On the bed, among the pages from his backpack, was his horse painting he’d drawn one night in her room, their last good night together. She’d doodled at the top, a revelation from a true artist, dotting the i’s with hearts.
That was how Emma saw him. Not a basketball player, but a shitty painter.
He dropped the painting on the desk and looked at the kid in the photos, smiling comfortably, exactly where he belonged. It looked nothing like the face that reflected back in the glass of the frame.
Maybe Peter was right. Maybe he had been handed all of this. How could he call himself a winner if there was never a chance he was going to lose?
He noticed another page on his bed: his theories from the first few days of looking for Emma. He smoothed it out. The hoods, he now knew, were Peter and the debate team; the runaway theory was impossible; the plebe kid wasn’t working for anybody other than himself.
He hovered over theory four: the school took her. They got us all here, Peter had said once; Aiden had written it word-for-word in the margins. For what?
Aiden stood up, sucking in a deep breath of air with his nose, suddenly feeling frantic. His eyes bounced around the room for a moment, then in one swooping arm motion, he cleared the trophies, along with the bag of Apex, off his desk and onto the floor.
From his drawer, he grabbed a pen and a fresh sheet of paper.
Neesha.
THE HALLWAYS OF the dorm outside her room were silent while the entire school partied in the gym. Neesha lay alone on Emma’s mattress, watching the small hand on the clock wind backward, counting down to the end of her life. In sixty hours, three thousand six hundred rotations of the small hand, she was going to be expelled from Redemption. Her research, her work, past and present, her dreams, her goals for the future, the lab she was going to own, the discoveries she was going to make—all of it would incinerate in a violent reaction, torching quickly and disappearing into odorless vapor until there was no sign it had ever been there in the first place. It was over.
Emma’s plan had worked. She’d made it home safely, leaving Neesha to be blamed for every sale of Apex. Neesha had fallen into every trap. By Thursday morning, Yangborne would realize that only her compound could be responsible for the presence of amphetamines around the school; they’d all understand why she was so desperate to find Emma, and they’d hold her fully responsible.
And yet lying here in this horrible state of suspended animation, she wished for the first time that she could have Emma back. Even if it was bullshit, and Emma’s plan had been to manipulate her all along, Emma always knew what to say in the worst moments. She had perspective.
In her backpack, Neesha found the testimonial journal, still untouched. The creases along the spine were thick and defined; it smelled more like Emma than any of her pillows did anymore. She pulled back the first page and read.
For over an hour, she read alone, rocking back and forth slowly, her face the moon hanging over the world of the journal. She was halfway through the entry on Day 15 when she felt her face starting to get hot and tears welling in the corners of her eyes. By the time Emma started therapy, Neesha was crying, uncontrollably.
For the last week, she’d assumed everything about Emma had been a performance, false sadness to manipulate Neesha into helping sell Apex, but here in Emma’s private world, it was clear it wasn’t. Emma was sad. Truly, profoundly sad. And insecure, and lonely, and deeply invested in the lives of the people around her. Emma needed someone to reach out. And she’d been sitting there for forty days.
Zaza came to her door after the game with a water bottle, half-full, presumably of vodka. She hid the journal under her pillow and tried to wipe her face before answering, but as soon as he saw her, his eyes got wide. “Holy shit.”
“What?” she tried to snarl, but the word caught in her throat.
“Nothing, I’ve just never seen you . . .” He rubbed the top of his head. “Your face is a little red. Can I come in?”
She fell back onto her bed, leaving the door open for him.
“I heard about the hearing,” he said, offering her the water bottle. “That sucks. Do you think they know anything about . . .”
The liquor stung her lips, the roof of her mouth, and her tongue. She drank anyway, forcing down two full swallows. “Yep,” she said. “And if they don’t yet, they will by then.”
He leaned back in her desk chair. “You can fight it,” he said. “Appeal to their thirst for excellence. Say you were only doing it to win the trophy.”
“I was only doing it to win the trophy.”
“Well then tell them that.”
She shrugged. “It’s not gonna matter.”
He sat up. “Don’t cry about it, Neesha. That’s what an inert person would do.” He smiled, intentionally turning her words on her. “You’re not inert. Fight it.”
“I’m not crying about it,” she muttered.
“Oh.” He sat back. “Then . . . what are you crying about?”
Her first instinct was to lie or find some excuse to avoid having to tell him anything, but her excuses had run out and all that was left in their place was a confusion she was desperate to share, so instead, she pulled the journal from below the pillow.
“Is that . . . Emma’s?”
She nodded.
“Where did you find that?”
“Evan had it.”
“God, I fucking hate that kid,” he said. “What, uh . . . what’s it say?”
Neesha flipped it open on her lap and shrugged. “Not much about anything. The story of a girl who was sad and trying a million different ways to make it better. And her roommate who didn’t do anything about it.”
Zaza grinned. “Sounds kinda cheesy.”
The crease found the last entry, the day she’d disappeared. She’d written a single sentence: out into the world, 2 find my place.
Neesha read it again and sniveled. “I was so obsessed with that fucking trophy. She was sitting here, the entire time, painfully sad, and I wasn’t noticing, because all I cared about was my shit. She probably only even wanted to sell it so I’d focus on something else for a change, but I never . . .”
She read the entry again. out into the world, 2 find my place.
“You never what?”
Neesha stood, dropping the journal on the bed and floating to the door, pulling it open to see the front. The school had sent a maintenance worker to scrub off the Magic Marker, but a faint outline remained, faded against the metallic blue door. she’s going 2 die.
Not to die. 2.
“What are you doing?” Zaza asked, following her out.
Neesha stared into it, finally seeing what had been right in front of her all along. The branches, the threatening message on her door, the final entry in the journal. It was a simple code, a binary. “1” was yes, “2” was no. “1” was good, “2” was bad. “1” was safe, “2” was—
“Evan was right,” Neesha said, gripping the door to keep her balance. “She’s still here. Emma never left.”
Evan.
HE LAY IN bed, focusing on his eyelids. They popped open every forty to sixty seconds, and the harder he concentrated on keeping them shut, the worse it got. He pictured Emma, heard her reading, “eternally, endlessly,” his breathing started to even out, “you tried to make a place for me.” It had been at least two minutes, or maybe three minutes, they were naturally closed now, he could feel himself drifting—
The electric fence snapped. His eyes shot open.
He needed to rest. It had been seventy-two, ninety-something, a hundred and twenty hours since he’d slept. He’d logged at least twelve more hours in a sleeping position, but inside his immobile body, his brain still whirled.
She hadn’t escaped. She wasn’t at home. The only reason the school would make an announcement like that was if they wanted people to stop looking. Whoever had her was moving into their endgame.
He could hear other students outside partying. The game had ended two hours
ago but enough Years Ones had tried alcohol for the first time tonight that no one was going to sleep. Even the professors were still awake and celebrating. He could hear kids laughing like there was nothing wrong. Like they weren’t stuck here. Like something wasn’t coming for them.
No one was even talking about the fence anymore. No one took it seriously. Other students heard, and they assumed it was exaggerated. Some plebe in his Compassion Lab said he’d seen it before and it wasn’t that bad. And Neesha seemed to want to pretend that it had never happened, and that Evan didn’t exist.
Even more ignorantly, everyone believed the school about Emma. They believed she just walked away, somehow got past the fence, and was sitting at home in Kansas. Without ever telling any of them she was going to leave. Without even packing a single thing.
He heard a door slam across the hall and clutched his blanket above him tighter. Sleep wasn’t coming. His brain wouldn’t stop. He shot out of bed and threw on a black hoodie.
S5—Rationale, S5—Rationale, S5—Rationale; he could feel his S4—Emotions about Neesha and the school getting the best of him; he was losing control of the S8—Consequences of reckless behavior. He needed to control his actions, but how could he when nothing he was doing was having any effect on the world around him. Something was causing the system to break down. What was causing the system to break down?
He went straight to Dr. Richardson’s office and slammed on the door with his open palm. Nothing happened. He tried again, harder and faster, his hand starting to glow hot with pain. He hit it harder, again and again and again, but there was no sound behind the door. He glared down at the keypad. With a deep breath, he punched in the code he’d seen Dr. Richardson enter twice. The perimeter glowed green.
The smell of her room rushed out first. He took a few steps inside, but the room wasn’t empty. Dr. Richardson scurried back behind her desk from somewhere on the right side of the room. “Evan!” she almost screamed. “How did you get in here?”
He took another step into the room and froze. Eddy was sitting in the chair in front of the desk. He didn’t turn around.
“I need to talk to you,” Evan said.
Dr. Richardson glared. “We’re in the middle of a session. How would you feel if someone barged in on the middle of one of our sessions?”
Evan stared at the back of Eddy’s head. He wasn’t moving. “I want to talk about my feelings. I need to talk to you about Emma.”
Dr. Richardson narrowed her gaze. “Evan, are you feeling alright? You look like you’re experiencing a tremendous amount of anger—”
“I’m fine, I just need to talk. I’m ready to be honest—”
“Evan,” she cut him off. “I don’t believe you’re fine, and I can’t speak to you until you calm down.”
“She’s n-not at home,” he explained. “The school is lying.”
“Evan.” She wasn’t even listening to him. “Identify the anger. Locate where it’s coming from and control it.”
“Y-y-you’re not listening,” he screamed. “She wouldn’t go home and the school is looking for her, something happened that they’re not saying! They’re ly-ly-lying . . .”
She let him grind himself to a stop. “You’re out of control, Evan,” she said. “I won’t tolerate that in my office.”
“But—”
“Emma’s fine. I spoke to her myself.”
Electric flashes went off in his brain, one after another. “B-but . . . why? Why did she go home?”
Dr. Richardson checked on Eddy. He still hadn’t moved. Evan noticed that the items all over her cabinets on the right side of the room were rearranged; a few of the framed photos were facing downward. “Over the last few months, Emma and I spent a lot of time together. I’m not sure if you spoke to her much about it, but she wasn’t very happy at Redemption.”
“I know, but she had to—she had so much t-to . . . I—I—I was gonna—”
“She wasn’t feeling well, Evan. People who aren’t well sometimes do things that don’t make sense,” she said. “If they could control their emotions, that might not happen as often. Emma will be back. Now leave my office, immediately. I’m in the middle of a session.”
She took three steps toward him and closed the door in his face.
He stood with his nose to the metal for a minute, but behind the door it was completely silent. He settled into a chair in her lobby and waited.
It got later. No one came in, but he could still hear the party raging in the Human Lounge. He looked at the phone booth to his right. There was no one for him to call. There hadn’t been for months. He was alone.
What if Emma actually had gone home?
He looked at the magazines on the table. He’d seen all of them before.
What if she decided that this place wasn’t good enough for her and just left? What if she didn’t need saving from something else, and all the monsters that she was seeing around the campus were actually just hers, and the only person she needed saving from was herself? And he’d failed. He wasn’t there, and now she was gone.
He picked up the Holy Life magazine. It was worn, read a hundred times, with the story about some pastor in North Carolina on the front. He froze as he flipped it open. There was an Emma doodle on the back page.
This time, it was the story of Peter’s instruction from the Lord: On the rock, I will build my home; and the Gates of Hades will not overcome it. —Thessalonians 9:30.
It was jotted down, with the spirit of an absentminded illustration, a roof over the central two letters in “home,” the way people draw when they forget their drawing, but the work was precise—the angle of the roof was perfected and intentional. Evan read the verse aloud several times over, the words getting louder in his head. He shook it, shaking the cobwebs, jarring the memory loose. On the rock, I will build my—
He sat up.
He could hear the words in a voice. Not his own, not Emma’s—
Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee. The voice was just above his head, smiling down, two feet, close enough to feel. But my father is in Heaven. The fifth row. The red satin cushion on the pew. The leftover sting of last night’s cold. His mother’s bony hand. “Isn’t that amazing, Evan? Simon thought he’d figured it out on his own.” It was warm like she always was. “But it was him the whole time—” She was smiling like she always did. On the rock I will build my—
Evan sat up.
There’s a pattern to everything, if you just stand far enough away from it.
Aiden.
HE SKIPPED PRACTICE the next day, but when Coach Bryant sent the same Year One to find him, he told the kid to get lost. He’d filled one page, then another, then another with his thoughts, scratching them in as fast as his brain could find them, until finally, that afternoon, something clicked.
There was only one person he could tell about it. “You didn’t come here for debate,” Aiden said as soon as he intercepted Peter in the B-School Lounge.
“Good to see you too, buddy,” Peter mumbled, continuing past him. Evidently, he was still upset from the fight where Aiden had called him a degenerate, or maybe from the purple swelling Aiden had placed on his right eye.
But Aiden didn’t give up. “You told me that the first night, the school didn’t recruit you to debate. You said they found you after the article came out about you speaking twelve languages.”
“Big discovery, man. Great stuff.”
“They found us through newspapers,” Aiden said. “People wrote stories about us, and then they recruited us.”
Peter kept walking, passing into the GRC. “Why does that matter?”
“Because it doesn’t make sense. Why would they want someone who speaks twelve languages?”
“’Cause that’s how recruiting works? You get the best people?”
“What about him?” Aiden pointed across the lounge to a seven-foot-tall Year One, Nico Cruz. Nico was on the basketball team, but he was horrible.
“I don’t know,
maybe he paid them?”
“You said it yourself. They got us all here, there has to be a specific reason. What is it?”
Peter didn’t have an answer. He stared past Aiden, while behind him, a group of basketball players followed Dirk across the lounge. Only one, a Year Two in the back, looked over in Aiden’s direction; the rest intentionally ignored him.
“Dirk definitely came here for basketball,” Aiden mumbled, watching them.
“I’ve got it,” Peter interrupted him. “I know how we can find out.”
Peter marched out and Aiden followed, not stopping until they were seated in front of one of the Macintosh computers along the back wall of the B-School library. The school owned a few, and as far as Aiden could tell, their primary purpose was for Year Ones to play Pong, so they didn’t have to sit alone at lunch.
“A few of the debaters use this thing. They said the school’s just got it in.” He punched a few buttons on the keyboard din front of the Macintosh. “You’re not gonna believe what we can do with this.”
The machine made an awful hissing, popping, groaning, pinging sound.
“Ah, fuck.” Aiden covered his ears. “What’s happening?”
“That’s what it sounds like when it’s working,” Peter said, rubbing the top. “That’s the World Wide Web. All of the information in the world, suddenly available, in only ninety seconds.”
On the screen, a large text box appeared, and Peter typed in a few letters. The screen beckoned again, a larger text box this time. “Newspapers sometimes put their stuff on here.”
“And then we . . . go to it?” Aiden asked. “We just have to type in the code or whatever?”
“It’s even easier than that. It’ll find it for us.” One by one, Peter punched the letters N-I-C-O C-R-U-Z—the machine whirred to life.
He leaned into the screen, staring up and down. Nico Cruz dot com, the home of Mexican Superstar Nico Cruz—the Nico Cruz fan club—Nico Cruz and Mariah Carey Seen on a Boat Together—
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