ELEVEN YEARS AND TEN MONTHS AGO

Nearly twelve years earlier, Grayson waits in the Hawthorne tree house for Jameson, who enters recklessly through a window after dangling from a branch. The brothers discuss the rare day when they will be the same age: Jameson will turn eight, and Grayson will turn nine the following day.

Their birthday anxiety centers on Tobias Hawthorne’s yearly ritual. Each boy receives ten thousand dollars to invest, chooses a talent to cultivate, and must complete a creation challenge before the next birthday. Because both boys have spent years cultivating martial arts, Jameson expects Tobias to make him fight Grayson, and Grayson expects to fight Jameson the next day. Jameson makes Grayson promise not to go easy on him.

Jameson asks about Grayson’s creation challenge. Grayson explains that Tobias assigned him a haiku, demanding perfection in only seventeen syllables. Grayson reveals a medallion containing the finished words and says that true, beautiful words should hurt.

Jameson then shows Grayson evidence of his own challenge: a five-hundred-card castle built without glue or adhesives. His camera contains hundreds of photos documenting both progress and collapse, until the final image shows a five-story L-shaped castle built against the walls. Jameson admits he finished by cutting slits into the floor and walls, exploiting a gray area in the rules and risking Tobias’s anger over damage to Hawthorne House.

After they confirm that their investment choices cannot be discussed, the brothers consider what skill to cultivate next. Jameson wants knife fighting, but Grayson, drawn to the camera and to the images of falling cards, chooses photography. Jameson rejects photography and chooses rock climbing instead, framing it as proof that he is not afraid to fall.