Alex, a sophomore at Vassar, is visiting home for Christmas break. His mom's questions remind him of his childhood when his dad was still alive. He tells his mom what he thinks she wants to hear about the college experience, always covering something up and never quite opening up about his recent ex girlfriend Sloan. Being back home feels stagnant to him in a way he'd never noticed before. His childhood and adolescence feel like different lives compared to where he is now. This strange foreignness quickly morphs into a sense of stifling familiarity. Alex is hiding something in every conversation with friends and his mom. He evades their questions, finds excuses not to listen to them or brush them aside. He only finds solace in his dad's annotated copy of To the Lighthouse, where he reads underlined passages at random and tries to understand what his dad was feeling at the time. He fixates on the line "exquisite happiness, intense happiness" in particular, in no small part because Alex feels incapable of finding that for himself. Finding his father's business card as a bookmark makes Alex reconsider how he envisioned the book. The edition was old, but his father was only in that particular office for a few years before succumbing to cancer, which meant he most likely made his annotations after he knew he was dying. This realization prompts Alex to reconsider how he interacts with his mom and handles his friendships.