Chapter 1

When I was younger and more impressionable, my dad gave me some advice that’s been stuck in my head ever since.

"Whenever you feel like judging someone," he told me, "just remember that not everyone’s had the same advantages you’re lucky enough to have."

He didn’t say much else, but we’re always been good at communicating without being overly expressive, and I understood he meant a lot more than that.

So, I tend to hold back on judging people, which has opened me up to some really interesting people - and also made me the target of a few seriously boring veterans. People who are a little off can spot that quality immediately and latch onto it.

That’s how, in college, I got unfairly labeled a politician just because I knew the hidden sorrows of some wild, unknown guys.

Most of the time, people just started telling me their problems - honestly, I’d often fake sleep, pretend to be distracted, or even act a little sarcastic when I sensed someone was about to unload a really personal confession; because young guys’ deep thoughts are usually just copied from somewhere else and leave out a lot.

Keeping your opinions to yourself is all about hoping for the best. I'm still a little worried I’ll miss out on something if I forget that, like my dad - and I - snobbishly put it, everyone doesn't start life with the same basic fairness.

And, after bragging about how open-minded I am, I have to admit there’s a limit. Someone’s actions might be based on solid ground or shaky foundations, but after a certain point, I just don’t care.

When I got back from the East last fall, I just wanted everyone to act the same way and be on their best behavior forever; I didn’t want any more random, privileged glimpses into people's hearts.

Only Gatsby, the guy this book is about, was exempt from my reaction - Gatsby, who represented everything I secretly looked down on.

If being yourself is a series of successful moves, then there was something amazing about him, a real sensitivity to the possibilities of life, as if he was connected to one of those complicated machines that can detect earthquakes thousands of miles away.

That responsiveness wasn't about that soft, easily influenced type people call the "creative type" - it was an incredible ability to hope, a romantic eagerness I’d never seen in anyone else and probably never will again.

No - Gatsby turned out okay in the end; it was what was dragging him down, what nasty dust followed his dreams that briefly lost my interest in the messed-up sadness and quick bursts of happiness of other guys.

My family has been important, wealthy people in this Midwestern city for three generations.

The Carraways are a tight-knit group, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the real founder of our line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in eighteen fifty-one, paid someone else to fight in the Civil War for him, and started the wholesale hardware business that my dad runs today.

I’d never met this great-uncle, but I was told I looked like him - especially if you checked out that old, serious-looking painting in my dad’s office.

I graduated from Yale in nineteen fifteen, just a quarter century after my dad, and a bit later I got caught up in that delayed invasion from Germany known as the Great War. I liked the counter-attack so much, I came back feeling restless.

Instead of feeling like the center of everything, the Midwest suddenly felt like the edge of the world - so I decided to head East and get into the bond business. Everyone I knew was in the bond business, so I figured it could handle one more single guy.

All my aunts and uncles talked it over like they were picking a fancy school for me, and finally they said, "Yeah, I guess so," with really serious, hesitant faces. Dad agreed to pay for me for a year, and after a bunch of delays, I came East, thinking it would be permanent, in the spring of ’twenty-two.

The sensible thing was to find a place in the city, but it was a warm season, and I’d just left a place with huge lawns and friendly trees, so when a guy at the office suggested we rent a house together in a suburb, it sounded awesome.

He found the house - a beat-up, basic bungalow for eighty a month - but at the last minute, the firm sent him to Washington, and I ended up out in the country by myself.

I had a dog - well, I had him for a few days until he ran off - and an old Dodge, and a Finnish woman who made my bed, cooked breakfast, and mumbled Finnish wisdom to herself while she cooked on the electric stove.

It was lonely for a bit, until one morning, some guy, newer to the area than me, stopped me on the road.

"How do I get to West Egg village?" he asked, looking lost.

I told him. And as I walked on, I wasn’t lonely anymore. I was a guide, a trailblazer, an original settler. He’d basically given me the inside track to the neighborhood.

And so, with the sunshine and all the leaves bursting out on the trees, just like in fast movies, I had that familiar feeling that life was starting fresh again with summer.

There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much good health to soak up from the fresh, breezy air.

I bought a dozen books on banking, credit, and investments, and they sat on my shelf in red and gold, like brand-new money from the mint, promising to unlock the secrets that only Midas, Morgan, and Maecenas knew. And I planned to read a ton of other books too.

I’d been pretty literary in college - one year I wrote a bunch of really serious, obvious editorials for the Yale News - and now I was going to bring all that back into my life and become that rarest of all specialists, the "well-rounded guy."

This isn't just a clever saying - life is way more successful when you look at it from a single window, after all.

It was pure luck that I ended up renting a house in one of the weirdest communities in North America. It was on that skinny, wild island that stretches east of New York - and where there are, among other odd things, two unusual land formations.

Twenty miles from the city, a pair of enormous eggs, identical in shape and separated only by a little bay, stick out into the most tamed body of saltwater in the Western hemisphere, the big, wet farmyard of Long Island Sound.

They aren’t perfect ovals - like the egg in the Columbus story, they’re both flattened out at the end - but their physical resemblance must be a constant surprise to the gulls that fly overhead.

For those without wings, an even more interesting thing is how different they are in every other way, except for their shape and size.

I lived in West Egg - the, like, less fancy of the two, though that’s a pretty shallow way to describe the weird and kind of unsettling contrast between them.

My house was right at the tip of the egg, maybe fifty yards from the Sound, squished between these two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season.

The one on my right was seriously over the top - it was basically a copy of some town hall in Normandy, with a tower, totally new under a thin layer of ivy, a huge marble pool, and over forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s place.

Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion where a guy named Gatsby lived.

My own place was kind of an eyesore, but it was a small one, and it was overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the comforting nearness of millionaires - all for eighty bucks a month.

Across the bay, the fancy white houses of East Egg glittered on the water, and the story of that summer really starts on the night I drove over there to have dinner with Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Daisy was my second cousin, like, twice removed, and I’d known Tom back in college.

And right after the war, I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among other things, was one of the best football players ever at New Haven - a big deal, one of those guys who reach such intense skill at twenty-one that everything else feels like a letdown.

His family was super rich - even in college, his spending was a problem - but now he’d ditched Chicago and moved East in a way that was just wild: for example, he brought a whole string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to believe a guy my age could be rich enough to do that.

Why they came East, I don’t know. They’d spent a year in France for no real reason, and then drifted around, restless, wherever people played polo and had money together.

This was a permanent move, Daisy said on the phone, but I didn’t buy it - I couldn’t read Daisy’s heart, but I felt like Tom would just keep wandering, kind of wistfully searching for the excitement of some unforgettable football game.

So, on a warm, breezy evening, I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends I barely knew. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a bright red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay.

The lawn started at the beach and ran to the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick paths and flower gardens - finally reaching the house, drifting up the side in bright vines, like it was gaining momentum.

The front was open with a row of French windows, glowing with reflected gold and wide open to the warm, breezy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He’d changed since college. Now he was a solid, straw-haired guy in his thirties, with a hard mouth and a superior attitude. Two bright, arrogant eyes dominated his face and made him look like he was always leaning forward aggressively.

Not even the fancy, almost feminine style of his riding clothes could hide the power of his body - he seemed to fill those shiny boots until he strained the top laces, and you could see a bunch of muscle shift when his shoulder moved under his thin coat.

It was a body built for massive strength - a tough body.

His voice, a rough, husky tenor, added to the impression he gave off. There was a hint of condescension in it, even toward people he liked - and there were guys at New Haven who seriously hated him.

"Now, don’t think my opinion on these things is set in stone," he said, "just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are."

We were in the same senior group, and while we weren't close, I always got the feeling he approved of me and wanted me to like him, with a kind of intense, stubborn longing.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I’ve got a really nice place here," he said, his eyes darting around restlessly.

Turning me around by my arm, he swept his hand across the view, taking in a sunken Italian garden, a huge patch of deep, fragrant roses, and a small motorboat bumping against the tide.

"It used to belong to Demaine, the oil guy."

He turned me around again, polite but abrupt.

"Let’s go inside."

We walked through a long hallway into a bright, rosy-colored room, connected to the house by French windows at both ends. The windows were open and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside, which seemed to grow right into the room.

A breeze blew through, swirling the curtains in from one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the fancy, frosted ceiling, and then rippling across the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it like wind does on the ocean.

The only thing that wasn’t moving was a huge couch where two young women were lounging, looking like they were floating on anchored balloons. They were both wearing white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they’d just been blown back in after a quick trip around the house.

I must have stood there for a few moments listening to the snap of the curtains and the creak of a picture on the wall. Then there was a slam as Tom Buchanan closed the back windows and the trapped wind died down, and the curtains, the rugs, and the two young women slowly settled to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was stretched out at her end of the couch, completely still, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it that was about to fall.

If she saw me out of the corner of her eye, she didn’t show it - I was almost surprised into mumbling an apology for barging in and disturbing her.

The other girl, Daisy, tried to sit up - she leaned forward with a serious expression - then she laughed, a silly, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and stepped into the room.

"I’m so happy I’m frozen."

She laughed again, as if she’d said something really funny, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she wanted to see more. That was just her way. She hinted in a whisper that the last name of the balancing girl was Baker.

(I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s whisper was just to make people lean in to hear her; a petty criticism that didn’t make it any less charming.)

Anyway, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost without me noticing, and then quickly tipped her head back - whatever she was balancing had obviously wobbled and given her a scare. Again, an apology rose to my lips.

I always feel compelled to give someone a stunned nod if they seem totally self-assured.

I looked back at my cousin, who started asking me questions in her low, captivating voice. It was the kind of voice that your ear follows, like each sentence is a series of notes that will never be played again.

Her face was sad and beautiful, with bright things in it - bright eyes and a bright, passionate mouth - but there was an excitement in her voice that guys who had cared for her couldn’t forget: a compelling urge to sing, a hushed "Listen," a promise that she'd been doing exciting things recently and that more exciting things were just around the corner.

I told her how I’d stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a ton of people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried, totally stoked.

"The whole town’s a mess. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black - like a mourning wreath - and there’s this constant wail all night along the north shore."

"That’s wild! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!"

Then, kinda random, she added, "You should see the baby."

"I’m down for that."

"She’s asleep. She’s three. Haven’t you ever seen her?"

"Nope. I haven't"

"Seriously? You have to see her. She’s - "

Tom Buchanan, who’s been pacing around the room, stopped and put his hand on my shoulder.

"What’s up, Nick?"

"I am in bonds."

"Who with?" he asked.

I told him and he just shook his head.

"Never heard of them," he said, sounding pretty sure of himself.

That really bugged me.

"You will," I shot back.

"You will if you stick around in the East."

"Oh, I’ll stick around the East, don’t even worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, like he was looking for something. "I’d be a total idiot to live anywhere else."

At that point, Miss Baker said, "Totally!" so fast that I jumped - it was the first thing she’s said since I walked in. She seemed surprised by it too, because she yawned and then, with a bunch of quick movements, stood up.

"I’m stiff," she complained.

"I’ve been lying on that couch forever."

"Don’t look at me," Daisy retorted.

"I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"Nah, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just brought in from the pantry. "I’m seriously in training."

Her host looked at her like she was crazy.

"You are!" He practically slammed down his drink.

"How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what she did get done. I liked looking at her. She was slender, small-breasted, with a confident posture, which she emphasized by arching her back.

Her grey eyes - sun-bleached - looked back at me with polite curiosity from this kind of faded, charming, unhappy face. It hit me then that I’d seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she said, sounding unimpressed. "I know someone there."

"I don’t know a single - "

"You do, You know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy.

"What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply, dinner was announced. Tom Buchanan practically shoved me out of the room, like he was moving a checker piece.

Gracefully, casually, with their hands on their hips, the two women walked out onto a pink porch, facing the sunset, where four candles flickered in the breeze.

"Why candles?" Daisy frowned, snapping them out.

"In two weeks it’ll be the longest day of the year."

She looked at us all, glowing.

"Do you always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it."

"We should plan something," Miss Baker yawned, sitting down at the table like she was getting into bed.

"Okay," said Daisy. "What should we plan?"

She looked at me helplessly.

"What do people even plan?"

Before I could answer, her eyes fixed on her little finger with a look of awe.

"Look!" she complained.

"It hurts."

We all looked - the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn’t mean to, but you did. That’s what I get for marrying a total brute of a man, a huge, bulky, strong - "

"I hate that word ‘bulky,’ " Tom grumbled, "even when we’re joking."

"Bulky," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes Daisy and Miss Baker would talk over each other, casually and with a playful back-and-forth that wasnn't really chatting - it was as cool and effortless as their white dresses and their detached expressions, like they didn’t want anything.

They were just here, accepting Tom and me, making a polite effort to be entertaining or entertained. They knew dinner would be over soon, and the whole night would be wrapped up quickly.

It was so different from the West, where nights felt rushed from one thing to the next, either filled with disappointment or just plain nervous energy about the end.

"You make me feel like a caveman, Daisy," I admitted after my second glass of kinda funky but surprisingly good wine.

"Can’t you talk about crops or something?"

I didn't mean anything specific by that, but Tom took it the wrong way.

"Civilization’s falling apart," Tom exploded.

"I’m getting really pessimistic about everything. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this guy Goddard?"

"No," I said, surprised by his tone.

"It’s a great book, everyone should read it. The point is, if we're not careful, the white race will - will be totally taken over. It's all science; it’s been proven."

"Tom’s getting deep," Daisy said, with a sad, distracted look. "He reads long, complicated books. What was that word we - ?"

"These books are all based on science," Tom insisted, glancing at her impatiently.

"This guy has figured it all out. It’s up to us, as the dominant race, to keep an eye on things or these other races will be in charge."

"We gotta put them in their place," Daisy whispered, winking hard at the sun.

"You should live in California - " Miss Baker started, but Tom cut her off by shifting heavily in his seat.

"The idea is we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are - ," he paused for a second before including Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again.

" - And we’re the ones who created everything that makes civilization - science, art, and all that. Get it?"

There was something almost sad about how focused he was, like his usual confidence wasn’t enough anymore. Just then, the phone rang inside, and the butler left the porch. Daisy seized the moment and leaned towards me.

"I’m going to tell you a family secret," she whispered excitedly. "It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?"

"That’s why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to polish silver for some people in New York who had a silver set for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until it started affecting his nose - "

"Things just got worse and worse," Miss Baker chimed in.

"Yeah. Things went from bad to worse until he had to quit his job."

For a moment, the last bit of sunlight fell on her glowing face - her voice pulled me forward, breathless, as I listened - then the glow faded, each light leaving her with a lingering regret, like kids leaving a nice street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something to Tom’s ear, and Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and went inside without saying a word. As if his absence sparked something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love seeing you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a - of a rose, an absolute rose. Don’t you?"

She looked at Miss Baker for confirmation: "An absolute rose?"

That wasn’t true. I’m not even a little bit like a rose. She was just making stuff up, but she had this warm energy, like her heart was trying to spill out in these breathless, exciting words. Then, suddenly, she tossed her napkin on the table and made an excuse to head inside.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a quick look, totally meaningless. I was about to say something when she sat up straight and whispered, "Sh! A quiet, intense murmur came from the other room, and Miss Baker leaned forward, not even embarrassed, trying to catch every word.

The murmur wavered, almost making sense, then got louder, then stopped completely.

"This Mr. Gatsby you mentioned is my neighbor - " I started.

"Don’t talk. I need to hear what’s happening."

"Is something happening?" I asked, playing dumb.

"Seriously? You don’t know?" Miss Baker said, genuinely surprised. "Everyone knows!"

"I don’t."

"Why - " she began hesitantly.

"Tom’s got another woman in New York."

"Got another woman?" I repeated, totally blank.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She could at least have the decency not to call him during dinner. Don’t you think?"

Before I even processed what she meant, I heard the rustle of a dress and the crunch of boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn’t be helped!" Daisy said, her voice bright but tense.

She sat down, looked at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: "I just glanced outside for a sec, and it’s so dreamy out there. There’s a bird on the lawn; I think it’s a nightingale that flew over on a ship - the Cunard or White Star."

"He’s singing his heart out - " Her voice turned melodic: "Isn’t it romantic, Tom?"

"Totally romantic," he said, then looking miserable at me: "If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables."

The phone inside rang, startling everyone, and as Daisy shook her head firmly at Tom about the stables, well, every topic just vanished into thin air.

Among the bits and pieces from the last few minutes at the table, I remember the candles being lit again, totally pointless, and I felt like I wanted to look everyone in the eye, but also avoid looking at anyone.

I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt even Miss Baker, who seemed to have a pretty good handle on not caring about much, could completely ignore this other guest’s loud, sharp phone call.

To some people, the situation might have seemed interesting - my instinct was to call the police right away.

The horses, of course, weren’t mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with a few feet of fading light between them, strolled back into the library, like they were standing guard over someone real, while I trailed behind Daisy around a bunch of connecting porches to the front porch.

We sat down next to each other on a wicker couch in the deep shadows.

Daisy put her hands over her face, like she was feeling the shape of her cheeks, and her eyes drifted out into the soft twilight. I could tell she was feeling a lot, so I asked some easy questions about her little girl, hoping to calm her down.

"We don’t really know each other that well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even though we’re cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding."

"I wasn’t back from the war yet."

"That’s right."

She paused.

"Well, I’ve been through a lot, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything now."

She had good reason to be. I waited, but she didn’t say anything more, and after a moment, I awkwardly went back to talking about her daughter.

"I guess she talks, and - eats, and everything."

"Oh, yeah."

She looked at me vaguely.

"Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Do you want to hear?"

"Definitely."

"It’ll show you how I’ve been feeling about - stuff. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was, like, who knows where. I woke up from the anesthesia totally lost, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and I just turned my head away and cried."

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a little clueless - that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little airhead.’

"You know, I think everything’s awful anyhow," she went on, super serious.

"Everyone thinks so - the most woke people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything."

Her eyes darted around, defiant, kind of like Tom’s, and she laughed with a total scoff.

"Sophisticated - God, I’m sophisticated!"

The second her voice stopped, like she wasn’t holding my attention anymore, I felt how fake everything she’d said was. It made me uneasy, like the whole evening had been some kind of trick to get a reaction out of me.

I waited, and sure enough, in a second she looked at me with this total smirk on her gorgeous face, like she’s bragging about being in some exclusive club with Tom.

Inside, the room glowed red with light. Tom and Miss Baker were at either end of the long couch, and she was reading aloud from the Saturday Evening Post - the words just flowed together, a calming tune.

The lamplight hit his boots and made her autumn-leaf yellow hair look dull, glinting along the paper as she flipped a page with a quick movement of her arms.

When we walked in, she held us quiet for a moment with her hand up.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our next issue."

Her body shifted restlessly, and she stood up.

"Ten o’clock," she said, like she could tell the time just by looking at the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to hit the hay."

"Jordan’s playing in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh - you’re Jordan Baker."

I realized why her face looked familiar - that cool, dismissive look had been in tons of pictures of the fancy sports scene in Asheville, Hot Springs, and Palm Beach. I’d heard a story about her too, a critical, not-great story, but I’d forgotten what it was.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me up at eight, will you?"

"If you’ll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you later."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy.

"Actually, I think I’ll set you two up. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of - oh - lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that fun stuff - "

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs.

"I haven’t heard a word."

"She’s a nice girl," said Tom after a beat. "They shouldn’t let her run around the country like this."

"Who shouldn’t?" inquired Daisy, cold.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt who’s, like, a thousand years old. Plus, Nick’s going to look after her, right? She’s going to spend tons of weekends out here this summer. I think her family’s influence will be really good for her."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other silently for a moment.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. We grew up together there. Our beautiful white - "

"Did you give Nick the talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I? "

She looked at me.

"I don’t remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we did. It just kind of happened, and before you knew it - "

"Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

"I said lightly that I hadn’t heard a thing, and a few minutes later I headed home. They walked with me to the door and stood together in a bright, cheerful glow. As I started my car, Daisy called out sharply, "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it’s kinda important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"Yeah, that’s right," Tom chimed in, being all nice.

"We heard you were engaged."

"That’s totally not true. I’m too broke."

"But we heard it," Daisy insisted, surprising me by getting all open again, like a flower.

"We heard it from three people, so it has to be true."

Of course, I knew what they were talking about, but I wasn't even close to being engaged. The fact that gossip had spread the news was one of the reasons I came East.

You can’t just cut ties with an old friend because of rumors, and on the other hand, I definitely didn’t want to get "rumored" into marriage.

Their interest actually touched me and made them seem less like super-rich people - still, I was confused and a little grossed out as I drove away. It seemed like Daisy should just rush out of the house, kid in her arms - but clearly, that wasn’t on her mind.

As for Tom, the fact that he "had another woman in New York" was less shocking than that he was bummed out by a book. Something was making him pick at old ideas, like his strong, confident personality wasn’t enough to feed his demanding heart anymore.

It was already deep summer on the roofs of roadside cafes and in front of gas stations, where shiny new red pumps sat glowing in the light. When I got to my place in West Egg, I pulled the car under the garage and sat for a while on an old grass roller in the yard.

The wind had died down, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings flapping in the trees and a constant, droning sound like the whole earth was breathing life into the frogs. The shadow of a cat moving across the moonlight, and when I turned to watch it, I realized I wasn't alone

- fifty feet away, a figure had come out of the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at the sparkly stars.

Something about how he moved and how secure his feet were on the lawn made me think it was Mr. Gatsby himself, coming out to see what part of our local sky belonged to him.

I decided to call out to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would be a good way to be introduced.

But I didn’t call out, because he gave me the feeling that he wanted to be alone - he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a weird way, and even though I was far away, I could have sworn he was shaking.

Without thinking, I looked out toward the water - and saw nothing except a single green light, tiny and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked again for Gatsby, he’s vanished, and I was alone again in the restless darkness.