Before the Flood (Prologue)
A raw wind roars through a New England forest under a leaden sky, stripping the last leaves from their branches and sending them skittering across a lonely country road. I take this solitary walk pretty much every day, contemplating how this place can leave me so godforsakenly blue. If I go at sunset, I can hear the evening freight train rumbling across the countryside, its plaintive horn doubling the ache in my heart, so I avoid walking at that hour unless I want to really torture myself.
I ended up at this place three-thousand miles from my home in California with virtually no choice in the matter. It was just what you did when you came from a family like mine, dominated by a spoiled, inherited-wealth father whose unhappiness had turned him into a despot. I had started to become surprisingly popular in eighth grade, was getting all A’s, and had started to receive second glances from girls—when my world was suddenly blown into a million pieces. Now here I am, at the most brutally competitive prep school in the country, without a clue, not a girl in sight, and dark, bitter cold winters that last forever. I am not cut out for this, and my feeble adolescent brain can’t seem to rescue me. All the other boys appear to have the discipline to study in their rooms at night, while I struggle to even crack a book—and when I do, the words swim maddeningly off the page. Years later I realized I’d had a temporary case of dyslexia, no doubt brought on by anxiety, but there were no counsellors in those days, so we had to figure everything out on our own. In order to keep up even a C average, I had to fake my way through my classes, appeal to my teachers’ better natures, and pretend I wasn’t getting a D in Latin. What a come-down from my sunny days at Paul Revere Junior High School.
At the end of my walk I pass through an impressive pair of gates and onto campus, passing solid old ivy-draped buildings that were here long before any of us were born and will be here long after we die. Harkness Academy is a well-oiled machine that has turned out America’s leaders and captains of industry for 175 years. I have every confidence that I won’t be one of them.