Every girl at Phillips Academy Andover—at least once in her ninth-grade year—had harbored a crush on Amory Ellison.
It was practically a rite of passage, like misplacing your ID or falling asleep during your first Intro to Philosophy seminar. For some, it happened in the dining hall the first week, when he leaned back in his chair and recited a Neruda poem during lunch. For others, it came when he made a perfect three-pointer during inter-house basketball in a too-big jersey and a devil-may-care smirk.
By sophomore year, the spell had begun to break. About half of them saw through the charm—through the rehearsed spontaneity, the tragic backstory involving "emotional geography," and the fact that he always made you carry his bag.
Only ten percent held on into junior year, the die-hards and romantics and girls who liked sad indie films and thought quoting Camus in English class was a mating call.
Amory was, maddeningly, good at everything. He got A's in Latin without trying. Teachers loved him; students either wanted to be him or wanted to push him into a pond. He was quick, athletic, tall in the right way—not hulking, but lean and unfairly graceful. And he was funny, in the kind of way that made you laugh and then feel vaguely manipulated afterward.
One girl, who had the dubious distinction of dating him for precisely one day during their freshman year, recounted the memory like a ghost story.
"He handed me his bag in the morning," she said flatly. "Didn't say anything. Just… gave it to me. Then he talked to Cary the whole day, like I wasn't there. Then, at dinner, he told me we had to break up because I hurt his lip when we kissed behind the theater."
It would've been cruel if it hadn't been so absurd.
Later that same year, Amory—perhaps out of boredom, or a desire to live poetically—fell in love with two girls at the same time. He wrote each of them long, handwritten letters filled with metaphors about dying leaves and burning cathedrals, unaware (or uncaring) that they were roommates. When they found out, he claimed the duplicity was "a commentary on duality and the unbearable weight of yearning."
Now, in his senior year, the dust had mostly settled. Among the twelfth grade, only about 1% of girls still wanted to date him, and most of them were either European boarders or recently transferred. Ten percent of juniors hadn't yet learned. Fifty percent of sophomores swooned openly. And as for the freshmen—every single one of them, like clockwork, fell into the gravitational pull of his tousled hair and tragic smirk by the second week of classes.
Amory knew all of this.
He would sometimes stare out over the Great Lawn and say things like, "Do you think beauty is a curse, or a responsibility?" and then walk away before anyone could answer.
That lunch, the dining hall was a steady thrum of noise—clattering trays, bursts of laughter, the low drone of academic stress reawakening after summer. The air smelled faintly of tomato bisque and something overcooked. Nicole sat at their usual table near the windows, where the sunlight always hit just right around noon. She had taken her sunglasses off—always a sign that she meant business.
Heather was picking at her salad, Amanda was midway through a tirade about their new English teacher's obsession with Beowulf, when Nicole, without preamble, said:
"I've decided I'm going to move on."
Both heads turned immediately.
Heather arched an eyebrow. "From…?"
"Amory," Nicole said, in the practiced tone of someone delivering a TED Talk on personal growth.
Amanda snorted into her lemonade. "How many times have you said that?"
"This time I mean it," Nicole replied, brushing a perfectly curled strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm reclaiming my emotional bandwidth. I've realized I've been pouring energy into a beautiful—but ultimately unavailable—source of chaos. And honestly? That's not the narrative I want for myself senior year."
Heather gave her a slow, amused nod. "That's very Oprah SuperSoul Sunday of you."
Nicole ignored the sarcasm. "He's just a symptom of my addiction to aesthetic misery. You know—like listening to Lana Del Rey while journaling about how he doesn't look at me in class."
Amanda raised her hands in surrender. "Okay, we support this. We are proud. We are emotionally detoxing. Who's the rebound?"
Nicole tilted her head as if she hadn't considered this. "I don't know. Someone stable. Like… that kid in calculus who wears sweaters and always raises his hand. I want a guy who says 'good morning' and means it."
"Or just one who doesn't ask you to carry his bag," Heather muttered.
They all laughed, and for a moment, Nicole felt genuinely lighter. A little freer. Even as, across the dining hall, Amory sat with Anthony, Cary, and Albert, telling a dramatic story involving jazz, an elevator in SoHo, and a broken champagne flute—occasionally glancing, very subtly, toward the window where she sat.
Nicole noticed. She didn't react.
She just stabbed a cherry tomato, lifted her chin, and said, "Growth."
It was a bright, cloudless morning in early October, the kind of day that made the campus look like a well-funded movie set—maple trees at peak blaze, brick buildings lit golden, and everything filtered through the soft nostalgia of New England fall.
Picture Day had arrived.
The buzz started early. Students milled around outside the chapel, adjusting collars, lint-rolling sleeves, and pretending not to care. But everyone cared. They always did.
Amory, for his part, had entered what Cary referred to as full DiCaprio mode.
"I swear," Cary muttered, leaning against a tree with a thermos in hand, "he's been in the mirror since Tuesday. The man moisturized. Twice. That's more than Heather."
"He quoted Titanic at his own reflection," added Albert dryly. "It was dark."
Amory emerged then, looking luminous and infuriating in a charcoal turtleneck and blazer, his golden hair artfully messy. He ran a hand through it once, frowned at a nonexistent pimple just below his cheekbone, and cursed softly under his breath.
Meanwhile, across the quad, Nicole stood beneath a burning-red oak tree in a green cardigan and pleated skirt, her lipstick just slightly darker than usual. She was talking to David Rhodes—tall, sweet, a varsity tennis player with the emotional range of a Hallmark movie, but in a wholesome way.
"Would you… maybe want to go out sometime?" David asked, his hands buried in his pockets.
Nicole blinked, surprised—but not unpleasantly so. "You know what? Yeah. Sure."
David smiled, boyish and earnest. "Cool."
Amory, now mid-rant to Anthony about "the lighting being criminal this year," stopped abruptly. His eyes slid to Nicole. His gaze narrowed slightly when he saw David standing just a bit too close, his posture too casual, his smile too comfortable.
He turned, fully now, away from his friends.
"You know—" he began, voice low and deliberate, eyes locked on Nicole's like he was about to say something definitive, something sharp-edged and timeless—
But before the next syllable could form, a yearbook staffer appeared out of nowhere, clipboard in hand.
"Amory Ellison?"
He turned toward her, his jaw tightening.
"Photo line's ready."
Nicole watched him walk off without a word, the breeze tugging at his blazer. She raised an eyebrow, said nothing, and turned back to David, who was asking if she liked old movies.
In the distance, Amory stood before the camera, tilted his head just so, and smiled like he was daring the lens to capture him correctly.
Amory returned from his photo session with the air of a tragic prince exiting a battlefield. His steps were languid, dramatic, like each footfall was weighed down by the burden of aesthetics. A camera flash still echoed in his mind as though it had scorched his very soul. His blazer was now slightly askew in a way that looked entirely intentional.
Nicole stood where he'd left her, arms crossed, watching him with a mild expression that barely concealed her curiosity—or her irritation.
"What did you want to tell me?" she asked.
Amory blinked, disoriented. "What?"
"You started to say something before you got called away. 'You know—'?"
He looked at her blankly for a moment, the question not registering. His brain was still spinning in shutter speeds and lighting angles.
"I look dreadful," he groaned instead, dropping his bag at her feet as if she might pick it up out of muscle memory. He hadn't even seen his picture yet, but it was tradition: Amory always claimed he looked awful. Then, a month later, he'd be voted Best Portrait in the yearbook and act surprised.
Nicole's eyes narrowed. "So nothing, then," she said flatly.
But Amory wasn't listening. He'd already produced a small silver mirror from the inner pocket of his blazer and was turning his head slightly left, then right, studying his reflection like a surgeon inspecting a near-perfect incision.
"My hair is flat on one side," he muttered.
"Right," Nicole said, her voice clipped. "Tragedy."
Amory didn't look up. "It was the breeze. Or humidity. Or some cursed lighting from above. God, I swear, they catch me at the worst angles."
Nicole didn't answer. She just looked at him for a long beat, then turned on her heel and walked away toward the library steps.
Only after a few seconds did Amory lower the mirror and glance back at her retreating figure.
"What did I—?"
But the words faded. And she didn't turn around.
Nicole's steps were fast and deliberate, heels clicking against the stone path with the sharp rhythm of pride stung just enough to crack. But then—behind her:
"Nicole."
She slowed, instinct more than choice. The voice was unmistakable: rich, careless, soaked in velvet and mischief.
Amory was following her, his blazer flaring slightly as he caught up. When she turned, he was already talking.
"I was going to say…" he began, breathless not from effort, but from the momentum of whatever ridiculous conviction had overtaken him, "that David is not even half as good-looking as I am."
Nicole opened her mouth, incredulous, but he plowed on.
"And you know," he continued, almost earnestly, "if I were going to ask someone out, I wouldn't just say something in passing. I'd bring flowers. Like—an entire bouquet. And chocolate. And I'd probably recite something… like Rilke. Or Leonard Cohen. I'd—"
He stopped.
They were suddenly very close. Too close. His face hovered just inches from hers, the world narrowing until the only things that seemed to exist were his eyes and the warm breath touching her cheek. His mouth was just below her eyes, his lashes golden in the sunlight, and Nicole's heart betrayed her—beating faster, harder, in a way that made her furious.
He leaned in slightly, gaze fixed, as if—
Then he squinted.
"You've got a pimple," he said flatly.
Nicole blinked. Her whole body seemed to recoil—not backward, but inward.
"Thanks," she said, her voice an icicle.
"No problem," Amory replied, utterly unfazed, and with the serene self-absorption of an emperor checking his reflection in a pond, he pulled out his mirror once more.
Nicole stared at him, her jaw tightening, her chest burning with everything he didn't say and everything she foolishly wished he would. Then, without another word, she turned and walked away, leaving him framed in dappled light, frowning faintly at his own perfection.