Free to Fall

11

THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, after a particularly brutal beating in practicum, I slipped into my seat in Cog Psych and audibly exhaled. Not only was the Masquerade Ball tomorrow, but I had a two-day break from the Beast. Aka, Dr. Tarsus.

Her class continued to be fifty-five minutes of unadulterated hell every morning. It wasn’t the subject matter I hated, or the format. Just her. Anytime I tried to participate in class, I got hammered for it. My comments were “shortsighted” or “misguided” or “woefully off the mark.” When I stayed quiet, she blasted me for not participating. I couldn’t win.

I docked my Gemini and pulled out my tablet to sync up. We’d been moving through the physical architecture of the brain, and today we were supposed to cover the frontal lobe. But the screen at the front of the room was dark. Rudd was coming around with his handheld, stopping at each desk. Witty and approachable, Kyle Rudman was the anti-Tarsus, and by far my favorite teacher.

“Were we supposed to start on chapter three?” someone asked in a panicked voice.

“Nope,” Rudd replied as he stepped up to my desk. “We’ve still got another two days on chapter two. We’re just taking a time-out to talk about your research projects.” He reached for my handheld. “Hey, Rory. You’ve got APD, right?”

My mouth went dry. I knew he was asking about my topic, but the way he phrased it stirred the little well of fear at the base of my spine. I hadn’t heard the voice since that moment in the arena, but I kept thinking about it. I was seriously questioning my choice of paper topics, wishing I’d trusted Lux after all. Every time I started reading a journal article or a scholarly paper, the nagging uncertainty would creep back in. I’d catch myself questioning the science, trying to poke holes in the research—which, by the way, was a lot less conclusive than I’d been taught to believe. There were theories about how the elimination of synaptic connections in the frontal lobe could cause auditory hallucinations, but no real proof, a fact that every science textbook—and teacher—I’d ever had had completely glossed over. There were moments when I felt certain that there was more to the Doubt than the research let on. Was this why Lux had steered me away from picking APD as my topic? Did the app somehow know that I’d react like this? That in itself was alarming. Virtually every source I’d found talked about the fact that there were some people who were predisposed to hear the voice and less capable of blocking it out. Was I one of them?

“Rory?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “APD.” Rudd punched a button on his handheld and a new icon appeared on my screen. It was red with the letters DPH in the center and had a little lock symbol at the upper right corner.

“You’ve all been given limited access to the Department of Public Health’s medical records database,” Rudd said as he returned to the front of the room. “Your login has been coded to the research topic you selected, allowing you to review the med records for patients who suffered from the mental illness you’re studying.” He picked up his tablet off his desk and tapped the DPH icon. The app launched on the screen at the front of the room. “Now, I know what some of you are thinking,” he deadpanned as he logged himself in. “You’re hoping this means you’ll be able to prove once and for all that your frenemy is a certified nut job. But, alas, your access is limited to dead crazies, and this particular database is anonymous anyway, which means the only identifying information you’ll have are gender, ethnic origin, and birth and death dates.” He made a face of mock disappointment, and we all laughed.

Once inside the database, Rudd gave us a brief tutorial on how to search by diagnosis and how to filter our results. “The point here is for you to play sleuth. To look for clues as to how the pathology you’re studying affects a patient’s wellness, to find patterns and consistencies among different patients, and to reason through the trajectory from diagnosis to death. What are the pivot points? How could healthcare policy be improved to give sufferers of your illness a better quality of life?”

Seeing how the Doubt had ruined people’s lives would no doubt help silence my inner skeptic. Sign me up.

The girls were already in the dining hall when I got to lunch. Izzy was at the salad bar, studying her screen. “It just says cucumbers,” she said as I walked up. “Does that mean I can have an unlimited amount of them?” She looked at me for the answer. She’d been using Lux to help her diet for the Ball and was a half a pound from her goal.

“I think so?”

“Excellent,” she said, dumping the entire container onto her plate.

I grabbed a tray and slid down the counter. I was scrolling through the ingredients in the Chinese chicken salad when I felt someone beside me.

“You coming to the match tomorrow?” I heard Liam say.

“Uh—” I assumed he was talking about water polo, but it would never have occurred to me to go to a match. I could count the number of sporting events I’d attended in my life on one hand.

Liam saw the look on my face and laughed. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“I’m not much of a sports person,” I said apologetically.

“Well, since you said no to my first question, you’re not allowed to say no to my second one.”

“Uh-oh,” I said, eyeing him with mock suspicion.

“Be my date to the Ball.”

I heard the word ball and for a second I thought he was still talking about water polo.

“Wait, the Masquerade Ball?”

“Is there another one I don’t know about?” he teased. A few seconds passed as I just stood there, too stunned to hold up my end of the conversation. Liam was asking me out? My self-concept wasn’t that bad, but guys like Liam didn’t typically go for girls like me. Then again, my experience with guys like Liam was pretty limited. I glanced past him and saw Hershey at the soup station, watching us.

“Sure,” I said finally. “I’ll go with you.”

Liam grinned.

“Awesome. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As soon as he walked off, Hershey walked over. “What was that about?” she asked, setting her tray down next to mine and reaching for a pair of metal tongs.

“Liam asked me to the Ball,” I blurted out.

“Look at you,” she said, nudging me with her hip. “Are you gonna hook up with him?”

“No! I mean, he just asked me. My brain’s not there yet.”

“Well, put your brain there,” Hershey pressed. “Either you can imagine hooking up with him or you can’t.”

How could I want to hook up with Liam when every time I heard the words hook and up in the same sentence, my brain catapulted to North?

“I guess I can,” I allowed. “Maybe.”

“So you like him.”

“I think he’s a nice guy,” I clarified.

“Don’t mistake calculation for kindness, Rory,” she said, snapping her tongs at my face like a crocodile’s jaw. Then she laughed and slid her tray down the bar.

The Grand Rotunda had been barricaded all week, and when I passed through its doors Saturday night, I understood why. The room’s austere marble surfaces were hidden behind elaborate set pieces that seemed to be growing out of the walls instead of sitting in front of them.

“I can’t get over how incredible you look,” Liam said as he held the door open, his voice echoing inside his lion mask.

“It’s the dress,” I told him. And the fact that my face is completely hidden, I wanted to add. Our masks had been hand-delivered in layers and layers of tissue paper to our dorm rooms on Thursday afternoon. When I saw Hershey’s and mine, I knew I’d been right. They were exactly the masks the society members had worn. But up close they were even more spectacular than they’d appeared to me then. I’d been given a peacock, its elongated beak made of smooth yellow lacquer, with textured white stripes above and below the eyeholes that felt like they were made of leather, and close to a hundred tiny curled feathers on the crown. The fanlike crest of iridescent blue-green feathers was a separate piece, attached with stiff wire to a bejeweled hair comb. Hershey’s jaguar mask was less striking but just as beautiful, with wet-looking black fur that felt like it had come from an actual jungle cat. It was hard to believe these pieces were nearly three hundred years old. Aside from a few small patches of matted fur and one bent feather, the masks were in perfect condition.

“It’s the girl in the dress,” Liam corrected. He was wearing the lion’s head again, and in the light I was struck by how real it looked, from the thick, caramel-colored mane to the fuzzy triangular nose and downturned black mouth. “The only way you could look better,” Liam added, giving my hand a squeeze, “was if that mask wasn’t hiding your beautiful face.”

It was a cheesy thing to say, but he sounded like he meant it, so I let myself beam. It’s not like anyone could see it.

“Whoa,” I heard Liam say beside me. It was more of a grunt, really, as though the word had escaped without him meaning for it to. It was hard to follow his gaze since I couldn’t see his eyes, but there was no mistaking what had prompted the reaction.

Hershey was standing a few yards in front of us, next to a smoking volcano, talking to a man in a brown bear’s head. A cloud of dry ice billowed around her, rustling the bottom of her red dress. Knowing Hershey, she’d probably picked the spot just for the effect. She’d wrapped her bare arms in black leather shoelaces and shaded her shoulders with streaks of kohl eyeliner, blurring the line between mask and skin. Whoa was right.

“Oh, look, there’s Hershey,” I said casually, as if Liam and I hadn’t both been staring at her for the last ten seconds. I watched as she put her hand on the bear’s forearm and he shook it off. Who was under that mask? There was something familiar about his posture, but I couldn’t place him. Was that her mystery boy? If so, there was clearly trouble in hookup land. I could tell from his body language that he did not want to be having whatever conversation they were having. I took a step toward her, but Liam caught my arm. “Let’s dance,” he said, moving into my sightline. I was struck again by how real his mask looked, right down to the fan of whiskers.

“Uh, okay,” I replied, not at all sure I could do that in this dress—or these heels. I gripped Liam’s hand to steady myself as he led me to the center of the dance floor.

“I can see you back there,” Liam said as he wrapped his arms around my waist. “Analyzing me with those impenetrable blue eyes.”

“Analyzing you, huh?” In reality, I was too consumed by the awkwardness of trying to slow dance with a giant mask on my head to be analyzing anything, but he didn’t need to know that.

“You were doing it when we met,” Liam replied. “I was trying to be all cute and charming, and your eyes weren’t giving anything away. The whole time I’m thinking, So does this girl like me or not? I’ve been asking myself the same question ever since.”

He paused as if he was waiting for my answer. I faltered. What was I supposed to say? I did like him, in the regular sense of the word. But the way he meant it? Until Hershey interrogated me about it yesterday, I hadn’t even considered the idea.

“What’s not to like?” I said lightly. “I—”

“We have a lot in common, you know,” Liam said, cutting me off. “We were both stuck in a cage of mediocrity,” he said. “Yours was in Seattle, mine was in Boston. And now we’re here. On our way to somewhere much, much better.”

I bristled. Yes, there were times when I felt like an outsider back home. And there were moments when I wanted nothing more than to escape. But it hadn’t been a cage, and the life my dad and Kari were living wasn’t mediocre. Who appointed Liam the judge of lives, anyway?

He could sense my reaction. “That didn’t come out right,” he said quickly. “All I meant is that we’d make a great team.” He gave my hips a light squeeze. “That is, if you can stand me.” Through the painted mesh of the lion’s mouth, I saw him chewing self-consciously on his bottom lip, and I realized that his confidence was an affectation, like the penny loafers and the popped collar. Part of the persona he’d worked so hard to adopt. Behind the mask was a kid from a crappy neighborhood wearing someone else’s clothes. I softened.

“Hmm . . .” I teased. “Does it require me to attend sporting events? Because that just might be too much.”

“I think we could come to an arrangement,” he said with a laugh.

“Here’s an idea,” I said lightly. ”I’ll come watch you hurl yourself around in the water if you’ll spill all those society secrets you’re keeping.”

“That I can’t do,” he replied in a low voice. ”Not until you get in.”

“Ooh, ‘until’ not ‘unless.’ Does that mean I’ve been upgraded from an ‘if’ to a ‘when’?”

Liam leaned in so our masks were touching, the opening for his mouth pressed against the mesh at my ear. “You’re a Hepta,” he said. His hands were heavy on my hips. “It’s always been yours to lose.”

“No pressure,” I joked. But my mouth was turned away from him and he didn’t hear me.

“C’mon,” he said then, letting go of my hips and reaching for my hand.

“Where are we going?” I asked as he led me through the crowd. The rotunda was now packed with way more alumni than current students. The alums were easy to spot because they were wearing much smaller, newer masks that covered only their eyes, party gifts they were given on the way in. I spotted the guy in the bear mask talking to a group of recent grads, but I didn’t see Hershey anywhere.

“Hey! Stone! Get your ass over here!” Liam’s water polo teammates were beckoning for him. He waved them away and kept moving toward the stairs that led up to the rotunda balconies. But instead of going up, he went around to the underside of the staircase. There was an old phone booth under there, the kind with an accordion door. Liam slid it open and turned around to face me, lifting my mask from my shoulders in one fluid motion before tugging off his own.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“This,” he said, and pulled me inside the narrow space. I stumbled in my heels, but Liam caught me and gently pressed his lips against mine. The accordion door sprung shut behind us, nudging me farther into him.

I ignored the ache in my chest as he kissed me. I would not think about North right now. I would not picture him in his tomato-stained T-shirt, sitting on his worn-out couch surrounded by obsolete technology and dog-eared paperbacks, Mohawked and tattooed and completely adorable. Liam was nice, and he was smart, and he wasn’t embarrassed to be associated with me. These were not insignificant traits.

I put my palms on his chest and kissed him back. But when I felt his tongue brush my lips, I pulled away. “We should get back to the party,” I said, fumbling for the door behind me.

He started to protest, but I already had the door open. “I’ll meet you back out there,” I said, not meeting his gaze. “I’m just gonna run to the bathroom.” I felt him reach for my hand, but I was already halfway out the door.

“Rory.”

Please don’t ask me why. I don’t want to lie to you, and I can’t tell you the truth. I can’t tell you that the whole time we were kissing, I was wishing you were someone else.

“Hm?”

“Your mask,” he said, and handed it to me. He was still standing in the booth and had to hold the door open to keep it from springing shut between us.

“Thanks,” I said brightly. “See you in a second.” I had no idea where the ladies’ room was, but I strode with purpose back into the main room as if I did. When I didn’t immediately see it, I hurried toward the stairs on the other side of the rotunda, to the balcony above. What was I doing? Hiding?

There was a man on the steps, all muscle and dressed in black like a security guard. I hesitated when I saw him, expecting him to tell me I couldn’t be up there. But he just looked me over and stepped aside to let me pass. When I reached the landing, I went to the railing, wrapping my palms around it. The gold plating was cool on my skin. I spotted Liam below me and instinctively stepped back into the shadows.

“They never think to look up,” a voice behind me said. Griffin Payne—the Griffin Payne, CEO of Gnosis, Griffin Payne—was leaning against a marble column, a shiny Gemini Gold in his hand. His mask, black and feathered with a pointed beak, was pushed off his face, and his smile was friendly. “Every year I come up here, and I’m always amazed—not so much as a glance.”

“You’ve conditioned them to look down,” I said, with a nod at the Gold in his hand. My mask bobbed a little, knocking against my collarbone.

He laughed. “I suppose that’s true.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’m Griffin, by the way.” Like everyone in America didn’t know who he was.

“Rory,” I said, quickly wiping my palm on my dress before shaking his hand, hoping the sweat wouldn’t stain. As we shook hands, I noticed his ring. It was bulky, like a class ring, but instead of a gemstone there were four symbols in Arabic, or maybe Hebrew. I thought of the Greek letter on my pendant, but these were clearly different.

“You get to play God up here,” Griffin said then, stepping up to the railing. “Silently judging everyone below. Take that guy, for instance”—he pointed down at one of Liam’s friends, a kid whose wild, shaggy hair was sticking up through the blowhole of his orca mask—“he’s gonna regret that do. He thinks it’s cool now, but he’ll look back at his class photo and wonder what in the hell he was thinking.”

I giggled.

“Oh, this isn’t just a guess,” Griffin assured me. “I know from personal experience. If you’re ever in need of a serious gut-busting bout of hilarity, just take a stroll down the fourth floor of Adams Hall. Fifth picture down. I’m the guy with the white-boy Afro. It ain’t pretty.”

I giggled again. On TV Griffin seemed so . . . intense. But in person he was laid-back and funny.

“What year did you grad—?” I was interrupted by the sound of footsteps.

“There you are,” a voice boomed.

Griffin and I both turned. The man’s face was hidden inside the head of a bald eagle, but his voice had given him away. It was Dean Atwater.

“Hiding again?” the dean asked as he strode toward us, his voice echoing a little in his mask.

“Not very well, apparently,” Griffin replied. Dean Atwater chuckled then turned to me. Each eye was two concentric circles, shiny and black inside of white, and though I knew they had to be transparent on his end, they were opaque on mine. I saw no trace of the man inside.

“You look wonderful tonight, Rory. Though I’d encourage you to spend time at the party, not above it.” His tone was light but it felt like an indictment.

“Yes, of course,” I said quickly. “I was on my way back down.” I turned to Griffin. “It was very nice to meet you, Mr. Payne.” He’d introduced himself as Griffin, but I felt weird calling him that in front of the dean.

Griffin smiled kindly. “The pleasure was mine.”

I gave them both an awkward little wave then headed toward the stairs, gripping my dress in both hands so as not to trip over it.

“Rory!” I heard Griffin call. I turned back around. “Keep us in mind when internship time rolls around,” he said. “I’ll look out for your application.”

I bobbed my head. “Will do,” I called back. “Thank you!”

Beaming, I made my way down the steps. An internship with Gnosis meant a very good shot at a job at Gnosis.

I stopped on the last step to scan the room. Liam was still with his friends, and didn’t seem to be looking for me. I didn’t see Hershey or the guy in the bear mask. I slipped my phone from my clutch and raised it to my lips. “Should I date Liam Stone?” I asked Lux.

“You’d make a good match” came Lux’s reply. I brought the phone back to my lips, ready to ask about North, when I realized I couldn’t. North didn’t use Lux, so he didn’t have a profile for the app to analyze. If I wanted to assess our compatibility, I’d have to do it myself.

There was a commotion behind me as Griffin and Dean Atwater descended the steps, the man in black at Griffin’s elbow. I stepped aside to let them pass, and pulled out my Gemini. Griffin had topped Forbes magazine’s “40 Under 40” list last year, so I knew he had to be in his thirties, which meant there was at least a chance he’d been in my mom’s class. Panopticon had my answer:

At sixteen, Payne was admitted into Theden Academy, an exclusive preparatory school in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. He graduated from Theden Academy in 2013 and interned that summer in Gnosis’s research and development department. He returned to Gnosis as Director of Product Design after graduating from Harvard College in 2017.

2013. He was in my mom’s class.

Needing to see for myself, I left the rotunda through the side door and went straight to Adams Hall. To my surprise, the main entrance was unlocked. Except for the faint green glow of the emergency lights, the building was pitch-black. Using my phone’s flashlight, I mounted the steps to the fourth floor.

The walls were lined with Theden class photos. The official kind, shot in black-and-white, with a placard proclaiming the year. I stopped at the first one. The image was grainy and the students’ clothing was more conservative than what we wore, but otherwise it looked how my class photo might, smiling teenagers in dressy clothes lined up on risers in front of the Grand Rotunda. CLASS OF 1954, the placard at the bottom declared. I kept moving down the hall, counting the frames. The years jumped around. They weren’t in any particular order.

Griffin’s class was exactly where he said it’d be, fifth one down. He stood in the center of the group, smiling broadly, his hair looking like he’d stuck his fingers in an old electrical socket. I slid my light down to the bottom of the frame, looking for the placard with the class year.

CLASS OF 2013.

My light jumped wildly from corner to corner as I looked for my mom, too impatient to scan the rows one by one. The students were all wearing short sleeves, which means the photo could’ve been taken in the early fall or late spring. If it was the latter, my mom may have already been gone.

It was my own face that caught my eye. Standing right next to Griffin in the center of the photo, the very last place I looked. Of course it wasn’t my face, it was hers, but a stranger wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Her eyes, her cheekbones, the shape of her nose. They were my features on a taller, more willowy frame. Our coloring was different—she was auburn and olive, while I was chestnut and fair—but you couldn’t tell that in black-and-white. I could see my face reflected in the glass between us, painted with Hershey’s makeup, and it looked less like mine than the girl’s in this old photograph did. Stepping closer, I pressed my hand to the glass, not caring about fingerprints, just wanting to connect to the girl on the other side.

I stood there for a few moments, trying to step into the moment the photograph had captured. My mom, standing with her classmates, smiling a confident smile. There was no trace of uncertainty in her eyes, no hint of what would come next. If she was struggling at Theden, this photo didn’t show it.

My Gemini lit up in the dark.

@LiamStone: where r u?

I sighed audibly. I couldn’t hide out in this dark hallway forever. I snapped a few pics of the class photo with my Gemini, but my built-in flash created a glare on the glass. Without the flash, I couldn’t see the photo at all. The best I could do was hold my handheld at an angle and move in tight on my mom. The shot I ended up with was a close-up of just her. The blue Forum icon popped on screen: Post photo to your wall?

My finger hovered above my screen. I posted everything to Forum. But this photo couldn’t be summarized in some pithy caption. I tapped the word NO and the pop-up box disappeared. Instead I called Beck, the only person other than my dad who would understand what finding the photo meant to me without me having to explain it.

“Hey,” he said, picking up on the second ring. “Aren’t you supposed to be at that fancy dance of yours?”

“I am,” I replied. “But I just found this picture of my mom, and I—”

“Text it to me,” he said.

I heard a ding through the phone as my message popped up on his screen. I was looking at it on my end too.

“Wow,” he said. “She looks just like you.”

“I know, right?”

“You send it to your dad?”

“Not yet,” I said, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure I was going to. I knew how hard it was for him to look at pictures of her. “Well, I should probably get back to the party.”

“I’m glad you found it,” Beck said.

“Me too.”

I walked slowly back to the rotunda, across the grass this time, my heels sinking in the soft ground with each step, thinking about the girl in that photograph. She was a complete enigma to me. She’d walked across this same lawn, yet it felt to me like she’d inhabited a separate universe. Would she ever be more to me than a face that looked like mine?

Liam signaled for me the moment I entered the rotunda. He was standing with a group of faculty members in various reptilian masks. I looked for the serpent mask but didn’t see it.

I pretended not to see Liam and looked for Griffin. He was easy to spot: Surrounded by a group of aging alumni on the far side of the room, Griffin was talking animatedly with his hands. I caught the word empire on his lips.

“Hey,” Liam called, coming toward me. “Where’d you go?”

“I was looking for Hershey,” I lied. “Have you seen her?”

“Not in a while,” Liam replied. “Wanna dance?”

He held out his hand and in my mind I decided to take it. To dance with him, to try to enjoy myself. But then I looked down at the hand he held out to me. How different it was from the hand that caught me when I tripped on the sidewalk last week. That one was cracked and stained and caked with coffee grounds, the nails bitten down to the quick. And when it had caught my arm, I’d felt it down my spine.

“I have to go,” I said suddenly.

“Go where?” Liam asked, looking confused.

“I just have to go.”

Liam said something after that, but I didn’t hear it. I was already at the door. I knew I should still be mad at North for how he treated me in front of Hershey, and I was. So mad I could punch him in the face. But that anger did nothing to quell my sudden need to see him.

I stopped by the dorms to drop off my mask and get a jacket, worrying for a sec that Hershey would be there, passed out or puking. But our room was empty. Feeling my confidence wane just a bit, I dug through Hershey’s drawers in search of her stash of airplane alcohol. But she’d either finished it or hidden it well; all I found was a half-empty mini bottle of Kahlúa. I downed the rest of it, gargled some mouthwash, and left.

It was late and dark and cold, and I was missing the most important event of the fall semester. But I didn’t care. I wanted to see North. And now that I let myself want it, I really wanted it. I felt it on my skin, in the back of my throat, underneath my ribs. As I walked, I rehearsed what I would say. I’d be casual. I’d joke that I couldn’t live another day without seeing Rocky. Then he’d apologize for the way he acted last weekend, promise me it’d never happen again. The whole encounter unfolded so smoothly in my head that I was genuinely surprised when I stepped up to the café’s bay window and didn’t see him inside.

Without thinking, I kept walking. Around the building and through the door and up the stairs to North’s landing where I rapped my knuckles against his cold metal door without a second’s hesitation. The door couldn’t open fast enough.

Until it did.

My stomach, and all the excitement that had been bubbling up in my chest, crashed to my knees when I saw the look on North’s face.

“What are you doing here?” he said in a low voice, stepping into the crack between the door and its frame.

“I, uh . . . ,” Mortified, I dropped my eyes to the ground. There was a parcel there, wrapped in brown paper, addressed to Norvin Pascal. I saw North see it too. He bent quickly to pick it up. My eyes went to the space where he’d been standing, my gaze pulled into his living room by the flash of red I saw there.

Hershey’s dress was draped across his couch.

North straightened up, blocking my view again. “You should go,” he said quietly.

Dumbly, I nodded. Why is Hershey’s dress on your couch? my insides were screaming. But my brain knew. It’d already put the pieces in place. This was why North hadn’t wanted me to tell anyone we’d hung out. Why Hershey had wanted to go by Paradiso that morning, and why North had acted so weird when we did. He was the guy Hershey was hooking up with. Her secret scandalous fling.

“I can explain,” he said then, even quieter now.

“No need,” I said, anger burning my throat. “I get it.” I wanted to spin on my heels and stomp out, but the stairs and my stilettos were a dangerous combination. So I simply turned and walked down carefully, praying that he couldn’t see me shaking. A second later I heard the door click shut.