Lauren Miller - Free to Fall

Hershey tossed her remote onto the bed. “Let’s take a walk. I want coffee.”

“Good call. The dining hall has an all-day snack cart. I saw it on—”

“Lame,” Hershey declared. “It’s only a ten-minute walk to downtown. Eight if we take the unauthorized scenic route, which we totally are.” She pulled a tube of lip gloss and a mirrored compact from her bag. She slid the tube across her lips then pursed them in a sultry pout. “C’mon,” she said, snapping the compact shut. “Let’s go.”

The “unauthorized scenic route” involved trespassing through a private cemetery east of campus, which was marked, appropriately, PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING. Despite the midday sunshine, I was creeped out. The moss-covered headstones were oversize and weathered with centuries of age. I shivered in the humid heat.

“Which way?” I asked impatiently, eager to get out of there. Whoever owned this place had hung that no trespassing sign for a reason. And they’d put a giant statue of a very angry-looking angel in the center of the cemetery, his long stone finger pointing toward the exit, to emphasize the point.

“I dunno,” Hershey said, squinting at her Gemini. “I lost service.”

“Can we please just go back? I’d prefer not to get arrested on my first day here.” I was attempting to sound more annoyed than freaked out, but the truth was I was both.

Hershey rolled her eyes. “Relax. The town green is just on the other side of those woods.” Her eyes scanned the trees. “I think.” She held her Gemini up, searching for a signal. “So much for the ‘everywhere network,’” she said.

“It’s not a shortcut if we get lost,” I pointed out.

“God, Rory, would you just chill out? Here”—she reached into her bag and pulled out two airplane bottles of Baileys, tossing one to me—“that’ll help.” She twisted the cap off the other one and chugged its contents. “Ugh.” She shuddered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I hate Baileys. But I couldn’t reach the vodka.”

“I’m not drinking this,” I said, handing it back to her. “The assembly starts in an hour.”

Hershey sighed. “Look, Rory, I’m not suggesting you get wasted and take an exam. It’s our first day, and we’ve got nothing to do but listen to a bunch of self-congratulatory and ultimately forgettable speeches about how great we are, and how great Theden is, and how much greater we’ll all be when we graduate from here. The onus is on us to live deep, to suck all the marrow out of life. No one’s gonna do it for us.” She held the mini bottle back out, waving it a little until I took it. I’m not sure why I did; maybe it was the shock of hearing Hershey use the word onus correctly, or the fact that she’d casually quoted Thoreau. Or maybe it was just that her words had struck a chord. I applied to Theden because I wanted my life to change, but so far the only thing different about my life was its location. And that wasn’t enough.

I unscrewed the cap and took a tiny sip. Hershey grinned and held up her own empty bottle. “To sucking the marrow out of life,” she declared.

I raised my bottle to hers. “And topping it off with Irish cream.”

We laughed, but as we clinked, my eyes caught the epigraph on a headstone a few feet away and the laugh got lodged in my throat.

BE SOBER, BE VIGILANT;

BECAUSE YOUR ADVERSARY THE DEVIL, AS A

ROARING LION, WALKETH ABOUT,

SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR.—1 PETER 5:8

The hair on my forearms prickled. I brought the bottle back to my lips, but this time only pretended to sip it. Hershey had already turned and was heading toward the trees, so I quickly emptied the contents of the bottle on the grass and hurried to catch up.

“So where are we going?” I asked, falling in stride with her.

“Café Paradiso,” she replied. “It’s on the river. Used to be a mill or something.”

I pulled out my Gemini to check the reviews on its Forum page, but I still didn’t have service. “This whole place is a dead zone,” I said. Beside me, Hershey chortled.

“Fitting, right?” She tossed her bag over the rusty chain-link fence that stood between us and the trees, and began to climb. “Ouch!” A broken link had snagged the hem of her dress, scratching her thigh.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She cleared the fence then jumped. “You coming?”

I made my way over, careful to avoid the broken link. There was an embankment on the other side that led into a denser patch of woods. Hershey scampered up the grassy hill and disappeared into the trees. “I see buildings,” she called. “We’re close.” I followed her up, sliding in my sandals. It was several degrees cooler up there, dense leaves blocking the sun. A few steps later, I heard the river roaring up ahead.

Café Paradiso was in a wooden building on the corner of State and Main, painted fire-engine red and set apart from the others. I had service again, so I pulled up the café’s Forum page. Its rating was one and a half stars.

“There’s another coffee shop a few blocks down,” I said, pulling up the page for River City Beans, voted “Best Coffee in the Valley” by the Berkshire Gazette . I wasn’t a snob about much, but I was a Seattle native, after all. “It’s got way better reviews.”

“Yeah, that’s the place Lux recommended,” Hershey replied, striding toward Paradiso.

I sighed and followed her.

A bell above the door jangled as we stepped inside. It was split-level, with the counter at ground level and seating space in a loft above it, overlooking the river. For a place with thousands of bad reviews, it was awfully packed. I didn’t see a single empty table. When we stepped up to the counter, I understood why. There was a laminated sign stuck to the register that read IF YOU LIKE US, LEAVE US A REALLY CRAPPY REVIEW ON FORUM. SHOW IT TO US, AND YOUR NEXT DRINK IS ON US!

“You didn’t fall for it,” I heard a male voice say. “Or you just like shitty coffee.” I looked up. The guy behind the counter was about our age, and he might’ve been cute were it not for the tattoos covering his bare arms and peeking out from the collar of his white V-neck T-shirt. I didn’t have anything against tattoos in general—Beck had a hanja character behind his left ear—but this guy had that whole my-diffuse-body-art-makes-me-countercultural-and-thus-cooler-than-you vibe about him. The Mohawk on his head didn’t help.

“I was brought against my will,” I said, and the boy smiled. His eyes, pinned on mine, were dark brown, almost black, his pupils shiny like wet paint. “Let me guess—first-years at the academy?” There was something dismissive in his tone, as if our affiliation with Theden was a mark against us.

“I’m Hershey, and this is Rory,” Hershey said, stepping up to the counter. “Maybe you can show us around sometime.” The boy didn’t respond. “Cool ink,” she cooed, touching her fingers to his forearm. There were lines of text drawn there, each one in different handwriting. They looked like lines of poetry or quotes from books. The writing was small and I definitely wasn’t about to lean in for a closer look, so it was hard to be sure. “What’s your name?” she asked him.

“North.” His eyes still hadn’t left mine. They were doing that rapid back-and-forth thing that eyes do when they’re studying something. Or, in this case, someone. Heat sprung to my cheeks. I cleared my throat and looked past him to the chalkboard menu. Beside me, Hershey pulled out her Gemini.

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna let that thing order for you,” he said, his gaze finally shifting from me to Hershey.

“Never,” Hershey replied. She scrolled down to the very last entry on Lux’s recommendation list. “I’ll have the coconut latte,” she announced. “Lux promises I’ll hate it.”