“I wish I could, but I have to get to class. I’ve done maybe half the reading. The only thing I have going for me is my punctuality and attendance.”

“I doubt that,” Sam said. Sadie was one of the most brilliant people he knew.

There was no echt Sadie in this view, he decided. She looked indistinguishable from any number of smart, well-maintained college girls in the train station.

And so she’d be cool, because that’s what mistresses were. Mistress, Sadie thought. Sadie laughed a bit to herself, thinking this was what it was like to play someone else’s game: to have the illusion of choice, without actual choice.