My finger hovered above my screen. I posted everything to Forum. But this photo couldn’t be summarized in some pithy caption. I tapped the word NO and the pop-up box disappeared. Instead I called Beck, the only person other than my dad who would understand what finding the photo meant to me without me having to explain it.
“Hey,” he said, picking up on the second ring. “Aren’t you supposed to be at that fancy dance of yours?”
“I am,” I replied. “But I just found this picture of my mom, and I—”
“Text it to me,” he said.
I heard a ding through the phone as my message popped up on his screen. I was looking at it on my end too.
“Wow,” he said. “She looks just like you.”
“I know, right?”
“You send it to your dad?”
“Not yet,” I said, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure I was going to. I knew how hard it was for him to look at pictures of her. “Well, I should probably get back to the party.”
“I’m glad you found it,” Beck said.
“Me too.”
I walked slowly back to the rotunda, across the grass this time, my heels sinking in the soft ground with each step, thinking about the girl in that photograph. She was a complete enigma to me. She’d walked across this same lawn, yet it felt to me like she’d inhabited a separate universe. Would she ever be more to me than a face that looked like mine?
Liam signaled for me the moment I entered the rotunda. He was standing with a group of faculty members in various reptilian masks. I looked for the serpent mask but didn’t see it.
I pretended not to see Liam and looked for Griffin. He was easy to spot: Surrounded by a group of aging alumni on the far side of the room, Griffin was talking animatedly with his hands. I caught the word empire on his lips.
“Hey,” Liam called, coming toward me. “Where’d you go?”
“I was looking for Hershey,” I lied. “Have you seen her?”
“Not in a while,” Liam replied. “Wanna dance?”
He held out his hand and in my mind I decided to take it. To dance with him, to try to enjoy myself. But then I looked down at the hand he held out to me. How different it was from the hand that caught me when I tripped on the sidewalk last week. That one was cracked and stained and caked with coffee grounds, the nails bitten down to the quick. And when it had caught my arm, I’d felt it down my spine.
“I have to go,” I said suddenly.
“Go where?” Liam asked, looking confused.
“I just have to go.”
Liam said something after that, but I didn’t hear it. I was already at the door. I knew I should still be mad at North for how he treated me in front of Hershey, and I was. So mad I could punch him in the face. But that anger did nothing to quell my sudden need to see him.
I stopped by the dorms to drop off my mask and get a jacket, worrying for a sec that Hershey would be there, passed out or puking. But our room was empty. Feeling my confidence wane just a bit, I dug through Hershey’s drawers in search of her stash of airplane alcohol. But she’d either finished it or hidden it well; all I found was a half-empty mini bottle of Kahlúa. I downed the rest of it, gargled some mouthwash, and left.
It was late and dark and cold, and I was missing the most important event of the fall semester. But I didn’t care. I wanted to see North. And now that I let myself want it, I really wanted it. I felt it on my skin, in the back of my throat, underneath my ribs. As I walked, I rehearsed what I would say. I’d be casual. I’d joke that I couldn’t live another day without seeing Rocky. Then he’d apologize for the way he acted last weekend, promise me it’d never happen again. The whole encounter unfolded so smoothly in my head that I was genuinely surprised when I stepped up to the café’s bay window and didn’t see him inside.
Without thinking, I kept walking. Around the building and through the door and up the stairs to North’s landing where I rapped my knuckles against his cold metal door without a second’s hesitation. The door couldn’t open fast enough.
Until it did.
My stomach, and all the excitement that had been bubbling up in my chest, crashed to my knees when I saw the look on North’s face.
“What are you doing here?” he said in a low voice, stepping into the crack between the door and its frame.
“I, uh . . . ,” Mortified, I dropped my eyes to the ground. There was a parcel there, wrapped in brown paper, addressed to Norvin Pascal. I saw North see it too. He bent quickly to pick it up. My eyes went to the space where he’d been standing, my gaze pulled into his living room by the flash of red I saw there.
Hershey’s dress was draped across his couch.
North straightened up, blocking my view again. “You should go,” he said quietly.
Dumbly, I nodded. Why is Hershey’s dress on your couch? my insides were screaming. But my brain knew. It’d already put the pieces in place. This was why North hadn’t wanted me to tell anyone we’d hung out. Why Hershey had wanted to go by Paradiso that morning, and why North had acted so weird when we did. He was the guy Hershey was hooking up with. Her secret scandalous fling.
“I can explain,” he said then, even quieter now.
“No need,” I said, anger burning my throat. “I get it.” I wanted to spin on my heels and stomp out, but the stairs and my stilettos were a dangerous combination. So I simply turned and walked down carefully, praying that he couldn’t see me shaking. A second later I heard the door click shut.
12
I TOOK A LONG SIP OF THE COFFEE I’d smuggled into the stacks, lukewarm now. You could bring drinks into the library’s main study lounge, but I wanted to be alone today, so I was at a desk in the stacks, eating cereal from a plastic Baggie, drinking weak dining hall coffee, and blinking back tears.
I tried again to focus on my screen, my eyes burning with fatigue. I’d fallen asleep quickly the night before after practically running back to my room, but I’d woken up again when Hershey crept in just after midnight and was still awake when everyone else began trickling back to the dorms a little before one. After that, sleep eluded me. I stared at the ceiling as the hours dragged by until finally, at six, I got up and went here. Except for a quick dining hall run when it opened at eight, I’d been in this chair all day, trying to work on my cog psych paper but mostly thinking about North. I felt like such an idiot. We’d hung out twice, both times alone, and both times he’d kept it completely platonic. I couldn’t even be mad at him. He couldn’t have made it clearer if he’d tried.
Ding! A pop-up box appeared on my screen: You will be logged out due to inactivity in sixty seconds.
I sighed and tapped CONTINUE. How long had I been staring at these same search results? I was clicking through health files of patients with akratic paracusia, looking for subtle connections between them, but all I was finding were not-so-subtle ones. It was the same story over and over. Previously sane person starts hearing a voice in her head. Person starts adhering to the voice’s commands. Person engages in increasingly irrational, self-sacrificing behavior. Suddenly she’s quitting her job or giving all her money away or inviting ex-cons to dinner. Family members freak and intervene. Person resists medication. Person’s life falls apart.
After that, one of two things always happened. Either the person was forced into treatment by a concerned family member or simply fell off the grid. It wasn’t clear where people in this second category went, but the entries in their medical files just stopped. No annual physicals, no checkups, no routine immunizations. They’re unemployable without these things, so it’s not as if they’re off leading normal, productive lives. I couldn’t help but think of the photographs Beck took that day in Tent City, images of men with wild eyes and women with vacant ones. Had they heard the Doubt? Had it led them over the edge?