Free to Fall (4 page)

“My dad told me it was like this,” Hershey whispered, closing out of Forum and tapping the little Theden icon on her screen. Around us, kids were checking their housing assignments and talking excitedly. No one had gotten up yet.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Totally free. A super-late curfew, no dorm check-ins, no dress code. Basically, no rules. You can pretty much do whatever you want.”

“Really?” Prep schools were notorious for their rules. I’d figured Theden would be even stricter than most.

“Uh-huh. A ‘privilege of prudence’ or some crap.” She leaned against me and held her Gemini up for a selfie. “Perf,” she said when she saw it, then promptly uploaded it to Forum. My Gemini buzzed.

The photo “roomie BFFs!” has been added to your timeline by @HersheyClements.

The photo was horrendous. My forehead was shining and my bangs were split down the middle and my smile looked more like a grimace. But there was no way to delete it now that she’d posted it, and no way to untag myself either.

“Lovely,” I muttered, gathering my things. My handheld buzzed again.

@BeckAmbrose:
had a nightmare u moved 3,000 miles away and became “roomie BFFs” w HC.

Hershey heard me laugh. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I lied, dropping my handheld into my bag. “Come on, roomie,” I said, nudging her forward. “Let’s find our room.”

Theden’s two hundred and eighty-eight students all lived in the same building, Athenian Hall, a V-shaped structure on the north end of campus. Our room was on the second floor of the girls’ wing and looked more like a fancy hotel room than a dorm. There were two double beds, matching mahogany desks and dressers, two walk-in closets, and an electronic fireplace. But no light fixtures. When I didn’t see any in the ceiling, I looked around for lamps. The brightness in the room had to be coming from somewhere, and there weren’t any windows. But there wasn’t a single light source that I could see.

Hershey had picked up the small black remote sitting on the bed she’d claimed as hers. There was an identical remote on my bed, with three rows of buttons on the front and the distinctive Gnosis logo on the back. Hershey started at the top and worked her way down, pressing every button. First the room got brighter, then dimmer, until it was completely dark save for the wall connected to the door, which glowed a warm amber. Hershey’s face lit up. “
PHOLED
wallpaper!” She pressed another button and the wall became a TV screen. Another, and we were looking at the dashboard of her Gemini. Another, and the screen split into two screens. “Turn your side on,” she told me, pointing at the remote on my bed. “The button labeled
LINK
.” When I pressed it, my Gemini dashboard popped up next to hers.

I’d heard that Gnosis had developed wallpaper made up of
PHOLED
s—the display technology used in most of its devices—but I didn’t think it’d been released yet. I walked over and touched the wallpaper with my fingertips. It was smooth and cool under my skin, and when I pulled my hand away there were faint fingerprint smudges there. I wiped them away with the hem of my T-shirt.

Hershey tossed her remote onto the bed. “Let’s take a walk. I want coffee.”

“Good call. The dining hall has an all-day snack cart. I saw it on—”

“Lame,” Hershey declared. “It’s only a ten-minute walk to downtown. Eight if we take the unauthorized scenic route, which we totally are.” She pulled a tube of lip gloss and a mirrored compact from her bag. She slid the tube across her lips then pursed them in a sultry pout. “C’mon,” she said, snapping the compact shut. “Let’s go.”

The “unauthorized scenic route” involved trespassing through a private cemetery east of campus, which was marked, appropriately,
PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING
. Despite the midday sunshine, I was creeped out. The moss-covered headstones were oversize and weathered with centuries of age. I shivered in the humid heat.

“Which way?” I asked impatiently, eager to get out of there. Whoever owned this place had hung that no trespassing sign for a reason. And they’d put a giant statue of a very angry-looking angel in the center of the cemetery, his long stone finger pointing toward the exit, to emphasize the point.

“I dunno,” Hershey said, squinting at her Gemini. “I lost service.”

“Can we please just go back? I’d prefer not to get arrested on my first day here.” I was attempting to sound more annoyed than freaked out, but the truth was I was both.

Hershey rolled her eyes. “Relax. The town green is just on the other side of those woods.” Her eyes scanned the trees. “I think.” She held her Gemini up, searching for a signal. “So much for the ‘everywhere network,’” she said.

“It’s not a shortcut if we get lost,” I pointed out.

“God, Rory, would you just chill out? Here”—she reached into her bag and pulled out two airplane bottles of Baileys, tossing one to me—“that’ll help.” She twisted the cap off the other one and chugged its contents. “Ugh.” She shuddered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I hate Baileys. But I couldn’t reach the vodka.”

“I’m not drinking this,” I said, handing it back to her. “The assembly starts in an hour.”

Hershey sighed. “Look, Rory, I’m not suggesting you get wasted and take an exam. It’s our first day, and we’ve got nothing to do but listen to a bunch of self-congratulatory and ultimately forgettable speeches about how great we are, and how great Theden is, and how much greater we’ll all be when we graduate from here. The onus is on us to live deep, to suck all the marrow out of life. No one’s gonna do it for us.” She held the mini bottle back out, waving it a little until I took it. I’m not sure why I did; maybe it was the shock of hearing Hershey use the word
onus
correctly, or the fact that she’d casually quoted Thoreau. Or maybe it was just that her words had struck a chord. I applied to Theden because I wanted my life to change, but so far the only thing different about my life was its location. And that wasn’t enough.

I unscrewed the cap and took a tiny sip. Hershey grinned and held up her own empty bottle. “To sucking the marrow out of life,” she declared.

I raised my bottle to hers. “And topping it off with Irish cream.”

We laughed, but as we clinked, my eyes caught the epigraph on a headstone a few feet away and the laugh got lodged in my throat.

BE SOBER, BE VIGILANT;

BECAUSE YOUR ADVERSARY THE DEVIL, AS A

ROARING LION, WALKETH ABOUT,

SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR.—1 PETER 5:8

The hair on my forearms prickled. I brought the bottle back to my lips, but this time only pretended to sip it. Hershey had already turned and was heading toward the trees, so I quickly emptied the contents of the bottle on the grass and hurried to catch up.

“So where are we going?” I asked, falling in stride with her.

“Café Paradiso,” she replied. “It’s on the river. Used to be a mill or something.”

I pulled out my Gemini to check the reviews on its Forum page, but I still didn’t have service. “This whole place is a dead zone,” I said. Beside me, Hershey chortled.

“Fitting, right?” She tossed her bag over the rusty chain-link fence that stood between us and the trees, and began to climb. “Ouch!” A broken link had snagged the hem of her dress, scratching her thigh.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She cleared the fence then jumped. “You coming?”

I made my way over, careful to avoid the broken link. There was an embankment on the other side that led into a denser patch of woods. Hershey scampered up the grassy hill and disappeared into the trees. “I see buildings,” she called. “We’re close.” I followed her up, sliding in my sandals. It was several degrees cooler up there, dense leaves blocking the sun. A few steps later, I heard the river roaring up ahead.

Café Paradiso was in a wooden building on the corner of State and Main, painted fire-engine red and set apart from the others. I had service again, so I pulled up the café’s Forum page. Its rating was one and a half stars.

“There’s another coffee shop a few blocks down,” I said, pulling up the page for River City Beans, voted “Best Coffee in the Valley” by the
Berkshire Gazette
. I wasn’t a snob about much, but I was a Seattle native, after all. “It’s got way better reviews.”

“Yeah, that’s the place Lux recommended,” Hershey replied, striding toward Paradiso.

I sighed and followed her.

A bell above the door jangled as we stepped inside. It was split-level, with the counter at ground level and seating space in a loft above it, overlooking the river. For a place with thousands of bad reviews, it was awfully packed. I didn’t see a single empty table. When we stepped up to the counter, I understood why. There was a laminated sign stuck to the register that read
IF YOU LIKE US, LEAVE US A REALLY CRAPPY REVIEW ON FORUM. SHOW IT TO US, AND YOUR NEXT DRINK IS ON US!

“You didn’t fall for it,” I heard a male voice say. “Or you just like shitty coffee.” I looked up. The guy behind the counter was about our age, and he might’ve been cute were it not for the tattoos covering his bare arms and peeking out from the collar of his white V-neck T-shirt. I didn’t have anything against tattoos in general—Beck had a
hanja
character behind his left ear—but this guy had that whole my-diffuse-body-art-makes-me-countercultural-and-thus-cooler-than-you vibe about him. The Mohawk on his head didn’t help.

“I was brought against my will,” I said, and the boy smiled. His eyes, pinned on mine, were dark brown, almost black, his pupils shiny like wet paint. “Let me guess—first-years at the academy?” There was something dismissive in his tone, as if our affiliation with Theden was a mark against us.

“I’m Hershey, and this is Rory,” Hershey said, stepping up to the counter. “Maybe you can show us around sometime.” The boy didn’t respond. “Cool ink,” she cooed, touching her fingers to his forearm. There were lines of text drawn there, each one in different handwriting. They looked like lines of poetry or quotes from books. The writing was small and I definitely wasn’t about to lean in for a closer look, so it was hard to be sure. “What’s your name?” she asked him.

“North.” His eyes still hadn’t left mine. They were doing that rapid back-and-forth thing that eyes do when they’re studying something. Or, in this case, someone. Heat sprung to my cheeks. I cleared my throat and looked past him to the chalkboard menu. Beside me, Hershey pulled out her Gemini.

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna let that thing order for you,” he said, his gaze finally shifting from me to Hershey.

“Never,” Hershey replied. She scrolled down to the very last entry on Lux’s recommendation list. “I’ll have the coconut latte,” she announced. “Lux promises I’ll hate it.”

This was her thing, I’d learned. Doing the thing Lux said not to.

“I’m experimental,” Hershey added, and smiled. North swallowed a laugh.

He turned back to me. “So what about you?” he asked. His voice was teasing. “Do you like to experiment?”

I blushed and hated myself for it. “I’ll have a vanilla cappuccino,” I said, glancing at my phone out of habit, even though I knew without looking what Lux would have me order. It was always the same.

“Okay, first, that’s the worst order ever,” North replied. “We roast our own beans, and everything is single origin, so if you’re gonna have coffee, don’t kill it with vanilla. Second, if you like sweet stuff, our spiced matcha latte is a way better choice.”

“I’ll have a vanilla cappuccino,” I repeated. “I don’t like tea.”

North shrugged. “Your call,” he said, punching in our orders. We scanned our handhelds to pay and moved to the other end of the counter to wait for our drinks.

“I’m totally going to hook up with him,” Hershey whispered, barely out of his earshot.

“Ew.” I made a face, but inside I felt a surge of envy. Not because I had any desire whatsoever to hook up with the smug, tatted-up barista, but because Hershey was the kind of girl who could. I glanced over at North as he steamed the milk for our drinks. The espresso machine he was using looked like an antique. It had to be the noisiest and least efficient way to make a cappuccino ever.

“One coconut latte, and one vanilla cappuccino,” North declared, setting two paper cups on the counter. His expression was neutral, but his mouth looked funny, like he was biting the inside of his cheeks to keep from smiling. I smiled politely and reached for the cup with
VC
scrawled on the side in black marker. No printed drink stickers here. I felt like I was in a time warp. Hershey took a sip of hers and shuddered.

“Ugh. Gross.” She smiled at North. “Perfect.”

“Happy to disgust you,” he replied, then glanced at me. “Yours okay?”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said, and took a sip.

The second it hit my tongue, I knew what he’d done. The fiery bite of the cayenne laced with the ginger. He’d made me the matcha drink. I hadn’t been kidding; I didn’t like tea. And I hated ginger. But this wasn’t like any tea I’d had before, and mixed with all the other ingredients, the ginger was kind of the best thing I’d ever tasted. I took another sip before I realized North was watching me. It was too late to pretend I hated it. Still, I refused to acknowledge the told-you-so look on his face.

“Well?” he prompted.

“This is a really crappy cappuccino,” I deadpanned.

North let out a laugh, and his whole face lit up with it.

“To be clear, the fact that I’m drinking this doesn’t prove your point,” I told him.

“My point?”

I rolled my eyes. “That I shouldn’t let my handheld make decisions for me. You thought I missed that not-too-subtle subtext?”

“An Academy girl? I’d never sell you that short.”

“Even without Lux, I never would’ve ordered this,” I pointed out. “I hate two of the four ingredients.”

“Ah, but there are
seven
ingredients. And so what if you hate two of them? The fact that I hate Russian dressing doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of a good Reuben sandwich. Ours is amazing, by the way.”