My chest burned like someone had fired a cannon through it. My poor dad. I understood now why my mom would let the pregnancy go so far past her due date; she needed my dad to think I was due later. Otherwise he wouldn’t believe the baby was his.
I put my head on the bathroom counter, feeling its slick coolness on my skin. Who was my real father? Did he know that I existed, or had my mom lied to him, too?
When my screen lit up with a text, it was after six. I’d been sitting in the dark for hours, my thoughts like tennis balls shooting out of one of those practice machines. As long as I was thinking, I wasn’t feeling, and I didn’t want to feel this.
The message was from a blocked number, with an attachment. Another task from the society. But it wasn’t a word puzzle this time.
Your task is to connect these nine dots. You must use straight, continuous lines.
You may not lift your finger once you have begun. You may not retrace a line you have already drawn.
What is the fewest number of lines necessary to complete this task?
You have two minutes to respond.
It seemed so straightforward. Five lines. That’s what it took to hit every dot. But it seemed too easy. The society’s puzzles were harder than this. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t do it in less than five.
Don’t you have eyes to see?
My body tensed, not with anxiety that I’d heard the voice, but with anger that its words were so completely useless. “Eyes to see what?” I shouted at my screen as the timer passed the one-minute mark.
And then, in a flash, out of nowhere, it seemed, the solution came to me. I’d been keeping my lines within the confines of the dots. If I swung my lines out wide, I could do it in four.
With twenty seconds left, I hit the number four and pressed send, then held my breath as I waited for a reply.
Well done, Zeta.
Gemini still in my hand, I closed my eyes and gave into the dulling fog. Dreamlessly, I slept.
19
I SLEPT THROUGH BREAKFAST and only barely made it to practicum. I thought I’d feel better after a couple more hours of sleep, but I woke up shivering and achy. Fortunately, Hershey either hadn’t come back or had slipped in and out of the room without waking me, so at least I didn’t have to deal with her on top of everything else.
We were working in teams in practicum, which was good because I was useless on my own. My head was pounding and my eye sockets felt like they were radiating heat. Meanwhile my brain was on a screaming loop: My dad is not my dad! My dad is not my dad!
“Rory, could you stay after class for a few moments, please?” Dr. Tarsus said at the end of the period. She phrased it as a question, as if I could refuse.
“Sure,” I said, making my way to her desk as everyone else filed out.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Tarsus said when we were alone. “But as your adviser, I thought you should hear it from me first.” She pinned her beady black eyes on mine. “Hershey Clements is no longer a student here.”
The words didn’t register. “What?”
Tarsus was watching me carefully. “She was taken to the health center early this morning for a psychiatric evaluation. Her doctors made the recommendation for dismissal a few hours ago.”
I stared at her. “What’s wrong with her?”
Tarsus pursed her lips. “I obviously can’t share those details with you, Rory. But it appears that the stress of our rigorous academic program caused Hershey to become a bit . . . confused.”
It was her word choice that tipped me off. If she’d said any other adjective, I might’ve believed her. But Hershey wasn’t “confused” about anything.
“Trust me when I say it’s in everyone’s best interest—including yours—that she not be on campus anymore. Out of respect for Hershey’s privacy, I’d ask that you’d leave it at that.” Trust her? Not on my life.
“Where is she now?” I asked. “I want to talk to her.”
“I strongly suggest that you focus your energy on your own well-being and let Hershey attend to hers.” How was it that the woman could make everything sound like a threat?
I expected her to turn away then, the way she always did when she was finished with me, but she reached out and took hold of my necklace instead, examining it in her palm. I resisted the urge to step back, out of her reach, knowing how it would look to her if I did.
“Pythagoras’s letter,” she said, raising her eyes to meet mine.
I put on a bland smile, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “Oh?”
“The upsilon,” she replied, letting go of the pendant at last. “Pythagoras saw it as an emblem of the choice between the path of virtue and the path of vice. One leads to happiness, the other to self-annihilation.” She cocked her head, the corners of her mouth turning up a little. “A fitting choice for someone like you.”
“I have class,” I said abruptly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Though I wanted to sprint from the room, I forced myself to walk until I made it to the courtyard. When I hit the grass, I broke into a run, charging toward the woods.
I arrived at Paradiso out of breath and light-headed, my eyes like little fireballs in my skull.
“You look awful,” North said when he saw me, coming around the counter to meet me.
“Gee, thanks.”
He put his palm on my forehead. “You have a fever.”
“I do not,” I said, pushing his hand out of the way and putting mine there instead. “I don’t even feel hot.”
“That’s because your hand is as warm as your forehead, genius.” I punched him in the arm and he laughed. “So what are you doing here?” he asked. “Don’t you have class?”
“Hershey got kicked out of school.”
North’s mouth dropped. “What?”
“Dismissed for ‘psychological reasons.’ It’s a complete load of crap, obviously. Tarsus just got rid of her because Hershey stood up to her.”
“And Tarsus is who, again?”
“The teacher Hershey was spying for. She doesn’t think I should be at Theden because of my mom. Hershey told me she was going to tell Tarsus she wouldn’t do it anymore. I guess this is where that got her.”
North looked skeptical. “Does this Tarsus woman really have the power to get Hershey kicked out like that? I’d think there’d be a whole process, doctors’ signatures, stuff like that.”
“That’s why I need to see Hershey’s psych eval,” I told him. “Can you h—” I stopped myself before I said “hack” and lowered my voice. “Can you help me get it?”
“I’ll try,” North said. “She was at the campus health center?”
I nodded.
He glanced over his shoulder. “I should probably get back to work,” he said apologetically. “Kate has the flu, so we’re understaffed. But I get off at four and can look into the Hershey stuff then. You want to come over after your last class and we can do it together?”
“That would be great,” I said, pulling out my handheld to check the time. “I should get going anyway. My calculus class started five minutes ago.”
“Will you please stop at the drugstore first and get something for your fever? It’ll take two minutes. I’d give you something, but Kate cleaned out our medicine drawer last night.”
“You’re worried about me,” I said, and smiled.
“Nah. It’s purely selfish. I want to be able to kiss you without infecting myself.”