Free to Fall (3 page)

I stared at him. This bore no resemblance to the love story I’d heard growing up. Two high school sweethearts who eloped in the Kings County Courthouse on graduation day and honeymooned in a camping tent. That version made sense. This one didn’t. My dad could tell what I was thinking.

“Your mother was impulsive,” he replied. “Irresistibly impulsive. And I was powerless to refuse her.” He smiled and signaled for our waiter. But he hadn’t given me the answer I was looking for. He may have explained why
he’d
gotten married at eighteen, but not why my mother had wanted to, or, more important, why she would’ve dropped out of the most prestigious high school in the country just shy of graduation. Why she would’ve given up her future for something that could’ve waited.

“And that’s it? That’s the whole story?”

Dad looked hesitant, like he didn’t want to say yes but couldn’t in good conscience say no. “Your mom, she was unlike anyone I’d ever met,” he said finally. “She had this . . . quality about her. An inner calm. Even when we were kids. She didn’t worry about stuff the way the rest of us did. It was like she was immune to it almost.” He paused, and the thought
I did not inherit that
shot through my head. His eyes were sad when he continued. “When she showed up at my house that day, she seemed . . . shaken. But when I’d ask her about it, she’d shut down.”

“What could’ve happened to her?” I asked.

“I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times,” Dad replied. “Wishing I’d pressed her more to find out. But I thought I had time. I didn’t think she’d . . .”

The unspoken word hung heavily between us. He didn’t think she’d
die
. But she had, just eight months later.

“But
something
happened,” I said. “Something must’ve.”

Eventually Dad nodded. “Something must’ve,” he said.

3

“PEANUTS OR PRETZELS?”

“Pretzels.” Hershey held out her hand without looking up. We were midair, side by side in first class (thank you, Theden), and I was waiting for her to fall asleep so I could finally open the card from my mom, but my companion was completely immersed in one of the many gossip magazines she’d downloaded to her tablet. I hadn’t slept the night before, thinking about that little paper rectangle, wondering what it said, hoping it would answer the shit storm of questions in my head.

“Sir? Peanuts or pretzels?” The flight attendant had moved on to the man across the aisle from me.

“Peanuts,” he mumbled, and the flight attendant reached into her cart.

“Uh, actually, would you mind having pretzels instead?” The man, Hershey, and the flight attendant all looked at me. “I’m allergic to peanuts,” I explained.

“There was no allergy listed on the manifest,” the flight attendant said accusingly. “Cindy!” she called down the aisle. “Is there an allergy on the manifest?” Cindy consulted her tablet then came running toward us, tripping over a man’s foot and nearly face-planting in the process. I heard Hershey snort.

“Aurora Vaughn, 3B. Peanuts.”

Our flight attendant’s expression went from accusing to five-alarm fire. She started snatching peanut packages from passengers in neighboring rows.

“Sorry,” I said to the guy across the aisle.

“So what would happen if you ate one?” Hershey asked me as the flight attendant handed me a bag of pretzels.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I had a pretty bad reaction to a peanut butter cracker when I was three. A woman at my daycare had to use an EpiPen.”

“Does it freak you out?” Hershey asked. “Knowing that you’re one poor snacking choice away from death?”

I looked at her.
Seriously? Who said things like that?

“No,” I said, reaching for my earphones. “I don’t even think about it.” I didn’t need to. Lux analyzed ingredient lists, tracked allergic reactions and food-borne illnesses in other users who consumed the same foods,
and
alerted you if someone in your immediate vicinity was either allergic to something you were eating or eating something you were allergic to. The only time I had to be cautious about it was in confined spaces with no network access. In other words, on planes. I slipped in the earbuds and turned up the volume.

A few minutes later Hershey flung off her seat belt and stood up. “I have to pee,” she announced, dropping her tablet on my lap and stepping over me into the aisle. As soon as she was gone, I yanked out my earbuds and pulled the envelope from my bag. Careful not to rip the paper, I slid my nail under the flap and gently tugged it open.

The card inside was made of soft cotton paper, the kind they didn’t make anymore. My brain registered the number of handwritten lines before my heart did, and when my heart caught up, it sunk. There were only three.

I formed them free, and free they must remain

Till they enthrall themselves;

I else must change their nature.

I turned the card over, but the other side was blank. So much for answering my questions. This had raised a hundred more.

“What’s that?” Hershey was back. I hadn’t seen her walk up.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, and tried to slip the card back into my bag. But Hershey snatched it. Her eyes skimmed over the words. “Weird,” she declared, handing it back to me as she settled into her seat. “What’s it a quote from?”

“I dunno. It’s from my mom.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I did not want to talk about my mom with Hershey.

“Did it come with a note?”

I shook my head. This
was
the note. Instinctively, I reached for the pendant around my neck. It was surprisingly heavy on my collarbone.

I saw Hershey open her browser to GoSearch. “Read it to me again,” she said.

“‘I formed them free, and free they must remain—’” I said, and paused, puzzling over the words I’d just read as Hershey typed them.
Who
formed
who
free? “‘Till they enthrall them—’”

Hershey interrupted me. “It’s from
Paradise Lost
,” she said. “Book Three, lines one twenty-four to one twenty-six.”

“Is that a play?” I’d heard of
Paradise Lost
but knew nothing about it.

“A poem,” Hershey replied. “A super long and super boring poem published in 1667.” Her eyes skimmed the text on her screen. “Oh my god, shoot me now. Is this even English?”

“Who wrote it?”

“John Milton,” she said, tapping the thumbnail of his photo to enlarge it. She zoomed in on his eyelids. “A man in desperate need of blepharoplasty.”

Hershey clicked back to her magazines, bored already. I pulled up the Panopticon entry for
Paradise Lost
on my own tablet and began to read.
The poem, considered one of the greatest literary works in the English language, retells the Biblical story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
I tapped a link for a full text version of the poem and my eyes glazed over almost as quickly as Hershey’s had. None of the books we’d read in class were anything like this. Public school curriculum focused on contemporary lit, novels that had been written in the last twenty years. Was this the kind of stuff they read at Theden? Panic fluttered behind my ribs. What if I couldn’t keep up?

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest.
Please, God, don’t let me fail,
I said silently.

You won’t fail.

My head jerked. I hadn’t heard the Doubt since the summer before seventh grade. I remembered the effect it’d had on me back then, the peaceful feeling that settled over me after it spoke. This was the opposite experience. I was rattled and unsettled and all those other words that mean not at all okay. The Doubt was for unstable people and artists and little kids. Not, as the application packet had made explicitly clear, for Theden students. The psychologist who’d conducted my psych eval asked at least three times when I’d last heard the voice, relenting only when she was satisfied that it’d been more than three years. If the members of the admissions committee knew what I’d just heard, my time at Theden would be over before it started. That was part of what made my new school different. You couldn’t just be smart. You had to be “psychologically impervious.” Immune to crazy.

It’s just nerves,
I told myself. Lots of perfectly sane adults heard the Doubt when they were stressed. But telling myself this only intensified my anxiety.

“We should order matching comforters,” I heard Hershey say. She’d moved on from her magazines and was now scrolling through the Anthropologie lookbook. “Otherwise we’ll end up with that whole hodgepodge, mismatched, pretending-to-be-eclectic dorm room cliché. What do you think of this one?”

I still didn’t understand how we’d ended up living together. According to our acceptance packet, roommate assignments were done by a computer program that matched students based on their personalities and interests. Since Hershey and I had exactly nothing in common, I had to assume the program was flawed.

I blinked and tried to focus on the neon paisley pattern on her screen. It was hideous.

“Why don’t we wait and see what the room looks like first?” I suggested.

Hershey gave me a pitying look. “I won’t make you pay for it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s not that,” I said evenly. “I’d just prefer something that doesn’t make my eyes feel like someone has poured bleach on them.”

“How about we repurpose some old denim and stitch it together with hemp?”

I ignored her jab and went back to my tablet.

Paradise Lost
was still on my screen, so I scrolled up to the beginning and began to wade through it, forcing myself to read every word. I absorbed none of it, but the task occupied my mind for the rest of the flight. It was a trick I’d learned in elementary school. As long as your brain was busy, the Doubt couldn’t speak.

Our flight landed in Boston fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. If we hurried, we could catch the earlier bus to campus, assuming we didn’t have to wait for our bags. As we speed-walked to baggage claim, I launched my travel monitor and tracked our suitcases as they made their way from the belly of the plane to the carousel. They got there thirty seconds after we did.

My heart-shaped lock was busted, as if whoever inspected my bag hadn’t even bothered with the key that hung next to it. The sleeve of a T-shirt was pushing out through the opening, dirty from the conveyer belt. I wouldn’t have locked it at all, but the zipper track was warped, causing one of the sliders to inch away from the other, leaving an open gap. Lux had recommended that I use a twist tie, but I’d used the lock instead. Beck had given it to me on my thirteenth birthday as part of a vintage diary set. I never wrote in the notebook, but I adored the heart-shaped lock. I sighed and slipped the broken lock into my pocket as Hershey struggled to lift her gargantuan Louis Vuitton from the carousel. Served me right for ignoring Lux.

“The two-thirty shuttle to Theden Academy campus departs in three minutes,” our handhelds declared in unison. We hurried to the pick-up spot. The driver waved us over.

“Just in time,” he said as we boarded, marking our names off on his tablet. Hershey immediately pulled out her Gemini to post a status update. I knew Beck would be waiting for mine, but my thoughts were too jumbled to formulate a pithy post. I looked around at my new classmates. Nothing about them screamed gifted. They were just a bunch of sixteen-year-olds on their handhelds. I felt a wave of disappointment. I’d been so worried about feeling out of my league that I hadn’t considered that the alternative might be worse.

Hershey was on Forum for most of the two-hour ride to campus. I put my earbuds in and stared out the window, watching as the buildings got farther and farther apart until there was nothing but trees and rock. Giant slabs of granite lined the roads as we cut through mountain, the sunlight a deeper gold than I’d ever seen it. Apart from the network towers—made to look like trees, but much too perfect-looking to fool anyone—there were none of the trappings of modernity that Seattle’s nature parks were known for. No assisted sidewalks. No solar-powered trolleys. It was as if time had given up on these woods or accepted its own inconsequence. My cheek pressed against the window, I let my eyes unfocus and blur. By the time we descended into the Connecticut River valley, I was asleep.

“Rory.” Hershey nudged me with her elbow. “We’re here.”

My eyes sprung open just as the bus passed through the campus gates. I spun in my seat, watching as the wrought-iron rungs moved back into place behind us, sealing us off from the rest of the world. It was more for show than security; the stone wall stopped just a few feet from the gate. Still, it was imposing, the smooth stone columns, the iron gate, the high arch with ornamental scrolls. And in the center of the archway, the tree-shaped Theden seal, identical to the design on the lapel pin clasped to the tongue of my sneaker.

The driveway was long and paved with something smooth and gray that definitely wasn’t asphalt. Towering elms, evenly staggered along the sides of the road, formed a high canopy of green above us. Beyond them, the ground sloped up and the light disappeared into thick, overcrowded woods.

The driveway curved to the left and there it was: Theden Academy. A dozen redbrick buildings enclosing an interior courtyard that was still out of sight. I knew from Panopticon that these were the original structures built by Theden’s founders in 1781, and that the academy’s architecture was considered one of the best examples of the Federal style. What I didn’t know was the effect the whole would have on me when we rounded that corner, the Appalachian Mountains coming into view just as the buildings did, the forest like a cocoon around them.

“Wow,” Hershey whispered, uncharacteristically un-blasé.

We were silent as the bus pulled into the large parking lot marked
FACULTY
and double-parked behind a row of BMWs. The spaces were labeled with engraved bronze placards on thick wrought-iron posts.

“That’s Dean Atwater,” Hershey said, pointing at the tall, silver-haired man striding across the lawn, his hands loosely in the pockets of his pressed khaki pants. “I recognize him from my dad’s photos.”

Our driver cut the engine as Dean Atwater boarded the bus. He had a kindly, grandfatherly quality, with the commanding presence of a prep school dean. He smiled broadly in greeting as he surveyed our faces. His eyes hung on mine for a few seconds, something like recognition flashing there. My heart sped up. Had he known my mom? I knew how much I resembled her. Our coloring was different, but we had the same wavy hair, the same smattering of freckles across our cheeks, the same heart-shaped face and almond-shaped eyes. My dad said I was taller than she’d been, but you couldn’t tell that from pictures. I looked so little like him that my stepmom once joked that Mom had just cloned herself, but my dad snapped at her for being insensitive and she never said it again.

“You’re here!” Dean Atwater declared, pumping his fist in the air. The seats around me erupted into cheers and whistles. The old man laughed. “Time has no doubt been crawling for each of you since the day you received your acceptance letters. I can assure you, it will speed up now. Before you know it, you will be graduating and wondering where the last two years went.” He smiled. “Or, in my case, the last twenty-five.”

Twenty-five years. He
had
to have known my mom. I touched my mom’s pendant, feeling the engraving under my fingertips.

“The upperclassmen returned to campus last week,” the dean continued. “So we’ll all gather at six this evening in the rotunda for an opening assembly, followed by our annual welcome dinner. Until then, you’re on your own. You’ll find your dormitory assignments under the ‘housing’ tab in your Theden app. That’s also where you’ll find a list of important campus phone numbers—the registrar, my office, the psych line. . . .”
The psych line.
I swallowed hard. “And your campus key. Our locks are tied to your handhelds,” he explained. “Your key will get you through the main door of each academic building and into your assigned rooms.” Around me, people scrambled for their phones. “I suggest you spend the next few hours getting acquainted with one another and our campus. I’ll see you all again at six.” He gave us a little wave and stepped back down off the bus.