“Here ya go,” she said, and set a fresh bottle in front of me.
“Thanks,” I said. Without making eye contact, I pulled a ten-dollar bill from my wallet and slid it across the table to her. When the song finished and I looked around, she was gone. I turned to Matt.
“Hey,” I said. “Where’d she go?”
He was staring at me like I’d just grown an extra head.
“You know that girl wasn’t a waitress,” he said. “Right?”
It was another six weeks before I saw Kara again, at a party in a friend’s apartment on campus this time. Thank God, she didn’t recognize me.
I got back from my run a little before noon, tired and sweaty and still just as confused, but riding high on endorphins and feeling much better about my day. I dropped my clothes on the bedroom floor and got into the shower, spent fifteen minutes mostly just letting hot water sluice over me, then got dried off and dressed and headed downstairs to make lunch. I ate, made some calls, and was just starting to think about playing around with a few things on my simulator when I felt my phone buzz. There was a priority message waiting for me. It flashed to the screen as soon as I pulled the phone out of my pocket and it registered my thumb print. It was from Meghan Cardiff, DragonCorn’s lead for synthesis and testing.
MCardiff: Sorry to bug you, Drew, but there’s something seriously funky with the last set of schema I got from Singapore. I mean, the synthesizer ran to completion, but I know what corn RNA looks like, and this ain’t it. Call me when you have a minute.
MCardiff: Scratch that, Drew. Call me now.
10. In which Hannah’s social standing continues to deteriorate.
On a sunny Saturday morning toward the end of September, Dad dropped me off at Briarwood with the rest of Doyle’s sled dogs. We got onto a bus and rode out to the bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario, a dozen miles east of the tomb of the old nuclear plant. It was a thirty-minute ride. Looking around the bus, you would have thought Doyle was on his way to dump us into a mass grave.
After ten minutes of riding in dead silence, I actually said that to Sarah Miller. She’d been thumbing through her newsfeed—not reading anything, mind you—just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. She looked up at me and shook her head.
“Yeah,” she said. “I wish.”
I didn’t have any way to know this at the time, but we were actually reenacting a tradition that stretched back to Doyle’s first year at Briarwood. That year, and every year since, he deliberately left a nine-day hole in the meet schedule somewhere between the third week of September and the first week of October. Right in the middle of that, he hauled the team up to the lake, and they ran a workout that he liked to call Climb to Failure.
The upperclassmen all knew what was coming, of course. That’s why they were acting like they were on the way to their own funerals. I honestly thought they were putting on an act—you know, get the freshies all worked up, see if you can make them cry, that kind of thing.
They were not.
The bus dropped us in a parking lot looking out over the lake, maybe five hundred feet below. We left our sweats and phones and gear bags in our seats and shuffled out onto the pavement. Doyle led us over to the edge of the lot. There was a trailhead there. I pushed up to the front of the group, in between Tara and Jordan, and looked down. The trail switchbacked down the face of the bluff, all the way down to a narrow strip of sandy beach.
“Holy crap,” I said. “Are we going down there?”
Jordan put a hand on my shoulder.
“No,” he said. “We’re going down over there.” He waved off to the side, where I could see a longer, gentler trail curving away through knee-high grass. “This is where we come up.”
“Okay,” Doyle said as the last of us straggled down onto the beach. “For those of you who are new to this drill, here’s how it works. It’s a bit over two hundred yards from here to the top, and just about three hundred back down the easy way. This whistle blows every four minutes. If you’re not ready to toe the line when it does, you’re out. The goal is to see how many reps you can complete, so pace yourselves. Five means you get to keep your jersey and ride home on the bus. Ten gets you varsity warmups for the rest of the season. After that? You’re in bonus time. We keep going until everyone fails. Questions?”
I looked around. Everyone but Jordan looked to be somewhere on the spectrum between sad and terrified. Nobody raised a hand.
“Right,” Doyle said. “Line up, fastest to slowest. First whistle’s in sixty seconds.”
Five hundred yards. Four minutes. Doesn’t seem that bad, right?
Trust me, it was bad.
Nobody had to walk home. That’s the only good thing I can say about that morning. A few came close, though. Sarah, Kerry, and a boy everyone called Fish came within about two seconds of missing the fifth whistle. The three of them and four others dropped after that rep. We lost one or two per rep after that, but Kerry was the only one of the top seven, either boys or girls, who didn’t make it to ten.
After eleven, it was just Jordan, Tara, and me.
Jordan made the whole thing seem effortless. He hit the top of the trail at least thirty yards ahead of us on every rep. Tara and I went side by side. Neither of us said a word the entire workout. By twelve, we were almost walking at the top. On thirteen, we barely made the whistle.
On fourteen, Tara didn’t.
On the bus ride home, I wound up sharing a seat with Jordan.
“Nice work today,” he said when he flopped down next to me. “Mind if I sit here?”
I shrugged.
“Go nuts. Doesn’t look like anybody else wants to.”
He slung an arm around my shoulder.
“Remember what I told you, Hannah?”
“It wasn’t a race,” I said. “It was just a workout.”
“Oh, Hannah,” he said, and gave me a squeeze. “You’re such a sweet, innocent child.”
“Bite me,” I said, and wriggled out from under his arm. “I just . . . why does everything have to be so stupid?”
“Because,” Jordan said. “People are stupid. Anytime you’re trying to figure out why something is the way it is, just remember those three little words. You’ll almost never go wrong.”
The bus started moving. We sat in silence as we pulled out of the parking lot and onto Lake Road. We were almost back to the highway when I looked up at him and said, “None of the girls like me right now, do they?”
Jordan sighed.
“No, probably not.”
“Why not?”
The whine that had crept into my voice made me cringe.
“Well,” Jordan said, “you’re upsetting the social order. Nobody likes that.”
“Okay,” I said. “So how do I fix it?”
He slouched down until our heads were almost level.
“You’ve got two choices, Hannah. First, you could back off. Leave Tara at the top of the heap. If you settled in at third, say, or maybe even a distant, nonthreatening second, they’d welcome you right back into the fold.”
“Okay,” I said. “What if I don’t like that option? What’s number two?”
He leaned over then, until the sides of our heads were touching.
“Option two is that you hang in there until everybody gets over the fact that there’s a new sheriff in town.”
“And how long does that take?”
He laughed.
“With Tara? I’m guessing that’s going to take a long, long time.”
The other half of the Climb to Failure tradition at Briarwood was that the captains were supposed to host a party that night. I would honestly rather have stuck my head in a blender than go, but they were having it at Jordan’s house, and he’d made me promise to be there before we got off the bus. I’d been stewing about it most of the day, going back and forth over whether to actually show, but eventually I decided I could put in an appearance, try to make nice with some of the girls if they’d let me, and then tell Jordan that my
dad wanted me home early.
I was just out of the shower, trying to decide what you wear to a cross-country party, when my phone pinged.
Wilma17: Inchy?
Wilma17: Right. What do you want?
Wilma17: Wait—are we friends?
Wilma17: Oh, for shit’s sake, Inchy. I really don’t have time for you right now.
Wilma17: . . .
Wilma17: Can I ask you something?
Wilma17: . . .
Wilma17: Um . . . Fine?
Wilma17: :-|
Wilma17: No, Inchy. My question was why do you need me to spy on my dad when you’ve obviously got my whole house bugged? Also, how do you have my whole house bugged? And while I’m at it, why do you have my whole house bugged?
Wilma17: What are you talking about? You can obviously see and hear everything I do! How is that, Inchy?
Wilma17: . . .
Wilma17: Okay. So why don’t you just hack his phone? You can help him pick out his outfits for a change.
Wilma17: Unlike me, you mean?
Wilma17: So you thought you’d let me do it for you?
Wilma17: Okay. So how would you put it?
Dad dropped me off at Jordan’s house a little before nine. I told him to come back and get me at ten. He looked at me like I’d grown a second head.
“Ten? That’s an hour from now.”
“Yeah,” I said, and opened the passenger door.
“You understand it took almost a half hour to get here, right?”
I turned to look at him. He didn’t look happy.
“Um . . .” I said. “Yes?”
“So you want me to drive home, sit in the driveway for five minutes, and then turn right around and come back for you. Is that right?”
I gave him my best doe eyes.
“Yes?”
He tried to stare me down, but he never had a chance.
“Fine,” he said finally, and sighed. “Have fun.”
I waved to him as he pulled away, then started up the walk to the house. I shouldn’t have been surprised by what I was looking at after seeing Jordan’s car, but I was. When Dad put our place together, he was definitely trying to stay under the radar. From the outside, you wouldn’t think anybody worth lynching lived there.
Jordan’s parents clearly had no such concerns. Their house was a mountain of marble and brass and teak and jade. When the revolution came, I was pretty sure the Barneses were gonna be the first ones against the wall.
Jordan was waiting for me when I stepped onto the porch.
“Hannah! So glad you made it. You know Micah, right?”
The boy standing next to him gave me a truncated wave. I recognized him from practice—he was one of those guys at the back end of the varsity pack, the ones who ran with Jordan’s group during easy workouts, but couldn’t hang with them on a progression—but I hadn’t known his name until just then.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. How’s it going, Micah?”
He laughed.
“You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not really.”
He laughed again, harder. Micah turned out to be pretty hard to offend.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Next to Jordan, we’re all kind of forgettable.”
That was objectively not true. Micah was . . . well, definitely not forgettable. The other runners were all sharp edges and wiry angles. Most of them looked like their arms and legs had just gone through a growth spurt, and they were still waiting for their bodies to catch up. Micah’s body was clearly a finished product, and wiry was not the word for it.
Micah looked like he could bench-press a truck.
“Come on,” Jordan said. “Let me show you around.”
Here are some things that Jordan’s house had, that mine did not:
A sauna.
A hot tub which appeared to be made entirely of marble and gold.
A lounge.
A movie theater.
“It’s a media room,” Jordan said. “We don’t really watch movies here.”
“Yeah,” Micah said. “Movies are for the proles.”
Jordan smacked him, but Micah just laughed.
“What?” Micah said. “Is there a prole standing behind me?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Honestly, I’m kind of feeling like a prole right now.”
Micah gave me a long look, and shook his head.
“I don’t know exactly what your parents do, Hannah, but I know what it costs to get a set of custom mods that actually produce a viable kid and not a monster. Your family may do a better job of keeping things on the down-low than the Barneses, but I can guarantee you’re every bit as much an aristo as Jordan or me.”
“An aristo?” I said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Really?” Micah said. “When the shit hits the fan again, whose side will you be on?”
“Okay,” Jordan said, and stepped between us. “I think that’s it for the tour. Let’s get back to the party, shall we?”
I spent the next forty minutes confirming that yeah, I really should have let Tara beat me that morning. Most of the girls would barely make eye contact, let alone talk to me. Sarah sat next to me on a gigantic leather couch for about two minutes and complained about the GeneChem assignment we had due on Monday, but Tara walked past and shot her a look, and that was that. The boys were better. They didn’t seem to care so much what Tara thought—but they didn’t seem to care so much about having any sort of extended conversation with a slightly funny looking freshie girl, either, so that wasn’t a ton of help. Jordan hung with me for a couple of stretches, but it was his party, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to spend the whole time babysitting me even if he’d been willing to do it. All in all, I was pretty happy when Dad showed up a few minutes early.
“Hey,” I said when I climbed into the car. “Thanks for coming back.”
He tried to glare at me, but I gave him the doe eyes again, and he couldn’t hold it.
“No problem,” he said. “Did you have fun?”
I shrugged.
“About as much as I expected.”
He had the car set to auto. It backed up onto the access road, and headed out toward the highway. He was reaching for the to
uch screen to turn on the sound system when I said, “So Dad. Um . . . how’s work going?”
He turned to look at me. I’m pretty sure that was the first time in my life that I’d asked him anything about his job.
“Well,” he said. “It’s good, I guess? I mean, it keeps us off the streets, right?”
I forced a smile.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
He reached for the screen again.
“Working on any interesting projects?”
He took longer to answer that time.
“Hannah? Is there something you want to tell me?”
I shook my head.
“Why would you think that?”
“Well,” he said. “You’ve never expressed the least interest in my work before. Did something happen at the party? Did somebody say something about me, or about Bioteka?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody talked about anything but homework and carbo loading. It was the most boring party ever.”
We sat in silence for what seemed like a really long time.
“Okay,” he said finally, and turned on the sound system. It was set to his playlist from the Dark Ages. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I was actually starting to drift when my phone dinged.
11. In which Jordan experiences a persistent sense of foreboding.
In-season runners’ parties don’t tend to be all-night affairs. Tara and her crew departed en masse around eleven, and everyone was gone by midnight.
Everyone but Micah, I mean. My parents were out of the country. Micah was staying the night.
We were doing a little desultory cleaning—throwing away half-eaten food, emptying bottles, that sort of thing—when Micah stopped in the middle of clearing the coffee table in the sitting room and said, “Hey, Jordan?”
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