Free to Fall

by Lauren Miller

  With shaky hands, I pushed open the taxi’s door and stepped out onto the pavement.

  “Here,” North said in a low voice, pulling a second handheld from his pocket and slipping it into the small purse on my arm. “When they scan it at the door, it’ll pull up the name I added to the guest list. Jessica Sizemore. She’s an undergrad at Harvard. Her dad’s a shareholder.”

  “What if she shows up?” I hissed. We were approaching the edge of the crowd waiting to get in.

  “She won’t. She RSVPed no the day after invitations went out, and according to Forum, she’s still on campus right now.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “Just act natural. Once we’re inside, it won’t matter.”

  I leaned against his shoulder and tried to relax. We blended in easily with the well-dressed twenty-somethings milling around us, immersed in their screens as they waited to get in.

  The girl taking tickets smiled as we stepped up to the red carpet. “Welcome to the future,” she said, reaching for our handhelds. I held my breath as she scanned them. “Enjoy the party, guys.” She handed them back to us and lifted the velvet rope.

  We were in.

  The main event was in the open-air courtyard in the center of the building, which Gnosis had transformed into a metallic garden. The fountain in the center was lit up from under the surface of the water and seemed to be pouring liquid gold. Servers in black ties were circling with shiny gold trays of champagne, and there were tiny gold Gs projected on the stone walls all around us. There were high tables constructed out of shiny gold Legos and standing chandeliers made of bright gold coins. “Wow,” I breathed, taking it in.

  North grabbed two flutes of champagne off a server’s tray and handed me one. “Props,” he said. The next server had some sort of ahi tuna cupcake with avocado “icing.” I reached for one.

  “Snacks,” I said, biting into it. “Ohmygod, this is amazing. You have to try one.”

  “Focus, Jessica Sizemore, focus. We’ve got an hour to find your father.” But before the server stepped away, North grabbed a tuna cupcake and popped the whole thing in his mouth.

  Now that we were on the other side of the velvet rope, I was calmer. No one was paying any attention to us, and it was easy to move along the periphery of the party, along the walkway that encased the courtyard, subtly scanning the crowd for Griffin. As we made our way along the eastern wall, walking slowly so as not to draw any attention, I let myself pretend for a second that we hadn’t snuck into this party, that we’d been invited like everyone else. It struck me that it probably wasn’t a far-off fantasy. Not anymore. This was the kind of stuff that came with a Theden diploma. Parties like these, people like this. If I stayed on track, I wouldn’t have to lie my way into these places. I’d belong.

  I was between North and the wall as we rounded the corner at the southeast end of the courtyard and saw her. A beautiful black woman in a winter white pantsuit standing by the fountain. There was no one between us. If she turned just slightly to her left and looked up, she’d see me.

  North heard me gasp.

  “What is it?” he asked in a low voice, inclining his face toward mine.

  “Kiss me,” I whispered. “Right now.”

  I didn’t have to ask twice. His hands came to my hips as he pushed me gently against the wall, the edge of my crystal flute clinking against its polished surface. I wrapped my free arm around his neck, pressing my body into his as if I could disappear against him, closing my eyes as his lips touched mine. Had she seen me? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. North’s elbows were on the wall now, one on either side of my face, somehow holding his champagne glass without spilling it as he kissed me. For a second I got lost in the sensation, thinking nothing and feeling everything, from the flutter in my chest to the static in my stomach to the tingle in my tongue every time it touched the tip of his. But then Tarsus’s face came slamming back into my brain and my whole body tensed up. North felt it and pulled back.

  “I sense that kiss served a purpose beyond the fulfillment of about five of my fantasies,” he said, his face still inches off mine.

  “She’s here,” I whispered. “Dr. Tarsus.”

  “Shit. Did she see you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I told him. “You hid me.” My arms were still around his neck, so I traced his earlobe with my thumb, careful to keep my body behind his as I shimmied along the wall behind a column.

  “Where is she now?” He leaned ever so slightly to the left, as if he was nuzzling my neck, so I could scan the courtyard. A crowd of newcomers had arrived, and they stood between us and the fountain, blocking our view.

  “I don’t see her anymore,” I said. “She was by the fountain.”

  “What is she doing here?”

  “No idea. Gnosis is a big funding source for Theden—maybe that’s the connection?” Still, it was odd to see her here, at a trendy tech launch party. Odd, and very unlucky for us.

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “No,” I told him. “This is our best shot at getting to Griffin. We’ve gotten this close—I can’t give up now. We’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t see us.” I felt a boldness in my chest. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but not an unpleasant one. I wasn’t used to being so sure about things. Not without Lux calling the shots, anyway.

  North slipped his hand in mind. “If that happens to require a few more of those kisses, I suppose I could oblige.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve still got an hour until Griffin’s speech, so he’s probably in the crowd somewhere. Assuming we can find him, the trick will be getting him alone.”

  “Not once he sees me,” I said, confident in that.

  It was even easier than I hoped. As we were making our way through the crowd, my head angled down to avoid being spotted, we passed right by Griffin, who was talking to a group of women in expensive cocktail dresses. North elbowed me, I lifted my head, and there he was, two feet away from me, looking like he’d been airbrushed into the room. The first thought that popped into my head was How did the offspring of two gorgeous people end up looking like me? The second was He is smiling, but his eyes are sad.

  I opened my mouth to say something but didn’t have to. Griffin was already staring at me, his mouth slightly ajar. “Excuse me,” he said to the women, cutting one of them off, his eyes still on me. He stepped through them as if they weren’t there. They swiveled their heads to look at me.

  “I think you knew my mother,” I said lamely. “Av—”

  “You’re her daughter,” he said, then made a sound that was like a laugh but coarser. “Of course. For a second, I thought— But of course you couldn’t be.” His eyes lifted to look past me then fell back to my own. “Is—Is your mother here?” There was such unbridled hope in his voice that my own caught in my throat. I just shook my head.

  “Rory needs to talk to you,” North said then. Griffin looked over at North as if seeing him for the first time. North offered his hand. “Gavin West,” North said, giving him his cover name. We’d agreed I wouldn’t use mine.

  Griffin shook it, but his eyes were back on me. His smile was kind, but his eyes were even sadder now, almost wistful. “Rory. Have we met before? I know I’d remember your face, but your voice—it’s familiar. And your name.”

  “We met at the Theden Masquerade Ball,” I told him. “On the balcony.”

  “You were the girl in the peacock mask,” Griffin said, and I nodded. “Well, it’s nice to meet you again, Rory.”

  “You too,” I said. My nerves made it difficult to smile. Griffin seemed to notice. He glanced at North then back at me.

  “It’s quieter inside,” he said then. “How about we talk there?”

  We followed him through a side door and into the library’s small café. The chairs were stacked on the tables and there was a sign blocking the entrance, but Griffin stepped past it and took down two chairs.

  “I’ll wait over there,” North said, pointing to a bench by the stairs.

 
; I nodded and looked at Griffin. His face was half curiosity and half confusion. I needed to say something before his guard came up. Please don’t let me screw this up, I prayed. I didn’t want to ambush him with what I knew, not if I wanted the truth, but I didn’t have time to skate around it either. His keynote was scheduled for eight o’clock, and it was already seven twenty-five.

  “Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,” I began. “I—I have a lot of questions, and no one to answer them.”

  “Your mom,” Griffin said then. “Something happened to her, didn’t it.” His voice didn’t go up at the end because it wasn’t a question.

  I nodded slightly. “She died right when I was born.”

  He buried his face in his hands for a second, and when he dropped them back to his sides, he looked his age for the first time. There were lines extending like sunbeams from the outer corners of his eyes. It was ironic, smile lines beside sad eyes.

  “And your dad?”

  I eyed him. Was he trying to see what I knew, or could he honestly not know that I was his child? “My dad?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you know, is he in the picture? Is he around?” Griffin looked uncomfortable, like we’d crossed into unpleasant territory.

  “I’ve never met my father.”

  This didn’t seem to surprise Griffin, and in fact, something like relief flashed in his eyes. So he did know. He was trying to see if I did. I gritted my teeth. It wouldn’t help me to get angry with him. Putting him on the defensive was the quickest way to shut this down.

  I kept my voice casual. “I know you have a speech to give and all, so I won’t take up too much of your time, but I was just hoping you could tell me what happened between you and my mom.”

  Griffin sighed. “I haven’t talked about your mom in fifteen years.” He tugged at his tie. “No, longer. Not since she left.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out his handheld. It was shiny and metallic and the size of a matchbox. The Gemini Gold. He tapped his screen and it lit up. It was 7:35. “I have to be in the prep room at quarter till. This isn’t a ten-minute story, but I’ll try to make it one.” He snapped his Gold into the metal band on his wrist and ran his hands through his hair. It was the exact shade of mine, so dark brown it looked black, but straight where mine was wavy. Unlike my dad’s, whose straw-colored hair was flecked with silver, Griffin’s showed no hint of gray.

  “Your mom and I met our first year at Theden,” he began, his eyes brightening for the first time all night. “I fell for her the very first time we spoke—we were in practicum together, and she sat next to me on the first day. There weren’t pods back then, just desks with laptop docking stations, and she couldn’t get hers to turn on. Our teacher was this horrible, crotchety old man—Mr. Siegler—and Aviana was terrified he’d yell at her if she asked him for help. So I helped her, and in the span of about five seconds fell madly in love.”

  My heart turned over in my chest. It was easy to imagine that moment, my mom flustered and nervous the way I’d been on my first day, Griffin all confidence and charm. It was the beginning of something, something that could’ve gone a thousand different ways, with a thousand happily-ever-afters. Yet here we were.

  “I never imagined I had a shot with her,” Griffin continued. “She was totally out of my league. I, meanwhile, didn’t even have the IQ to be at Theden. My family had to pull strings to get me in.” His eyes clouded over. “My parents never liked Aviana,” he explained. “My stepfather hated her.”

  “Why?”

  “She was . . . different. She didn’t play the game the way everyone else did.”

  “The game?”

  “The ambition climb,” replied Griffin. “I’m sure it’s the same now as it was back then. All that drive and competition, the fight for top grades. Aviana didn’t care about any of that. And yet, she was our valedictorian.”

  “I don’t understand. My mom was expelled from Theden. How could she—?”

  “Expelled? Aviana?” Griffin laughed. “Hardly. She was the campus darling.” He looked at me curiously. “Who told you she was expelled?”

  “I saw the expulsion notice,” I said slowly.

  In her doctored medical file.

  “Well, I can promise you Aviana didn’t get kicked out of school,” Griffin replied. His expression darkened. “She took her finals then ran away.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll get to that,” he replied. “Let me explain what she was up against first. Not that it excuses what she did, but I know it affected her more than she let on.”

  “Your family.”

  He nodded. “They were awful to her. And the closer she and I got, the more aggressive they became. They threatened to take away my trust fund, not pay for college, the whole nine. I couldn’t have cared less. None of those things mattered to me then. So I asked Aviana to marry me. And I told my stepfather he could take my trust fund and shove it.”

  “You and my mom were engaged?”

  Griffin seemed to hesitate then. “We were more than engaged,” he said finally. “Rory, your mom and I were married.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “We got married a week before graduation,” he said softly. “At the courthouse in Albany. We spent the next two days holed up in a little cabin in Canada, completely disconnected from the rest of the world. Just the two of us and a fireplace.” He blushed a little, as if he’d forgotten that I was there. “We spent the whole weekend making plans. Aviana wanted to get as far as we could from my family, and I just wanted to make her happy. Theden had a pretty good reputation in the UK, so we decided to move to London, apply to Oxford and Cambridge, make a life there. I had a little money of my own saved, and we figured it was enough to tide us over until we got jobs. The plan was to leave right after graduation.”

  “But then she got pregnant,” I said. It sounded bitter, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t fair that something that was his fault as much as hers changed what he wanted. Changed how he felt. He wanted a life with her as long as it was just the two of them. A baby wasn’t part of the bargain.

  His face darkened. “There was no ‘then,’” he said. “She was already pregnant when we got married. That’s how I knew it wasn’t mine.”

  Confusion stalled my next thought. “Huh?”

  Griffin hesitated. “I don’t want to paint a nasty picture of her, Rory. We were both really young. We were kids. I don’t blame her for lying to me. Not anymore.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What did she lie to you about?”

  “Aviana and I, we never— She said she wanted to wait until we were married.” He made a sound in his throat. “I guess that rule didn’t apply to other guys.”

  “She cheated on you?”

  He nodded. “While I was in Nantucket for spring break. I found out the morning of graduation. Someone emailed me a copy of her pregnancy test results. The test was dated April 14. Long before we ever . . .” He trailed off, his eyes hollow now. “It was at that moment, staring at her test results in black-and-white, that it all just clicked. That voice I’d been listening to, the one that led me to her, it wasn’t some higher power guiding me along. It was nothing more than cognitive dissonance working itself out. My rational mind sensed I shouldn’t be with her, but my emotional brain couldn’t accept it, so it invented a fiction, a voice that knew something I didn’t.” He looked up at the ceiling. “We’re better at lying to ourselves than most people realize.”

  There were so many things I wanted to ask him—what my mom had said when he confronted her, why he didn’t go after her when he started hearing the Doubt—but the questions were lodged in my throat. Griffin kept talking.

  “This company owes a lot to your mom,” he said then, gesturing toward the window overlooking the party outside. “If she hadn’t left, I never would’ve come to work for them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your mom, she was very anti-Gnosis,” Griffin explained. “I never understood it. They were ju
st a little tech startup back then. But somehow they’d gotten on Aviana’s radar, and she was adamant that I not have anything to do with them. The Monday after graduation, I drove to their offices and told them I’d work for free.”

  “And you’ve been there ever since?”

  He nodded. “It’s funny how things work out. When I started at Gnosis that summer, they’d just launched the R&D on a new decision-making app. An app that would keep people like me from lying to themselves. A voice we could trust. I decided right then that I’d dedicate my career to that app. The more people that used it, the fewer who would end up with their hearts broken.”

  My mind leaped to the boy ten feet to my left. Was it worth it to avoid heartache if you also avoided its opposite, the feeling that your heart might burst with joy?

  “Mr. Payne.” The voice caught both of us off guard. It was a hulk of a man in a black suit with an earbud in his ear. I recognized him as the guy I’d passed on the steps at the Masquerade Ball. Griffin’s bodyguard. “It’s quarter till.”

  Griffin nodded at the man and turned to me. “I’ve got a speech to give,” he said. He sounded apologetic.

  “She wasn’t pregnant when you got married,” I blurted out. It was now or never. “Whoever sent you those test results wanted you to think she was, but she wasn’t.”

  Griffin’s whole body tensed up, like I’d hit him. “What?”

  “My birthday, it’s March 21,” I said. “If she’d gotten pregnant when you think she did, I would’ve been due in early December. But I wasn’t. I was due in February and born in March. Three weeks and five days late.” The words were getting jumbled now, but I kept talking, afraid that if I stopped he’d walk away. “I saw a photo from her last ultrasound. The math all works out. She got pregnant on your wedding night.” Griffin was shaking his head. I grabbed his arm. “Look at my eyes. And my hands—” I held out my arm. “And my chin! The cleft on my chin. It’s just like yours. Our hair, it’s the same color, too. And—”

  I could tell Griffin wasn’t listening anymore. His face looked broken. I got quiet, abruptly, and let go of his arm. It was several seconds before he said anything. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, like he’d been screaming. “You’re saying I’m . . .” He didn’t say the rest of it. It didn’t seem as if he could.