Free to Fall

13

“TOMORROW, THEN,” Liam said, his voice at my shoulder.

I kept my eyes on my tablet. It was the night before day two of fall midterms, and the library’s central reading room was packed. I’d deliberately chosen a corner table so I could be alone, but the water polo team had claimed the one behind me, and Liam’s seat backed up to mine. Right now he was tilted back in his chair, balancing on two legs as he twirled a stylus with his fingers. He’d asked me out at least twenty times in the past month, and each time I’d politely turned him down. If he were anyone else, I would’ve told him straight out to stop asking, but he was a society member and I didn’t know how much sway he had over tap decisions. I was pretty sure that made me gross and calculating, but I wasn’t about to let Liam keep me from getting in. I’d gotten eight more word puzzle texts, the most recent just the night before, and I’d solved all eight.

“Rory.” I could hear him smiling. “I’m willing to beg.”

“I can’t tomorrow,” I said.

“Saturday, then.”

“Let’s talk about it after midterms,” I said. It would be so much easier if he’d just get the picture here and let it go. But for some reason he seemed determined that we date.

I contemplated moving to the stacks, but I’d come without a jacket and it was freezing out, which meant the stacks would be an icebox. The crackle from the fireplace in the center of the reading room made it cozy, and the coziness was calming. Calming was good, since I was hovering on the brink of a major panic attack about our second day of exams. Day one was the left-brain subjects—calculus, comp sci, and Chinese. Tomorrow would be a thousand times worse: lit, history, cog psych, and the test I was dreading the most, our practicum performance exam. There was no way to prepare for it, which had me unhinged. I had no idea what to expect. No one did. The exam changed dramatically from year to year, so the second-years weren’t any help either.

One of Liam’s water polo buddies whispered something that the others found hilarious, and the table erupted into laughter. They were amped up on caffeine and sugar and getting more and more boisterous, and I was getting more and more nervous that I wasn’t prepared for the next day’s tests. I’d spent the past fourteen nights in the library, not leaving until well after midnight, despite Lux’s insistence that I needed at least eight hours of sleep.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Izzy enter the reading room and scan the tables for somewhere to sit. A few seconds later she was heading toward me. Quickly, I started packing up my things. I’d studied with her a few times over the past couple of weeks, and every time we’d talked more than we’d worked.

“Oh, no, you’re leaving already?”

I jumped just a little, as if she’d surprised me. I hated faking it, but our midterm scores were a huge part of our grade and if I wanted to do well, I couldn’t spend the rest of the night chatting about movies or makeup or the caloric value of the vending machine granola bars.

“Hey!” I said. “Yeah, Hershey and I are going to study together back in the room.” Internally, I winced. This wasn’t even remotely true. Hershey and I hadn’t ever studied together, and we certainly didn’t have plans to do it that night. As if it would mitigate the lie, I tacked on something true. “She hates the library.”

“Hershey studies?” Liam piped up. His teammates snickered.

“See you guys later,” I said, and walked out.

It was freezing outside and it was starting to sprinkle. I sprinted to the dorms, raindrops stinging my face, and was heaving by the time I got to our room. Hershey was at her desk, hunched over her tablet. I assumed she was studying, until I heard her sob.

“Hershey?” She didn’t react. I wondered if she’d even heard me. I dropped my bag onto my bed and moved toward her. She was really crying, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. I touched her shoulder and she looked up. Her face was puffy and red. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m going to fail,” she said, sobbing. Her voice was hoarse and raw. “Today was a disaster, and tomorrow—I haven’t even been doing the reading, Rory. Not at all. I thought—God, I don’t know what I thought. That I could just float by, the way I always have, I guess.” She shook her head.

“You’re not going to fail,” I said lamely, because that’s what friends say, and because that’s what we were, as complicated as our relationship had become.

“You think I deserve it,” she said then. Her eyes welled up with fresh tears. “My grandmother will hate me,” she whispered. “My parents. Oh God, my parents.” She pressed her palms to her face and said something else, but her words weren’t intelligible.

Help her.

Ever since finding out about my mom’s illness, I’d been stressing about hearing the Doubt again, afraid of what it would mean for me. Now it had spoken and I wasn’t scared of anything. I was pissed off. I’d already decided to help Hershey half a second before the voice spoke. Now if I did it, I’d be listening to the Doubt.

I looked at Hershey. She was five inches taller than I was, but she looked so small sitting there, her shoulders hunched and shaking.

This isn’t about you, I snapped at the voice, as if it could hear me, then I put my hand on Hershey’s arm.

“I’ll help you study,” I said. My roommate dropped her hands and looked at me, blinking her swollen eyes in surprise.

“What about your exams?”

Hershey and I were on alternate schedules, which meant her second-day tests were the ones I’d already taken. Not a single subject overlapped.

I shrugged. “I’ll be fine,” I said, and tried to believe it. Yes, Hershey had gotten herself into this, and maybe she did deserve it, but I couldn’t let her fail out.

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Thank you,” she said. Her eyes were glossy with gratitude and hope.

We started with comp sci, Hershey’s strong suit, and then moved to calc, mine. She was as unprepared as she said, but was a fast learner and grasped concepts quickly. Still, there was a lot of material to cover, and as the night drew on, we both began to drag.

At 3:30, we went down to the common room for vending machine coffee. Liam was there, practicing for his history oral exam. I angled my body away from him, keeping my eyes on my screen as I launched Lux. I changed my projected bedtime from midnight to four o’clock tomorrow afternoon, selected the “energy” and “stamina” filters, and then touched my sensor to the vending machine. A paper cup dropped down, followed by a stream of steaming black liquid.

“What’d you get?” Hershey asked.

“No idea,” I replied, lifting the cup from the tray. “I let Lux decide.” I took a sip. It was thick and strong. “A red-eye, tastes like. With stevia instead of sugar.”

“Done.” Hershey typed in her order then touched her Gemini to the vending machine. A second cup dropped down. I kept my back to Liam as we waited for the cup to fill.

I saw her eyes flick from me to him. “Did something happen between you guys?” she asked. “You cooled on him pretty quickly after your big date.”

“Liam and I are fine,” I insisted. “We’re just better as friends.”

“If you say so,” she said, reaching for her coffee. “I still think there’s something you’re not telling me.” My cheeks burned as the image of Hershey’s dress slung over North’s couch popped into my mind. Yes, there was something I wasn’t telling her, but it had nothing to do with Liam.

“We should get back to studying.” I picked up a lid for my cup and turned toward the door.

“Hey, Rory?”

“Hm?” I turned back around.

Hershey was looking down at her cup, her eyes hidden by a wall of dark hair. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Helping me.”

I answered instinctively. “Because you’re my friend.”

Hershey grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Her voice broke as she whispered something in reply. It was too quiet for me to make out, and I didn’t want to ask her to repeat it. But I kept replaying the moment as we ran through calc problems and her Chinese vocab list. It sounded like I’m sorry.

We didn’t sleep. At seven in the morning we were still at it, but I could tell that Hershey was no longer panicking. She was ready. Maybe not for an A+ performance, but she’d pass. I, on the other hand, was screwed. It wasn’t like I hadn’t studied for my day-two exams at all, but I’d been relying on a final night-before push. Not to mention a solid six hours of sleep. Now here I was, an hour before my first test, queasy from the late-night coffee and so tired that my eyes felt like I’d soaked them in bleach and hung them in the desert to dry. I would’ve cried had I not been too dehydrated to produce tears.

I showered and put on a sweaterdress, hoping the outfit would perk me up a little, but I didn’t have the energy to dry my hair, so I twisted it into a knot and clipped it. Hershey was humming as she brushed her cheeks with bronzer, the bags under her eyes hidden behind concealer.

“I’m almost ready,” she said, catching my eyes in the mirror. “Want to grab a quick breakfast?” I knew food was a good idea, but I couldn’t imagine actually consuming it. My stomach was fizzy and sour, and the last thing I wanted to do right then was put something in it.

“I think I’ll wait,” I told her. “Get something after my practicum exam.” Which starts in twenty-two minutes, my mind was screaming. I slung my bag over my shoulder and started for the door.

“Just so you know,” Hershey said behind me. “I know why you really helped me.”

I turned back around. “What?”

“It was the Doubt.” Her voice was soft, but it echoed like a scream.

My brain stalled. How could she possibly know? My next thought was more practical. Don’t get defensive.

“The Doubt?” I said with what I hoped was a quizzical smile. The effort hurt my face. “You think I hear the Doubt?”

“Well, I know your mom did,” she replied, sounding very sure.

I took a step back. “Excuse me?”

“I know your mom heard the Doubt.”

I stared at her. “Who told you that?”

“No one,” she said quickly. “I just figured it out.” She’s lying shot through my head. There’s no way she could’ve known about my mom. So who told her? Who else knew?

She seemed self-conscious now, as if this moment wasn’t unfolding the way she played it out in her head. Then again Hershey wasn’t exactly the type to think this sort of thing through before launching into it. “I mean, I’m not going to tell anyone—”

“I can’t talk about this right now,” I told her, turning away. “I have to go. Good luck on your tests.”

I pulled our door open and stepped into the hall, letting the old mahogany door shut behind me. Just before it closed, I glanced back and caught Hershey’s eye. “I don’t hear it,” I said, as convincingly as I could. The door closed before she could reply, but she didn’t need to. I could tell from her face that she didn’t believe me.