Like a man’s voice should sound, he thought.
Amy took a long, slow breath through her nose, as if trying to calm herself. It seemed to work. Her face smoothed out a bit. “Summer was fine,” she said. “Where are you living this year?”
Garrett ignored the question. “You look fantastic. Were you on the beach a lot in August?”
Amy’s expression warmed another half degree. “Um, sure. I mean, yes. A little.” She looked down. It was almost a shy gesture.
Garrett didn’t let her up for air. His offensive strategy seemed to be working. “Just a little? How come you’re glowing, then? You look like you just stepped out of a calendar shoot!” He touched her affectionately on the shoulder.
Was that going too far?
No, it wasn’t. Incredibly, she didn’t shrink away. In fact, Garrett thought she might have even edged closer. He gave her his warmest smile. “We should get some breakfast or something.” He congratulated himself on the delicate diplomacy of such an offer. Not dinner. Not even lunch. Breakfast. Anyone could have breakfast together. It meant nothing. Nothing.
She surprised him again by smiling back. “Sure,” she said. “What are you doing right now?”
Garrett lost his momentum briefly. This was not the response he had been expecting. His goal had been a smooth getaway, nothing more. He was good, but not this good.
Amy didn’t seem to mind the silence. She stood and looked at him. Then, inexplicably, she actually took a step toward him. Garrett was so surprised that he thought for a second she might have been hit by a gust of wind. But she didn’t try to step back. They were standing only inches from each other now. He studied her face, searching for a trap. Or maybe a joke.
No joke.
Garrett felt like laughing. Instead, he looked seriously at Amy and took her by the shoulders. “What about this?” he said quietly. “Why don’t you and I get to know each other a little better?” He managed to do and say these things without cracking even the smallest smile, and Amy let herself relax against him.
They kissed there on the path. Garrett wondered what would happen if Teresa were to happen along right then, and see her best friend sticking her tongue into her ex-boyfriend’s mouth. That would be interesting. But Teresa didn’t happen along.
After a while Garrett told Amy that he had to go, but that he would call her up later that afternoon. She looked up at him, and he sensed that he could have taken her behind a patch of bushes if he had suggested it. Just a couple feet away from the path.
I could take care of this in three minutes, tops.
“But I do need to go grab breakfast,” he said quickly.
And Allyson Morrone, he thought. She’s the one I really need to take care of, that’s the thing. And I’m not going to have any difficulty this time.
He walked away, heading for Taylor dining hall. Amy Till watched him go. She looked mildly disappointed. Mostly, though, she just looked smitten.
Life was smiling on Garrett Lemke.
Jason was finishing his story of the previous day’s events. Normally the task would have made him stumble over his words, especially considering the audience – two good-looking women, one of whom he was definitely starting to like – sitting right in front of him. But his new memory didn’t seem to be affected by nerves.
“After he gave Garrett and me the treatment,” Jason said, “Carlisle brought you two into the room. Then he hooked you both up, and that was it. Once we were all out of the chairs and back on our feet, he told us we should come back to see him tomorrow for a second interview and the start-up.”
Melissa frowned. “Start-up? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Who cares?” Lea said, suddenly sounding unhinged. “I’m done talking to that man. He should be in jail.”
Melissa shrugged. “I agree, but we still need to see him.” She tapped her nose delicately. “This thing is awfully sensitive. I don’t know about you two, but I’d like to get back to the way I was before. We should go see him right now.”
“Not an option,” Jason said. “He won’t be on campus today. Some conference or something. He said we shouldn’t even bother trying to find him before tomorrow.” He sighed and glanced at his watch. “Anyway, all of us have classes now.”
Lea looked stricken. “Class? I don’t know if I can.”
But Melissa was already nodding. “Yes, you can,” she said sternly. Her voice was clipped and cold. “This is your freshman year at Dartmouth College. Fall semester. Third day of classes. Don’t let some manipulative, bonehead professor throw you off-course.”
Jason and Lea were silent. They stared at Melissa, and her face reddened. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “That was for me, not you. It wasn’t easy for me to… to get here, you know? To get to Dartmouth, I mean.”
Lea nodded supportively. Her emotional hyper-sensitivity was getting stronger all the time, and Melissa’s distress was having a profound effect on her. “We’ll all go to classes,” Lea said. “One day is nothing. And then tomorrow Carlisle will fix us up. Things will go right back to normal.”
Melissa looked encouraged. “That’s right.”
“Back to normal,” Jason said, as if repeating the phrase would make it more likely.
“Can we meet back here this afternoon?” Melissa suggested.
Lea and Jason didn’t say anything. They had made eye-contact, and were now gazing at each other as if hypnotized.
Melissa threw her hands up. She walked over and punched Jason in the shoulder. Hard. He barely seemed to feel it, but it did wake him up.
“Um,” he said.
“We’ll meet here after classes,” Melissa repeated.
“Okay,” said Jason dreamily.
“Got it,” said Lea, barely controlling the goofy grin on her face. “Right here, this afternoon.”
“For crying out loud,” Melissa said. She took Jason firmly by the wrist and lead him out of the room, trying to hold her breath. At this range, the smell of boy – horny boy – was so strong that it almost obscured the reek of the garbage bin in the commons. She could feel herself starting to respond involuntarily, and she decided that it would not be safe for her to maintain this closeness. She let go of Jason’s wrist and pointed him towards his room. He thanked her and shuffled happily away, thoughts of Lea dancing in his head.
4
Professor Carlisle sat in his office at the medical center, biding his time. He was wondering about his four subjects’ progress so far. Despite what he had told them, he had not left campus for any conference. He wanted them to grapple with their new experiences for at least a day on their own – twenty-four hours was the minimum for a meaningful test run – so he had fed the hockey player a little lie about taking a day trip.
They would probably be upset at him by now.
Then again, they might not remember who was to blame, at least at first. If that turned out to be the case, the hockey player would be able to help them piece it together. And most of their hippocampus function would return after a few hours anyway. Not like Jason’s, of course, but enough to fill in the bigger gaps.
Carlisle could hardly wait to interview them tomorrow. He was so excited that he had almost stopped thinking about Kline’s unpleasant phone call that morning.
Almost.
He was still taking extra precautions. He locked doors behind him whenever possible, and he was very aware of anyone approaching him. Especially from behind.
Someone might come in my place, Kline had whispered.
5
On her way to art class, Melissa tried to prepare herself. She thought back to all the smells from Ms. Cooper’s room at Fitchburg High. The oils and the acrylics. The cotton canvases, the wooden easels, and the caustic, alkaline cleaning solutions.
The horsehair paint brushes.
She tried to imagine it all multiplied by a thousand, filling up her head like a dense, black smoke. If she thought about it enough, maybe she could avoid making a scene when she entered t
he classroom. It was difficult to concentrate as she walked, because the smell of car exhaust kept pushing every lucid thought from her brain. Almost as bad was the dog feces everywhere. The Dartmouth campus was always filled with happy dogs – faculty dogs, frat dogs, dorm dogs – but now it seemed to Melissa as though every one of them did nothing all day except poop and pee.
She hoped that her stomach would be strong enough to withstand the art department. It had been a stressful morning, and she needed to do some painting. Ms. Cooper would have understood.
The class started out well. Melissa arrived early enough to get a spot by the window, where the breeze could help dilute scents in the room. She would still have to deal with the stench of car engines and dog shit from outside, but she was becoming slowly accustomed to those things.
The real problem was the inside of the room.
The odor of art supplies was stronger than she had anticipated. The cloth canvases had a living, almost personal smell to them, as if each were a separate character. She had been prepared for the oil paints to be pungent, and they were. But the metal tubes they came in were more pungent, sharp and bitter in her nose, almost as if they were burning her. And the brushes – the supposedly horsehair brushes – were not horsehair at all, but donkey-hair.
She didn’t know exactly how she was able identify the smell of donkey, but there it was.
She smelled the first student coming before he had even arrived. Melissa tried to keep her nose pointed out the window, but this didn’t help much.
Male. Hasn’t showered since Sunday – Sunday! – and he didn’t brush his teeth when he woke up.
The boy took a seat at the other side of the room, and Melissa took a little breath of relief. She could handle him at that distance, even though he –
Two females. Shared the same eye shadow this morning. Ditto with the deodorant, although it’s not really working. And they just smoked up. They’re practically made of pot.
The hashish ladies sat down in the middle of the room, a little closer to her than the unwashed boy, and –
Girl. Bulimic, threw up a few minutes ago.
Two Boys. Obviously gay and dating, since their smells are all mixed around.
Girl. Boy. Two more girls. All of them filled with nothing but coffee and booze. It’s in their sweat. Profoundly hung-over.
Melissa bent down and tried to slow her breathing.
One more girl. Advanced case of athlete’s foot.
That was it. Melissa rose from her seat and went staggering out of the room, one hand over her mouth. The four students who smelled like hangovers watched her sympathetically, imagining that they knew how she felt.
Melissa lunged for the public bathroom in the main hallway, but this turned out to be a mistake. The bathroom had recently been used, and not kindly. Even as she dry-heaved into the sink, Melissa felt her body gearing up for a much stronger, deeper response. The industrial bleach used by the janitor wasn’t helping; it seemed to amplify the fecal rot.
Her stomach contracted powerfully, and bits of food she thought had been digested days ago found their way up her throat and into the sink. The veins at the side of her neck bulged. Her head throbbed. Tears of pressure poured from her eyes.
I wonder if this is what it’s like to be in labor.
She didn’t wait for the spasms to subside. Instead, she forced herself out of the bathroom, through the double doors at the stairwell, and straight outside, all while her stomach was still twisting itself like a towel on a ringer.
Several students running late for class saw a very tall, very beautiful, very sick-looking girl come stumbling out of the Farley Art Center. If they had not been so late already, they might have stopped to ask if she was okay.
It was good that they didn’t stop. In her weakened state, Melissa couldn’t have withstood the morning breath.
Lea’s English 5 class was in a large, dimly lit lecture hall. The space resembled Professor Carlisle’s Psych 10A auditorium, though it could not hold quite as many people. The smaller size was supposed to allow more questions and answers from the students. Lea chose a seat at the back. She hoped the shadows would hide her face. Like Melissa, she didn’t want to make a scene.
When the professor, Jane Wilkes, resumed the discussion of Othello from the day before, Lea felt herself tense up. Yesterday Professor Wilkes had seemed clear-spoken, energetic, and open-minded. But now, with Lea’s improved face-reading abilities, it was unpleasant to watch her. The cynicism in her demeanor was like a dark brown stain. “As we have seen,” Professor Wilkes said, “Shakespeare’s examination of love and its dark companion, jealousy, is a moving and painful work. It is, in every sense of the word, a tragedy.”
With this, at least, Lea could agree. She had read Othello twice already in high school, and it was still awful to watch the main character’s downfall. Even when you knew Othello was going to screw everything up, you still found yourself hoping that maybe, this time, he wouldn’t murder his own wife. And if Professor Wilkes had said the same thing yesterday, Lea would have nodded along. Maybe she would even have jotted a quick line on her notepad: “tragedy.”
But today things were different. Today it was obvious that Professor Wilkes was nothing but a con artist. Lea squinted and leaned forward, watching the professor closely. Was she seeing this right?
Absolutely. Look there, at the lines around her mouth. And the tightness in her neck. The teacher was practically laughing. She was a picture of badly-concealed cynicism. Professor Wilkes, Lea realized, thought Othello was nothing but a hack-job. A piece of middle-millennium pulp. She half expected the teacher to stop in the middle of her lecture, hock back, and spit a glob of phlegm into the first row of seats.
Very slowly, Lea reached into her backpack and brought out a pair of earphones. After putting them gently over her head, she felt around in the bag for the play button on her iPod.
She sat there for a minute, and then reached in again. She turned the volume way up, to drown out the professor’s voice, and she closed her eyes.
Better.
Jason was having a wonderful time in Calculus. In fact, he thought it was the best class he had ever attended. Right up to the minute when the teacher threw him out of the lecture hall.
Professor Braden started the lesson by going through a quick review of the concepts from the previous class. Most of it was limits stuff, and Jason now felt supremely confident with limits. Lea had explained the material clearly to him, and he could remember every word she had said or written on the board. He could also remember everything Braden had written – it was no different than reviewing a video tape in his head – but he preferred to remember Lea’s explanations whenever possible.
The mental tapes with Lea in them were more fun to review. They were prettier.
Professor Braden paused for questions. Just for the hell of it, Jason put up his hand. Braden looked surprised. “Yes?”
“The second example, there, for finding limits by factoring?”
“Go on.”
Jason smiled. “Wouldn’t it be more helpful to give an example in which the answer could not be found using simple division?” Oh, that was good, Jason thought. It came out sounding just the way Lea had said it. Maybe even better.
“What did you have in mind, Mr. – ?”
“Bell,” Jason said quickly. “I don’t know, maybe something that would lead to a zero in the denominator without factoring.” He tried to sound as if he were coming up with the information on the fly. “For example, you could try the limit as X approaches three of X minus three over X squared minus nine.”
Professor Braden gave him a strange look. Then he turned to the board and began writing. “That sounds fine, Mr. Bell. I’ll put your example up as well. Thank you.”
Jason sat back and tried not to look too smug. “No problem.”
After a few minutes of review, Braden moved on to a discussion of the projects that they would be working on. “You may work in groups if you wa
nt,” he said. “But each member of the group will need to turn in his or her own report. The written product from each student must be no less than six pages, double-spaced, with a full explanation of the concept being explored.”
The class groaned.
Jason couldn’t resist. “Professor, I think you said five pages yesterday.” And I don’t think. I know.
Braden turned to him. “Excuse me?” He sounded annoyed, but Jason didn’t back off. He felt his heart rate going up, and he liked the sensation. It reminded him of being back on the ice in Ledyard arena. “Yesterday it was five,” Jason said again. “Ask the other students if you don’t believe me. You changed the page count.” He could already see people nodding around him.
Braden’s eyes narrowed. “Did I? Well today it’s six pages. Tomorrow it might be seven. Comments?”
Jason shrugged.
Not if you’re going to get all uppity, he thought.
“STOP BEING SO RUDE!”
His mother. Her voice almost knocked Jason out of his seat. He turned around to look, even though he knew he wouldn’t see her. Still, you could never tell. Cynthia Bell might have decided to drop in on her son’s math class. Just to make sure he was getting enough playing time. Or board time. Or whatever kind of time you were supposed to get in a calculus lecture. Coach Dixon, Professor Braden; they were all the same. None of them gave her son the credit he deserved.
But of course she wasn’t there. Jason shrank down in his seat and closed his eyes. The mental tape had switched over for some reason. Instead of Lea’s supportive voice, now his mother’s shriek was stuck in his head. “MY SON IS A HOCKEY PLAYER!” she yelled. It was the scene from the hospital room. She was barking at the doctor. “HE CAN’T LEARN NEW THINGS! NOT ANYMORE!”
“Quiet,” Jason whispered. He put his hands over his ears.
“WHAT ABOUT YOUR NHL CAREER?” Now she was on the phone with him, trying to convince him to see the doctor in Connecticut.
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