Free to Fall

22

“WHAT IF SOMEONE ASKS HOW WE GOT INVITED?”

“No one’s going to ask,” North said. “It’s a huge ballroom. We’ll blend.” I caught sight of my reflection in the tinted windows of the train and almost didn’t recognize myself. Noelle, the girl at the computer repair shop, had loaned me her homecoming dress, a calf-length black bustier that was in no way high school dance appropriate, and Kate had done my makeup, hiding the constellation of dark freckles across my nose under spray foundation and lining my eyes in charcoal shadow. My hair I’d done myself, preferring to have it loose and wavy around my face in case I needed to hide behind it.

North was even more incognito. His Mohawk was combed down flat and his tattoos were hidden under the sleeves of a gray herringbone jacket. Between the suit and his tortoise-shell Wayfarers and the Bluetooth earbud clipped to his ear, he looked like a prep school kid on his way to a party. Precisely the part he was playing tonight.

He was on his handheld now, checking our progress on his map. It was going to be tight; we had to get to Boston, to the party, somehow get Griffin alone, then get back to the train and to campus before the library closed at midnight. I’d left my Gemini there, hidden in the stacks, with location services turned on. North had created a program that would auto-post status updates twice in the six-plus hours we’d be gone, in case anyone was looking for me. It wouldn’t do me much good if anyone actually came to the library to find me, but it’d keep me off the radar as long as no one did. Theden’s rules about leaving campus were lenient, as long as you stayed close by. We weren’t allowed to go outside a five-mile radius of the campus gates without written permission from the Dean. If I got caught tonight, I’d be expelled.

To calm the cyclone in my stomach, I watched North, memorizing every detail of his face. Even in the train’s harsh fluorescent light, he was handsome. Classically handsome, I saw now. His skin was cinnamon colored and the corners of his eyes were angled down, but his nose was straight and his jaw was strong and the whole of his face came together with beautiful symmetry.

He turned and caught me looking at him.

“You look really pretty,” he said, touching the tip of my nose with his finger. “But I miss your freckles.” I tilted my head back and kissed his palm. His finger slid down my neck, tracing the contours of my collarbone toward my right shoulder. He hooked the thin strap of my dress, lifting it a millimeter before skimming over it and down my arm. My skin crackled with heat.

“You don’t look bad yourself,” I said, my voice airy. I could still feel the path his finger had made, and it wasn’t hard to imagine him tugging my straps down, unzipping the back of my dress. I’d kissed only one boy before North, and now I was picturing myself topless with him. I suspected both Lux and the voice in my head would reel this one in, but I wasn’t consulting either of them right now. I gripped the edge of my plastic chair and reminded myself where thoughts like that had gotten my mom.

“So there’s a nine-fifteen and a ten-oh-five train back,” North was saying. “If we take the later one, we won’t get into the Theden station until eleven fifty.”

“That’s not enough time,” I said, although the truth was I had no idea if ten minutes was enough time to get from Theden Central Station back to campus on North’s motorbike. Using Lux for so many years had completely destroyed my ability to assess travel times. Lux told me when to leave, which way to go, and what time it would be when I arrived. How little attention I’d paid to the details, trusting Lux to get me wherever I needed to go. And invariably, it had.

“It’ll be tight,” North said, “but if we have to, we can make it. Still, we should aim for the nine-fifteen.” He glanced back at his handheld. “We’re the next stop.”

My heart started drumming in my chest. Oddly, I was more worried about getting into the party than I was about confronting its famous host. I wasn’t expecting the ambush to go well, necessarily, but I knew he’d at least believe I was who I said I was. Even dressed like this, with all the makeup, I bore an uncanny resemblance to my mom.

“You ready for this?” North asked as the train pulled into Back Bay Station. I nodded. I had to be. And with North by my side, maybe I was. He slipped his hand in mine as we made our way onto the platform and through the building to the taxi stand outside.

“Copley Square,” North told the cab driver. “The Boston Public Library.” The man grunted and we were off. The station was only half a mile from the library where the party was being held. Walkable if I hadn’t been wearing three-inch heels. So the cab ride didn’t give me much time to collect myself. Two minutes after getting in, it was time to get out.

We’d pulled up in front of a massive stone building with arched windows that occupied an entire city block. It looked more like a palace than a library, and nothing like Seattle’s glass and metal Central Library back home. It didn’t hurt that it was lit up like a castle, with warm, yellow spotlights illuminating its stone face. Above the lights and the row of arched windows was the word GOLD projected in 3D. There was a red carpet on the front steps and a velvet rope and throngs of photographers hovering on the plaza out front. This was an odd place, as it were, for a tech launch party, considering Gnosis had made public libraries irrelevant when it started offering e-books to borrow for free. None of the old buildings even housed books anymore—not paper ones, anyway. They were basically just big tablet terminals, with rows and rows of desks with screens built in, and public media rooms where you could surf the Web and watch TV.

With shaky hands, I pushed open the taxi’s door and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Here,” North said in a low voice, pulling a second handheld from his pocket and slipping it into the small purse on my arm. “When they scan it at the door, it’ll pull up the name I added to the guest list. Jessica Sizemore. She’s an undergrad at Harvard. Her dad’s a shareholder.”

“What if she shows up?” I hissed. We were approaching the edge of the crowd waiting to get in.

“She won’t. She RSVPed no the day after invitations went out, and according to Forum, she’s still on campus right now.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “Just act natural. Once we’re inside, it won’t matter.”

I leaned against his shoulder and tried to relax. We blended in easily with the well-dressed twenty-somethings milling around us, immersed in their screens as they waited to get in.

The girl taking tickets smiled as we stepped up to the red carpet. “Welcome to the future,” she said, reaching for our handhelds. I held my breath as she scanned them. “Enjoy the party, guys.” She handed them back to us and lifted the velvet rope.

We were in.

The main event was in the open-air courtyard in the center of the building, which Gnosis had transformed into a metallic garden. The fountain in the center was lit up from under the surface of the water and seemed to be pouring liquid gold. Servers in black ties were circling with shiny gold trays of champagne, and there were tiny gold Gs projected on the stone walls all around us. There were high tables constructed out of shiny gold Legos and standing chandeliers made of bright gold coins. “Wow,” I breathed, taking it in.

North grabbed two flutes of champagne off a server’s tray and handed me one. “Props,” he said. The next server had some sort of ahi tuna cupcake with avocado “icing.” I reached for one.

“Snacks,” I said, biting into it. “Ohmygod, this is amazing. You have to try one.”

“Focus, Jessica Sizemore, focus. We’ve got an hour to find your father.” But before the server stepped away, North grabbed a tuna cupcake and popped the whole thing in his mouth.

Now that we were on the other side of the velvet rope, I was calmer. No one was paying any attention to us, and it was easy to move along the periphery of the party, along the walkway that encased the courtyard, subtly scanning the crowd for Griffin. As we made our way along the eastern wall, walking slowly so as not to draw any attention, I let myself pretend for a second that we hadn’t snuck into this party, that we’d been invited like everyone else. It struck me that it probably wasn’t a far-off fantasy. Not anymore. This was the kind of stuff that came with a Theden diploma. Parties like these, people like this. If I stayed on track, I wouldn’t have to lie my way into these places. I’d belong.

I was between North and the wall as we rounded the corner at the southeast end of the courtyard and saw her. A beautiful black woman in a winter white pantsuit standing by the fountain. There was no one between us. If she turned just slightly to her left and looked up, she’d see me.

North heard me gasp.

“What is it?” he asked in a low voice, inclining his face toward mine.

“Kiss me,” I whispered. “Right now.”

I didn’t have to ask twice. His hands came to my hips as he pushed me gently against the wall, the edge of my crystal flute clinking against its polished surface. I wrapped my free arm around his neck, pressing my body into his as if I could disappear against him, closing my eyes as his lips touched mine. Had she seen me? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. North’s elbows were on the wall now, one on either side of my face, somehow holding his champagne glass without spilling it as he kissed me. For a second I got lost in the sensation, thinking nothing and feeling everything, from the flutter in my chest to the static in my stomach to the tingle in my tongue every time it touched the tip of his. But then Tarsus’s face came slamming back into my brain and my whole body tensed up. North felt it and pulled back.

“I sense that kiss served a purpose beyond the fulfillment of about five of my fantasies,” he said, his face still inches off mine.

“She’s here,” I whispered. “Dr. Tarsus.”

“Shit. Did she see you?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “You hid me.” My arms were still around his neck, so I traced his earlobe with my thumb, careful to keep my body behind his as I shimmied along the wall behind a column.

“Where is she now?” He leaned ever so slightly to the left, as if he was nuzzling my neck, so I could scan the courtyard. A crowd of newcomers had arrived, and they stood between us and the fountain, blocking our view.

“I don’t see her anymore,” I said. “She was by the fountain.”

“What is she doing here?”

“No idea. Gnosis is a big funding source for Theden—maybe that’s the connection?” Still, it was odd to see her here, at a trendy tech launch party. Odd, and very unlucky for us.

“Do you want to leave?”

“No,” I told him. “This is our best shot at getting to Griffin. We’ve gotten this close—I can’t give up now. We’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t see us.” I felt a boldness in my chest. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but not an unpleasant one. I wasn’t used to being so sure about things. Not without Lux calling the shots, anyway.

North slipped his hand in mind. “If that happens to require a few more of those kisses, I suppose I could oblige.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve still got an hour until Griffin’s speech, so he’s probably in the crowd somewhere. Assuming we can find him, the trick will be getting him alone.”

“Not once he sees me,” I said, confident in that.

It was even easier than I hoped. As we were making our way through the crowd, my head angled down to avoid being spotted, we passed right by Griffin, who was talking to a group of women in expensive cocktail dresses. North elbowed me, I lifted my head, and there he was, two feet away from me, looking like he’d been airbrushed into the room. The first thought that popped into my head was How did the offspring of two gorgeous people end up looking like me? The second was He is smiling, but his eyes are sad.

I opened my mouth to say something but didn’t have to. Griffin was already staring at me, his mouth slightly ajar. “Excuse me,” he said to the women, cutting one of them off, his eyes still on me. He stepped through them as if they weren’t there. They swiveled their heads to look at me.

“I think you knew my mother,” I said lamely. “Av—”

“You’re her daughter,” he said, then made a sound that was like a laugh but coarser. “Of course. For a second, I thought— But of course you couldn’t be.” His eyes lifted to look past me then fell back to my own. “Is—Is your mother here?” There was such unbridled hope in his voice that my own caught in my throat. I just shook my head.

“Rory needs to talk to you,” North said then. Griffin looked over at North as if seeing him for the first time. North offered his hand. “Gavin West,” North said, giving him his cover name. We’d agreed I wouldn’t use mine.

Griffin shook it, but his eyes were back on me. His smile was kind, but his eyes were even sadder now, almost wistful. “Rory. Have we met before? I know I’d remember your face, but your voice—it’s familiar. And your name.”

“We met at the Theden Masquerade Ball,” I told him. “On the balcony.”

“You were the girl in the peacock mask,” Griffin said, and I nodded. “Well, it’s nice to meet you again, Rory.”

“You too,” I said. My nerves made it difficult to smile. Griffin seemed to notice. He glanced at North then back at me.

“It’s quieter inside,” he said then. “How about we talk there?”

We followed him through a side door and into the library’s small café. The chairs were stacked on the tables and there was a sign blocking the entrance, but Griffin stepped past it and took down two chairs.

“I’ll wait over there,” North said, pointing to a bench by the stairs.

I nodded and looked at Griffin. His face was half curiosity and half confusion. I needed to say something before his guard came up. Please don’t let me screw this up, I prayed. I didn’t want to ambush him with what I knew, not if I wanted the truth, but I didn’t have time to skate around it either. His keynote was scheduled for eight o’clock, and it was already seven twenty-five.

“Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,” I began. “I—I have a lot of questions, and no one to answer them.”

“Your mom,” Griffin said then. “Something happened to her, didn’t it.” His voice didn’t go up at the end because it wasn’t a question.

I nodded slightly. “She died right when I was born.”

He buried his face in his hands for a second, and when he dropped them back to his sides, he looked his age for the first time. There were lines extending like sunbeams from the outer corners of his eyes. It was ironic, smile lines beside sad eyes.

“And your dad?”

I eyed him. Was he trying to see what I knew, or could he honestly not know that I was his child? “My dad?”

“Yeah. I mean, you know, is he in the picture? Is he around?” Griffin looked uncomfortable, like we’d crossed into unpleasant territory.

“I’ve never met my father.”

This didn’t seem to surprise Griffin, and in fact, something like relief flashed in his eyes. So he did know. He was trying to see if I did. I gritted my teeth. It wouldn’t help me to get angry with him. Putting him on the defensive was the quickest way to shut this down.

I kept my voice casual. “I know you have a speech to give and all, so I won’t take up too much of your time, but I was just hoping you could tell me what happened between you and my mom.”

Griffin sighed. “I haven’t talked about your mom in fifteen years.” He tugged at his tie. “No, longer. Not since she left.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out his handheld. It was shiny and metallic and the size of a matchbox. The Gemini Gold. He tapped his screen and it lit up. It was 7:35. “I have to be in the prep room at quarter till. This isn’t a ten-minute story, but I’ll try to make it one.” He snapped his Gold into the metal band on his wrist and ran his hands through his hair. It was the exact shade of mine, so dark brown it looked black, but straight where mine was wavy. Unlike my dad’s, whose straw-colored hair was flecked with silver, Griffin’s showed no hint of gray.

“Your mom and I met our first year at Theden,” he began, his eyes brightening for the first time all night. “I fell for her the very first time we spoke—we were in practicum together, and she sat next to me on the first day. There weren’t pods back then, just desks with laptop docking stations, and she couldn’t get hers to turn on. Our teacher was this horrible, crotchety old man—Mr. Siegler—and Aviana was terrified he’d yell at her if she asked him for help. So I helped her, and in the span of about five seconds fell madly in love.”

My heart turned over in my chest. It was easy to imagine that moment, my mom flustered and nervous the way I’d been on my first day, Griffin all confidence and charm. It was the beginning of something, something that could’ve gone a thousand different ways, with a thousand happily-ever-afters. Yet here we were.

“I never imagined I had a shot with her,” Griffin continued. “She was totally out of my league. I, meanwhile, didn’t even have the IQ to be at Theden. My family had to pull strings to get me in.” His eyes clouded over. “My parents never liked Aviana,” he explained. “My stepfather hated her.”

“Why?”

“She was . . . different. She didn’t play the game the way everyone else did.”

“The game?”

“The ambition climb,” replied Griffin. “I’m sure it’s the same now as it was back then. All that drive and competition, the fight for top grades. Aviana didn’t care about any of that. And yet, she was our valedictorian.”

“I don’t understand. My mom was expelled from Theden. How could she—?”

“Expelled? Aviana?” Griffin laughed. “Hardly. She was the campus darling.” He looked at me curiously. “Who told you she was expelled?”

“I saw the expulsion notice,” I said slowly.

In her doctored medical file.

“Well, I can promise you Aviana didn’t get kicked out of school,” Griffin replied. His expression darkened. “She took her finals then ran away.”

“Why?”

“I’ll get to that,” he replied. “Let me explain what she was up against first. Not that it excuses what she did, but I know it affected her more than she let on.”

“Your family.”

He nodded. “They were awful to her. And the closer she and I got, the more aggressive they became. They threatened to take away my trust fund, not pay for college, the whole nine. I couldn’t have cared less. None of those things mattered to me then. So I asked Aviana to marry me. And I told my stepfather he could take my trust fund and shove it.”

“You and my mom were engaged?”

Griffin seemed to hesitate then. “We were more than engaged,” he said finally. “Rory, your mom and I were married.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“We got married a week before graduation,” he said softly. “At the courthouse in Albany. We spent the next two days holed up in a little cabin in Canada, completely disconnected from the rest of the world. Just the two of us and a fireplace.” He blushed a little, as if he’d forgotten that I was there. “We spent the whole weekend making plans. Aviana wanted to get as far as we could from my family, and I just wanted to make her happy. Theden had a pretty good reputation in the UK, so we decided to move to London, apply to Oxford and Cambridge, make a life there. I had a little money of my own saved, and we figured it was enough to tide us over until we got jobs. The plan was to leave right after graduation.”

“But then she got pregnant,” I said. It sounded bitter, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t fair that something that was his fault as much as hers changed what he wanted. Changed how he felt. He wanted a life with her as long as it was just the two of them. A baby wasn’t part of the bargain.

His face darkened. “There was no ‘then,’” he said. “She was already pregnant when we got married. That’s how I knew it wasn’t mine.”

Confusion stalled my next thought. “Huh?”

Griffin hesitated. “I don’t want to paint a nasty picture of her, Rory. We were both really young. We were kids. I don’t blame her for lying to me. Not anymore.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What did she lie to you about?”

“Aviana and I, we never— She said she wanted to wait until we were married.” He made a sound in his throat. “I guess that rule didn’t apply to other guys.”

“She cheated on you?”

He nodded. “While I was in Nantucket for spring break. I found out the morning of graduation. Someone emailed me a copy of her pregnancy test results. The test was dated April 14. Long before we ever . . .” He trailed off, his eyes hollow now. “It was at that moment, staring at her test results in black-and-white, that it all just clicked. That voice I’d been listening to, the one that led me to her, it wasn’t some higher power guiding me along. It was nothing more than cognitive dissonance working itself out. My rational mind sensed I shouldn’t be with her, but my emotional brain couldn’t accept it, so it invented a fiction, a voice that knew something I didn’t.” He looked up at the ceiling. “We’re better at lying to ourselves than most people realize.”

There were so many things I wanted to ask him—what my mom had said when he confronted her, why he didn’t go after her when he started hearing the Doubt—but the questions were lodged in my throat. Griffin kept talking.

“This company owes a lot to your mom,” he said then, gesturing toward the window overlooking the party outside. “If she hadn’t left, I never would’ve come to work for them.”

“Why not?”

“Your mom, she was very anti-Gnosis,” Griffin explained. “I never understood it. They were just a little tech startup back then. But somehow they’d gotten on Aviana’s radar, and she was adamant that I not have anything to do with them. The Monday after graduation, I drove to their offices and told them I’d work for free.”

“And you’ve been there ever since?”

He nodded. “It’s funny how things work out. When I started at Gnosis that summer, they’d just launched the R&D on a new decision-making app. An app that would keep people like me from lying to themselves. A voice we could trust. I decided right then that I’d dedicate my career to that app. The more people that used it, the fewer who would end up with their hearts broken.”

My mind leaped to the boy ten feet to my left. Was it worth it to avoid heartache if you also avoided its opposite, the feeling that your heart might burst with joy?

“Mr. Payne.” The voice caught both of us off guard. It was a hulk of a man in a black suit with an earbud in his ear. I recognized him as the guy I’d passed on the steps at the Masquerade Ball. Griffin’s bodyguard. “It’s quarter till.”

Griffin nodded at the man and turned to me. “I’ve got a speech to give,” he said. He sounded apologetic.

“She wasn’t pregnant when you got married,” I blurted out. It was now or never. “Whoever sent you those test results wanted you to think she was, but she wasn’t.”

Griffin’s whole body tensed up, like I’d hit him. “What?”

“My birthday, it’s March 21,” I said. “If she’d gotten pregnant when you think she did, I would’ve been due in early December. But I wasn’t. I was due in February and born in March. Three weeks and five days late.” The words were getting jumbled now, but I kept talking, afraid that if I stopped he’d walk away. “I saw a photo from her last ultrasound. The math all works out. She got pregnant on your wedding night.” Griffin was shaking his head. I grabbed his arm. “Look at my eyes. And my hands—” I held out my arm. “And my chin! The cleft on my chin. It’s just like yours. Our hair, it’s the same color, too. And—”

I could tell Griffin wasn’t listening anymore. His face looked broken. I got quiet, abruptly, and let go of his arm. It was several seconds before he said anything. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, like he’d been screaming. “You’re saying I’m . . .” He didn’t say the rest of it. It didn’t seem as if he could.

“My father,” I said softly.

All at once Griffin was crying. I took a step back, startled at the rawness of the emotion and how quickly it had come. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.

“All this time, I thought she’d betrayed me,” he said thickly. “The Doubt, it kept telling me to trust her, to go and find her. For months I couldn’t shut it off. I thought— I thought I was going crazy. I couldn’t make it stop. And then one day it did.” He rubbed his eyes with his fists as if trying to blot the grief away. “All that I’ve done since then—”

“Mr. Payne,” the man in black said.

“I need a minute, Jason.” Griffin’s eyes hadn’t left mine. “If I was the father, why did she leave?” he asked me. “She was supposed to give the valedictory address. She’d been working on it for weeks. But when I went to her dorm room that morning, to confront her about the email, she was gone. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Do you know if my mom was seeing a psychiatrist that spring?”

“A psychiatrist? For what? Because of the Doubt?” He shook his head. “Your mom never would’ve gone to a doctor about that. Why, did someone tell you she did?”

“It’s a long story,” I told him. “But I think someone may have been out to get her. I just don’t know who, or why. I was hoping you’d have some of the answers.”

“Unfortunately, I’m as in the dark as you are,” he said. “But maybe we can figure some of it out together. Can we talk after my speech? How long will you be here?” He smoothed his hair and the skin under his eyes, collecting himself.

“I wasn’t supposed to leave campus,” I admitted. “So I need to be on the nine-fifteen train back.”

“I’ll get you a car,” Griffin said. “If you leave by ten, you’ll be fine. And the speech won’t take long. I’d cancel it to talk to you, but they’re live-streaming it and there are a few things I need to say before this thing goes any further than it already has.” There was a tenor of resolve in his voice that hadn’t been there before. Before what goes any further? I wanted to ask, but the man in black was at Griffin’s elbow. “So you’ll stay?”

“Sure,” I said.

My father smiled, and for a second his eyes weren’t sad at all. “I’m so glad to meet you, Rory,” he said, taking my hand in his.

“What do the symbols mean?” I asked, nodding at the ring.

“Timshel,” Griffin replied. “It’s Hebrew. Steinbeck used it in East of Eden. It means ‘thou mayest.’ The idea being that we all have a choice. To do good, to live well.”

“Timshel,” I repeated. “I like that idea.”

“Me too,” Griffin replied. He examined his ring as if seeing it for the first time. “Your mom had it made for me for my eighteenth birthday. When she left, I kept it on as a reminder of the mistake I’d made, trusting something other than myself.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if searching for something there. “I think I missed the point.”

“Mr. Payne, the stream goes live in five minutes.” Jason was back, and his voice was urgent now. There was static buzzing from his earpiece. “They have to mic you, sir.”

Through the window I could see that the crowd had formed a semicircle around the fountain, facing the stage at the south end of the courtyard where Griffin would be giving his speech. There was a paper-thin screen mounted on the wall behind it, playing the latest TV ad for the Gold.

“I’ll find you as soon as I’m done,” I heard Griffin say.

And then he was gone, through the door and swallowed up by the boisterous crowd outside. North was at my side seconds later.

“How’d it go?”

“He never knew the baby was his,” I said, following North outside. “He got some email with the results of a pregnancy test dated two months before he and my mom ever slept together, so he thought my mom had cheated on him. When he went to ask my mom about it, she was gone.” I chewed on my lip. “Why would someone want him to think the baby wasn’t his?”

“I don’t know. You think the person who sent that email is the same person who messed with your mom’s medical file?”

“I guess so, but it seems weird, right? I mean, I understand the fake test results, but it’s not like Griffin would ever see her medical file. Why go to all that trouble?”

“Rory?” I spun on my toes, startled by the familiar voice. Beck was standing just a few feet away, in a navy suit that fit him perfectly but looked completely ridiculous. It reminded me of something Liam might wear, which made it the polar opposite of anything I’d ever seen my best friend put on.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, rushing over to give him a hug and nearly tripping in my heels in the process. “Another perk of being a beta tester?” I grabbed him by the elbows and gave him a once-over. He looked good. The zits he’d always battled had cleared up and his arms were bulkier, like he’d been working out.

“Oh, it’s way cooler than that,” Beck said, glancing at North then back at me, a reminder that I hadn’t introduced him. “My photographs are on the wall in one of the exhibit rooms. It’s part of an exhibit of new artists that Gnosis is sponsoring. It goes from here to the MFA in Boston.”

“No way! That’s amazing!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty sweet. Gnosis flew all the artists out for it. There’s another event at the museum tomorrow night.”

“Holy crap.” I punched him in the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It just happened. So what are you doing here? Class field trip?”

“Something like that,” I said. The knowledge I’d accumulated over the past few weeks, about the voice, and my mom, and now, my real dad, was pressing out from the inside. How had I not told Beck any of it? I felt a twinge behind my rib cage. I’d tried. Several times.

Beck looked over at North. “So we should probably just introduce ourselves since Rory’s clearly not going to.”

North laughed. “Probably a good plan. I’m North.” I stepped back so they could shake hands and noticed that Beck had his Gold snapped to a brown leather wrist strap. It was like the suit. Much too preppy for Beck’s taste. Then again, it was a party and he was here on someone else’s dime, and this was probably just his attempt at dressing up.

“Beck’s my best friend,” I told North. “From back home.” I turned back to Beck. “So where are they? I want to see them!”

“They’re inside,” Beck replied. “Let me just make sure we have enough time.” He raised his wrist toward his mouth. “Lux, do we have time to visit the exhibit before the keynote speech?”

I felt as if I were watching a stranger. Beck had told me he was using Lux now, but to ask it something as ridiculous as that? Beck didn’t need an app to tell him that we had plenty of time. Yet he was earnestly waiting for Lux’s reply, a bizarre half smile on his lips as he stared at his tiny screen.

“The presentation is delayed,” Lux said, in a voice that sounded so much like Beck’s that I thought for a second that he’d been the one to say it. The Lux voice on the older model Gemini was tinny, audibly distinct from its owner’s. This version was indistinguishable. “You have adequate time to view the exhibit,” Lux continued. “I will notify you when it is time to return to the courtyard.”

“Thanks,” Beck said to his handheld. He readjusted his sleeve and smiled at us. “Let’s do it.”

I started to follow him then stopped to scan the courtyard first. Tarsus was easy to spot this time, a flash of iridescent white silk in a blur of dark colors. Thankfully, she was on the other side of the fountain and her back was to me. I could tell from the way her head was bobbing that she was in a heated conversation with whoever was in front of her.

“You coming?” Beck asked.

“Yep,” I said, glancing over at Tarsus one last time. She’d moved slightly, so the person she was talking to was now in view. I watched as she put her hand on his forearm and he shook it off, his face twisted in anger.

It was Griffin.

“No,” I breathed. “North, he’s talking to Dr. Tarsus.” An avalanche of dread cascaded from my chest to my stomach. “If he tells her I’m here . . .”

“Don’t panic,” North whispered, steering me toward the room where Beck was headed. “They could be talking about anything.”

As we stepped inside the building, I looked over my shoulder to where Tarsus and Griffin had been standing. He was striding away from her, toward the podium. She was on her handheld, a Gold, strapped to her wrist like Beck’s. It glinted in the dim light. It felt like a good sign that she wasn’t searching the room for me. Maybe they had been talking about something else. Maybe Griffin hadn’t mentioned me after all.

Or maybe she was calling the dean right now to report me.

“Mine are on the left wall,” I heard Beck say. We were in a room adjacent to the courtyard, which Gnosis had converted into a chic-looking art space, with temporary white fiberglass walls. There were paintings in nearly every media, from watercolor to digital ink prints, but I saw only three photographs. All of sailboats.

“Wait, where are yours?” I asked, revolving to take in the rest of the room.

“They’re right there,” Beck said. “You were just looking at them.” He took my shoulders and turned me back toward the boats.

“But they’re sailboats,” I said. I looked at North because I couldn’t look at Beck. It’s not that they were terrible pictures; it was just that they were the type of photographs you’d expect to see in a doctor’s office or the lobby of a chain hotel. Commercial. Pretty. Forgettable.

“That’s my thing now,” Beck replied with no trace of defensiveness. “Boats and bridges. I realized that my previous work was too depressing to sell.”

My mouth opened, but no words came out. Beck’s work was evocative and powerful and raw. Hard to look at sometimes, but that was the point. “Too depressing?”

“Unfortunately, Rory, even artists have to eat,” Beck said pleasantly. Beside me, North cleared his throat.

“I think they’re beautiful,” he told Beck, stepping up for a closer look. “The glossy finish really makes them pop.” This was true, but it wasn’t a compliment. The images looked fake, like stock screensavers. “Were they all shot in Seattle?”

“Yep,” Beck replied. “On three consecutive days. The Gold comes with a photo app that links to Lux. You just type in the kind of photo you want, and Lux’ll show you where in the city to shoot, and what time of day. Takes all the effort out of it.”

“What happened to ‘Lux thinks like a computer, not an artist,’” I asked, barely able to look at him now.

“Every artist needs tools for his craft,” Beck said. “Lux is one of mine.”

“And the Doubt?” I asked softly. In my peripheral vision, I saw North’s head turn.

“Quiet at last,” Beck said, as though this was something to celebrate.

My stomach churned. “You’re taking Evoxa.”

“Nope. Still think that stuff fries your brain. I just took Lux’s advice and told the voice I didn’t need it anymore. Not long after that, it stopped.”

My brain couldn’t process a response. It was as if I were interacting with some alternate version of my best friend. I stared at his photographs, hating them even more now, wishing I could tear them from the wall and throw them into the fountain.

“Please proceed to the courtyard,” I heard Beck say. But, of course, it wasn’t actually Beck, but his electronic sidekick. It took restraint for me not to rip the Gold off his wrist and hurl it against the wall.

“We should get going,” the real Beck said. North slipped his hand in mine.

Just then there was a tinkling sound, like a glass being tapped with a knife, but louder, and coming through the overhead speakers. Our signal that the speech was about to start. We followed Beck back outside.

“Ladies and gentlemen” came a familiar voice. Tarsus was behind the gold-plated podium. She was introducing him? I quickly ducked behind North. Beck gave me a quizzical look. “On behalf of my fellow Gnosis board members, it is my great honor to introduce a man who needs no introduction. The visionary behind Lux and the architect of the game-changing device we’re here tonight to celebrate. The CEO and face of Gnosis, Griffin Payne.” The crowd erupted in applause as Griffin joined her on the stage.

“Thank you, Esperanza.” Griffin’s smile looked more like a grimace as he stepped up to the mic. “And thank you all for coming, and for helping to make Gnosis what it is today.” He looked up at the ceiling for a second then continued. “When I started as an intern at the company the summer after high school, I thought I’d hit the career jackpot. Here was a company committed to remaining at the forefront of technological innovation that wanted to do good in the world. I was a kid with a broken heart who was given the opportunity to help design an app that would make sure it would never happen again.” There was twittering in the audience, scattered whispers. This was not something Griffin had ever shared publicly. But the man at the podium seemed unaware of his audience’s reaction. He kept talking. “It was a lofty notion, the idea that we could improve society with a handheld app.” Griffin seemed to falter a little. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “A lofty notion,” he continued. “And a misguided one.” He paused and gripped the podium, his face suddenly ashen. He wiped his brow again and blinked his eyes a few times as if he were having trouble focusing. “The truth is that—” He was still talking, but all of a sudden his words were garbled. Unintelligible. A woman beside me whispered, “He’s not making any sense.”

Tarsus mounted the stage in a single step, just in time to catch Griffin as he fell.