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the last period on the exam schedule. The departure of the students, the teachers, even the film crew, all vanishing at once like characters in a fairy tale, probably happened just this way every Christmas.
    The church bell—the top of the chapel tower visible over the gold-domed roof of Goodrich Hall, weathervane pointing north—tolled the hour. At the same time, a cold wind began to blow; from the west, Nat noticed, despite the weathervane. No snow had fallen yet, but everyone said the Inverness Valley was one of the snowiest places in the east. Nat looked up, saw a line of clouds closing over the sky.
    He wasn’t going anywhere for Christmas. There’d been money for only one trip home that semester, and he’d chosen Thanksgiving, although it was shorter, because Patti’s birthday had been the day after. He crossed the quad and went into Baxter to check his mail. Standing before the rows of brass letter boxes, he realized he was still holding the basketball.
    Nat put it down, turned the dial to J3, took out a letter.
    Dear Nat

    
I’m so sorry about that little insident at Julie’s party. I don’t know what came over me. I’ll never drink like that again. For sure. You were so great about it. At least that’s what Julie said the next day. Joke. Everythings ok but I miss you so much and not looking forward to Xmas at all.

    
One other thing I think I missed my period—but don’t worry, I maybe just got mixed up.

    
I love you soooo much.

    
Patti

    
ps—my present should be there by now.
    Nat reached back into the box, found a small package. He took it back to the dorm. Wags’s lab notes still lay all over the floor of the outer room. Nat heard voices in Wags’s bedroom, glanced in the open door. No Wags. Clothes trailing over everything, and the TV on. One of those movie channels Wags liked to watch. An actor from the thirties or forties whose name Wags would know at once but Nat didn’t stared thoughtfully into his glass while an offscreen actress asked what they were doing that night. Nat smelled coffee, noticed a steaming cup on the windowsill, half full. He left the TV on, went to his own bedroom, put Patti’s gift on the bed.
    Tacked on the wall was a list of what he wanted to accomplish during the holiday:
    clean room
    laundry
    write home
    work out
    get to know town and surroundings
    â†’on next semester
    That last one being the most important: Nat had registered for an American novel course that required reading a book a week, and he’d never keep up, would fall behind in everything, without a head start. Book one,
Young Goodman Brown and Other Stories,
already borrowed from the library, was waiting on the orange crate that served as his bedside table.
    Nat sat on the bed, picked up the book, but first reread Patti’s letter. He tried to see what she’d crossed out, partially distinguishing only one word—
kissed, pissed,
or
missed—
but nothing else. He swung his feet up on the bed, overcame the urge to take off his sneakers. No time for sleep: two hundred pages of
Young Goodman Brown and Other Stories
before dinner was the goal. He read the letter one more time. There, in the center of all those unusual silences—his room, the dorm, the whole campus—he could almost hear Patti’s voice. What had happened at Julie’s party didn’t bother him at all; what bothered him was the spelling. That, and the way she dotted the
i
in her name with a heart. Had she always? If so, it hadn’t mattered before. Why should it matter now?
    Nat opened
Young Goodman Brown
. The title page showed a woodcut of a young man striding down a country road. Someone had drawn a bottle of beer in his hand and a fat joint in his mouth. Nat turned the page.
    Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village. . . .
    Â 
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