Hacking Harvard

by Robin Wasserman

  I starred giggling. "So basically, you're going to hell?"

  "Not me," he said, tossing me another star-spangled Kiss. "Jews don't really believe in hell. You ask me, it's the best part."

  "Why? Because it means next year you can string up some Christmas lights on your rabbi's roof with no divine consequences whatsoever?"

  "No, it's not just the no consequences. There are no rewards, either. Or at least, no one talks about them much." We passed under the gate at the edge of the Yard, and in the moment of shadow, his expression faded into darkness, but I could tell from his voice that he wasn't smiling anymore. "That's the thing--in some religions, you're supposed to behave so that you don't get punished after you die, right? Or you're supposed to do good things so that you'll end up in some kind of eternal paradise. But Judaism isn't about what happens next. It's about what happens here, in this life. You don't necessarily get rewarded for doing the right thing; you don't get punished for doing the wrong thing. You're supposed be a good person just because that's the right thing to do. Doing the right thing-- that's the reward."

  I choked back a laugh. "You're claiming the universe runs on the honor system?" I thought about the teacher I'd had junior year who left the classroom every time we took a test. It was supposed to teach us honesty and responsibility; after the first test, it taught us that there was no point in studying, since as soon as she walked out of the room we could pull out our textbooks and copy down the answers. "Seems like a system doomed to fail."

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  "Only if you think human nature is inherently selfish, and that people will always do the wrong thing unless someone's policing them," he said. "I don't."

  "Ahhh, so you're a romantic."

  "I prefer realist."

  "No, I'm a realist," I told him. "Because in the real world, people do whatever they have to, if it'll get them what they want. Especially when they know they won't get caught."

  "Are we talking about 'people,' or are we talking about you?"

  I crumpled the Kiss wrapper into a tiny, hard silver ball and rolled it back and forth between my thumb and index finger. Then it slipped out of my grip. I stopped abruptly, knelt down, hunted for it in the dark, partly because I didn't want to litter, but mostly because I didn't want to answer the question. "All people," I said finally, standing up again with the wrapper in hand. "Which includes you."

  "I think you're wrong," he said.

  "Not possible. I'm never wrong."

  "Amazing--something else we have in common."

  We ended up in front of the Science Center, where we'd started a month before, and he steered us through the revolving door. The last time I'd been in there--the only time--it had been filled with people, not just the ones going to class or taking a break from their labs, but real, live Harvard students checking their e-mail or eating a nasty-looking Chickwich from the nasty-looking snack bar. I had tried to imagine myself as one of them. A year from now, I'd thought, this will be me. But I couldn't see it.

  At night, the place was deserted. It was like a high school on the weekend, or one of those Bermuda Triangle ghost ships where

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  everything seems normal--lights on, half-full coffee cups on the table, music on the radio--until you realize there are no people. Anywhere. It was more than a little creepy.

  Eric led us over the security guard's desk and flashed a student ID. The guard barely bothered to look; he just handed Eric a key and waved us toward the elevator.

  "You have a fake ID?" I whispered.

  He nodded, like it was no big deal that one of Wadsworth High's top five geeks had a fake ID, while I'd never even been to a party where they served beer.

  "You have a fake ID, and you use it to sneak into the Harvard Science Center?"

  "And what do you use your fake ID for?" he asked, in a way that let me know that he knew I didn't have one.

  "Sneaking out of bad dates," I snapped.

  "Good thing I don't have to worry about that." We stepped into the elevator, and he pressed the button for the top floor. "Since this isn't a date."

  "What is this place?" I asked in a hushed, churchly voice. But what wasn't the right word.

  The word was when.

  Up the elevator, down a passageway, up a creaky stairwell, through a rusted door--and as we crossed the threshold, it felt like we'd stepped back in time. Eric led me into a perfectly round room with a domed roof. The walls were covered with glow-in-the-dark paintings of the stars, and in the middle loomed a massive machine, its gears and pulleys climbing up along a tube so wide, I could have crawled inside, and

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  so high that, had I shimmied up its length, I could have pressed my hand flat against the ceiling. An old wooden ladder was propped against it, leading up to a small platform that met the tube at its midpoint.

  A viewing platform, I realized.

  It was a telescope.

  "They built a new one a few years ago," Eric said, running his hand along the metal. "This one's so old, no one bothers with it anymore. Students are allowed to use it themselves, but . . . guess they all have better things to do."

  I took a deep breath, nearly choking on all the dust. It felt like we were creeping through an archaeological site--like we'd stumbled on a lair of forgotten ruins, a moment from the past left behind as the future rushed in. "How do you even know about this?"

  "Max's sisters used to bring us up here when we were kids. Now I just come sometimes on my own, whenever . . . well, it's a good place to get away from stuff." He was drumming his fingers on the lower rim of the telescope and darting his eyes around the room. I realized he was waiting for my verdict.

  It was tempting to toy with him a little, but somehow it wouldn't have felt right. Not there.

  I nodded. "Very cool. So what now?"

  "First"--he fumbled around in his backpack and pulled out a paper grocery bag--"essentials." He tossed me two bags: a Ziploc filled with the remaining bar mitzvah Kisses, and a package of Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

  "My favorites!" I ripped into the Reese's. "How'd you know?"

  "You keep forgetting, I know--"

  "Everything," I finished with him. "Right. So tell me this, how

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  exactly are we supposed to look up at the stars"--I looked up at the metal dome--"through the roof?"

  "That's step two." He headed toward the wall and flicked a switch, plunging us into darkness. Then, a low-pitched whine and the squeal of metal on metal.

  "Look up," he said, his voice floating across the black.

  I did--and, as the roof slid open like the hatch of a spaceship, I saw stars.

  The ladder groaned with every step, but it wasn't very high. And I knew I wouldn't fall, not with Eric standing a step below me, his arms bracing me, his chin resting on my shoulder. "It should be in focus now," he said. "Just look through the eyepiece, and--" I see it!

  It was just a tiny gray circle with reddish stripes, surrounded by black. But it was a planet. I'd never seen anything like it.

  "Can you see the two tiny white dots on either side?"

  I squinted, and the image went fuzzy for a moment, then cleared again. "I don't think so, I . . . no, wait, there they are."

  "Those are Jupiter's moons," he said. "Some of them, at least."

  "This is incredible."

  I felt his hand graze my arm, so gently that I thought I might have imagined it. "Yeah. It is."

  "You'll laugh."

  "Probably," I admitted.

  We were sitting on the edge of the roof, the open dome beneath us and the lights of Boston and Cambridge spread out in every direction.

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  Eric sighed. "You really want to know?"

  "Well, now I do," I said, giving him a light shove. "You've built it up too much."

  "Fine." There was a long pause. "Batman."

  I laughed.

  "Shut up!" He tried to shove me back, but I grabbed his arms and wrestled them back down. His
hands were icy. Our eyes met, and I let go. He was blushing. "I told you you'd laugh."

  "You just told me you wanted to be Batman when you grow up," I pointed out. "What was I supposed to do?"

  "I tried to give you the normal answer," he complained. "You said to think outside the box. You said my dream job."

  "And then you said Batman." I started laughing again, letting myself slide backward until I was lying flat on the thin picnic blanket he'd brought along. Even with all the city lights, we could still see the stars.

  "Well, not really, not with the costume or anything. And I don't want to live in a cave. But look, he's a millionaire, he's got all these amazing gadgets, he goes out every night and battles the forces of evil, he always gets the hottest--" He stopped abruptly.

  "What?"

  "Uh, cars," he said quickly. "Very cool cars. You telling me you wouldn't want a ride in the Batmobile?" He started ticking the advantages off on his fingers. "Cool car, cool toys, cool mission. That's my answer, and I'm sticking. Laugh all you want."

  I had to admit, it was more interesting than his "normal" answer, something long, complicated, and impressive-sounding about designing affordable computers for the third world by using micro- processors that. . . well, that's where I'd tuned out.

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  Batman I could at least understand.

  "I just want to ... I know it sounds stupid, but I want to change the world," he said. "Somehow. Do something. You know?"

  I knew.

  "Okay," he said. "Your turn."

  I took a deep breath, watching the dots of light over my head, remembering that when I was a kid, I'd thought every airplane was a falling star.

  "When I grow up? My deepest, darkest, most laugh-worthy desire?" I shrugged. "I don't know. Ballerina? Vampire slayer? Top secret international spy?"

  "Come on. Really. I told you mine."

  What was I supposed to do? Admit that I didn't have a plan, laughable or otherwise? That the future seemed flat and finite, like if I tried to sail past the horizon of high school graduation, I might fall off the edge of the world? "Big Dipper," I said instead, pointing out to the west, or at least, the direction I thought was west. "It's the only one I ever learned to recognize."

  "Okay, so we can cross astronomer off the career list. That's Orion."

  "Oh." And now I was laughing at myself. "As far as I'm concerned, it's just a bunch of random white dots on a black screen. I can never tell where I'm supposed to connect all the stupid imaginary lines. Obviously."

  "It's not so hard," he said. "I'll show you."

  He lay down next to me, and we stared at the sky. The moon was only a sliver, but I could see his arm, reaching out toward the chains of stars. The night had a reddish glow.

  Eric pointed out Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pisces, the low-hanging

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  bright star that was actually a planet, and, eventually, the Big Dipper. Half of me was paying attention, while the other half was noticing how close our cheeks were to each other, and the fact that if I rolled a little to the left, and he rolled a little to the right, we would collide, face to face.

  The half-empty bag of Reese's lay between us.

  "I don't know why no one comes up here," he said, propping his hands behind his head. "It's such a waste."

  Someone came up there. But I decided not to tell him about the condom wrappers I'd seen in the trash. He was right. It was a waste.

  I didn't know what I was doing. I'd forgotten all my plans for the night, and instead, I just lay there, totally relaxed, like all the crap that had been weighing me down was back on the ground, and as long as we stayed up there, in the dark, nothing mattered.

  "What are you scared of?" he asked suddenly.

  "What?"

  "Before. On the bridge. You said you were scared of something, but. . . I didn't have to answer. I definitely didn't have to answer honestly. I was good at lying.

  But I was also tired of it.

  So I didn't say anything.

  "You're scared of not getting in, aren't you?" he asked quietly.

  "What makes you--"

  "I can just see it. You look around, like you're trying to picture yourself here but you don't want to let yourself do it. Like you don't want to count on it, right?"

  He said it, I didn't. Just remember that for later. He's the one who

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  brought the whole thing up. All I could do then was tell the truth.

  "Yes. That's what I'm scared of." Among other things. "It's like, what if, whatever I do, it's not enough? Everyone's expecting--and even if they say they're not, I know they are, my parents at least, and my teachers, and--what the hell am I supposed to do if something goes wrong? What happens then?"

  "Alicia Morgenthal," he said quietly.

  I didn't say anything.

  "I was in that class, you know," he said. "I saw her. When she-- when it happened. I was there."

  I hadn't known that.

  "You're not like her," he said. "You'd never . . . you're just not."

  "You barely know me."

  "I know you're different."

  I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, blotting out the stars. When I opened them again, the world seemed too bright. "I bet that's what her friends would have said, too. Before. You think anyone who knew he saw it coming?"

  "I didn't," he said softly.

  "What?"

  "I was her friend. Sort of. I mean, I knew her. And I saw her that night--you know, that last night."

  I propped myself up on my elbows and gaped at him, hoping I didn't look too nakedly curious. No one knew where Alicia had disappeared to in the hours between the inbox stuffed with rejections and the calculus class meltdown the next morning. "Saw her where?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

  "She came over, and she--" He shook his head. "She didn't tell

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  me about, you know. The rejections. She didn't really talk at all. She just... I should have known. I should have known something was up."

  "How could you, if she didn't say anything?"

  "Because she--" Eric broke off abruptly then contorted his face into a fake smile. "It doesn't matter."

  I wanted to know more; I needed to know more. But I didn't want to push. So I lay back down and stared at the sky, waiting.

  "It's got nothing to do with you," Eric finally said. "You'll get in somewhere great."

  "Unless I don't." He couldn't understand. He'd been working for some professor at MIT for the past four years. They were probably begging him to go there. The first day of freshman year they'd probably send a limo and roll out a red carpet. And if he changed his mind about Harvard? It was his for the taking. As if the whole genius thing wasn't enough, his father was some big professor there--not only would they let him in, for all I knew they'd probably let him go for free. It wasn't his fault, but it was true. Me, on the other hand?

  "There's nothing I can do about it, one way or another. I have no control."

  "And you hate that most of all."

  So he got me. So what? It didn't mean anything. I wasn't too hard to figure out. "I guess."

  He didn't try to argue me into admitting that it didn't matter where I got in. And he didn't lie and say it would all work out the way I wanted it to. He didn't even look at me. When I glanced over, he was still staring up at the stars. But he moved his hand, just a

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  little, to the right, until it was resting on top of mine. He wasn't holding it--he wasn't even pressing down. He was just touching it, as lightly as he'd touched my arm by the telescope.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "It's not like you did anything."

  "Lex, there's something I should . . ." But his voice faded out.

  I turned onto my side, and so did he. Our faces were almost touching. I'd only ever been this close to one other guy. Jeff had been taller than Eric, and better built; his eyes hadn't been as close together, he hadn't worn glasses, he hadn't had that crooked f
ront tooth or a dimple when he smiled, his lips hadn't been so thin.

  And I had never wanted to kiss him this much.

  I hadn't stared at Jeff's lips wondering how they would feel and what they would taste like. Jeff always tasted like spearmint.

  Why was I thinking about Jeff when I was staring at Eric?

  Gazing. I was gazing at Eric, there was no other word for it-- moonlight, whispered secrets, and gazing. It wasn't the kind of moment I'd expected someone like me to have. Especially not with someone like him.

  "Eric ..." I could see the broad contours of his face, but no more than that. It was too dark to read his expression. I wondered if he could see mine.

  Kiss me, I thought, trying to force the words out of my head and into his. Someone was going to have to make a move. And it wasn't going to be me.

  He brushed a piece of hair out of my face. He smiled, then opened his lips a little, as if he was about to say something, but was pausing, holding the words back. This was it. Sometimes life really

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  is like the movies, and even without a script to follow, you just know.

  I knew.

  He closed his eyes, leaned in.

  And I rolled away. Sat up. Jumped to my feet. "I have a curfew," I lied. "We should really start heading back."

  Okay, I hurt his feelings, I get that.

  He didn't talk the whole ride back. I assumed he was embarrassed. But maybe he just couldn't get a word in, because I couldn't shut up: Did you see this movie, did you read that book, how'd you like that class, what did you think of that album, and on and on until I was on my doorstep and he was walking away as fast as he could without actually breaking into a run.

  I could have explained to him that I was just trying to do the right thing. But he wouldn't have understood. Not unless I explained the whole thing. And I couldn't do that; he could never know about the mistake I'd made.