When Adrian is thirteen, he's long-forgotten his old green-gray copy of the Iliad and moved on to more interesting things. He might pick it up again, hide away in a corner of the library and bolt it all in one go, but now he is mature and absolutely certain he's the last in his classroom to like girls. It wouldn't be very difficult to feign that he does, at least where his classmates are concerned, but he doesn't bother. He's the best at baseball, and there are plenty of other hobbies to pursue, like making friends. But when summer comes, he leaves all these friends he's made behind.

When he's thirteen and one quarter (this making him far more advanced than his peers) the Veidt family goes upstate to visit what family they have on vacation.If this were like any other summer holiday they could go to the beach, and he doesn't see why they don't do that; it'd be marginally more tolerable.

Aunt Lydia is Mother's sister, and they have a debt to her; there was no hearing the end of this on the trip over, and the lack of specifics just make it more painfully obvious what everyone means. She's been in the States longer than they have, and she's very urbane, dusting the house in pearls and all of that. If there's an uncle corresponding with this aunt to explain where the children came from, he isn't in the family's good graces; there is, however, a stepfather and two grown sons. The three youngest children are meant to be his playmates; it's an odd weight off his mind that they all have normal American names, not German ones. Diana is 11, and a girl, which almost ensures they won't have a thing in common to talk about; Mark is his age (approximately, everyone forgets the and one-quarter no matter how much he emphasizes it) and they're sure to get along; Blake is sixteen and so on, forever; the listing of relatives he can't remember meeting continues.

There aren't exactly neighbors, except the one family and they only have one little boy with them. He's really a very little boy, but Adrian sees him sometimes, when their parents are exchanging words and borrowing gasoline, and instantly envies him. Danny's father is an investment banker, comfortingly reasonable and ordinary. (Adrian won't know where his father's money came from until he's older.) So on the very first day of their trip, Adrian is carefully plotting out how the rest of his summer will go.

All these plans are immediately derailed once he actually meets his cousins.

Diana (the name raises obvious associations of aloof, stoical huntresses) runs to greet them at their car in the driveway, the evening light fading behind her, and she hugs him. If this wasn't affront to his dignity enough, she's already taller than he is and won't let go of him.

"You're here! We were about ready to send out a search party!"

Because Adrian is prematurely middle-aged on the inside, he sputters, and his parents laugh.