by Julia Kent
What if Eliot knew which tablet was mine? What if he had rigged the test? I had been terrified of having to confront Eliot and tell him my real name, but worse than that was the possibility that I didn’t deserve the prize at all. Surely it wasn’t a coincidence that I still sat here in the auditorium. My palms gripped the armrests of the seat.
Eliot returned alone and called the other student, the one I didn’t know, for his turn. By the time Eliot came into the room to call in Quentin for his interview, my heart was racing. I wanted to speak up, but didn’t know how, and they had left the room before I could say a word. Now, alone in the auditorium, I cursed myself for being such an idiot. I couldn’t stay. Eliot would think of me as a complete liar when I told him who I really was. Not only that, I hadn’t even finished half of the problems. As much as I wanted to win, I didn’t want to win unfairly. My grandmother had always told me that cheating was wrong, and if I won the prize it would be by cheating. I could always find another way to get to Hungary.
Liar. Cheat. Liar. The words reverberated in my head. The lecture hall closed in on me and I gasped to breathe. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t.
My heart pounded in my chest as I rose from my seat. I crossed over to Eliot’s desk and picked up a scrap of paper, pulling a pen out of my jacket pocket to write a brief note.
Sorry. I don’t deserve this.
I didn’t sign the note. Who was I to him, anyway? Valentina was nothing more than a wisp of imagination.
I left the note on his desk, and before I could change my mind, I turned and ran.
Eliot reached his hand out to dismiss the first student, someone who hadn’t written down a single partition for the first problem. Surely Valentina would know what a partition was? A flash of anxiety surged through him. If she were the first student to be dismissed—
Never mind that. Eliot berated himself for being so biased. Perhaps it was for the best that he couldn’t tell whose work was whose. Valentina had been writing, anyway, or pretending to. He pressed the button on his screen, sending the dismissal out into the auditorium. He stared at his screen for a moment until he heard a seat creak, and then he looked up to see a boy rolling his eyes as he left.
Not her.
Eliot pulled himself upright in his seat, wiping at his weary eyes. The night before already felt far away, the stuff of dreams and magic. He had looked forward to the internship test because he knew he would see her. And yet he was scared, too, for what reason he could not tell. Perhaps he worried that she would fail. She did not seem like the kind of person to take failure lightly. Perhaps he worried more that she would win, and all that would mean for him.
He flipped through the students’ work on his screen quickly, dismissing all those who had nothing written down. Then he went back and dismissed all those who were simply writing down partitions in any random order. He did not want guessers. He did not want anyone whose brains were disorderly.
Valentina still worked on in the second row. Her dark hair fell over her face, obscuring her eyes. She held the stylus carefully, precisely, as though cutting one slice of cake in two perfectly equal pieces. As he scanned through the remaining students on his screen, he tried to guess whose screen belonged to her. Perhaps this one, with the delicate handwriting, the numbers slanted in a hurry toward the right of the page. Perhaps this other one with the sums in an orderly matrix. One student had written all of the partitions out already and was beginning to show the proof for a general case.
Enough. He deleted the problem set, erasing all of the answers. Anybody still here deserved to move on.
As the problems went on and he dismissed the students more slowly, he grew prouder and prouder of Valentina. She certainly would become a great mathematician if she kept at it. All of the remaining few students—four of them—had done a remarkable job in their attempts at finding the answers to unreasonably hard questions. He thought he knew which tablet was hers before erasing the last question.
“Congratulations,” he said, looking directly at Valentina. She blushed and looked away. “You have passed the first round of testing. We’ll start the interview portion of the test now. Relax here; the interviews should take less than a half hour each. You first,” he said, pointing to the young man sitting next to Valentina. Eliot glanced back at the tablet on his desk. Although he wanted to be impartial, he knew that it would be hard to interview anyone after he had spoken with Valentina. He held out his hand to the young man who approached the front of the lecture hall.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Herceg.”
“Mark. Mark Joseph.” The boy shook his hand firmly and they walked out of the back exit of the auditorium to the empty classroom Eliot had chosen for the interviews.
“Very impressive. You and your fellow students. This is one of the finest test groups I’ve seen.” Eliot didn’t have to lie; the competition had grown fiercer each year, and this selection of students did not disappoint. Pasadena University, for all its administrative idiocy, certainly admitted some of the top mathematical talent in the country.
“Thank you, sir.” They sat in the student chairs, Eliot leaning back with his tablet in his lap. The boy scratched nervously at the side of his glasses.
“Mark Joseph. Any relation to the dean?”
“He’s my dad.” The boy stared down at his feet as though significantly embarrassed by having to reveal this fact. Eliot had to keep himself from laughing at the irony. After all that nonsense with Patterson, to have the dean’s son show up as a top candidate!
“Don’t worry, I won’t give preference one way or another. I only care about your math.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Which problem gave you the most trouble on the test?” he asked.
They sat and talked about the problems for quite some time before Eliot glanced at his watch and noticed over thirty minutes had passed. The boy impressed him, a good fit for the program and able to communicate his difficulties easily. A strikingly intelligent student. In any other year Eliot would have had his winner right there. And yet—
He had not dared to hope that Valentina would make it this far on the test. He thrilled to know that her mind was as top-rate as any of the other students there. He interviewed the other two boys in succession, leaving her for the end. Neither of the two other boys impressed him as much as Mark had. The red-haired one couldn’t explain his process except to repeat the particular steps he had taken, and Eliot needed someone who would be able to understand the broader strokes of the field he worked in. The same issue plagued the other student, who got frustrated while explaining his missteps on one of the proofs and clammed up completely when asked to describe his overall process of thought. No, he needed someone able to acknowledge their mistakes, someone who could talk him through their work. He hoped Valentina would be that person. If not, well, at least he had one candidate who could fill the spot.
Walking back down to the auditorium, Eliot felt his step grow lighter. She would do well, he knew it. She was a brilliant mathematician if she had gotten this far, and he already knew her temperament suited the internship. He walked into the auditorium filled with hope.
“Valentina—”
Her seat was empty. Eliot’s mouth stopped half-open. His thoughts turned slow, fuzzed.
“Valentina?”
There was only a note on the desk in the front of the room. He read it and crumpled the page in his hand. He looked out, as though expecting her to materialize from nothing into the seat where previously she had been sitting.
Eliot shoved the note into his pocket. He would not let her disappear so easily.
Fate told me I wasn’t a Disney princess, and I agreed. When the other girls at school wanted to play in imaginary royal palaces built out of cardboard and imagination, I went along. But I was never the princess. I was the funny sidekick lobster that helped the princess get the prince. What I never saw in myself—what nobody ever saw in me—was the slim grace of the hand that rests the tiara on her brow.
Me, Cinderella? A dainty, feminine orchid, destined to be plucked? No. I was Artemis, strong and intelligent and cunning.
Of Artemis,—her bow, with points drawn back,
A golden hue on her white rounded breast
Reflecting, while the arrow’s ample barb
Gleams o’er her hand, and at his heart is aim’d.
Nobody would come looking for me if I ran away, I thought.
I was wrong.
Princes don’t always go for the ones in glass slippers, it seems, and Eliot already had a hold on my heart that I could not escape from, no matter how fast or how far I ran.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know her name.”
Patterson’s brows sloped deeply into the wrinkled skin above his nose. He shook his head at Eliot, who paced across the oak floors of his office in vain.
“You have to pick a winner. We have to announce a winner. Today.”
“I have picked,” Eliot insisted.
“There is no Valentina Alastair!” Patterson looked at Eliot like he was a crazy person. Who knows, perhaps the man was right. Perhaps Eliot was crazy. But if there was one thing he knew, it was that Valentina was real, even if her name wasn’t really hers. And he wasn’t about to tell Patterson that his intended winner had turned tail and fled. It irritated him that the tablet system designed to preserve anonymity had backfired on him so miserably.
“She must have given the wrong name.”
“Then she must not want the prize. Pick another winner.”
“There isn’t another.” Even as he said this, Eliot knew the student he would pick if Valentina failed to materialize. Patterson sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back onto his desk.
Damn her! Why did she force him to chase after her? He felt ridiculous. He felt—
He felt as he had when he spoke to Clare for the first time, when she told him that her boyfriend was on his way to pick her up. He had persisted despite his mind telling him that he would surely fail, and eventually he won her over. Now, he felt the same stirrings of desire, the same desperate, ridiculous pangs of longing that made him rush headlong into foolishness.
“We can choose another for you, then. The Joseph kid. You mentioned him, and it would be beneficial for your status at the university…”
“Let me find her.” Eliot’s mouth set in a hard line. “Email the student list—”
“Dr. Herceg!” Patterson sounded incredulous. “Do you expect me to send out a missing persons alert for the winner of the most prestigious prize in the department?”
“Why not?”
“If you knew the kind of outrage that this would provoke—”
“Please!” Eliot knew he had reached the thin edge of Patterson’s tolerance, but he could not stop a last brutal effort. “Let me find her.”
“Then find her,” Patterson said. “Today. If I have not received an answer from you in the next two hours, I’m naming Mark Joseph the winner.”
“This is my internship—”
“Then stop acting like a fool! Eliot, I’ve tried to keep you here despite everything, but this is too much. I promise that the department will re-evaluate your fellowship.”
Eliot cast his eyes around the room. Truly, he must sound like a madman. Although every cell in Eliot’s body rejected it, he knew that Patterson had a point. Still, he needed to do everything he possibly could to find Valentina.
“Just one email—”
“No!” Patterson snapped down on the word as though cutting it off with his teeth. “You have until I leave campus tonight. I’ll be awaiting your reply.”
Eliot left the office, his shoulders slumped. Valentina—whatever her name actually was— had left him nothing with which to pursue her. She might well be a ghost. He had nothing of hers but her note—
Yes. Her note. He dug into his pocket and brought out the crumpled paper, running his fingertips over the lines. He stopped in his tracks and turned around, his eyes lifting back up to Patterson’s door. The department chair had stepped out into the hall and walked down the other corridor, away from Eliot.
Eliot stole a quick glance down the hallway, pretending to study the student research posters on the walls. When Patterson turned the far corner, he snuck back to the office and slipped into the doorway, crossing over to where Patterson had been sitting. He picked up the pile of homework sitting on the corner of the desk marked “juniors.”
He would find Valentina in here, if she existed.
Eliot hurried up the stairs of the library, looking for a corner to sit in peace. There was not enough time to go home from campus, and he hated driving in inclement weather anyway. He had to get this done before Patterson declared a winner. The department chair might have been bluffing, but Eliot didn’t want to chance it.
Outside the wind whipped tree branches against the large windows, the leaves slapping the glass panes as though trying to get inside from the cold. He found a long oak table to sit at and spread the papers out in front of him. Valentina’s note he took from his pocket and smoothed before putting it aside for reference.
Where to start? His first inclination was simply to dig through the pages as quickly as possible, but after turning through a few dozen assignments he realized that he was going too fast, possibly missing the right paper. And if he missed it the first time, he would have to go back through all of the pages. He sat back in his chair, his heart beating fast. There were hundreds and hundreds of papers in the pile, and most of the writing was numeric. The task seemed impossible.
No, he thought. Not impossible.
He took a deep breath and slowed himself down. He picked up Valentina’s note and studied the lettering. A slight slant to the right, a flourish on the letter y. The period and the dot over the i were not actually dots but tiny circles instead, as though she were trying to spite the mathematical description of a point. He ran his fingers across the paper.
Why am I doing this? Even as he asked himself the question, he felt the curl of desire rise in him. Quickly he tamped it down, ignoring the voice inside that screamed to him that she was a danger, that she had already edged into his heart. She was a capable mathematician. That was all he needed to know.
He reshuffled the papers together into one pile. How to begin logically? Of course. He began to sift through the papers, setting aside any obviously male names. That should narrow the pile down by half or so. More, even. The math department always slanted heavily male.
Minutes passed quickly as he went though the papers, the wind whistling outside of the window. It seemed that ambiguous names had come back into fashion, to his utmost irritation. Cayden, Laurie, Jax. He caught himself putting a Sam into the male pile and then reconsidered—what if it were a nickname? Slowly, carefully, he winnowed down the papers and was about to start in on selecting by handwriting type.
The lights went out. Instantly the emergency lighting system turned on, the red glow of the exit lights pointing a way toward the stairs of the library. Eliot tensed, clutching a pile of papers in one hand. He didn’t have time for this distraction.
Electric candles flickered over the tabletops of the library, and Eliot gathered a few of them to put in a circle around his papers. It would have to do. Sitting back down to his work, he began to sort through the pile again, this time separating by handwriting that slanted to the left and handwriting that slanted to the right. His eyes blurred from lack of sleep and the poor lighting, but his mind was sharply focused on the task at hand.
The pile in front of him grew smaller and smaller as he worked, and finally only one paper remained. Eliot checked and rechecked it twice, but it had to be this student. The slanting letters, the wide curves of the vowels, the slight flourishes, and the numbering he recognized from her work on the screen that morning. There was even a small circle over the i in
her name. He held it up in front of him, the candles flickering light onto the pages.
Brynn Tomlin.
Eliot gathered the papers up quickly and raced down the steps of the library, almost tripping on the carpet in the darkness. He ran across the lawn and pulled open the door of the math department. The hallways here, too, glowed eerily with the emergency lighting system. Breathing heavily, he got to Patterson’s door and tried the handle before he saw the note taped to the department chair’s placard.
“Eliot,” the note read, “Electricity went off. Going home, will notify the Joseph boy about the Prize.”
Eliot slammed his hand against the door, the homework papers falling out of his grip and tumbling to the floor. Anger poured through him, a blind frustration that all of his efforts had been in vain. Shocked at the intensity of his emotion, he leaned his head against the door and willed himself to breathe slowly until the ferocity pumping through his blood ebbed.
Peace, Eliot. He folded Brynn’s paper and tucked it into his pocket along with her note. He needed sleep. The best solutions always came to him after a night of rest. This would be no exception. He knew there was a solution. He simply had to find it.
I ran all the way home and slammed the apartment door behind me, breathing hard. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve anything. I was a liar, nothing more.
“Brynn? You okay?”
Shannon peeked her head around the hallway from the couch where she had sprawled out. Tendrils of her red hair curled limply down her neck, escaping from the pins that tried valiantly to hold the mass of hair up. She had two more pins between her lips, and she took them out to speak more clearly.
“Hon, you look like you just saw a ghost! What’s wrong?”
I burst into tears, and Shannon immediately got up from the couch and came down the hall to put her arms around me.
