Free to Fall

25

SUNDAY CRAWLED BY in a thick haze of anxiety, excitement, and hope. I was anxious about Griffin’s recovery, excited about initiation, and hopeful that Dr. Hildebrand would have the answers I so desperately needed. I spent the day on North’s couch, weeding through my schoolwork, surprised to hear that Hershey was all caught up on hers. She said she didn’t want to be behind when they let her back in. There was no “if” in Hershey’s mind. She was determined to be back at Theden in time for finals. It was still a little weird for me that she was staying at North’s apartment, knowing all that I did about how hard she’d come on to him the night they met, but she was out of money and didn’t have anywhere else to go, and North, being North, had invited her to stay. So for now she was a permanent fixture in his living room.

I forced myself to go back to campus on Sunday night for dinner. I’d run into Rachel and Izzy at brunch and they’d commented on how little they’d seen me. It wasn’t until they said it that I realized how much time I’d been spending at North’s. I hadn’t eaten dinner in the dining hall all week. There was no requirement that we eat on campus, but the Theden app tracked our dining hall check-ins, and I assumed that meant the administration was tracking them too. I didn’t need anyone asking questions about where I was spending my time. Now that we knew Tarsus was watching my every move, North and I were being careful to keep our relationship off her radar. He couldn’t afford to have someone looking too closely at his life. The facade he’d built was too thin.

Liam came up behind me at the pasta station. “Hey,” he said, reaching for a plate. “I need to ask you something.”

I slid my tray down to make room for his. “Okay.”

“That blanket on your bed,” he said in a low voice. “The one with the pink stitching. Where’d you get it?”

“My mom made it for me. Why?”

“Your mom,” he repeated. I nodded.

“It was my baby blanket,” I explained.

“It’s a Fibonacci spiral.”

“I know that,” I said, a little surprised that Liam did.

“Why would your mom sew a Fibonacci spiral onto a blanket?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “She died when I was born. Why do you care so much?”

“Because the pattern on your blanket is the map of our tomb,” Liam replied, his voice even lower now.

I looked at him blankly. “Huh?”

“The society’s compound. Underneath the cemetery. It’s ten rooms, with Fibonacci proportions. Identical to your blanket.”

I dropped the tongs I was holding. They clattered onto the stainless steel counter. “Really?”

“Yeah. Of all the designs for her to put on that blanket, she picks that one?”

“My mom went here. She was in the society.”

Liam took a step back. “Your mom was one of the Few?”

I nodded. “Upsilon ’13.” I showed him my pendant. “This was hers. She left it for me. She didn’t break her vows or anything,” I said quickly.

“How come you never mentioned any of this be—” Liam stopped as Izzy stepped up to the fettuccini pan.

“Hey,” Izzy said, reaching for the tongs I’d dropped. “What’re y’all all hush-hush about?”

“Nothing,” Liam and I replied in unison. Izzy gave me a knowing smile.

“I’ll text you later,” Liam said, and walked off.

“He’s so your secret boyfriend,” Izzy squealed.

“No. He’s definitely not.”

Izzy pouted. “Well, boo. Then who is?”

“Still not telling people,” I said, wondering how long I could pull this off. Izzy was heaping fettuccini Alfredo onto her plate. Lux had definitely not sanctioned this meal. “Hey, did you preorder the Gold?” I asked her. The first shipments of the handhelds were supposed to arrive at the campus post office the next morning.

“Didn’t everybody?” was her reply. The answer was no, because I hadn’t. I didn’t want it anymore.

By lunchtime the next day I was in a very small minority. I hadn’t seen a single person on campus who didn’t have a Gold strapped to their wrist. According to the latest numbers, the tiny device had already broken the record for the fastest-selling handheld of all time. Two hundred million had already been shipped, and they were expecting to sell more than twice that over the next two days. That meant that more than half a billion people would be using the Gold by week’s end. Griffin was still in the hospital after his surgery, and Gnosis was milking that for all it was worth. The hashtag #GoldsForGriffin had been trending on Forum since Friday night, ever since Gnosis had promised to donate a percentage of the proceeds from Gold presales to stroke-prevention research.

I left after history to meet up with North. We were taking the one-fifteen train to Cambridge, hoping to catch Dr. Hildebrand on her way back from lunch. When I knocked on North’s door, Hershey answered, wearing skinny black pants and a V-neck cardigan that I’m pretty sure was intended to be worn with a T-shirt underneath. Hershey had opted for a lacy black bra.

“Don’t worry,” Hershey said when she saw my face. “This isn’t for your boyfriend, it’s for mine.” She stepped back to let me inside. “Yours is in his secret room.”

I shrugged out of my dowdy blue jacket, wishing I’d worn something nicer. Hershey said I could wear whatever of hers I wanted, but I felt weird about it now that she was back. So I was stuck with my own stuff, and the worst of it at that, since all my decent clothes were at the bottom of my laundry basket. “Is yours the same guy as before?”

Hershey smiled coyly. “Maybe. Hey, I have a present for you.” She turned and walked over to the couch, reaching under the cushion and pulling out an oversize hardback book.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The Evil Queen’s yearbook. Class of 2013 was the last one they printed on paper.”

“Where did you get this?” I demanded.

“I figured there might some be clues in there,” she said, not answering my question.

“Hershey, this isn’t a game. We don’t know what this woman is capable of.”

“I’m not scared of her,” Hershey retorted, reaching for her jacket and a pair of dark sunglasses. “She’s just a bully who needs to be put in her place.” She tossed her hair and pulled open the door. “Oh,” she said, turning back around. “North was waiting for that.” She pointed at the small box on his coffee table, imprinted with the Gnosis logo. “It came a few minutes ago.” She blew me a kiss and was gone.

I picked up the box and carried it into the bedroom closet. The door to North’s secret room was cracked. I could see him at his desk chair, leaning back with his eyes closed, bobbing his head a little like he was listening to music. But it was quiet in the room.

“Hey,” I said, ducking inside. North didn’t look up. It was as if he hadn’t heard me. I tried again, louder. “Hey!” This time, his eyes popped open.

“Come over here,” he said, leaning to grab my hand. “I want you to hear this.” He pulled me into his lap. As my body came in line with his, I heard the distinctive sound of Nick’s mandolin coming from a speaker above our heads. I looked up.

“Was that on the whole time?”

“Cool, right? It’s called an audio spotlight. Only the person sitting in this chair can hear what’s coming out of that speaker. Although, apparently, the sound isn’t actually coming from the physical speaker but from ultrasonic waves in front of it. Don’t ask me how it works, though. I’ve read the manual forty times and still don’t get it.” He reached around me to twist the knob on the little gray box on his desk, turning up the volume even more. “But the song’s amazing, right? The guys released their new album today. This is the first track.”

It was one of the songs we’d recorded in the mausoleum. I leaned back against North and closed my eyes.

“I can’t get over how good they are,” I said when the song was over, sliding off his lap. I realized I still had the box in my hand. “Hey, this came for you,” I said, setting it on North’s desk.

“You mean Norvin,” North corrected, slitting the packing tape with his pocketknife. Inside was a smaller, shinier black box, plain except for an image of the Gold and the words BOW DOWN printed in glossy gold foil. “Does it come with an altar?” North retorted as he lifted the lid. I peered into the box. The shiny device was snapped into a clear silicone wristband.

North slipped the band onto his wrist and grimaced. “It’s so tacky.”

I giggled. “All you need is a matching gold chain for your neck.”

North tapped the tiny screen and it lit up. It was 12:35.

“We should probably go,” I said. “I don’t want to miss our train.”

“I want to show you something first,” North replied. “I found Beck’s Lux profile.”

I perked up. “And?”

“And you should look at it,” he said, scooting his chair toward his desk. “You—”

The music suddenly went silent, like someone had turned the speaker off. But the power light on the control panel was still lit. North looked at the ceiling, puzzled. He turned the volume knob all the way up and the speaker started making a loud popping noise. Still no music.

“Did we blow it out?”

“I don’t think so,” North said. “It wasn’t even that loud.” He leaned over toward the far end of his desk where the plug was and the music started to blare. My hands flew to my ears as North quickly reached for the volume knob. But before he even touched it, the music cut out again. North looked down at the Gold on his wrist. Slowly, he outstretched his arm. The music came on again. He brought his wrist toward his body. The music stopped.

“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

“I think they’re canceling each other out,” North said slowly. “But for that to happen, the Gold would have to be emitting sound waves at the exact same frequency as my speaker. Really high frequency waves that we can’t hear. That we aren’t supposed to hear.”

“Why would it be doing that?”

North shook his head. He looked baffled. “I have no idea. Especially since there’s nothing about it in the new terms of use.” He unsnapped the Gold from its strap and tossed it onto a pile of clothes in his closet. The music came back on. He shook his head again and scooted back up to his desk.

His computer had finished booting up. North clicked on a document saved to his desktop, labeled BECK.

“Show me the threats first,” I said. North zoomed in on the bottom right quadrant. My eyes scanned the list. Surprises. Sunsets. Storms. Solar eclipses. “No, the threats first,” I said.

“These are the threats,” North replied.

“But Beck loves eclipses,” I argued. “They’re, like, his favorite thing. And he gets his best artistic ideas at sunset.” North slid his cursor over and zoomed in on the opportunities quadrant. Predictability, monotonous routine, temperate weather, successful people, homogenous neighborhoods, steady income, stable work. My chest tightened.

“No.” I shook my head violently. “This is not Beck.” Part of me was relieved. I hadn’t been able to reconcile Beck’s behavior at the party with the boy I’d grown up with, the free spirit who blazed his own path. Now I understood. “Lux is manipulating him.”

“Of course it is,” North replied. “That’s what Lux does. It steers people into the life they think they want—the ‘happiness’ they think they deserve.”

“But this isn’t the life Beck wants,” I insisted. “You don’t know him the way I do.”

“I don’t know him at all,” North said. “But, Rory, if Beck is trusting Lux, then he’s choosing to. You can’t blame the app for that.”

But I did blame the app. Beck wouldn’t just decide to become a whole different person—a total d-bag, by the way—just because he thought it’d make his life easier. My best friend was less shallow than that.

Help, I said silently, pleading with the voice. Help me figure this out. There was something I wasn’t seeing here, maybe something I couldn’t see. But if I’d learned anything about the Doubt, it was that it could see. Everything I couldn’t. I needed that vision now.

“I know it’s hard to accept,” North was saying. “But the only person at fault here is Beck. He’s the one who decided to listen to—”

Just then North’s screen froze. “Crap,” North said, quickly typing a series of commands. The screen didn’t budge.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” North replied, holding down the power button. After a few seconds, the screen went black and lit up to blue. And stayed that way.

“Yikes. That seems bad,” I said. I’d heard stories about old computer malfunctions, the dreaded blue screen. Gnosis devices hardly broke down.

“I back everything up every ten minutes, so it’s not a huge deal if it’s fried. I’d just prefer not to spend another ten grand on a machine if I don’t have to.”

“These computers cost ten thousand dollars?”

“They didn’t originally. But nobody makes computers with hard drives anymore. Everything is on the cloud. I have to have mine custom built by some guys who used to work for Apple, before they went under.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve still got twenty-five minutes. You okay if we swing by the shop and drop this off on the way to the station?”

I could see Noelle behind the counter, so I went in with North to thank her for letting me borrow the dress. There was an older man with her this time. Her grandfather, I assumed. He smiled when he saw North come in with his laptop.

“Zapped another one?” the old man asked.

“I’m hoping it just needs the Ivan touch,” North said, setting the laptop down on the counter.

The old man’s eyes wandered to me. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“I’m Rory,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

The man reached across the counter and lifted my pendant. “I haven’t seen one of these in years,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

“It was my mother’s,” I told him.

“What do you keep on it?”

I looked down at my pendant, confused. “What do I keep on my necklace?”

He pinched my pendant between his finger and thumb and pushed his thumb up. The face of the pendant slid up and a little port popped out. “It’s a thumb drive,” the old man said. “You didn’t know?”

“I don’t even know what a thumb drive is,” I said, still staring at my pendant.

“It’s a little hard drive.” North sounded as awed as I felt.

“So that means—”

North finished my sentence. “There’s something on there.”