Dedication
for leah, leb, seth & joe—
(another mission completed on the never-ending quest to convince my siblings i’m cool)
Epigraph
men wiser & more learned than i have discerned in history a plot,
a rhythm, a pre-determined pattern . . .
these harmonies are concealed from me.
i can see only one emergency following upon another
as wave follows wave.
—H.A.L. Fisher
i view my fellow man not as a fallen angel,
but as a risen ape.
—Desmond Morris
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part I: Evening Mass
Evan
Neesha
Aiden
Neesha
Evan
Part II: Maintenance Sweep
Evan
Aiden
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Evan
Neesha
Part III: Uppers
Neesha
Evan
Aiden
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Part IV: Rats in Cages
Aiden
Neesha
Evan
Neesha
Aiden
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Neesha
Part V: Recruits
Evan
Aiden
Neesha
Evan
Aiden
Part VI: Light of the World
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Aiden
Evan
Aiden
Neesha
Part VII: The Flood
Aiden
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Aiden
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Aiden
Neesha
Aiden
Evan
Neesha
Evan
Neesha
Evan
Neesha
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Samuel Miller
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
REDEMPTION PREPARATORY ACADEMY
fifty miles east of Black Rock, Utah
October 19, 1995
Day 40
Testimonial: Emmalynn Donahue.
Year 1995–1996. Day 24.
When I came here, I thought I was blessed.
I remember my parents were so excited. We didn’t apply for it or anything, we’d never even heard of it, so the first few times that my father answered the kitchen phone and heard a man introduce himself as a member of a “recruitment department,” he thought it was a telephone salesperson, and he hung up.
They invited us to a Recruit Day in Des Moines, and my dad drove us there, four hours in the truck. We thought it would be full but there were only six of us, two potential students and our two parents each, in the conference room at the Days Inn. The other girl’s name was Melissa.
They told us that recruitment was incredibly selective, that we’d been chosen because of our accomplishments. They read long lists of names—famous inventors, politicians, and presidents of million-dollar companies—then added ours to the end. They showed us photographs of the campus on a projector screen and told us the school was funded by private donors, so we wouldn’t have to pay a dime for tuition. My mom cried.
I was fourteen when that happened. I thought it was the best day of my life.
My dad drove me to Utah in the truck, eighteen hours, for the start of my freshman year. When we got there, he put my suitcase on the bus and got right back in the truck. He said stuff like this didn’t happen to people in our family, so I should be sure to take advantage of it. He told me to take lots of pictures for my mom, because she would want to know what it was like to be given an opportunity like this. He said he would come get me in May, and that he would pray for me every day, and that I should pray too, to have the strength to not screw this up. Then he drove off and left me there, feeling blessed and alone.
The first person I met was Leia. She was from Beirut, and when she was eleven, she won a science competition that had ten thousand people in it. There aren’t even ten thousand people in our town. She needed to take an airplane to come to school here, but she could, because the country of Lebanon was giving her free flights so she could be at this school. The next person I met won a math competition in Germany. The next person I met spoke twelve languages. All I did was write a poetry book in English.
My dad couldn’t come get me in May. He lost his job when the furniture factory moved to Mexico, then the truck in a drunk-driving accident, so I stayed at the school over summer break, reading books and walking around the forests. There was only one phone on campus and you had to pay $1 per minute to use it, so my mom would write me letters instead, telling me about how Kansas looked in the summer, and how my old friends from middle school were starting to look like adults and work at the Dairy Queen, and how my dad loved me, even if he couldn’t come get me again this summer. At the end of every letter, she would write, There are more than a million people in Kansas, but no one is our Emma. You are our most special girl.
She still writes me letters, but they’re not as long anymore, and they don’t come as often. She hardly ever mentions my dad. She’s given up trying to understand my life here, so she doesn’t ask. In the last one, two months ago, she told me she didn’t think about me first thing in the morning anymore, and that she thought it was “nice to be moving forward.” But still, at the end of the letter, no one is their Emma. I am still their most special girl.
I used to love when she said that, but I don’t think I want to be special anymore. The most beautiful flowers are the ones that get picked, but what good is a dead flower?
I don’t remember what it was like to be fourteen and in love with the possibility of this place. I don’t feel worthy or important. I don’t write poetry anymore.
I’ve been here four years, and I don’t think I’m blessed. In fact, I’m afraid I might be cursed.
Part I.
Evening Mass.
Evan.
THE OVERHEAD LIGHT flickered as he waited for her to enter the dormitory hallway.
His door was wide open and he stood just inside the lip of it, angled toward the hall. It was Day 40, which meant he’d lived across the hall from her for forty days, and this was the first day he’d left his door all the way open. He’d covered his walls with basketball posters and lit a candle that smelled like pine trees. His hair was long enough now that it was starting to turn upward at the bottom, like the boy she said she liked from 3rd Rock from the Sun—Joseph Garden Whoever He Was. He’d even found one of his signature button-ups in the Lost and Found.
It was delicate, being in the right spot at the right time. It usually involved several minutes of standing in the right spot, waiting for the right time, and sometimes being placed in the right dorm and waiting forty days. Today, he held a Goosebumps book to his face, pretending to read and staring over the top at the hinge across the hall where at any moment, her door would open, and Emma would come gliding out.
He checked his watch: twenty minutes to mass. A few students passed but none of them noticed him standing at attention behind the book. It was easy to blend in at Redemption; the fact that everyone came from
different parts of the world meant students were always doing unexpected things. One of the lessons you learned in week one was to always look the other way, and before too long, you didn’t have to try. It was better that way. Forty days on this floor, and only two or three other students knew his name.
Across the hallway, the hinge creaked open, and Emma rushed out the door with her head down. She turned left.
Evan leapt forward, brushing past her in the opposite direction. His right hand dropped, and the book slipped from between his fingers, but he kept moving down the hall away from her.
He counted off ten seconds before chancing a look back. The Goosebumps book hung in her doorframe, blocking the latch.
Emma walked alone to church every Thursday night. Twenty minutes early, down the Human Sciences dorm hallway to the stairwell in the lounge. A stop at the water fountain on the way. The third pew in chapel. Hands crossed the whole time. A solo prayer at the outdoor cross afterward. A walk back with Neesha. A painted smile every time some plebe tried to say hi to her. A half hug for every pretend friend. Emma lived in a loop.
It wasn’t just Emma. The whole world was like that. In a loop. You could find a pattern in anything, if you stood far enough away from it. Day becomes night, success becomes failure becomes success becomes failure, green becomes yellow becomes red. All of it could be predicted.
And beaten.
That’s how you win at chess. You can’t solve the game; the game is objective. There’s an absolute mechanical parity to the pieces on both sides of the board. You solve the other person. You study their pattern. Every time they sacrifice a pawn to protect their bishop, they tell you about their carelessness. Every time they bring a castle back to protect their queen, they reveal an insecurity. Most people broadcast their mistakes before they even know they’re going to make them. So you load up not where they’re weak but where they’re going to be weak, and when they inevitably play the part they’ve been telling you they’re going to play, you take them.
Evan rushed down into the Human Sciences Lounge and out into the fog. It was thin today, the kind you could see through. The chapel was a quarter of a mile across the lawn, and the yellow light atop the wooden cross was the only one on the school’s back complex to guide the students. They were told to walk carefully through the fog, with their eyes on the ground, following the network of dirt paths, avoiding the rock formations and wild grass in between. He ran, his eyes up, around a slow-curving path that banked along the forest, until the gold in her hair broke through the fog, twenty feet ahead.
Emma stopped at the mouth of the path and stared into the mass of students. People came from all directions toward the stairs of the chapel, but where she stood, slightly elevated, it gave the illusion that they were all converging on her. She hid her eyes as a group of instructors passed. Someone tried to wave but she wasn’t paying attention. Evan followed her gaze and noticed a dark-purple-and-yellow jacket, hovering near the woods. By the time his eyes found Emma again, Aiden Mallet had descended on her.
Evan kept moving in a wide path around them, settling on one of the benches in front of the chapel. Aiden was trying to hug her, and she wasn’t hugging back. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Her arms were around her chest like a protective vest. Her fingers were twitching against the sleeves of her sweater.
Evan held his breath. This was it.
Aiden was a terrible boyfriend. He could barely read and write; he sucked at math, history, science, and philosophy. He could shoot a basketball, but that was a useless skill. He was attractive by American standards, with thick blond hair and broad shoulders, but to Evan he looked like a floppy-haired Hulk. He had one real value, but it was universal and easy to understand: Aiden was rich. His parents owned a chain of grocery stores on the East Coast, and he was their only child, and the heir apparent to their fortune.
None of that would have mattered if not for Emma. If not for Emma, Aiden would have been just another zero-value life filling the void of everywhere else. But he wasn’t. Something about being popular and rich and average at basketball gave him the right to Emma, and everybody went along with it, because it’s high school and that’s how the pattern is supposed to go. And Aiden went along with it, because that’s how the pattern of his life had always been. But Aiden didn’t deserve her, and Emma knew it, and Aiden knew it, and he’d made her life miserable for it.
But Emma had been altering her routine to avoid him. No more Wednesday morning breakfasts. No more walks home from mass. No more looks at him during church. No more invitations to her dorm after curfew. Aiden’s days were numbered, and today, they’d run out.
Evan sat on the edge of the bench, watching the conversation in his reactions, between groups of passing students. First, Aiden was nervous. He knew what was coming. A group of Year Ones stood in the way, so Evan craned his neck around them. Aiden was holding Emma’s shoulders to stop her from speaking. Evan sat up even further on the bench. A seven-foot-tall boy ran in front of them, so he slid left, just in time to see Aiden’s face morph into a smile.
“Hey.”
Evan’s face fell. Aiden was still smiling, bigger, and nodding along.
“Hey!”
Standing over her like a hungry lion, he mouthed one word; a question and an answer, a confirmation and a lifeline; the worst possible word that could come out of his mouth—“Tonight?”
“Hey!”
A large gloved hand grabbed Evan by the shoulder, and he fell backward.
“Can I sit here?”
Peter Novak was six foot three and razor thin, draped in a puffy orange coat, blocking the light from the top of the cross. He nodded to the bench next to Evan and sat without waiting for a response.
“So,” he said, burying his hands in his pockets. “You’re the kid who beat the chess computer?”
Evan nodded.
“Yeah, when my girl told me that, I thought, ‘No, that’s Bobby Fischer.’ You’re not Bobby Fischer, buddy.” Peter was from Eastern Europe, so his vowels were thick with an accent, but he was also on the debate team, so he spoke at two times the normal human speed, spitting as he went. “I guess you could do it too, but . . . that’s gotta suck, right? Being the second guy to invent the wheel? I mean, we kinda only need the one wheel.”
Peter hadn’t looked away from Evan; Evan hadn’t looked back. Silently, he absorbed all the S2—Subtext possible. Condescension was a means for establishing social control.
“What’re you looking at over there? Not much view from this bench, buddy. And I gotta say,” Peter said, inching closer, “I feel like I’m seeing you everywhere. Weird, right? Why do you think that is? Evan? Why d’you think that is?”
He felt his hair rise. Take the S4—Emotion out of it, and S5—Rationale. There was no reason for Peter Novak to know his name, unless Peter was paying attention to him.
“It’s a small—”
“Gotta talk louder than that.”
“It’s a small school.”
Peter tilted his angular nose down, like he was trying to pry a silent answer from beneath Evan’s skin. Aiden and Emma were gone, swept into the chapel with the wave of students around them. “I’m gonna go,” he mumbled, but as he tried to stand, Peter’s left arm slammed him back into the bench.
“I know what you’re doing, you little plebe,” Peter said. “She knows what you’re doing.”
“I—I’m not . . .” Evan tried to squirm around him but failed. His body went limp.
“I don’t know who you think you’re helping here, or why you’re following her, but knock it the fuck off, okay?” Peter let go of him and stood up. “My suggestion? Get a new hobby. Find your own thing.”
And he was gone, leaving Evan alone and out of breath on the bench. A few students nearby rolled their eyes in pity and continued into the chapel. One plebe girl tried to offer him a hand to stand but he ignored it. He didn’t need the help.
He didn’t care, either. It didn’t matter what Peter thought of
him. Peter’s life wouldn’t matter anyway. Peter was a plebe. He’d graduate from Redemption and find a lifeless job. He’d make a few women miserable. He’d mow his lawn a million times and get back problems. He’d die. Peter would come and go from Earth without anyone ever acknowledging that he was actually there. Peter would never exist for a larger purpose, and he would never know true salvation.
But not Evan. He had a purpose. After stepping inside to confirm Emma was secured in the third row, Evan disappeared out the back door of the chapel.
Neesha.
TEN MINUTES BEFORE evening mass, at the stone well two hundred yards north of the wooden cross, wearing a dark-purple-and-yellow Adidas windbreaker. Those were the instructions.
Neesha waited with her hands balled into fists, leaning against the inner break of a tree. On the top of the Wah Wah Mountains, and every mountain in the southern Rockies, water condenses faster, so when the sun disappears and the wet heat of the day is left to night, it becomes a thick white fog, clinging to the top of the mountain. Redemption was built on the edge of the fog line, which meant most nights, it came rolling in slowly and suffocated the school until dawn. She liked being outside to watch as it was settling, slowly obscuring everything in the distance until you could only see twenty feet in any direction. It was like watching the world shrink in minutes. Souffle de dieu, the instructors called it. The breath of God.
Twelve minutes to mass. Her feet were soaking wet. She’d been in such a hurry to get out, she forgot her all-terrain shoes, and now her Skechers were sinking into the mud. She could feel the cold sneaking up the arms of her jacket and in the holes of her jeans, squeezing her skin and setting off ripples of vibrations. She stood stiff, soaking the drawstring of the jacket with saliva as she chewed it.
Nine minutes to mass. Something started to feel off; she could always tell when something was wrong. Her mother told the story of a night in Chandigarh, when she was eight. They’d been walking home from temple, and as soon as the sun had fully set, she stopped and started crying. Her father tried to carry her forward, but she collapsed to the ground, refusing to cross the Ghaggar River. She insisted they walk around it, an extra kilometer to get home. The next day, her mother ran to tapri to get a newspaper, expecting to see reports of a drowning, or a car driving into the Ghaggar, but there were no tragedies in Chandigarh. Or if there were, she didn’t get far enough past the front-page headline to find it: JAHAR DEVASTATED BY FLOODING. Rains in the nearby Patna region had destroyed entire villages. It was like an attack; the rainfall was so sudden and violent that survivors felt certain it had been sent as a punishment, starting with the first drop right at sunset.
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