The college rises you up like an altar of pale stone and ancient glass: Saint Aurelius College of Arts & Sciences**, embedded in a hill that dominates the city the way one dominates a secret. Neo-Gothic towers, stained-glass windows imported from Belgium, geometric gardens trimmed by invisible hands paid their weight in gold. The tuition — forty-eight thousand dollars per semester — is spoken in reverent whispers, as if it were a mystical value, a number capable of separating castes. You walk the corridors knowing you do not belong and, still, belong more than many. A full scholarship. From Peru. A foreign body inside an aristocratic organism that pulses with old money.

You arrived knowing no one, your accent still clinging to your tongue, your suitcase far too light, your heart far too heavy. The fashion electives — fabrics, the history of dress, silhouettes as language — became your first refuge. It was there that Alice Ashford saw you the way one finds fresh water in a desert of lukewarm champagne. She adopted you with the ease of someone who has always adopted beautiful things. She said you were invigorating. Incredible. That your gaze was undomesticated. And suddenly you were inside: dinners, parties, black cars with silent drivers, cards that never decline. Everything funded without effort, as if money were spare change. It suffocates you at times — the excess of ease, the absence of weight — like an embrace that lasts too long. The Ashfords are a dynasty. Veronika Ashford, heiress to textile conglomerates and investment funds ethical in name alone; Ivan Ashford, lawyer of international mergers, a trained smile, a gaze that measures futures. They adored you instantly.

Families orbit Saint Aurelius like closed constellations: the Westwoods, an editorial empire and conceptual fashion; the Delaires, a fortune of centuries-old vineyards and sacred art stolen from time; the Haddocks, maritime logistics and military contracts; the Wrights, private hospitals and biomedical research; the Salazars, pharmaceuticals and patents; the Kensingtons, historic real estate and silent banks. Everyone inherits something — land, names, privileges — and pursues careers as one fulfills a rite.

It was Alice who brought you into the group: Anna Westwood, ethereal and sharp; Cherrie Delaire, sweet laughter and calculated venom; Paul Haddock, expansive, always performing lightness; Harry Wright, medicine, irony like a blade; Eric Salazar, medicine as well, clinical precision even in affection; Caleb Kensington, calm gravity, eyes that keep things. You settled in quickly. No false modesty, no excessive reverence. Through jokes, through honest jabs. You became one of the “guys” and, at the same time, one of the “girlys.” A comfortable and dangerous threshold.

Sometimes you share a bed. Especially with Harry. Months pass, an entire year stitched together by festivities and long nights. You become almost confidants: nicknames, codes, internal laughter. Harry is ornate, meticulous, cruel for sport. Cat and mouse. The game exhausts and addictively binds. To what point is it a veil for something more intimate? Or just absurd consideration? The doubt is born at the Delaire mansion, when he squeezes your belly laughing and pokes your hips in a joke that has become far too routine. Each touch is a complex enigma. You are just an intimate friend, right? No one would ruin this.

Saturday. The Westwood mansion is the farthest away. Alice calls an Uber for you — she always pays when she’s too drunk to come get you. Some girls are getting ready in the mansion’s living room; you haven’t arrived yet. Voices drift from the lounge area by the grand pool. The house is free, after all. At the table: Harry, Eric, Paul, and Cherrie. Caleb is probably looking after Anna and Alice somewhere.

"She’s always late." Paul says, drumming his fingers on the marble. "Alice didn’t tell us to go pick her up!" Cherrie replies, stirring her drink. "I thought Alice wouldn’t get drunk so fast today!" Eric watches the water: "You talk about her like she’s a damn event."