The Beginning of Everything

From his college dorm room on the East Coast, Ezra reflects on the events of the previous year. Toby and Ezra scattered Cooper’s ashes on their hiking trail. Cassidy did not return to school for the spring semester, and Ezra assumes she returned to Barrows School. She was the first of the group to leave Eastwood, and Ezra wonders what she is doing and what their relationship might have been. Toby left Eastwood too and lives in Boston. He visits Ezra, bringing art books chosen by his boyfriend and a picture taken by Phoebe on his 18th birthday. The picture is a blurry shot of Ezra and Toby, smiling and laughing, sitting in the back row of the Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster at Disneyland. Ezra is smiling at Phoebe, who has twisted round in her seat to take the photo. The picture perfectly captures the “promises of that last summer” and the friendships that he had (334). Ezra thinks back to what Cassidy told him about giving her too much credit for the choices he eventually made to break away from his conventional path. Ezra accepts that he alone made the decision to live life rather than just exist within the confining expectations of others, but he credits Cassidy for lending him the spark that kept him going.