Chapter One

The Girl With the Green Book

By the time Maya reached the old stone building where the university's book club met every Thursday evening, the sky above Oxford had already begun turning the soft grey-blue that came just before sunset, leaving the narrow streets washed in a quiet kind of melancholy that she had always thought suited universities better than sunshine ever could. She walked slowly beneath the old archway, one hand wrapped around the strap of her canvas bag and the other holding the green-covered novel she had been carrying around for the better part of the week, its pages filled with tiny pencil marks, folded corners, underlined sentences and the occasional irritated comment she had written in the margins whenever a character made a decision she considered completely unforgivable. She had been told more than once that she treated books as though they were people, but Maya had never understood why anyone considered that an insult, because books had listened to her through far more nights than most people ever had.

She paused outside the clubroom for a moment, adjusting the sleeves of her oversized dark sweater before pushing a loose strand of hair away from her face, although the strand immediately fell back into place as though it had been waiting for the opportunity. Maya had spent the entire afternoon telling herself that she would arrive early this time, find a comfortable chair, make herself a cup of tea and spend the first fifteen minutes reading peacefully before everyone else arrived, but the fact that she was standing outside at precisely six fifty-eight, with the meeting beginning at seven, suggested that once again her definition of early had been somewhat optimistic. She glanced down at the green book in her hands and smiled despite herself, remembering the line she had underlined that morning, and for a few seconds the nervousness that had been following her throughout the day disappeared completely.

The book club had become something of a refuge for her during her first year at Oxford, although she would never have admitted that aloud because Maya disliked making ordinary things sound unnecessarily dramatic, even when those ordinary things mattered to her more than she was willing to acknowledge. Her lectures were crowded, her assignments seemed to multiply overnight, and there were days when the university felt less like the beautiful academic dream she had imagined and more like a machine designed specifically to remind students that there was always something they had forgotten to read, submit, revise or understand, but Thursday evenings were different because nobody cared whether she had spent the previous three hours worrying about an essay or whether she had forgotten to answer someone's message until midnight. In the book club, people argued about fictional characters with the seriousness of politicians, defended authors they clearly should not have been defending, complained about endings, exchanged recommendations and occasionally spent twenty minutes discussing a single sentence as though it contained the answer to every question in existence.

Maya pushed open the door and immediately heard familiar voices from inside, along with the faint clinking of cups and the scrape of chairs being moved across the wooden floor. A few people looked up when she entered, greeting her with smiles that made the room feel warmer than it actually was, and she returned their greetings as she made her way toward her usual place near the window. She liked sitting there because the glass looked out toward the courtyard, where the old stone walls were covered in ivy and the lamps came on one by one as evening settled over the university, making the whole place look like something taken from the pages of a novel that had been written specifically to make people fall in love with old buildings.

She placed her bag beside the chair and carefully set the green book on the table, opening it to the page she had marked earlier, and although she had every intention of reading through her notes before the discussion began, she found herself distracted by the sound of someone taking the chair across from her. When she looked up, she saw a boy she had noticed around campus before but had never actually spoken to, although she had never considered the fact particularly important until that moment. He looked approximately her age, perhaps a little more composed than most of the students who wandered into the book club carrying unfinished assignments and apologetic expressions, and he had slightly untidy dark hair, a pair of simple glasses resting comfortably on his nose and large headphones hanging around his neck as though he had only just taken them off. A backpack sat against the leg of his chair, and beside it was a laptop covered in a few understated stickers that made Maya immediately assume he was either studying computer science or trying very hard to look like someone who studied computer science.

He glanced at the book in front of her, then at her, before giving a small nod that seemed more polite than confident, and Maya returned it without thinking much about the interaction. She had seen him before, she realized, although usually from a distance, sitting in the library with his laptop open or walking across campus with headphones on while looking as though the rest of the world had been placed on mute. She knew nothing about him beyond that, not even his name, and yet there was something vaguely familiar about his presence that made her wonder whether he had been coming to the club longer than she had simply without ever ending up in the same group.

"Is that the book we're discussing tonight?" he asked after a moment, pointing toward the green cover.

Maya looked down at it as though she had forgotten what she was holding, then looked back at him. "Unless they've secretly changed the schedule without telling me."

He smiled, and there was something slightly awkward about it, as though he wasn't entirely sure whether she had been joking.

"They might have," he said. "I've learned not to trust university schedules."

That made her laugh, quietly at first and then more openly when she noticed the faintly embarrassed expression that appeared on his face afterward. It was not an especially funny exchange, and Maya knew that, but there was something about the way he had said it that made the conversation feel unexpectedly easy, particularly because she had expected him to be the quiet, serious type who would spend the entire meeting taking notes and speaking only when someone specifically asked him a question.

Before she could say anything else, the club coordinator called everyone's attention toward the front of the room, and the conversations gradually faded into silence as chairs were pulled closer together. Maya closed her book reluctantly, placing one finger between the pages to keep her place, and settled back into her chair while the discussion began. For the next few minutes she listened, occasionally making notes in the margin of her copy, but she kept finding herself aware of the person sitting opposite her, particularly whenever he adjusted his glasses or leaned forward to listen more carefully to someone's argument.

Eventually, the coordinator asked everyone to share their thoughts about the protagonist, and Maya immediately raised her hand because she had approximately seventeen thoughts about the protagonist and at least twelve of them were complaints. When she was called upon, she launched into her argument with the kind of enthusiasm that usually appeared whenever she was discussing something she genuinely loved, explaining why the character's choices were understandable even though they were frustrating, why the author had deliberately made certain decisions uncomfortable for the reader and why the final chapter should not be interpreted as a simple happy ending merely because the protagonist appeared to get what she wanted. As she spoke, she became increasingly animated, her hands moving naturally as she tried to explain the point she had been forming in her head all week, and when she finally finished, she noticed the boy across from her watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read.

"What?" she whispered once the discussion had moved on.

He shook his head. "Nothing."

"You were staring."

"I wasn't staring."

"You were definitely staring."

A small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. "I was listening."

Maya raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, but before she could challenge him again, someone else began speaking and the room returned to the discussion. She looked down at her book, trying to concentrate on the next argument, although she found herself smiling faintly at the page for reasons she could not quite explain.

It was only later, when the meeting had ended and people were beginning to gather their things, that she finally learned his name.

"Ethan, are you coming?" someone called from near the doorway.

He looked over his shoulder. "Yeah, give me a second."

Maya closed her book and slipped it into her bag, repeating the name silently as though there were some reason she needed to remember it. Ethan. It suited him somehow, although she couldn't have explained why, and she was halfway through putting her coat on when he turned toward her again.

"You really didn't like the ending, did you?"

She looked at him for a second before smiling.

"I hated it."

He laughed, adjusting his glasses as he picked up his backpack.

"Good," he said. "I thought I was the only one."

And that was how it began, although Maya would not understand that for a very long time, because at that moment Ethan was simply the slightly awkward computer science student with glasses who had taken the chair opposite hers at the book club, and she was simply the girl with the green book who had strong opinions about fictional characters and absolutely no reason to believe that one ordinary Thursday evening would eventually become the beginning of a story she would spend years trying to describe.