Free to Fall (23 page)

“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.

23

“RORY, WE HAVE TO GO,”
North said urgently. EMTs were hurriedly strapping Griffin to a stretcher, barking at one another in rapid fire. I hadn’t moved since Griffin collapsed nineteen minutes ago. Nor had I spoken. I felt as if the floor beneath me had given way and I was floating through the air, weightless. This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t even know what “this” was yet. Was Griffin dead?

“Rory,” North said again.

I forced myself to meet his gaze. “Okay,” I said.

Beck was on his Gold, watching the Forum chatter about what had happened. Since Griffin had collapsed during a live broadcast, it was all anyone on Forum was talking about. New posts were popping up so fast, Beck’s screen was a whirl of vertical motion.

“Come with us,” I said to Beck suddenly. “Take the train with us back to Theden. You can stay at North’s.” I looked at North for confirmation. “Right?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of room.”

Beck was already shaking his head. “I can’t. I have the MFA event tomorrow.”

“You’ll be back by then. There are trains nearly every hour.”

I could see Beck considering it. He seemed uncertain. “Let me ask Lux,” he said finally.

“You can’t ask Lux,” I said sharply. “I’m not supposed to be here, so you can’t ask it if you can leave with me.”

Beck’s eyes were instantly suspicious. “What do you mean, you’re not supposed to be here?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, squeezing my fists in frustration to keep from shaking him. “God, Beck, just come with us. You’ll be back in plenty of time.”

“Rory, we really need to go,” North said gently. “It’s gonna be hard to get a cab, and we can’t miss our train.”

I looked at Beck. “You coming?”

He took a step back, away from me.

“Forget it,” I barked, spinning on my heels as angry tears sprung to my eyes. “North, let’s go.”

“Nice to meet you,” I heard North say behind me. “Good luck with the exhibit.”

“Rory!” Beck called. I didn’t look back.

By the time we made it to our train, the mainstream news media had picked up the story. We watched coverage the whole way back. A little after eleven, Gnosis released a statement. Griffin Payne had suffered a stroke.

“A stroke?” My voice faltered. “He’s thirty-five. He was on the cover of
Men’s Health
last month. How could he have a stroke?”

North just shook his head. “He’ll be okay. He’s got the best doctors in the world.”

I pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead in frustration. “Ugh! I feel like we took one step forward and, like, eleven steps back.” And then, out of nowhere and out of everywhere, I was crying. This time I didn’t even try to hold it in. North pulled me toward him, wrapping both arms around me. I wept noisily into his jacket, which smelled like woodsy cologne and not like North at all.

“None of it makes any sense,” I said, my voice muffled by herringbone. “Griffin said my mom was their class valedictorian. Why would she leave just hours before graduation?”

“Maybe she was scared,” North said. “Maybe she knew someone was out to get her. Someone who was capable of more than just some doctored medical files.”

“But who? And why didn’t she just go to the police? Or at least to Griffin. She could’ve proven to him that those test results were fake.” Unless she sent them to him. But why would she do that?

Just then something out the window caught my eye. A flash of light in the dark. It was a meteor, zipping through the night sky. For a moment I thought there were two of them, one below and one above, but then I realized the second one was a mirror image of the first, reflecting off the water below it. We were passing the reservoir. We were almost back.

“Theden” came the train’s automated voice. “Theden Central Station is next.”

I wiped my eyes and sat up as the train pulled into the station.

“Well, as far as dates go, this one was pretty uneventful,” North deadpanned.

“Totally dull,” I agreed.

“I’m glad you got a chance to talk to Griffin,” he said, softer and sincere.

“Me too.” Neither of us needed to say what we were both thinking. That we hoped it wouldn’t be the last time I got that chance.

The train stopped and we got to our feet. Mine were aching in Hershey’s stacked heels. “So we regroup tomorrow?” North asked as we stepped off the train onto the empty platform.

“Yeah, I guess so.” It was Saturday, so I didn’t have classes, but I’d resolved to use the weekend to catch up on all the schoolwork I hadn’t done. I’d assumed that talking to Griffin would answer my questions, not raise about a hundred more. Now I doubted I’d get anything done before Monday, or that this coming week would be any different from the past one. A blur of lectures I wouldn’t absorb and homework I wouldn’t do.

My jeans and sneakers were in the compartment under the seat of North’s motorbike, which was parked outside the station. North shrugged out of his suit jacket and held it up as a curtain, keeping his eyes on the sky as I changed in the space between it and him. When I had my jeans on but not my sweatshirt, I took a step closer to him so our bodies were touching, my bare chest against his white dress shirt. He looked down at me in surprise.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said, and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him. When my lips touched his, I let my eyes flutter shut and my thoughts go still, pretending, just for that instant, that we were just a boy and a girl kissing in a parking lot. A boy who wasn’t a cyber criminal and a girl whose life actually made sense. I felt his arms begin to lower. I shrieked. “Back up, back up!”

“Sorry,” he said, raising his arms again. “I got distracted.”

I giggled. “Okay, look away again, I have to put my sweatshirt on.” Obligingly, he tilted his head back, exhaling a big puff of warm air into the cold night sky. I tugged the sweatshirt over my head, and the skin on my chest prickled with goose bumps. “Okay, done.” I folded the dress and handed it to North. “Tell Noelle thank you.” North put the dress and his suit jacket under the seat then handed me a helmet.

“I should call my dad,” I said as I buckled the strap. “It was crazy to think I could keep this from him. He deserves to know the truth.” My voice broke a little. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t imagine actually saying the words.
Mom lied to you. I’m not your kid.

“What can I do?”

“Download Beck’s Lux profile,” I told him.

“What are we looking for?”

“An explanation,” I said. “He starts using Lux and suddenly he’s taking crappy photographs and not returning my calls. That can’t be an accident.”

“Contentment changes people,” North replied. He swung a leg over his bike and tilted the seat down so I could get on behind him. “He’s obviously getting a lot of validation for those photographs—which, by the way, aren’t
that
crappy—”

“Yes, they are.”

“And he feels like his life is coming together. It’s the same reason ninety-eight percent of the people in this country won’t make a decision without Lux. Life gets easier when you use it.”

I gaped at him. “You’re defending Lux?”

“Hell, no,” North replied. “I’m just explaining it.”

I shook my head, the helmet knocking against my temple. “No. There’s something else going on.”

“Like what?” North asked as he started up the bike.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I climbed onto the bike and wrapped my arms around his waist. “But maybe it’s connected to whatever Griffin was about to say tonight. Before he left for his speech, he said something about needing to say a few things before ‘this thing’ went any further.”

“But he collapsed before he could get it out.”

“That’s pretty odd timing, don’t you think?”

North turned his head to look back at me as the bike roared to life. “Wait. You think there’s a chance what happened to Griffin wasn’t an accident?” he yelled over the noise.

I met North’s gaze. “I think there’s a lot we don’t know.”

I got back to the library ten minutes before closing, and my Gemini was right where I’d hidden it, under a seat cushion in one of the upper reading rooms. It’d posted two mundane status updates in the time we’d been gone, and other than a few likes, my late-night study session hadn’t drawn much attention on Forum. We’d pulled it off. Unless, of course, Tarsus heard from Griffin that I was at the party, or worse, had seen me, but at that point I had no way to know. I’d just have to wait.

I called my dad on the walk back to the dorm. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet in Seattle, so I knew he and Kari would be awake. He answered on the second ring.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, my voice breaking.

“Sweetheart, what is it?”

The tears spilled over. How could the man who knew me well enough to know that something was wrong from the words
Hi, Dad
not be my real father?

“It’s about Mom . . . ,” I began.

“Okay,” Dad said slowly, guarded. There was the sound of a door opening. I imagined him stepping outside onto the small porch off the kitchen, barely big enough for the charcoal grill he kept there.

I started with the simplest truth. “Mom was— She was already pregnant when you guys got married.”

My dad sighed. “I know that, honey.”

“And”—I took a shaky breath—“you weren’t the father. You aren’t—my father.”

There was a long pause. I stopped walking and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing against his reaction, the pain I expected to hear.

“I know that, too,” I heard him say, his voice heavier than I’d ever heard it.

My eyes flew open. “You
know
?”

“I’ve always known,” he said sadly. “Your mom and I, Rory, we— We were never a couple. Not romantically, anyway. Your mom— She was in love with someone else. But, sweetheart, that doesn’t change how much I love you. Or the fact that I will
always
be your dad.” His voice broke. Tears rushed to my eyes.

“I love you too, Dad,” I whispered. “So much.”

“Maybe I should fly out there,” he said then. “I could—”

“No, that’s okay,” I said quickly. Airfare was expensive, and money was tight for them already. Plus, I felt like North and I were getting closer to whatever truth was behind all this, and having my dad around would only slow us down. “With classes and homework, I would hardly even see you.”

“If you’re sure,” my dad said, sounding uncertain. “I just hate that you’re by yourself in all this.”
By myself.
My mom was dead, my biological father was in the hospital, my best friend was acting like he’d been body-snatched, my roommate was missing, and my dad and stepmom were three thousand miles away. I felt like one of those bright-orange buoys in the ocean, floating in deep water. But those were tethered by rope. I was on my own.

You’re not alone,
came a whisper.

The voice was right. I had North.

“Dad?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Do you know . . . who he was?” I couldn’t say
who my father is
. Not to my dad. I’d already decided not to tell him about Griffin, not yet. Not unless he already knew.

“No,” Dad replied. “Your mom wouldn’t tell me. She said it was better—
safer
was her word—if I didn’t know.”

It was warm in my room, but I suddenly got cold.

“Safer,” I repeated.

“That’s what she said. She was insistent that I not try to find out, and made me promise that I’d never tell you that you weren’t mine.”

“Why? What was she afraid of?” What I really meant was
who
.

“It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million and one times since then. But your mother never said. All she told me was she thought her life was in danger, and yours was too, and that she needed me to marry her, and if anything happened to her, to raise you. She made me promise never to tell you that I wasn’t your father unless you found out on your own.”

It was hard to imagine my dad at eighteen, taking all of this on. “And you said yes to all that?”

“It was Aviana. I would’ve done anything for her.” His voice caught. “Plus, what she was asking, it was what I always wanted, anyway. To be with her. I thought we’d get to spend the rest of our lives together. I never thought she’d—” He stopped himself again. He never thought she’d
die
.

She thought her life was in danger, and nine months later, she was dead.

What if her death wasn’t an accident?

I didn’t sleep that night, wondering. It seemed implausible, but then again I didn’t know who my mom was dealing with. Neither had Griffin. There was a piece missing, a big one, and I had no idea where to find it.

At two a.m. I turned on my light. I couldn’t just lie there in the dark anymore, clutching the baby blanket my mom had been so determined to finish. But there was no way I could concentrate on the mountain of schoolwork I had to do either. North’s copy of
Paradise Lost
was on my nightstand, the card my mom left me marking the page where the quotation appeared. I grabbed the book and settled back into bed, letting my fingers skim the raised stitching on my blanket as I read the words aloud:

Authors to themselves in all

Both what they judge, and what they choose; for so

I formed them free: and free they must remain,

Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change

Their nature, and revoke the high decree

Unchangeable, eternal, which ordain’d

Their freedom: they themselves ordain’d their fall.

North was right. Saying the words out loud made the meaning clearer somehow.
Authors to themselves in all
. Milton was saying that we always had the power to make right choices, even if we seldom did. It reminded me of Pythagoras’s view of upsilon. And Griffin’s
timshel
ring. Virtue or vice, thou mayest or mayest not, there was always a choice.

I set the book in my lap and picked up my Gemini, turning it over in my hands. For the first time I sensed the Doubt before I heard it, as if my mind had been preparing for it to speak.