Free to Fall

20

IN THE END, we went to the student health center. I told North I was fine to go alone, but he just rolled his eyes at me and put on his coat.

The waiting room was empty. “Looks like someone has the flu,” the nurse at the check-in station said as we came through the automatic door, making a little tsk sound with her tongue.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You have that hit-by-a-truck look about you,” she replied. “You a student?” I nodded. “Tap your handheld there,” she instructed, pointing at a sensor on the desk. As I did, a new text appeared on my screen.

“Have a seat in the waiting room,” the nurse said.

“Mm-hm,” I murmured, eyes on my screen.

I am the beginning of every end,

and the end of time and space.

I am essential to creation,

and I surround every place.

What am I?

It was a riddle, and I read it again as I shuffled into the waiting room where North was swiping through an issue of Wired on one of the health center’s mounted tablets.

“Everything okay?” I heard him ask.

“Mm-hm.” I sat on the edge of the seat next to him and read it a third time. I am the beginning of every end, and the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead. I had nothing.

“It has to be an element,” I murmured. “Air, is it air? But how is air the beginning of every end? God. It’s God. It has to be God.”

“Rory, what are you talking about?” I looked over at North. He was staring at me. “You’re babbling.”

“I’m trying to solve a riddle.”

“A riddle?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Just because.”

“Okay. Well, what’s the riddle?”

“I don’t think I can tell you. That would be cheating.” It struck me that I hadn’t been given any rules for this exercise. Maybe it was perfectly acceptable to ask someone else or GoSearch for the answers to these things. But somehow I doubted it. Something I didn’t doubt was that the society would know, either way.

“Cheating? Is this a graded thing?”

“Sort of,” I said. Which was sort of true. “It’s for a club I’m trying to get into. An extracurricular thing.”

“What kind of club?”

“It’s just a club, okay?” I snapped. “And I have to solve this riddle to get in, so please just let me think.” I pulled my handheld back out, hoping that maybe the words themselves would give me a clue. “I think it’s God,” I said again, trying to convince myself that I could be right. But the beginning of every end part didn’t seem right.

North leaned over to look at my screen. “It’s the letter e.” He settled back into his seat, looking smug. “Think they’ll let me into their club?” I reread the riddle. He was right.

I quickly typed the answer and hit send. My whole body relaxed when I got the standard response. I leaned my head back against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. Every part of me ached.

“Why do you want to be in this club so badly?” I heard North ask.

“My mom was in it,” I said.

“Aurora Vaughn?” a nurse called.

“I’ll be here when you get out,” North said as I got to my feet.

“You really don’t have to stay.”

“Uh-huh. See you when you’re done.”

As I waited for the doctor, I pulled up the snapshot I’d taken of my mom the night of the Masquerade Ball. I hadn’t looked at it since. I stared at her eyes, nearly black in this photograph, as if they held the answers I needed. Who had Aviana Jacobs been?

I was still looking at my screen when the exam room door opened.

“Hello,” I heard the doctor say as I started to put my phone away. Just then, my eyes caught something I hadn’t noticed before at the very edge of the frame.

My mom was holding someone’s hand.

“I’m Doctor Ryland. What brings you to—?”

“Hold on a sec,” I said, cutting him off as I zoomed in closer on the photo. It was a boy’s hand that held my mom’s, and he was wearing a ring I’d seen once before. Four symbols engraved in silver. All of a sudden I remembered who’d been standing next to her in that photo.

Griffin Payne. The Griffin Payne. CEO of Gnosis Griffin Payne.

Holy. Shit.

Shaking, I went to GoSearch and typed out his name and added “at 18.” Griffin’s senior photo popped up on my screen. I stared at him, at the boy he’d been. The aqua-blue eyes. The wavy mahogany hair. The decisive cleft in his chin. Features I saw every morning in the mirror.

It was all the proof I needed. In that instant, I just knew.

Griffin Payne was my father.

I pressed my head against the seat back, feeling light-headed.

“Are you all right?” the doctor asked.

I jumped a little. I’d forgotten he was there. “No,” I said simply. I was definitely not all right.

“I need your help,” I told North when I returned to the waiting room twenty minutes later. He stood to greet me, holding my coat awkwardly in his arms.

“Okay,” he said. “What’d the doctor say?”

“Flu.” I handed him the bag of antivirals the nurse had given me and I took my coat. “I need access to Griffin Payne.”

“Uh, okay. And by access, you mean . . . ?”

“I need to talk to him. Alone.”

North reached forward and put his hand on my forehead.

“I don’t have a fever anymore,” I snapped, pulling away from him. “They gave me aspirin to bring it down.”

“You need to talk to Griffin Payne,” North repeated. “Alone.”

“Yes.” I zipped up my coat. “In person.”

“You do realize this is Griffin Payne you’re talking about. You’d have a better chance of meeting the president.”

“I’ve met him already. At a Theden event. He’s nice.” I walked past North toward the automatic exit. Outside, the clouds hung low in the night sky, giving off an eerie green glow.

“I’m sure he’s lovely,” North said, following me out. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll take a meeting with a high school girl.”

I stopped at the curb, letting North catch up. The sidewalk was deserted. When he reached me, he stepped down off the curb so we were eye level. “Rory, what’s this about? You go in to see the doctor and you come out saying you need an in-person meeting with the CEO of the biggest tech company in the world.”

“He’s my father,” I said quietly. North’s face registered the shock I felt.

“I don’t understand,” North said. “Since when?”

“Since he and my mom had sex seventeen years ago, I guess.” My voice was terse. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m just—still processing it.”

“But how’d you find out? I mean, you grew up with a dad, right? I’ve heard you talk about him.”

I nodded, and took a shaky breath. “I found my mom’s medical file in the Department of Public Heath’s database about a month ago, when I was working on a research paper for my cog psych class. Last night I went back through it. Turns out I was born almost a month past my due date, not three weeks before it like I always thought, which means my mom was pregnant when she left Theden.”

“The blood type thing,” North said. “You think that means your dad isn’t your dad.”

“Not think. Know.” My voice trembled. I would not cry. “There was an ultrasound photo in my mom’s file. She was A positive and I’m AB negative. My dad—the man I thought was my dad—is A positive too.”

North exhaled. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t know how,” I admitted. “It’s a kind of heavy thing to lay on someone you barely know.”

“You more than barely know me, Rory,” North said, taking my hands in his. “And I can handle heavy.”

I just nodded, not trusting myself to speak. “So what makes you think Griffin Payne is your real father?” North asked.

“She’s holding his hand. In their class photo. She’s holding Griffin’s hand.”

“That hardly means—”

“Look at him,” I said, shoving my phone into North’s face. Griffin’s senior photo was still on my screen. “Then look at me.”

“There’s a resemblance,” North allowed. “There totally is.” He exhaled, running his hands back and forth along the sides of his Mohawk. “Wow.”

We were both quiet for a moment. “Well, then I take back what I said earlier,” North said finally. “It’ll be easy to get in to see him. Just tell him who you are.”

“I can’t,” I said. “If I want to know what really happened seventeen years ago, he can’t see it coming. I don’t want to give him the chance to lie to me.”

“You assume he’s going to?”

“I don’t want to take any chances. It has to be in person,” I said firmly. “And it has to be a surprise. I want to be able to see his face.”

“You think he’s the reason your mom dropped out of school?”

“She didn’t drop out,” I reminded him. “She was expelled.”

“Could the pregnancy have had something to do with why?”

“Maybe. But there was no record of her being pregnant in her medical file. No test results, no mention of a baby in any of her psych reports. If she knew she was pregnant, she didn’t tell her doctor.”

“Can you show me the file?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have access to it anymore. I have only a photo of the final page.”

“I’ll see if I can get it,” North said. “You know your mom’s social security number, right?”

“Yeah, but her file was deleted from the system. You won’t be able to find it.”

“Au contraire,” replied North. “Deleted files are even easier to get. Before they’re permanently removed from a server, they’re almost always put in these little holding bins for a few weeks. It’s a stopgap for accidental deletions. Because the bins are hidden from users, companies think they don’t need to protect them.”

“Can we do it now?” I asked him.

“Sure. It might take me a couple of hours, but you’re welcome to hang out. Stay over, even.” His eyes twinkled. “So I can play doctor.”

“I can’t stay over,” I said, though his place was the only place I wanted to be. “I should probably just go back to the dorms now,” I said reluctantly. “Weeknight curfew is at ten.” Now that I knew exactly what Tarsus was capable of, I had to be a model student. “Can I come by tomorrow?”

“Of course,” North said. “I’m working the early shift, so stop by the café first. But give me your mom’s full name and social security number, and I’ll see what I can find tonight.”

I caught his hand and laced my fingers through his. “Thank you.”

He brought my hand to his lips and kissed the tips of my fingers. “It’s going to be okay. You know that, right? You’ll figure all this out.”

“Yeah.” My vision blurred as the tears I’d been holding back spilled over. I blinked, but it was too late. They were dripping down my cheeks. “Damn it,” I muttered. So much for my resolution not to cry. I swatted at my eyes.

North lifted my chin with his finger, all the confidence I didn’t have bright in his eyes, and then, even though I was probably wildly contagious and smelled like a hospital and hadn’t brushed my teeth in twelve hours, he kissed me and for a moment I forgot everything but what it felt like not to be alone.