Lauren Miller - Free to Fall

“No,” I said, reaching for my earphones. “I don’t even think about it.” I didn’t need to. Lux analyzed ingredient lists, tracked allergic reactions and food-borne illnesses in other users who consumed the same foods, and alerted you if someone in your immediate vicinity was either allergic to something you were eating or eating something you were allergic to. The only time I had to be cautious about it was in confined spaces with no network access. In other words, on planes. I slipped in the earbuds and turned up the volume.

A few minutes later Hershey flung off her seat belt and stood up. “I have to pee,” she announced, dropping her tablet on my lap and stepping over me into the aisle. As soon as she was gone, I yanked out my earbuds and pulled the envelope from my bag. Careful not to rip the paper, I slid my nail under the flap and gently tugged it open.

The card inside was made of soft cotton paper, the kind they didn’t make anymore. My brain registered the number of handwritten lines before my heart did, and when my heart caught up, it sunk. There were only three.

I formed them free, and free they must remain

Till they enthrall themselves;

I else must change their nature.

I turned the card over, but the other side was blank. So much for answering my questions. This had raised a hundred more.

“What’s that?” Hershey was back. I hadn’t seen her walk up.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, and tried to slip the card back into my bag. But Hershey snatched it. Her eyes skimmed over the words. “Weird,” she declared, handing it back to me as she settled into her seat. “What’s it a quote from?”

“I dunno. It’s from my mom.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I did not want to talk about my mom with Hershey.

“Did it come with a note?”

I shook my head. This was the note. Instinctively, I reached for the pendant around my neck. It was surprisingly heavy on my collarbone.

I saw Hershey open her browser to GoSearch. “Read it to me again,” she said.

“‘I formed them free, and free they must remain—’” I said, and paused, puzzling over the words I’d just read as Hershey typed them. Who formed who free? “‘Till they enthrall them—’”

Hershey interrupted me. “It’s from Paradise Lost ,” she said. “Book Three, lines one twenty-four to one twenty-six.”

“Is that a play?” I’d heard of Paradise Lost but knew nothing about it.

“A poem,” Hershey replied. “A super long and super boring poem published in 1667.” Her eyes skimmed the text on her screen. “Oh my god, shoot me now. Is this even English?”

“Who wrote it?”

“John Milton,” she said, tapping the thumbnail of his photo to enlarge it. She zoomed in on his eyelids. “A man in desperate need of blepharoplasty.”

Hershey clicked back to her magazines, bored already. I pulled up the Panopticon entry for Paradise Lost on my own tablet and began to read. The poem, considered one of the greatest literary works in the English language, retells the Biblical story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. I tapped a link for a full text version of the poem and my eyes glazed over almost as quickly as Hershey’s had. None of the books we’d read in class were anything like this. Public school curriculum focused on contemporary lit, novels that had been written in the last twenty years. Was this the kind of stuff they read at Theden? Panic fluttered behind my ribs. What if I couldn’t keep up?

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest. Please, God, don’t let me fail, I said silently.

You won’t fail.

My head jerked. I hadn’t heard the Doubt since the summer before seventh grade. I remembered the effect it’d had on me back then, the peaceful feeling that settled over me after it spoke. This was the opposite experience. I was rattled and unsettled and all those other words that mean not at all okay. The Doubt was for unstable people and artists and little kids. Not, as the application packet had made explicitly clear, for Theden students. The psychologist who’d conducted my psych eval asked at least three times when I’d last heard the voice, relenting only when she was satisfied that it’d been more than three years. If the members of the admissions committee knew what I’d just heard, my time at Theden would be over before it started. That was part of what made my new school different. You couldn’t just be smart. You had to be “psychologically impervious.” Immune to crazy.

It’s just nerves, I told myself. Lots of perfectly sane adults heard the Doubt when they were stressed. But telling myself this only intensified my anxiety.

“We should order matching comforters,” I heard Hershey say. She’d moved on from her magazines and was now scrolling through the Anthropologie lookbook. “Otherwise we’ll end up with that whole hodgepodge, mismatched, pretending-to-be-eclectic dorm room cliché. What do you think of this one?”

I still didn’t understand how we’d ended up living together. According to our acceptance packet, roommate assignments were done by a computer program that matched students based on their personalities and interests. Since Hershey and I had exactly nothing in common, I had to assume the program was flawed.

I blinked and tried to focus on the neon paisley pattern on her screen. It was hideous.

“Why don’t we wait and see what the room looks like first?” I suggested.

Hershey gave me a pitying look. “I won’t make you pay for it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s not that,” I said evenly. “I’d just prefer something that doesn’t make my eyes feel like someone has poured bleach on them.”

“How about we repurpose some old denim and stitch it together with hemp?”

I ignored her jab and went back to my tablet.

Paradise Lost was still on my screen, so I scrolled up to the beginning and began to wade through it, forcing myself to read every word. I absorbed none of it, but the task occupied my mind for the rest of the flight. It was a trick I’d learned in elementary school. As long as your brain was busy, the Doubt couldn’t speak.

Our flight landed in Boston fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. If we hurried, we could catch the earlier bus to campus, assuming we didn’t have to wait for our bags. As we speed-walked to baggage claim, I launched my travel monitor and tracked our suitcases as they made their way from the belly of the plane to the carousel. They got there thirty seconds after we did.

My heart-shaped lock was busted, as if whoever inspected my bag hadn’t even bothered with the key that hung next to it. The sleeve of a T-shirt was pushing out through the opening, dirty from the conveyer belt. I wouldn’t have locked it at all, but the zipper track was warped, causing one of the sliders to inch away from the other, leaving an open gap. Lux had recommended that I use a twist tie, but I’d used the lock instead. Beck had given it to me on my thirteenth birthday as part of a vintage diary set. I never wrote in the notebook, but I adored the heart-shaped lock. I sighed and slipped the broken lock into my pocket as Hershey struggled to lift her gargantuan Louis Vuitton from the carousel. Served me right for ignoring Lux.

“The two-thirty shuttle to Theden Academy campus departs in three minutes,” our handhelds declared in unison. We hurried to the pick-up spot. The driver waved us over.

“Just in time,” he said as we boarded, marking our names off on his tablet. Hershey immediately pulled out her Gemini to post a status update. I knew Beck would be waiting for mine, but my thoughts were too jumbled to formulate a pithy post. I looked around at my new classmates. Nothing about them screamed gifted. They were just a bunch of sixteen-year-olds on their handhelds. I felt a wave of disappointment. I’d been so worried about feeling out of my league that I hadn’t considered that the alternative might be worse.