Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  “I got you,” said a soft voice belonging to a young man over her shoulder. She noticed then that she was nearly in his lap; clearly he had broken her fall.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Cady scrambled to get off him, though she winced in pain when she set down her hand.

  “No worries. You a’right?” He helped her to her feet, and Cady thanked him. But standing eye to eye with the boy, she was surprised that he was no taller than she, with a nascent, fuzzy mustache; he couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Cady retrieved Eric’s blue notebook herself, but as the boy bent to gather the others scattered on the street, she noticed the base of his bumpy spine on his slight frame and marveled—his were the hands that had so forcefully lifted her?

  “Holy shit! That girl almost got run over!” a nearby teenage girl squealed, waving a cellphone with a glittery pink cover. “And I got it on video!”

  “For real? Tiana, show me.” Newly distracted, the boy darted to join the group gathering around the girl with the phone.

  Cady wanted to see too, but the cabbie, newly sprung from his taxi, cut her off. He’d run around the hood to see if he’d hit her, and as soon as he realized she was fine, his panic turned to anger. “Jeezus, were you lookin’? I had the light! Whaddya tryin’ to do, kill yourself?”

  Her mustached protector reappeared, stepping between them and puffing his bird chest. “Hey, fuck off, man!”

  The light changed again, and other cars began to honk. The cabbie threw up his hands and stormed back to his car.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” A pot-bellied school chaperone finally pushed his way through the throng and pointed at the boy. “Javi, I don’t wanna hear that language again, you hear?” Then he hitched up his pants and shouted over their heads, “Come on, everybody, outta the street.”

  As they jostled with the crowd back to the sidewalk, Cady turned to the boy. “Javi, is it? Thank you so much. Did your friend really get it on video? Can I see it?”

  A sly smile carved his cheeks. “Sure, guapa, give me your number. I’ll get it and send it to you.” He handed her his cellphone and grinned, showing off his braces.

  Cady quickly tapped in her number to his phone, just as the chaperone began to corral the students back toward Harvard Yard. Javi gave her one last moony smile before he disappeared among his classmates.

  Cady still felt shaken from the near miss and embarrassed for making a spectacle. She quickly, and carefully, crossed Mass Ave and strode toward the Smith Student Center, taking a seat at one of the outdoor tables to collect herself. She turned over her right hand and grimaced; the heel of her palm had been badly skinned, and she was definitely going to have a huge bruise on her buttocks. Although she supposed she should be thankful—if not for Javi, she could’ve been hurt a lot worse, or even killed. She sucked air as she picked out the pieces of gravel pressed deep into the heel of her palm. Droplets of fresh blood appeared in the tiny craters left behind.

  A pinging sound of a text message on her phone distracted her from the pain. It was a message from an unknown 617 number, consisting of mostly emoji: a taxicab, a gust of wind, and prayer hands, with a video attachment. A second text followed, “Follow me snap and ig @hollajavi04” and the sunglass smiley emoji.

  Cady clicked to play the video. It started by showing Harvard’s giant gate, with the girl narrating their arrival over a lot of ambient noise, then it panned down and back toward the street to a boy on the curb. “Devon, give me that Ivy League glamor, hunty!” Her guy friend snapped into a pose, fanning his painted fingernails around his fluttering doe eyes. While he vogued in the foreground, Cady spotted herself in the background hustling toward the street. The Yellow Cab barreled down the frame, and even at that angle, it’s clear that the two vectors were doomed to intersect, until the very last moment, when Cady was yanked backward. She replayed those last seconds, watching as Javi reached for her, his skinny right arm outstretched, and only his right arm—when she was sure she had felt two hands, on either side of her. Cady touched her left biceps—did she feel a tenderness there, or was she imagining it? Cady played the part again, pausing to zoom in on the moment, viewing the segment frame by frame, and while it’s clear Javi touched her, the force of it, enough to reverse her momentum like a crash test dummy, didn’t make sense to her.

  Good grief, that was close.

  Cady recognized the voice right away, it was the one from Memorial Church—Whit.

  I saw you walking ahead of me, and I was trying to screw up the courage to say hullo when I saw that roadster coming right for you.

  Whit was there. Seeing her and, not a taxi, but a “roadster.” She remembered what Prokop had described, hidden dimensions, the fabric of space-time folded over. What if the past had folded overtop the present at that precise location where she needed help?

  I’d like to take credit, but it was reflexive, I was in the right place at the right time.

  Or the right place in the wrong time.

  Anyone would’ve done it.

  Anyone could try, Cady thought. A fourteen-year-old boy weighing 120 pounds soaking wet probably couldn’t. But a collegiate rower like Whit was?

  You saved me, thank you.

  Shucks, like I said, I was lucky to be there.

  Cady stared at the chair opposite her, searching for any sign of movement, any glimmer, any sign of a presence. She leaned all the way across the table and waved her hand over the seat of it, feeling only air.

  Hey, hey! He chuckled, a low laugh like ice clinking in a glass of whisky. You could buy me dinner first.

  She yanked her hand back. “Sorry,” Cady said aloud. A couple of tourists at a nearby table stopped talking to look at her.

  You left in a hurry that night at the church. I hope I didn’t talk too much.

  No, I … I just had to get home.

  They give you Cliffie’s a strict curfew, keep the “Betty Co-Ed’s” in line.

  A what?

  You know, like the song? “Betty Co-Ed has lips of red for Harvard …” he sang. Nothing?

  It’s a stupid novelty tune. My music taste is better than that, I swear. My cousin works at Brunswick records in New York City, he sends me records all the time, sometimes before you can buy them. Anyway, any girl who goes to college has my utmost respect. You’ve probably got big plans for after graduation.

  Cady sighed, graduation seemed light-years away, she was trying to get through this week, or this day.

  I haven’t thought that far ahead.

  You haven’t thought past your brother. He’d said it gently, and yet the words still knocked her back in her seat.

  I’m sorry, there I go again, getting too comfortable. You were so open in the church the other night, made me feel like I know you better than I do.

  No … I know exactly what you mean, I just didn’t know it until you said it.

  I haven’t thought past my father. He died a few days shy of his thirtieth birthday. When I picture my future, I can imagine my Naval career, starting a family, but I can’t picture myself as a geezer, or really any older than he got to be. It’s like he’s the horizon line in my head, I’m always moving toward it, but I can’t imagine getting to the other side. You ever feel like that?

  Yes— Everything Whit said resonated with her. She had the uncanny sense of being truly seen by someone invisible. It thrilled and frightened her.

  Cady caught a tourist couple stealing glances at her again, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to lose contact with Whit. She wanted to know more about him, to find more of his connections to her or Eric, but maybe just to know him.

  —What do you want to do in the Navy?

  Have you ever seen a dirigible? They’re airships, enormous blimps with a steel skeleton. The Germans called them Zeppelins.

  Zeppelins … like in the Hindenburg explosion?

  I don’t know that one. Is
that one the Krauts used in the war?

  Cady racked her brain for the year of the Hindenburg crash, but Whit was excited and kept talking.

  Wouldn’t surprise me—the Zeppelins were filled with hydrogen, highly combustible. But the Navy has a new Lighter-than-Air division that has improved on the technology using helium, which improves stability. Ours are so stable, that the latest prototypes double as an aircraft carrier, so that’s recon and defense. I’d love to work in that division, I’m studying applied physics and mechanical engineering to give me an edge.

  If you join the Navy, don’t go to the base in Pearl Harbor, okay?

  What, you don’t think piloting a seven-hundred-foot airship while drinking Mai-Tais is a bright idea?

  No, it’s—Cady wanted to warn him without freaking him out or disturbing world history with some sort of butterfly effect—that base is vulnerable to attack.

  Exactly. All the more reason we need airships for recon and defense. There are miles and miles of currently unguarded Pacific Ocean between us and the Far East. Something’s brewing in the Orient, and it ain’t green tea, I read the papers. These dirigibles could avert disaster. It’s beautifully simple technology. Airplanes are heavy, they need lift, drag and fuel to propel into the sky. But dirigibles are literally lighter than air—they float! The papers are calling them the Leviathan of the Skies. They’re a modern marvel, and we need that right now, a reminder that we can build our way out of this depression. Something people can literally look up to in the clouds and say, “My country made that.” The Navy has figured out how to harness the wind.

  It was a big idea, the kind of thing Eric would’ve liked, Cady thought.

  What’s that you’re working on? You seemed so eager to rescue that notebook from the street.

  It was my brother’s. It’s all I have of his from his last year. It starts out as lab notes, but toward the end, I can’t understand it. I feel like I need to know what he was trying to work out, it’s my only insight into what was going on in his head. I thought these notes could give me a clue, but his best friend looked at it and says it’s just nonsense, that Eric had lost it by then.

  So? Why do you think his friend is the authority?

  Because he studies physics like Eric, he would know how to interpret this better than I would.

  Better than his sister? I find that hard to believe.

  Cady felt her cheeks flush with shame.—He was here with him his last year. I wasn’t.

  Distance doesn’t matter with family. Trust your gut. There’s no better decoder ring than shared history.

  What kind of ring?

  Little Orphan Annie? C’mon, I thought everybody knew that radio show. They ask kids to send away for the decoder ring—it’s just a simple Caesar cipher, the alphabet shifted over five or so letters—and then the radio show puts out a coded message that only the kids with the ring can decipher at home.

  A coded message, Cady repeated in her mind, the notebook gibberish is in code. She flashed to coded directions Eric used to leave her when they were kids, the hieroglyphs, the word puzzles, the missions …

  This might be a tougher puzzle than a kids’ radio show. But he was your brother. Nobody knows how to interpret him better than you.

  … the codes that only she could break.

  Cady dug in her bag for the notebook and threw it open on the table. She was paging to the back when she recoiled: a streak of red smeared across the page and dampened the edge of its pages. It was blood, and it was coming from her.

  “Boo-boo!”

  Cady looked up to see that a little girl was pointing right at Cady; when their eyes met, her small face crumpled. “Mommy!”

  The girl’s mother swooped in and lifted her daughter just as the child began to wail. Cady glimpsed the mother’s expression as she turned her daughter’s face away.

  Fear.

  A stream of fresh blood had sprung from a divot in the heel of her palm, a puncture wound from road debris that was deeper than she had realized. The blood filled the creases of her hand, tracing her lifeline like a palm reader. It must have been like that for some time, because the blood had dripped down her arm and darkened the wrist of her jacket and even smeared on the aluminum tabletop. It seemed impossible that Cady hadn’t noticed; she was as dumbfounded as the people now staring at her.

  But she’d been listening to Whit.

  It seemed that suddenly every passerby was looking at her. All wore similar faces of curiosity, concern, and revulsion. A middle-aged man in tortoiseshell glasses approached her. “Miss, do you need help?”

  “I’m fine.” Cady sprang up, hooking her arm under her purse straps and swiftly wiping the tabletop clean with her sleeve.

  “Do you know where UHS is, University Health Services? I can show you,” the woman with him added.

  “No thanks, really.” She hoped they weren’t faculty. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Cady kept her head down as she entered the student center and beelined to the restroom. A girl rose from a nearby seat and beat her to the bathroom door but, upon catching sight of Cady, blanched and stepped aside to let her go first.

  When she got to see herself in the bathroom mirror, Cady understood why. A bloody smudge marred her cheek and lip from where she’d touched her face, and her injured palm continued to sponge-paint in red everything she touched. She pawed at the toilet paper with her left hand and ran the right one under the hot water. The cut hurt more as she cleaned it, but luckily it didn’t seem too deep.

  Wounds on the palm bled a lot, Cady knew from past experience.

  She gingerly dried her hands. As she pressed a paper towel to her palm, a plum spot bloomed in the middle, but instead of focusing on the pain or the deepening color, Cady conjured the faces of the people staring at her, paralyzed between the tug of pity and the recoil of disgust. She imagined them talking about her right now, speculating, judging, and later, when they got home, Cady would be their story of the day.

  Just like Eric.

  30

  Cady had blocked out how hard it had been to go out with Eric in public. Now she recalled an afternoon at the King of Prussia mall, when her brother was home for spring break, and they had gone out to get their mom a birthday present. It was a Saturday, and the mall was packed. Eric had always hated crowds, even before he got sick, so Cady hadn’t intended to take him with her, but she wasn’t given a choice. Eric and their father had been fighting again, so their mother had insisted Cady get Eric out of the house. Cady made it a one-stop shop at Williams Sonoma, where she grabbed the first pretty serving platter she saw and raced to the checkout line. But even so, it hadn’t been fast enough for Eric.

  “This line isn’t moving at all,” he said, visibly agitated.

  “It is, just slowly.”

  “All these people are making me claustrophobic.” Eric kept licking his lips, though the white buildup at the corners of his mouth remained; his medication made his mouth dry. “We should go.”

  “If it’s making you really uncomfortable, you can wait outside. There’s an Auntie Anne’s pretzel kiosk outside the store, you like the cinnamon sugar ones, right? Here.” Cady handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Get whatever you want and I’ll meet you there. Make sure you wait for me.”

  “I hate when you act like Mom.” He took the money and walked away.

  She didn’t like it any more than he did. She waited in line, which was moving awfully slowly, glancing over her shoulder to keep an eye on Eric. Finally she paid for the gifts and rushed outside, but Eric wasn’t in front of the Auntie Anne’s. Her heart pounded as she hurried out onto the main atrium of the mall. Faced with three congested corridors going in separate directions, her eyes scanned for her twenty-year-old brother as panicky as if he’d been a lost child.

  She spotted him. He was standing by a large fern, rocking back and forth on his
toes, talking to himself, with his eyes fixed on a security camera—these days he never missed a security camera. But Cady saw something he didn’t see that broke her heart: two teenagers were filming Eric’s strange behavior on an iPhone and laughing at him.

  Cady called his name, hoping he would turn in the opposite direction. He didn’t respond, so she tried again, hustling to him. “Eric, we’re done, let’s go.”

  He ignored her and motioned to the camera with his head. “This is a decoy, the real one is somewhere else. They want you to believe the technology hasn’t improved since the eighties.”

  “We can go home now.” Cady took him by the arm, trying to steer him away, but not before he caught sight of the boys over his shoulder.

  “Hey you!” Eric shouted to them, his volume attracting the attention of passing shoppers. “Are you filming me? Are you following me, who told you to film me? Who sent you?”

  That only made them laugh harder.

  Cady kept her hand on his arm, feeling his muscles tense as the teens approached them. She kept her voice calm. “Ignore them, let’s get—”

  The one wearing a Phillies cap jutted out his chin. “This retard belong to you?”

  Cady recoiled at the nasty word as if she’d been hit.

  “What did you call me?” Eric snapped.

  “All right, then, how ’bout batshit crazy,” said the other, still holding up his phone. “This is going on YouTube.”

  “Give me that.” Eric shoved his hand out. “How did you know I would be here? Were you waiting for me?”

  “He makes it sound romantic. Yeah, I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”

  “Eric, stop.” Cady tugged at his sleeve.

  “Give me the phone,” Eric commanded.

  The punk met Eric’s glare and shrugged. “Make me.”

  Eric’s arm burst out of Cady’s grasp and caught the boy by the wrist, sending the phone clattering to the floor. They started scuffling, the boy pushing and trying to swing while Eric maintained his death grip. The friend had just lunged at Eric when a mall cop came jogging over, middle-aged but beefy. “Hey, hey, hey, everybody calm down and back off.” The mall cop pushed his body between the boys and finally Eric let go. “What’s the problem here?”