comment but instead seeing her smile thinly.

"What was the question again? I'm a bit tired." Regina gave up trying to talk with him, as he was proving boring, and continued conversing happily with Beth. John went back into his meditative trance.

After a few hours, by when the terrain outside looked rugged and unfamiliar, Mr. Langley proposed they stop to grab an early lunch somewhere; a quick vote was called, and everyone (including Alan, who had woken up from his slumber and immediately began regretting missing out on a few hours of social interaction) decided they were hungry. They pulled into a strip mall, and they climbed out one-by-one. John immediately wished he had worn a jacket, and Alan, still a bit drowsy, almost tripped over his own feet.

"Is In-N-Out fine with everyone?" Tom asked, and nobody cared enough to object. John never ate fast food at home, and was scared at the indulgence until the smell of fresh French fries hit his nose. Mr. Langley almost grabbed John's wallet when he tried to pay for their meal, pulling out a black credit card and signing the screen before John could cough up an objection. The kids all sat at their own table, as Mr. Langley needed to take a phone call outside; John could see him take bites of his burger as he talked, which to him seemed a bit rude. He sniffed his milkshake and burger suspiciously before taking a bite, the salt and fat making him wish he had thought of this years ago. Everyone else was smiling in approval at their meals, and so John did the same.

Alan found the pleasantly plastic surroundings comforting. The nice thing about fast food chains is that they standardize their restaurants: Alan was relieved to know that the food he was eating and the immaculately clean restrooms were all the same as at home.

"How long have you and your family been coming here?" Beth asked Tom, who emulated his father in talking with his mouth full:

"Ever since I could remember, we've come here at Christmas and during the summer like we are now. I'll have to show you all my favorite spots."

"You're so lucky to have a place like this," Regina commented; she had noticed Mr. Langley's credit card and had imagined herself a house as glitzy as Versailles.

"There's no such thing as luck in this world. That's what my dad always tells me. It's all hard work. My dad came from a poor family, and worked all his way through school to become a lawyer, and he maintained that fierce fighting spirit all the while. They don't call him Bulldog for nothing. One time, when he was talking with one of his clients from Apple, he—"

"We get the point, Bulldog is the best person ever," Beth said with a grin, putting a condescending emphasis on his father's nickname, and everyone but Tom and Alan laughed. When Alan thought of bulldogs, he thought of ferocious animals with teeth that rend flesh and a growl that makes others scream in fright. But beyond that, he hoped that by ingratiating himself with Tom, he would be privy to some of the same status he had. Alan wanted his own black credit card some day, one that would immediately demand obedience from anyone who saw it. Mr. Langley stepped back inside to find them as they cleaned up their trash and copiously apologized for his absence. They didn't notice, and until Tom had directed the discussion to his family, they had forgotten that he was driving them.

They climbed back in the van with full bellies and a bit more energy, and they were off again. The sunlight made patterns on the forest floor, and any residual traffic from the start of their journey had cleared up, so they drove quickly. When they drove by rivers, Mr. Langley explained how every fall, the salmon would swim through to breed in brilliant hues of red and green; everyone smiled at the image of rushing water and happy fish until he described, even more enthusiastically, how this created a feeding frenzy for bears and bald eagles. It was important in life to be like the bear, he always told Tom, and devour one's enemies wholeheartedly. John pointed out a bald eagle he saw perching on a rock to Beth and Regina, who immediately pulled out their phones to take photos before it went out of view.

"The symbol of America," Mr. Langley explained. Alan shared a fun anecdote about how originally, the national bird was supposed to be a turkey, but nobody besides Mr. Langley seemed interested. John began to grow bored of staring into space and ignoring the two chatterboxes next to him, and considered taking out the copy of Don Quixote Frank had loaned him. Many months back, after the musical, John had gone up to Frank to personally congratulate him on the show, not quite understanding the extent of his involvement. The next day, he had brought John his own personal copy of the book, entrusting him to do as he wished with it as long as he read it. Since that moment, John had the half-promise he mumbled to Frank squarely in the back of his mind, a promise that stared at him from his nightstand every morning and watched him play video games with a guilty look. It was a hefty tome, and John was just about to take it out before he remembered it was buried in his suitcase along with his swim trunks and underwear. And so he waited—Mr. Langley promised them that it would just be another hour.

The portion of the lake with their vacation home had many other homes just like it, none of which were particularly large; each was spaced from the other by a hundred feet of woods or so, enough that each could live in their own little plot of suburbia and believe that they were the only ones in the area. The particularly intrepid ones would take out their binoculars on the eve of sunset and look out from the upper floors of their homes to admire the palatial mansions on the other side of the lake, which had even more space between them and backyards for children to frolic.

Tom led the way with a careful stride up a slightly-sloped path that ran between flowers and a birch tree to the front porch, and took out the key his father had entrusted to him earlier that morning. Regina was disappointed—this house was no larger than hers! Mr. Langley led them on the house tour: Tom's old bedroom upstairs, with a few baby pictures of him and other children; the guest bedroom, with attractive olive-green tartan bedding and a pleasant smell of fresh linen; the master bedroom, where one lucky person would get to enjoy their own private bathroom; and downstairs through the small kitchen, with a dishwasher and coffee machine and spacious oven; the fancy dining room with china and silverware undeserving of teenagers; the upstairs living room with a rocking chair that Tom associated with his grandparents; the bottom floor with the large-screen TV (a smaller model was in the master bedroom, yet another of its perks) and hardwood floor; the computer room that had served as an office for many harried professionals who never learned how to take a break; and the study, with a few solitary bookshelves and poor lighting that left the room constantly dim.

"Unfortunately, we only have three bedrooms, so two of you are going to have to camp out somewhere," Mr. Langley explained. Everyone but Alan graciously offered master bedroom privileges to everyone else, and so he eagerly hefted his suitcase upstairs. The rest played rock-paper-scissors, and the losers, John and Beth, were banished downstairs. John chose to sleep in the computer room, where there was just enough space under the desk for him to stretch out his sleeping bag. A small window in the upper corner provided a natural tone to the room, otherwise disturbed by the constant low thrum of the computer. Beth chose the study, and John followed her to look at the books. She pulled one off the shelf at random that seemed large enough.

"James Joyce's astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Bloom's voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Sounds scandalous. What does voluptuous mean?" Beth asked, reading the back cover with mild disgust; the print was too small for her, this was clearly John's sort of book.

"Curvaceous and sexually attractive—well-endowed, in other words," John said without a trace of discomfort, and Beth giggled. John took a moment to look through the rest of the bookshelf, which was stacked with effectively every other classic novel one could think of. Initially stocked a few years prior by one of Mr. Langley's old golf buddies, every time someone came, they added a new book first so they could appear intellectually adequate, and then as tradition. There were even a few foreign-language books on the bottom shelf from people's international travels, in French, German, and a few languages that John could not identify.

"How's Louis doing, by the way?"

"Louis was a mistake. We broke up." John offered his condolences insincerely, as if he had not imagined this conversation in infinite variations long ago.

"It's no big deal, John, it's just the circle of life. I moved on long ago."

Well, why didn't you tell me "long ago," John thought to himself; on the positive side, this did retroactively justify his dislike of Louis, as he had clearly wounded Beth dearly. Someone called from above for them to come back to the front door, and Mr. Langley stood on the threshold chatting with the Monroes, who lived next door and were old friends of the family. Unlike many who came to the lake, they had moved there permanently about ten years ago. Mr. Langley took the opportunity to wish them adieu and begin the long drive home, and the rest of them stood politely unsure what to do next.

"You're all here alone? Do you think you're going to do any cooking?" Mr. Monroe asked, somehow conveying geniality despite his resting frown. John stumbled out a "Sure... um... we certainly could," not wanting to offend his newfound neighbor. "Well, don't worry about going to the store or anything, we can take care of that for you. It's nice to see some new faces around here. And if you ever want us to stop by and help with the cooking, my wife and I would love to help. All of you look like you could use some meat on your bones!" he responded, chuckling a bit. Once again not wishing to offend, John and the others thanked them, and as promised, a few hours later a few bags of nice groceries with a few printed-out recipes arrived on their doorstep. There was no receipt, and John began to worry before Tom assured him and Alan, who was starting to wonder as well, that to their generous benefactors, the expense was equivalent to a cup of coffee.

"What are we going to do with this?" Alan asked when he saw yet another container he couldn't confidently identify. He and John took point on unloading the groceries, examining unfamiliar labels and wondering if this was the sort of food adults ate on a regular basis. John held a jar of capers and swirled it, not sure if it needed to be refrigerated. The pantry was already fairly well-stocked, and Alan was happy to see familiar foods like cereal. He did not think of himself as a picky eater; rather, he had discerning tastes. The others immediately went to their rooms and changed into their swimming clothes; they were promised a lake, and if they were not there to swim, how else would they occupy their time? One advantage of their premium location was easy access to the water, and all they had to do was go out the sliding glass door downstairs, walk through the garden, open the gate, follow the path just a bit more, and voila, their own private dock. By the time John and Alan finished putting away the groceries and chased the others frantically outside, they were already swimming.

"The water's warm!" Tom shouted. John took this as an invitation to jump in, and immediately regretted his decision. John's breath flew out of his lungs, and he switched to treading water by instinct, just as Ms. Stevens had taught him. The lake was peaceful; it was too early in the season for the tourists to flock here by the dozen and drink beer on motorboats, and so the only noise was them splashing each other and just being kids. Swimming tired John too quickly, and he pulled himself up onto the dock to take in the view. Tom promised that at night, there would be fireflies that cavorted, blending in with the real stars. For John, swimming was exertion, something inextricably tied to school bells; he could never be like Alan and do a cannonball without shame, or be like Beth and take compliments on her sleek, black swimsuit in stride. She sunned herself on the rocks like a Siren. John felt ashamed of his bare chest, his ugly shorts, and his lingering shivers from the water. All he wanted was to go back inside.

They prepared dinner that night from one of the recipes Mrs. Monroe had given them, Tom reading out the steps one-by-one while Regina and John tried to work together amicably. Regina avoided her usual shenanigans, not wishing to inadvertently put John on edge and mess up the meal, or worse. It would be an inauspicious start of their trip to have an ambulance take someone away on a stretcher. They sat at the dinner table, uttering unfamiliar phrases like "Beth, would you please be so kind as to pass the potatoes?" and "This squab is exquisitely cooked! Compliments to the chefs!"

"It was all Regina and Tom, not me at all," John shyly commented, looking at the place settings again in case he had made an error; John could never remember, although he had never put any thought into remembering whether the knife went on the left or right.

"This is delicious!" Tom proclaimed. "What bird are we eating again?"

"This is pigeon," Alan explained. He had never eaten pigeon before, but in his mind, one bird was close enough to another bird where it didn't matter. He took a small helping of vegetables and tried to mask their flavor.

"Probably one of the pigeons that got stuck inside Mr. Reinhardt's classroom that time," Tom joked. That was the highlight of his day: Mr. Reinhardt screaming German obscenities while chasing an apathetic bird with a broom all through the classroom, everyone else sitting at their desks too scared to move a muscle. Beth suddenly found her appetite dissipate, but she choked down the rest of her dead pigeon with a smile.

That night, nobody could come to a consensus on what to do, so they segregated by gender: Regina and Beth went downstairs to continue watching some sort of drama that John thought sounded uninteresting, and the others sat upstairs for a brief bout of vigorous conversation that rapidly faded when nobody seemed truly interested. Tom, who sat on the couch across from the fireplace, could not help but think something felt out of place. Last time he was here, there were stockings hanging safely out of reach of the roaring fire, a Christmas tree with a collection of international ornaments accumulated over decades stood not far from the entrance, and he and his family were sitting and relaxing. His father would, after much polite urging, would saunter over to the piano and play some Christmas carols, and all the men would sing in a beautiful baritone. They would be summoned from their evening peace by the smell of freshly-baked carrot cake, a family tradition, and they'd sit around the table and laugh well into the night. Tonight, the fireplace was off (it wasn't cold enough, and they were scared they'd burn the house down), and nobody dared talk. The piano was unused, although Regina promised she'd play for them at some point; Tom never enjoyed playing, but he could muster up a little ditty if he really wanted. He would have been a great proficient had he tried, his father always told him.

Slowly, everyone went to bed, finding it unnatural yet oddly comforting to say good night to their friends. John and Beth, isolated from the rest, were the last to see each other, and John immediately began to wonder as soon as he closed his door if he should have slept on the couch. The computer room had the personal touches of many of its residents, which combined created a homey yet eclectic setting. John was most scared of the taxidermied raven, which on the top of one of the shelves seemed to stare into his eyes. He shined his phone flashlight around the dark room to see two black orbs, darker than the rest, reflect back at him. That's definitely not creepy at all, he thought to himself.

John slept soundly and woke with the sunrise due to the lack of curtains. He gently put on some socks due to the cold floor and tip-toed outside his door, noticing that the door to Beth's room opened sometime last night. He averted his eyes and moved upstairs to give her privacy, even though there was no way for any outside observer to tell that the long lump on the floor was her. John resolved then to finally begin his book, and he took a seat in the rocking chair, which once again had that unusual quality of beckoning to him. The light filtered through the blinds behind him perfectly to let him read without turning on a lamp, and for once he did not feel tired.

John was in a comfortable rhythm by the time Beth came upstairs to see if anyone else was awake. She had expected to be the first one up, but somehow she was not surprised to see John relaxed in the rocking chair, slowly moving back and forth, his feet like unhurried compass needles. She had not intended on reading that morning, but it was still too early to eat breakfast, and none of her friends would be awake already, maybe with the exception of Juliet. She went downstairs to her room and took more than a cursory glance at the books, picking 1984, which had a short title and seemed cryptic enough to be amusing. It was a bright cold day in June and the clock struck 7; that was the first time John had heard a grandfather clock, and he looked up to see Beth similarly startled. She waved tentatively, and John did not know what to say.

Beth still could not resist the temptation to check her phone before she started reading, and felt a minor twinge of guilt. John projected the image of a scholar, and there she was, checking Instagram. Fortunately for her, Juliet was a constant person, sticking to simple routines when convenient; this included Instagram, where she tried her hardest to post twice a week, and through no particular artifice but being a teenage girl on Instagram, she had accumulated close to 2000 followers, a respectable total indeed. Her Hawaii vacation intersecting with their lake trip was fortuitous, even if at the moment Beth was sad the trio was not complete: Juliet had made her first in what would be a series of daily posts chronicling her vacation. There she was, lounging on a beach towel with the shade of an umbrella just within view, sunglasses perched above her head, holding—Beth did a double take: a copy of How To Be A Good Person? "A bit of light reading," Juliet had written with a few garish emoji, and all the comments referencing her chosen tome were along the lines of "damnnn smart and sexy" instead of anything substantial. There was no indication in her smile that this was anything but a spontaneous gesture. Frank was just as surprised as Beth: he had woken up half an hour earlier, and nearly dropped his phone in astonishment when he saw a text from Juliet with that same picture and a similar, if more personalized caption, sent without any sense of irony. He promptly shared her post on the new official How To Be A Good Person Club Instagram page, which he hoped would slowly build traction over the summer until the movement crested. Beth considered showing John, but he didn't seem like the sort to use social media.

Alan turned out to be good-natured, generous, and likeable. In three days no one could stand him. He was still of the peculiar notion that his performance at the lake would be graded, not only on participation but on zealousness of execution, with the reward being hitherto unknown. Even though he woke up late, he did not let that stop him from inserting himself into whatever discussion was taking place downstairs. Alan insisted on being as nice, as sweet, as kind, and as good as he could possibly be, and took it as a personal slight when the others politely declined his repeated requests to do their laundry. He had even, seeing some of the thorough glances Tom gave the girls at the lake, crawled out of bed early one morning to come down and fraternize with Beth. If Regina had been awake then, he would have tried in vain to have an insightful conversation with her, too; Alan was never one to discriminate. After all, a participation grade was a participation grade. It was only due to his incompetence that Beth did not realize he was trying to flirt with her, and Alan gave up and started playing on his phone.

The morning after Regina learned of John and Beth's new reading ritual, she woke up to her alarm a few hours before she ordinarily did, and turned over to shut off her phone before she remembered why she had woken up so early. She stood up and stumbled over to the bathroom, looking over herself to make sure she could be seen by others. After combing her hair and brushing her teeth, all done quietly as to make her sudden arrival a triumphant surprise, she leisurely walked down the stairs, holding onto the railing in case she should trip and fall. Beth was surprised to see Regina up so early, and surmised she intended to impress John, who unfortunately did not react beyond a mumbled hello. Regina walked over to John's armchair and leaned down, reading the title of the book and sounding out the words, all while staring directly at John, who still showed no reaction to the proximity of her face. "Don Quixote... have you read Marquez?" Regina asked, still standing in John's personal bubble. Surprisingly enough, Regina had in fact read Marquez and enjoyed his work, and she assumed that as John was clearly reading a book with a Spanish name, this related factoid would impress him. He could even sit up, his face then even closer to hers, and ask her in that silky voice of his to educate him. This inquiry not receiving the correct answer, more extreme measures were needed, and Regina went to the study and, carefully stepping over Beth's sleeping bag, took a book she had heard of before and returned to the living room, sitting on the couch a few feet away from Beth; as she started reading, she glanced up at John frequently to see if her bold move had aroused his interest. She wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.

Tom greeted John, Regina, and Beth in his usual fashion, slinking down the staircase and looming behind Beth, who was in her usual position pinned to the corner of the couch. He never failed to startle John, who was usually so enraptured in his book that beyond a vague notion of the others arriving and greetings then routine, a sudden voice seemed insensitive. Tom's arrival created a before and after, as Regina could no longer hold her composure and pretend to be solely focused on her book, and Beth shook her head to rouse herself from her chosen tome. It forced John to accept that happy silent reading time was an impermanent reality, and by the time of Tom's arrival the clouds tended to part over the lake, revealing an ordinary day that lost its eerie quiet. Tom had not yet gotten over his initial surprise that most of everyone else he had invited wanted to read books for fun. He saw that Regina was the least interested, and asked her what she was reading:

"Looks long. What is it?"

"Some Greek guy goes on a sailing trip to find his father."

"That would make a great movie." Tom was certain he had seen something with this exact same plot before, he just couldn't put his finger on it. That bothered him.

"There's more to it too, I think. It's deep."

"An acute analysis," John muttered from his chair, and Regina smiled at the compliment (finally, he called her cute!) until she realized he was not talking about her. They then proceeded to a late breakfast where Tom skillfully manned the pancake iron and reveled in his authority. He tried to make shaped pancakes, but aside for one that resembled Mickey Mouse after an unfortunate encounter with a train, he failed miserably. Alan came just in time to taste one of Tom's culinary innovations—adding dark chocolate shavings—and immediately complimented him on his prowess: the best meal yet, he claimed. Regina was hurt that her squab was not sufficiently appreciated.

John proposed they take a walk through the woods that day instead of going to the lake, hoping for some form of recreation that did not involve going partially nude; even taking showers in the downstairs bedroom gave him anxiety, simply knowing that his peers were but a few feet away. Everyone else agreed, and those not already dressed changed quickly and loitered by the door. For all their time at the lake, the weather had remained constant, and today was no exception. Regina took a selfie with all of them as they left, Alan trying in vain at the last minute to become the center of attention and John still surprised that phones had cameras on both sides. They saw the Monroes walking in the other direction, and assured them they had been cooking and functioning as adults without any problems.

"Teenagers these days are too wimpy. They have no integrity or principles whatsoever. I'm glad all of you are an exception." When the Monroes had walked sufficiently out of eavesdropping range, John turned to the others:

"Were they being a bit condescending just now, or is it just me?" John disliked any sort of affable condescension, whether it was coming from teachers or other authority figures. That level of nuance was beyond his comprehension, and John was far too paranoid now about mixed signals to appreciate what they had to offer.

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" Tom considered this sort of social interplay a ritual of life in high society, one that if John and the others kept coming with him on vacation, they could learn to appreciate. The fundamental principle which Tom's father had imparted in him at a young age was never to question another's morality.

"Some of these people grew up in a different era. Things were simpler. Easier. Better. And understand that if any of your elders say something that you dislike, they know better than you. Trust them. Someday, you'll appreciate their wisdom." Tom had treasured that lesson then, even as he found it increasingly hard to maintain as he grew older and wiser. Was it really true that the poor were only there because of laziness? Were "good genes" the key to athletic and academic success? Tom worried he was betraying his status by considering any of these topics in great depth.

John considered philosophical discussions of a deeper nature as he continued reading Don Quixote; he turned to Beth one morning and asked plainly and abruptly, without any particular exigence:

"If God is out there, why do people die? Why can't we all live happily ever after, without a care in the world, without disease, without such unpleasantries as tooth decay?"

"If God isn't out there, why do people laugh and cry, why is nature beautiful? How could any of us ever engineer a sunset or rainbow?"

"I don't know. I just want to know why He created pain." John had just read a particularly gruesome passage about Sancho Panza receiving lashes, and did not know why anyone would find that anything but tragic. But why then did everyone in the novel think it comic?

"The God I believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be," Beth said with a tinge of arrogance; she thought it far too early in the morning for him to questioning any of her beliefs. Alan came down early that morning, and looked at John's book with initial incomprehension, and then looked at him with disgust when he saw how quickly John had been plowing through the book.

"I don't understand why you would ever torture yourself with something that long." Alan thought tools like Sparknotes were manna from heaven, intended to save everyone the trouble of literature, although with his new moral allegiance, it was perhaps time to disavow himself of that opinion. But that thought was supplanted in his mind by just how weird John was being by daring to read something with such small print. How crude.

"It's not torture if I enjoy it," John remarked, still avoiding eye contact.

"You don't need to pretend to enjoy it, you know. That's an unpleasant personality trait." Beth and Regina, who while enjoying their books with far less passion than John, certainly did not want to tolerate a personal attack on one of their own, looked at Alan with fearful horror. Alan knew then that he had messed up, and backpedaled furiously:

"I mean, well," he stuttered, "if you do enjoy it, that's even better!" Alan then went to the kitchen to pour himself a bowl of cereal, and consoled himself by thinking that he was no less of a good person for his slight. Men talked, they sang and danced! They amused themselves with countless pleasures and intrigues, some of which involved the written word, and many that didn't. He and the others proceeded through the rest of the day without any more mention of that morning's controversy. It was their last full day, and they frolicked in the lake with renewed spirit. Their routine played out in a familiar pattern: Regina would compliment Beth on her swimsuit, Alan would engage Tom in some sort of swimming contest to assert dominance, John would lazily tread water until he felt a chill to the bone and exited, and they would take turns in the showers afterward. They ate dinner, today moussaka, with the same concentration: John and Regina were still proving to be a dynamic duo in the kitchen, Alan and Beth cleaned up, and Tom was an accomplished master of "mise en place" if he knew what that term meant. They sat around the living room with heavy bodies and tired minds, and they all decided to go to bed early that night—their schedules were synchronized and their minds were one.

"A glooming peace this morning with it brings," John remarked to himself as he ascended the stairs. No longer would he be able to see his friends in such unprecedented casual moods. Beth languorously reading with her book held aloft, in bare feet and pajamas like she was at a slumber party or posing for some needlessly modern tableau, had by then seemed a part of his morning routine, just like brushing his teeth or applying deodorant. Before he could finish the very final chapter of Don Quixote, Tom came down, already dressed; he parted his hair frantically, as if he expected to be presentable in the early morning.

"Can I ask you for some advice, John?" John nodded—what was he going to do, say no?

"I am an open book."

"What is it like to be in love?" John found this question elementary. He could think of no love story more archetypical than that of his very own Don Quixote and Dulcinea del Toboso, the innocent peasant girl who did not even have the faintest idea that such a gaunt, cultured, witty knight could fall for her. He thought a moment, synthesizing in record time all his accumulated life experiences, and concluded:

"Lechery provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance." For John, the idea of taking initiative was unfathomable when it came to affairs of the heart. He had seen what happens when people entertained such fancies on a whim, and when did it ever end well? John avoided the sort of romantic comedies where anguished declarations of love in the rain would wipe away any trace of anger, even if he could imagine himself as the star. Perhaps Regina was right; to be fair, she never said any such thing directly to John, but what else could be inferred through her behavior? A more recent example he had to work with was Romeo and Juliet; how was Juliet, anyway? He had heard second-hand of Tom's occasional attempts to impress her, although seeing as Juliet was not at the lake, those clearly could not have gone well. It must be strange to be named after a teenage lover, he thought—did that create some sort of obligation to perform, an expectation of impetuousness leading to tragedy? By presenting himself as one not opposed to the occasional catcall or ogling of swimsuits, Tom seemed far better suited to these sorts of roles. He could easily sweep away anyone or dance a waltz with beguiling charm, or at least any person John could imagine playing the opposite role. John found his classmates excellent templates for psychological profiling, especially as they presented themselves as such great studies at the lake and at school. He described to Tom exactly what his diagnosis was, and how this was sure to ensure his success in any future romantic endeavors.

Tom did not understand John's point, but as it sounded like John was complimenting him in some way, he thanked him. Tom had by then picked up on Regina's continued inclinations toward John, and also John's very own partiality toward Beth. And now, he found himself warming up to Regina. Maybe it was just an unique quirk of the teenage mind that drove any young boy, finding himself in a position of authority, to immediately think fond thoughts about the nearest attractive person in a swimsuit. Juliet qualified, but on a phone screen she seemed so far, and so Regina it would be. Tom had also by then discovered what woes befell those who confessed their affections in a needlessly elaborate way, and he had patiently waited all week for a private opportunity. As it turned out, in a house with five people that proved hard. Tom sat for a few minutes with his head in his hands, trying to remember exactly where Regina would always sit, but could not conjure in his mind's eye anything but shadowy forms; disappointed, he returned upstairs.

John made one last survey of the house for any of his personal belongings he had forgotten, clutching his copy of Don Quixote. He had finished without any pomp and circumstance, and now was a man reborn. He had no need for his compass, he thought, and so John tucked the book right where Beth's head was when she slept. That spot felt right. Mr. Langley knocked on the door precisely when he was expected, and they took their bags and left.

Discussion Questions:

Look at different ways wealth has been portrayed so far in the novel; what are these portrayals accomplishing?

Which characters act differently here during vacation than their usual selves at school? Who stays the same?

Why is everyone so obsessed with reading?