Thursday, 9:40 in the morning, and Anaïs was rehearsing in my bathroom mirror.

"I'm putting a book together for Léa, she leaves for Lyon on Sunday, I just need everyone to sign it."

She said it three times at three different speeds and checked the shape of her own mouth in the glass each time. I ate toast in the doorway and told her she was overthinking it.

"I'm not nervous," she said. "I'm getting it right."

That was the thing about Anaïs. A few days ago I made her sign on her book, and now she was standing in my bathroom rehearsing a lie with more care than she'd ever given a seminar. The book hadn't made her dishonest. It just meant she'd never once asked herself why she wanted this.

We walked to campus together. She held my hand the whole way and didn't say anything about the folder under my arm.

The study group met on the fourth floor of the library, in one of the glass rooms you have to book three days ahead. Nine of us around two pushed-together tables, laptops open, a whiteboard nobody used. Léa was actually going to Lyon, which was the beautiful part. The lie had a spine of truth in it, and Anaïs had built the whole thing around that spine.

Camille came in at ten past, late the way rich people are late, which is to say without apology. Cream coat over the chair back. Coffee she'd bought somewhere better than the campus café. She took the seat someone had been saving and didn't notice the someone.

"Sorry, sorry. My father's been on the phone about the harvest all morning. You have no idea."

Nobody had asked.

Somebody slid the attendance sheet down the table. Camille signed it without turning it over, still talking about the harvest, her pen never slowing. I watched her do it. That was the whole reason Anaïs had picked her, and Camille didn't know it and never would.

Anaïs waited until the group had broken into its usual two halves, the ones arguing about the problem set and the ones on their phones. Then she leaned across with the folder and opened it flat on the table.

"Camille, before I forget. Sign this."

"What is it?"

"The book for Léa. Everyone's done it, you're the last one."

"Am I? God." Camille took the pen. …