Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow : a novel / Gabrielle Zevin.
A modern love story about two childhood friends, Sam, raised by an actress mother in LA's Koreatown, and Sadie, from the wealthy Jewish enclave of Beverly Hills, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780593607831
- ISBN: 059360783X
- Physical Description: x, 627 pages (large print) ; 24 cm
- Edition: First large print edition.
- Publisher: New York : Random House Large Print, [2022]
- Copyright: ©2022
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Video game designers > Fiction. Friendship > Fiction. Video games > Fiction. Success in business > Fiction. Ambition > Fiction. Man-woman relationships > Fiction. |
Genre: | Romance fiction. Large print books. |
Available copies
- 12 of 13 copies available at Evergreen Indiana.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 13 total copies.
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Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
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Butler PL - Butler | LP ZEVIN (Text) | 73174005047498 | Adult: Large Print | Available | - |
Eckhart PL - Main | LP F ZEVIN gabrielle Tomorrow (Text) | 840191003143232 | Large Print - Main Level | Available | - |
Fayette Co PL - Connersville | LGPT ZEV (Text) | 39230032243089 | Adult Books | Available | - |
Garrett PL - Garrett | LG ZEV (Text) | 30010171045829 | Large Print | Available | - |
Greenwood PL - Greenwood | LARGE PRINT Zevin (Text) | 36626104350822 | 2nd Floor Adult Large Print | Available | - |
Jennings Co PL - North Vernon | LT FIC ZEV (Text) | 30653001457498 | Adult LT | Available | - |
Kendallville PL - Kendallville Main Branch | LARGE.PRINT FICTION ZEVIN (Text) | 37516002076967 | Adult Print; Large Print Fiction | Available | - |
North Webster Comm. PL - North Webster | LP ZEV Rom. Fic. (Text) | 72436000133410 | Large Print Books | Available | - |
Peabody PL - Columbia City | LARGE PRINT FICTION ZEVIN (Text) | 30403002499762 | Adult - Fiction Large Print | Available | - |
Porter County PL - Portage Public Library | LP ZEVIN (Text) | 33410018174856 | Large Print | Available | - |
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Chapter 1
Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masurâa change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worldsâand for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfatherâs Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.
On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic adviser that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didnât care for crowdsâbeing in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world.
Sam wore an elephantine navy wool peacoat that he had inherited from his roommate, Marx, who had bought it freshman year from the Army Navy Surplus Store in town. Marx had left it moldering in its plastic shopping bag just short of an entire semester before Sam asked if he might borrow it. That winter had been unrelenting, and it was an April norâeaster (April! What madness, these Massachusetts winters!) that finally wore Samâs pride down enough to ask Marx for the forgotten coat. Sam pretended that he liked the style of it, and Marx said that Sam might as well take it, which is what Sam knew he would say. Like most things purchased from the Army Navy Surplus Store, the coat emanated mold, dust, and the perspiration of dead boys, and Sam tried not to speculate why the garment had been surplussed. But the coat was far warmer than the windbreaker he had brought from California his freshman year. He also believed that the large coat worked to conceal his size. The coat, its ridiculous scale, only made him look smaller and more childlike.
That is to say, Sam Masur at age twenty-one did not have a build for pushing and shoving and so, as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd, feeling somewhat like the doomed amphibian from the video game Frogger. He found himself uttering a series of âexcuse mesâ that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say âExcuse meâ while meaning âScrew you.â Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face valueâthe totality of what they did or what they said. But peopleâthe ordinary, the decent and basically honestâcouldnât get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.
âCanât you go around?â a man in a black and green macramé hat yelled at Sam.
âExcuse me,â Sam said.
âDammit, I almost had it,â a woman with a baby in a sling muttered as Sam passed in front of her.
âExcuse me,â Sam said.
Occasionally, someone would hastily leave, creating gaps in the crowd. The gaps should have been opportunities of escape for Sam, but somehow, they immediately filled with new humans, hungry for diversion.
He was nearly to the subwayâs escalator when he turned back to see what the crowd had been looking at. Sam could imagine reporting the congestion in the train station, and Marx saying, âWerenât you even curious what it was? Thereâs a world of people and things, if you can manage to stop being a misanthrope for a second.â Sam didnât like Marx thinking of him as a misanthrope, even if he was one, and so, he turned. That was when he espied his old comrade, Sadie Green.
It wasnât as if he hadnât seen her at all in the intervening years. They had been habitués of science fairs, academic games, college recruitment events, competitions (oratory, robotics, creative writing, programming), banquets for top students. Because whether you went to a mediocre public high school in the east (Sam), or a fancy private school in the west (Sadie), the Los Angeles smart-kid circuit was the same. They would exchange glances across a room of nerdsâsometimes, sheâd even smile at him, as if to corroborate their détenteâand then she would be swept up in the vulturine circle of attractive, smart kids that always surrounded her. Boys and girls like himself, but wealthier, whiter, and with better glasses and teeth. And he did not want to be one more ugly, nerdy person hovering around Sadie Green. Sometimes, he would make a villain of her and imagine ways that she had slighted him: that time she had turned away from him; that time she had avoided his eyes. But she hadnât done those thingsâit would have been almost better if she had.
He had known that she had gone to MIT and had wondered if he might run into her when he got into Harvard. For two and half years, he had done nothing to force such an occasion. Neither had she.
But there she was: Sadie Green, in the flesh. And to see her almost made him want to cry. It was as if she were a mathematical proof that had eluded him for many years, but all at once, with fresh, well-rested eyes, the proof had a completely obvious solution. Thereâs Sadie, he thought. Yes.
He was about to call her name, but then he didnât. He felt overwhelmed by how much time had passed since he and Sadie had last been alone together. How could a person still be as young as he objectively knew himself to be and have had so much time pass? And why was it suddenly so easy to forget that he despised her? Time, Sam thought, was a mystery. But with a secondâs reflection, he thought better of such sentiment. Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heartâthe part of the brain represented by the heartâthat was the mystery.
Sadie finished staring at whatever the crowd was staring at, and now she was walking toward the inbound Red Line train.
Sam called her name, âSADIE!â In addition to the rumble of the incoming train, the station was roaring with the usual humanity. A teenage girl played Penguin Cafe Orchestra on a cello for tips. A man with a clipboard asked passersby if they could spare a moment for Muslim refugees in Srebrenica. Adjacent to Sadie was a stand selling six-dollar fruit shakes. The blender had begun to whir, diffusing the scent of citrus and strawberries through the musty, subterranean air, just as Sam had first called her name. âSadie Green!â he called out again. Still she didnât hear him. He quickened his pace, as much as he could. When he walked quickly, he counterintuitively felt like a person in a three-legged race.
âSadie! SADIE!â He felt foolish. âSADIE MIRANDA GREEN! YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY!â
Finally, she turned. She scanned the crowd slowly and when she spotted Sam, the smile spread over her face like a time-lapse video he had once seen in a high school physics class of a rose in bloom. It was beautiful, Sam thought, and perhaps, he worried, a tad ersatz. She walked over to him, still smilingâone dimple on her right cheek, an almost imperceptibly wider gap between the two middle teeth on the topâand he thought that the crowd seemed to part for her, in a way that the world never moved for him.
âItâs my sister who died of dysentery, Sam Masur,â Sadie said. âI died of exhaustion, following a snakebite.â
âAnd of not wanting to shoot the bison,â Sam said.
âItâs wasteful. All that meat just rots.â
Sadie threw her arms around him. âSam Masur! I kept hoping Iâd run into you.â
âIâm in the directory,â Sam said.
âWell, maybe I hoped it would be organic,â Sadie said. âAnd now it is.â
âWhat brings you to Harvard Square?â Sam asked.
âWhy, the Magic Eye, of course,â she said playfully. She gestured in front of her, toward the advertisement. For the first time, Sam registered the 60-by-40-inch poster that had transformed commuters into a zombie horde.
SEE THE WORLD IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.
THIS CHRISTMAS, THE GIFT EVERYONE WANTS IS THE MAGIC EYE.
The imagery on the poster was a psychedelic pattern in Christmas tones of emerald, ruby, and gold. If you stared at the pattern long enough, your brain would trick itself into seeing a hidden 3D image. It was called an autostereogram, and it was easy to make one if you were a modestly skilled programmer. This? Sam thought. The things people find amusing. He groaned.
âYou disapprove?â Sadie said.
âThis can be found in any dorm common room on campus.â
âNot this particular one, Sam. This oneâs unique toââ
âEvery train station in Boston.â
âMaybe the U.S.?â Sadie laughed. âSo, Sam, donât you want to see the world with magic eyes?â
âIâm always seeing the world with magic eyes,â he said. âIâm exploding with childish wonder.â
Sadie pointed toward a boy of about six: âLook how happy he is! Heâs got it now! Well done!â
âHave you seen it?â Sam asked.
âI didnât see it yet,â Sadie admitted. âAnd now, I really do have to catch this next train, or Iâll be late for class.â
âSurely, you have another five minutes so that you can see the world with magic eyes,â Sam said.
âMaybe next time.â
âCome on, Sadie. Thereâll always be another class. How many times can you look at something and know that everyone around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that weâre all in the same world?â
Sadie smiled ruefully and punched Sam lightly on the shoulder. âThat was about the most Sam thing you could have said.â
âSam I am.â
She sighed as she heard the rumble of her train leaving the station. âIf I fail Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics, itâs your fault. She repositioned herself so that she was looking at the poster again. âYou do it with me, Sam.â
âYes, maâam.â Sam squared his shoulders, and he stared straight ahead. He had not stood this near to Sadie in years.
Directions on the poster said to relax oneâs eyes and to concentrate on a single point until a secret image emerged. If that didnât work, they suggested coming closer to the poster and then slowly backing up, but there wasnât room for that in the train station. In any case, Sam didnât care what the secret image was. He could guess that it was a Christmas tree, an angel, a star, though probably not a Star of David, something seasonal, trite, and broadly appealing, something meant to sell more Magic Eye products. Autostereograms had never worked for Sam. He theorized it was something to do with his glasses. The glasses, which corrected a significant myopia, wouldnât let his eyes relax enough for his brain to perceive the illusion. And so, after a respectable amount of time (fifteen seconds), Sam stopped trying to see the secret image and studied Sadie instead.
Her hair was shorter and more fashionable, he guessed, but it was the same mahogany waves that sheâd always had. The light freckling on her nose was the same, and her skin was still olive, though she was much paler than when they were kids in California, and her lips were chapped. Her eyes were the same brown, with golden flecks. Anna, his mother, had had similar eyes, and sheâd told Sam that coloration like this was called heterochromia. At the time, he had thought it sounded like a disease, something for his mother to potentially die from. Beneath Sadieâs eyes were barely perceptible crescents, but then, sheâd had these as a kid too. Still, he felt she seemed tired. Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, This is what time travel is. Itâs looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.
âI saw it!â she said. Her eyes were bright, and she wore an expression he remembered from when she was eleven.
Sam quickly turned his gaze back to the poster.
âDid you see it?â she asked.
âYes,â he said. âI saw it.â
Sadie looked at him. âWhat did you see?â
âIt,â Sam said. âIt was amazingly great. Terribly festive.â
âDid you actually see it?â Sadieâs lips were twitching upward. Those heterochromic eyes looked at him with mirth.
âYes, but I donât want to spoil it for anyone else who hasnât.â He gestured toward the horde.
âOkay, Sam,â Sadie said. âThatâs thoughtful of you.â
He knew she knew that he hadnât seen it. He smiled at her, and she smiled at him.
âIsnât it strange?â Sadie said. âI feel like I never stopped seeing you. I feel like we come down to this T station to stare at this poster every day.â
âWe grok,â Sam said.
âWe do grok. And I take back what I said before. That is the Sammest thing you could have said.â
âSammest I Ammest. Youâreââ As he was speaking, the blender began to whir again.
âWhat?â she said.
âYouâre in the wrong square,â he repeated.
âWhatâs the âwrong squareâ?â
âYouâre in Harvard Square, when you should be in Central Square or Kendall Square. I think I heard youâd gone to MIT.â
âMy boyfriend lives around here,â Sadie said, in a way that indicated she had no more she wished to say on that subject. âI wonder why theyâre called squares. Theyâre not really squares, are they?â Another inbound train was approaching. âThatâs my train. Again.â
âThatâs how trains work,â Sam said.
âItâs true. Thereâs a train, and a train, and a train.â
âIn which case, the only proper thing for us to do right now is have coffee,â Sam said. âOr whatever you drink, if coffeeâs too much of a cliché for you. Chai tea. Matcha. Snapple. Champagne. Thereâs a world with infinite beverage possibilities, right over our heads, you know? All we have to do is ride that escalator and itâs ours for the partaking.â
âI wish I could, but I have to get to class. Iâve done maybe half the reading. The only thing I have going for me is my punctuality and attendance.â
âI doubt that,â Sam said. Sadie was one of the most brilliant people he knew.
She gave Sam another quick hug. âGood running into you.â
Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masurâa change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worldsâand for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfatherâs Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.
On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic adviser that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didnât care for crowdsâbeing in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world.
Sam wore an elephantine navy wool peacoat that he had inherited from his roommate, Marx, who had bought it freshman year from the Army Navy Surplus Store in town. Marx had left it moldering in its plastic shopping bag just short of an entire semester before Sam asked if he might borrow it. That winter had been unrelenting, and it was an April norâeaster (April! What madness, these Massachusetts winters!) that finally wore Samâs pride down enough to ask Marx for the forgotten coat. Sam pretended that he liked the style of it, and Marx said that Sam might as well take it, which is what Sam knew he would say. Like most things purchased from the Army Navy Surplus Store, the coat emanated mold, dust, and the perspiration of dead boys, and Sam tried not to speculate why the garment had been surplussed. But the coat was far warmer than the windbreaker he had brought from California his freshman year. He also believed that the large coat worked to conceal his size. The coat, its ridiculous scale, only made him look smaller and more childlike.
That is to say, Sam Masur at age twenty-one did not have a build for pushing and shoving and so, as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd, feeling somewhat like the doomed amphibian from the video game Frogger. He found himself uttering a series of âexcuse mesâ that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say âExcuse meâ while meaning âScrew you.â Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face valueâthe totality of what they did or what they said. But peopleâthe ordinary, the decent and basically honestâcouldnât get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.
âCanât you go around?â a man in a black and green macramé hat yelled at Sam.
âExcuse me,â Sam said.
âDammit, I almost had it,â a woman with a baby in a sling muttered as Sam passed in front of her.
âExcuse me,â Sam said.
Occasionally, someone would hastily leave, creating gaps in the crowd. The gaps should have been opportunities of escape for Sam, but somehow, they immediately filled with new humans, hungry for diversion.
He was nearly to the subwayâs escalator when he turned back to see what the crowd had been looking at. Sam could imagine reporting the congestion in the train station, and Marx saying, âWerenât you even curious what it was? Thereâs a world of people and things, if you can manage to stop being a misanthrope for a second.â Sam didnât like Marx thinking of him as a misanthrope, even if he was one, and so, he turned. That was when he espied his old comrade, Sadie Green.
It wasnât as if he hadnât seen her at all in the intervening years. They had been habitués of science fairs, academic games, college recruitment events, competitions (oratory, robotics, creative writing, programming), banquets for top students. Because whether you went to a mediocre public high school in the east (Sam), or a fancy private school in the west (Sadie), the Los Angeles smart-kid circuit was the same. They would exchange glances across a room of nerdsâsometimes, sheâd even smile at him, as if to corroborate their détenteâand then she would be swept up in the vulturine circle of attractive, smart kids that always surrounded her. Boys and girls like himself, but wealthier, whiter, and with better glasses and teeth. And he did not want to be one more ugly, nerdy person hovering around Sadie Green. Sometimes, he would make a villain of her and imagine ways that she had slighted him: that time she had turned away from him; that time she had avoided his eyes. But she hadnât done those thingsâit would have been almost better if she had.
He had known that she had gone to MIT and had wondered if he might run into her when he got into Harvard. For two and half years, he had done nothing to force such an occasion. Neither had she.
But there she was: Sadie Green, in the flesh. And to see her almost made him want to cry. It was as if she were a mathematical proof that had eluded him for many years, but all at once, with fresh, well-rested eyes, the proof had a completely obvious solution. Thereâs Sadie, he thought. Yes.
He was about to call her name, but then he didnât. He felt overwhelmed by how much time had passed since he and Sadie had last been alone together. How could a person still be as young as he objectively knew himself to be and have had so much time pass? And why was it suddenly so easy to forget that he despised her? Time, Sam thought, was a mystery. But with a secondâs reflection, he thought better of such sentiment. Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heartâthe part of the brain represented by the heartâthat was the mystery.
Sadie finished staring at whatever the crowd was staring at, and now she was walking toward the inbound Red Line train.
Sam called her name, âSADIE!â In addition to the rumble of the incoming train, the station was roaring with the usual humanity. A teenage girl played Penguin Cafe Orchestra on a cello for tips. A man with a clipboard asked passersby if they could spare a moment for Muslim refugees in Srebrenica. Adjacent to Sadie was a stand selling six-dollar fruit shakes. The blender had begun to whir, diffusing the scent of citrus and strawberries through the musty, subterranean air, just as Sam had first called her name. âSadie Green!â he called out again. Still she didnât hear him. He quickened his pace, as much as he could. When he walked quickly, he counterintuitively felt like a person in a three-legged race.
âSadie! SADIE!â He felt foolish. âSADIE MIRANDA GREEN! YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY!â
Finally, she turned. She scanned the crowd slowly and when she spotted Sam, the smile spread over her face like a time-lapse video he had once seen in a high school physics class of a rose in bloom. It was beautiful, Sam thought, and perhaps, he worried, a tad ersatz. She walked over to him, still smilingâone dimple on her right cheek, an almost imperceptibly wider gap between the two middle teeth on the topâand he thought that the crowd seemed to part for her, in a way that the world never moved for him.
âItâs my sister who died of dysentery, Sam Masur,â Sadie said. âI died of exhaustion, following a snakebite.â
âAnd of not wanting to shoot the bison,â Sam said.
âItâs wasteful. All that meat just rots.â
Sadie threw her arms around him. âSam Masur! I kept hoping Iâd run into you.â
âIâm in the directory,â Sam said.
âWell, maybe I hoped it would be organic,â Sadie said. âAnd now it is.â
âWhat brings you to Harvard Square?â Sam asked.
âWhy, the Magic Eye, of course,â she said playfully. She gestured in front of her, toward the advertisement. For the first time, Sam registered the 60-by-40-inch poster that had transformed commuters into a zombie horde.
SEE THE WORLD IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.
THIS CHRISTMAS, THE GIFT EVERYONE WANTS IS THE MAGIC EYE.
The imagery on the poster was a psychedelic pattern in Christmas tones of emerald, ruby, and gold. If you stared at the pattern long enough, your brain would trick itself into seeing a hidden 3D image. It was called an autostereogram, and it was easy to make one if you were a modestly skilled programmer. This? Sam thought. The things people find amusing. He groaned.
âYou disapprove?â Sadie said.
âThis can be found in any dorm common room on campus.â
âNot this particular one, Sam. This oneâs unique toââ
âEvery train station in Boston.â
âMaybe the U.S.?â Sadie laughed. âSo, Sam, donât you want to see the world with magic eyes?â
âIâm always seeing the world with magic eyes,â he said. âIâm exploding with childish wonder.â
Sadie pointed toward a boy of about six: âLook how happy he is! Heâs got it now! Well done!â
âHave you seen it?â Sam asked.
âI didnât see it yet,â Sadie admitted. âAnd now, I really do have to catch this next train, or Iâll be late for class.â
âSurely, you have another five minutes so that you can see the world with magic eyes,â Sam said.
âMaybe next time.â
âCome on, Sadie. Thereâll always be another class. How many times can you look at something and know that everyone around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that weâre all in the same world?â
Sadie smiled ruefully and punched Sam lightly on the shoulder. âThat was about the most Sam thing you could have said.â
âSam I am.â
She sighed as she heard the rumble of her train leaving the station. âIf I fail Advanced Topics in Computer Graphics, itâs your fault. She repositioned herself so that she was looking at the poster again. âYou do it with me, Sam.â
âYes, maâam.â Sam squared his shoulders, and he stared straight ahead. He had not stood this near to Sadie in years.
Directions on the poster said to relax oneâs eyes and to concentrate on a single point until a secret image emerged. If that didnât work, they suggested coming closer to the poster and then slowly backing up, but there wasnât room for that in the train station. In any case, Sam didnât care what the secret image was. He could guess that it was a Christmas tree, an angel, a star, though probably not a Star of David, something seasonal, trite, and broadly appealing, something meant to sell more Magic Eye products. Autostereograms had never worked for Sam. He theorized it was something to do with his glasses. The glasses, which corrected a significant myopia, wouldnât let his eyes relax enough for his brain to perceive the illusion. And so, after a respectable amount of time (fifteen seconds), Sam stopped trying to see the secret image and studied Sadie instead.
Her hair was shorter and more fashionable, he guessed, but it was the same mahogany waves that sheâd always had. The light freckling on her nose was the same, and her skin was still olive, though she was much paler than when they were kids in California, and her lips were chapped. Her eyes were the same brown, with golden flecks. Anna, his mother, had had similar eyes, and sheâd told Sam that coloration like this was called heterochromia. At the time, he had thought it sounded like a disease, something for his mother to potentially die from. Beneath Sadieâs eyes were barely perceptible crescents, but then, sheâd had these as a kid too. Still, he felt she seemed tired. Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, This is what time travel is. Itâs looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.
âI saw it!â she said. Her eyes were bright, and she wore an expression he remembered from when she was eleven.
Sam quickly turned his gaze back to the poster.
âDid you see it?â she asked.
âYes,â he said. âI saw it.â
Sadie looked at him. âWhat did you see?â
âIt,â Sam said. âIt was amazingly great. Terribly festive.â
âDid you actually see it?â Sadieâs lips were twitching upward. Those heterochromic eyes looked at him with mirth.
âYes, but I donât want to spoil it for anyone else who hasnât.â He gestured toward the horde.
âOkay, Sam,â Sadie said. âThatâs thoughtful of you.â
He knew she knew that he hadnât seen it. He smiled at her, and she smiled at him.
âIsnât it strange?â Sadie said. âI feel like I never stopped seeing you. I feel like we come down to this T station to stare at this poster every day.â
âWe grok,â Sam said.
âWe do grok. And I take back what I said before. That is the Sammest thing you could have said.â
âSammest I Ammest. Youâreââ As he was speaking, the blender began to whir again.
âWhat?â she said.
âYouâre in the wrong square,â he repeated.
âWhatâs the âwrong squareâ?â
âYouâre in Harvard Square, when you should be in Central Square or Kendall Square. I think I heard youâd gone to MIT.â
âMy boyfriend lives around here,â Sadie said, in a way that indicated she had no more she wished to say on that subject. âI wonder why theyâre called squares. Theyâre not really squares, are they?â Another inbound train was approaching. âThatâs my train. Again.â
âThatâs how trains work,â Sam said.
âItâs true. Thereâs a train, and a train, and a train.â
âIn which case, the only proper thing for us to do right now is have coffee,â Sam said. âOr whatever you drink, if coffeeâs too much of a cliché for you. Chai tea. Matcha. Snapple. Champagne. Thereâs a world with infinite beverage possibilities, right over our heads, you know? All we have to do is ride that escalator and itâs ours for the partaking.â
âI wish I could, but I have to get to class. Iâve done maybe half the reading. The only thing I have going for me is my punctuality and attendance.â
âI doubt that,â Sam said. Sadie was one of the most brilliant people he knew.
She gave Sam another quick hug. âGood running into you.â