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often in the peaceful, chilly morning hours when I could pick a spot and let the town wake up around me. Drawing has always taken me out of my own head. At Oxford, it helped me be in the moment completely, instead of wondering what Lacey was up to, or which baseball announcers were bugging Dad the most. Despite how welcoming most people had been, I missed my family. I missed knowing which way to look before crossing the street. I missed network TV and American football and the way Diet Coke tastes in the States. But with a sheet of paper and a pencil in front of me, I’m home.
    On the last morning of First Week, I got up predawn and headed across the street to Christ Church. Ostensibly I wanted to draw the glow of sunrise over the college’s meadow, all wild grass and pastured cows and squawking geese, but the Iowan in me also itched to stretch her legs, and my body demanded cardiovascular activity to offset the noble sport of drinking I’d undertaken. I started down the mud-and-gravel trail, under the canopy of tall, spiky trees whose leaves were preparing for their seasonal suicide leap, and snaked around the river—blissfully alone with my sketchbook and my thoughts, interrupted only by the occasional bark of the coxswain and the rhythmic splash of the crew team’s oars reaching me through the mist. The road led me past a quaint folly bridge arching over the Isis that would fit perfectly into a series I was doing on the curves of Oxford. I hopped off the path and scrambled around the wooded edge in search of a flat rock to sit on, so lost in trying not to fall over a tree’s root that instead I tripped over the outstretched legs of a man in a hooded sweatshirt. I let out a shrill yelp and he leapt to his feet, knocking over his light and landing in a weird defensive position.
    “Shit!” he said.
    I squinted at him. “ Nick? ”
    In that instant, the hood on his sweatshirt slipped to reveal his face still frozen in a comical O of surprise. He had been sitting on a plaid blanket, surrounded by papers and books, as if he were on the quad at Pembroke in the afternoon and not a clammy field at dawn. Unsure what to do, I bent to pick up one of the papers strewn about the grass, which had flipped and scattered when he jumped.
    “Are you doing a crossword?” I asked, bemused. “It’s barely even light out.”
    Nick gave a shy I’m busted shake of the head, and pushed back his hood completely. He was pink-cheeked. “Yeah, the Times cryptic,” he said.
    “ Cryptic is one word for this,” I agreed.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    It occurred to me, as his breath normalized, that he might’ve thought I’d followed him.
    “I’m just on a run,” I explained, gesturing feebly to my athletic clothes and earth-splattered shins. “Well, more of an, um, art jog. I came out to sketch.” Then I froze. “Am I in someone’s crosshairs right now?”
    Nick relaxed. “You’ve not been shot yet, so that’s a good sign,” he said. “I’ll have them drop their weapons if you can answer a clue or two. It’s all tricks and wordplay and it’s impossible.” He handed me a printed sheet and pointed to one. “Like this. ‘New pay cut with Post Office work is loony.’ Gibberish.”
    “Don’t look at me. I’m still trying to figure out why your salacious secret life outside Pembroke involves word puzzles,” I said. “It’s not very scandalous.”
    “It would be if anyone ever saw how blank these are.” Nick sighed, taking back the crossword. “Freddie is brilliant at them, and he goads me about it. So I have to practice in private until I’m respectably competent. Someday I am going to finish one before he does.”
    “And this is your only way to do it in peace, because you don’t ever really get to be alone,” I said, not realizing until too late that I’d worked this out aloud.
    Nick looked surprised, but pleasantly. “The PPOs and I have a pact—they let me lose them once a week, and I