“Squeezing that shopping in before the big day, right?”
“Yeah.” He held up a bag with an enormous brown stuffed monkey inside. “For my daughter.” I remembered the look on his face when it was just the two of us waiting in an expelled specimen’s bedroom suite that one day, bloody and scared, the way he stumbled over his words trying to extend an olive branch to me by complimenting, of all things, my writing. I could see the look in his eye. He was back in that room too, probably amazed that I ever terrified him, that any of us ever terrified him.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Evan.”
We left the department store and headed to a deserted stretch of C Sector, where we sat down and had an early dinner together inside some shabby diner. To my surprise, he asked me about Goldsmith before I could ask him. Cooley—I mean Will—told me he disappeared right after the trial and didn’t leave a forwarding address or phone number. He told me he was surprised to hear that Goldsmith didn’t get in touch, because of how much he talked about me after they left the school, how he called me the only real thing about the whole place. I started to cry. And then Will started to cry too.
He asked how my writing was coming along and I told him the truth, that all of it was fake, lies told in flowery prose, that our story was the only one anyone wanted to hear—including, probably, myself—and that despite my integrity, I, the once proud purebred ice princess of Stansbury, was now going to take a stab at it only because I was scared of flunking out. Something about this idea appealed to the punk rebel that was still inside of him, most likely the delicious irony of a former highly-touted specimen selling out her memories of the school—photographic memories, no less—in order to pass out of a course and avoid the real work of creating something from scratch. So we sat there at that chipped Formica table for hours, well into the evening, and we put the pieces of this story back together. I loved hearing about the adventures of he and Goldsmith venturing away from the tower’s walls and sleuthing-out an impossible mystery; he loved hearing about the valedictorian’s clumsy romantic missteps. Tiny bells would jingle whenever the diner’s door swung open and we both looked at it each time it happened like we were expecting Goldsmith to rush in, apologize for his tardiness, and sit down for a piece of warm apple pie. I told Will that I’d send him a copy when it was finished. He recited his address, smiling because I never had to write stuff down to remember it. He said he’d read my story to Evan every night before bedtime. I don’t think he was kidding.
We paid the bill and stood up to go. He had a wife and little girl waiting for him. And I, as usual, had homework to complete. We stepped out into the street and I watched Will Cooley as he disappeared into the throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalk, that big shopping bag in his hand, a stuffed animal’s face peeking out of the top, looking back at me, smiling a silent good-bye. Then I went on my own way, blending into the masses of people happy just because it was a beautiful night during that special time of year. And I was glad to find that, despite the story I was finally prepared to tell, I felt the exact same way.
—Miss Camilla Moore II (Stansbury School, Class of 2036)
New Haven, Connecticut
April 21, 2040
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
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ISBN 0-312-34096-6
EAN 978-0-312-34096-4
First Edition: January 2006
eISBN 9781466879645
First eBook edition: July 2014
Prodigy Page 36