Amory slid the mirror back into the inner pocket of his blazer with the gravitas of someone sheathing a sword. He turned slightly, chin lifted, voice casual but calculated.
"Oh, Nicole—two more things," he said over his shoulder. "Firstly, DiCaprio in Don's Plum most certainly had a pimple. Like, a really large one. It added depth."
Nicole had already started walking again, but paused. Just long enough for him to keep going.
"And secondly," Amory continued, stepping forward with that signature mix of theatrical sincerity and casual cruelty, "you should really get that pimple checked at a hospital. I go see mine every three weeks."
Nicole turned back slowly, expression unreadable. "You don't have a pimple."
"I do," Amory pouted, genuinely offended. "It's right here—" He pointed somewhere vaguely near the edge of his jawline, where even a magnifying glass would've struggled to find anything more sinister than flawless skin.
"That's your face," Nicole replied flatly.
Amory was already fishing the mirror out again. He angled it toward the light, lips pressed together as he examined himself like he was inspecting fine art that had suffered a minor scratch.
Nicole shook her head, exhaled slowly through her nose, and said, mostly to herself: "You are unbelievable."
But Amory didn't look up.
"Tell that to the pimple," he murmured.
She turned on her heel, leaving him behind once more, this time without looking back.
"Tell it yourself," she muttered. "You're the one who brings it to therapy."
"He has the emotional availability of a magazine cover," muttered Cary, watching Amory fuss over his reflection like it had wronged him.
"Is that… a thing?" Anthony asked, squinting.
"No," Albert said firmly, arms crossed, "it's not fair. He is capable of feelings. Don't forget Stella."
"Oh, right," said Cary, his tone shifting slightly, like someone remembering a subplot in a much better novel. "Stella. Summer camp. Three years ago. He met her once, fell catastrophically in love, and has written her a letter every single month since."
"Twelve letters a year," Albert confirmed, nodding. "No interruptions. Even sent one when he had the flu. It was scented."
"And he never—not once—asked her to carry his bag," Cary added, as if it were the most romantic gesture in the known world.
Anthony rolled his eyes. "Stella is a fuckgirl," he snorted, biting into his apple like it had insulted him.
"Well," Cary said with a small shrug, "he doesn't know that."
They all fell quiet for a moment.
Amory, across the lawn, was now delicately adjusting a leaf that had fallen on his shoulder, seemingly unaware—or unbothered—that Nicole had disappeared entirely. His expression remained serene, preoccupied, as if the real drama of the day was whether or not his collar had been lying flat during his photo.
"Do you think he's going to find out?" Anthony asked, still chewing.
Albert sighed. "Only if someone tells him. And even then, he'll probably turn it into a metaphor and write a poem about betrayal and the fragility of seasonal love."
Cary cracked a grin. "And still dedicate it to her."
"Of course," said Albert. "Always. For Stella, who was not a season, but a climate."
They all groaned in unison. Somewhere, Amory probably heard them—and smirked.
Nicole started going out with David the way one starts wearing a winter coat in October—not out of need, but out of timing, out of some faint agreement with the season. David walked her to class. He remembered what kind of tea she liked. He once brought her a hand-knit scarf his aunt had made. She smiled more now, said less about Amory, and took a strange, quiet pleasure in not looking in his direction during lunch.
Amory noticed. Of course he did. He always noticed.
And yet he said nothing.
Instead, he threw himself into the final polishing of his college applications with the tragic focus of a fallen prince preparing for exile. The personal statement was his masterpiece—or so he insisted.
It began, as promised, with a dramatic denunciation of the letter S.
"The letter 'S' has haunted me," it opened, "a symbol of expectations I do not meet. 'Parents.' Plural. 'Success.' 'Stability.' 'Safety.' Things other students take for granted."
He wrote about how, as a child of divorce, he'd been misunderstood. How the world insisted on labeling his life in plurals when it was singular, how S had always been a reminder of what he lacked. He described being bullied—mostly emotionally, vaguely, in terms that made no one in particular accountable and yet left the impression of a boy unfairly weathered by life.
Then came the twist.
"But lately," he wrote, "I've started to see the letter differently. 'S' can also mean strength. Struggle. Self-awareness. I no longer fear it. I embrace it."
It was almost good. It sounded good.
But everyone who knew him—really knew him—saw the irony.
Because the truth was, Amory abhorred struggle. He detested it. He avoided discomfort like most people avoided spoilers. He would do anything to maintain the illusion of effortlessness: rehearse his off-the-cuff comments, pre-crinkle his shirts for "lived-in charm," and pretend to have seasonal depression every October because "melancholy adds dimension."
Even in his "struggle," there were soft pillows. Expensive metaphors. Good lighting.
Albert, reading a draft of the statement during study hall, closed the laptop and said, "This could get him into Yale."
Cary glanced over. "Or land him on a panel about youth adversity."
Anthony muttered, "Next year he'll be at Yale pretending to have PTSD from standardized testing."
Meanwhile, Nicole and David were sitting under the beech tree near the library, sharing a cup of hot cider. Nicole was listening to David talk about his plans for student council, nodding, smiling—her body there, her mind flickering somewhere behind her eyes.
Amory walked by once. Didn't look at her.
Mid-November arrived like a page ripped out of a sports movie: crisp air, bruised skies, scarves in school colors, and tension crackling like static in every corner of campus. It was Andover–Exeter Weekend, the annual rivalry that turned even the most indifferent upperclassmen into tactical analysts and lifelong loyalists. The Boys' and Girls' Soccer games were the marquee events—honor, tradition, humiliation and glory, all negotiated in ninety-minute bursts of adrenaline.
The stands were packed. Students draped in navy and white leaned over the rails, screaming chants that bordered on war cries. Nicole sat beside David in the top row, knees brushing, a knit blanket shared between them. She clutched a thermos of hot cider with one hand and cupped the other around her mouth to cheer. She was cheering, wholeheartedly. But her eyes kept finding one player again and again.
Amory.
Central Midfielder. Number 7. Hair tousled, jersey untucked, sweat clinging to his temple like a crown forged in effort. He didn't shout like the others. He moved like he was writing poetry with his feet—elegant, surgical, impossible not to watch.
Andover's team captain, a broad-shouldered senior named Julian Mahoney, stood barking orders with forced bravado. He had the jawline for leadership and the Adidas endorsement in his heart—but he knew the truth. Everyone on the team did. He was only captain because Amory had never applied.
Amory didn't need titles.
He was the tempo. He directed the flow like a composer in cleats, always in motion, always seeing one pass ahead. When he sprinted down the center, the whole crowd leaned forward, breath collectively held.
Nicole cheered, clapped, shouted when David did—but she couldn't help it: her eyes were magnetized. Amory glowed under the stadium lights, sweat making his cheekbones shimmer, his limbs cutting clean lines across the field like he belonged to a better, brighter world.
"What a play!" David shouted, nudging her. "That was Amory, right?"
Nicole blinked. "Yeah," she said, then added quickly, "He's good. He's always been good."
On the field, the Exeter team groaned in near unison as Amory cut past their left back with a signature move—fluid, almost balletic, his cleat brushing the ball with the kind of finesse that made defenders question their life choices. From the sidelines, the groan spread like a contagion, frustration rising from the red-clad crowd bundled under blankets and banners.
They'd seen this before. Too many times.
Ever since Amory Ellison joined the Andover soccer team in ninth grade, Exeter hadn't won a single match against them. Not one. Not even close.
Their coaches had tried everything—man-marking him, double-teaming him, shadowing his off-ball runs. One year they even tried ignoring him entirely in hopes of disrupting his rhythm. That year he scored twice and assisted once, barely breaking a sweat.
He wasn't even loud on the pitch. He didn't taunt, didn't shout, didn't even celebrate much. That made it worse. He simply was. Like gravity. Like rain. An inevitability they all hated but couldn't argue with.
And there he was again, weaving down the midfield with the effortless arrogance of someone who could outrun time. The ball moved between his feet like it had no will of its own. He glanced up—just once—and sent a curving pass slicing through the Exeter back line as if he had sculpted the air to do it.
A goal followed seconds later.
The Andover crowd erupted. Horns blared. Students screamed, fists in the air.
Nicole clapped, standing now, half of her cider sloshing over the side of her thermos. Even David stood and shouted, "Yes! Let's go, Ellison!"
On the Exeter bench, a midfielder muttered bitterly, "He's not even trying."
The assistant coach said nothing. He just stared down at the turf and quietly marked this year as yet another loss to Amory.
But at least—at least—Amory Ellison would be going to university.
That was the quiet comfort Exeter clung to now, like survivors staring after the departing tyrant of a conquered kingdom.
For four years, he had haunted their soccer program like a beautiful curse. Every Andover–Exeter Weekend, they'd marched in with new strategies, fresh hope, and a carefully cultivated belief that maybe this year would be different. And every year, Amory dismantled them with a smile that didn't even say sorry—just inevitable.
But now it was senior year. The end was in sight.
Soon, he would be gone—vanishing into the hallowed halls of Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or (God forbid) the debauched embrace of Penn. Wherever he ended up, one thing was certain: he would no longer be here. On this field. On their field. In their lives.
"Next year," Exeter's goalkeeper muttered under his breath, watching Amory jog back to midfield with a hand lifted vaguely in acknowledgment of the cheering crowd, "next year he'll just be someone else's problem."
"Yup," said the center back. "Let Yale deal with his mirror."
"And his poems," said another.
"And his perfect left foot."
But there was no real bitterness in their voices anymore—just exhaustion. The kind you feel at the end of a long, beautiful, pointless war.
Because if they were honest, they'd admit it: Amory made the game unforgettable. He had ruined them, yes, but he had done it with style. With grace. With narrative.
And next year, at last, they would get to breathe.
Until, of course, they ran into him again—on a different field, wearing a different jersey, smirking like he knew the ending of the story and was just letting them read it page by page.
When the final whistle blew, the scoreboard blinking 3–1 in Andover's favor, the campus erupted into a frenzy of cheers, horns, and the triumphant stampede of navy-and-white scarves storming the field. Students poured from the bleachers like a wave, their voices echoing across the twilight-soaked quad. Andover had won—again.
And of course, Amory was in the center of it.
Sweat-slicked, jersey clinging to him, hair a mess of golden chaos, he looked like a Greek hero who'd wandered onto the wrong century and decided to grace the sport out of boredom. He moved through the crowd like royalty at a victory parade, arms open, grin wide.
He embraced every girl who was vaguely attractive and pimple-free, as if the win gave him divine license to bestow charm in small, tactile blessings. Some got an arm around the waist, some a twirl, others—a lucky few—a kiss on the cheek. They squealed, giggled, melted into the moment, and afterward would tell their friends it had happened in slow motion.
Nicole stood near the edge of the crowd, arms crossed, watching him with an unreadable expression. David had gone to high-five the goalie and disappeared into the chaos, leaving her momentarily alone.
And then Amory was there.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't have to.
He stepped in close—too close, as always—placed a warm hand on her arm, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. The contact was brief, not lingering, not aggressive—but enough to scatter her thoughts like wind through a loose stack of papers.
Her breath caught, just for a second.
He didn't smirk. He didn't wink. He simply looked at her, eyes gleaming with that infuriating mixture of victory and softness, then moved on—already smiling at someone else, already halfway to his next audience.
Nicole touched her cheek absently, and for the first time that day, she didn't know which team had really won.