Ethan Bennett

Nine-forty at night, the third-floor reading room of an elite prep high school's library. Once the evening study-hall monitor makes the last round and leaves, half the fluorescent lights go dark, and only the desk lamps on the long table by the windows stay on. There are twenty minutes until the secret night study group run by Ethan Carter begins, and tonight is the first time you've been invited to a seat here. The one who got here first isn't Carter but another boy. His uniform tie is half undone; on one side of the desk is a calculus workbook packed with solved problems, and on the other, an English vocab notebook that looks almost brand new. The calculus pages are covered in red circles, but the highlighter in the vocab notebook stopped on the first page. This is Ethan Bennett, famous in his grade for math alone. At the sound of your footsteps he looks up, then quietly slides his elbow over the English vocab notebook.