Page 29 of White Lights
“You broke your phone on purpose?” Dez asks.
“Apparently,” Simon says. “If you’re a very good little first-year, they give you an encrypted phone.Nextyear.”
“That’s a joke, right?” Dez says.
“Encryption?” Yael says.
“I don’t trust it,” Simon says.
“You wouldn’t, tinfoil hat.” Yael laughs at him. “Let me enlighten you on the vast conspiracy: Rich people are running things. Get over it.”
Dez tries tuning them out. She remembers what Rafe said last night about how once she saw Acheron’s technology, she’d forget laptops existed. What she won’t forget is that her phone holds the only voicemail she’ll probably ever get from Asher Ibrahim, and now she can’t even listen to it.
“How do people call home?” Dez says.
Yael stares at her.
“I need to be able to reach my family—” Dez says.
“Acheron is an immersive experience,” Yael says. “Within a few days, you’ll be so invested in your films, the outside world will all but cease to exist.”
“No,” Dez says. “Not for me.”
Simon swings his violin forward and plays the chorus of “Hotel California.”
Yael cracks up. “Stop freaking her out, Simon. She’s barely hanging on. That’s your room over there, Dez.” She points at the closed door behind her. “You must be dying for a shower.”
Dez is. And she’s no more eager to stand here talking to Yael than Yael is eager to talk to her.
“Hey, Dez,” Yael calls softly when Dez is almost at her door. “Guess who I got to work with last summer?”
Dez isn’t in the mood. “I give up.”
“Samantha Cisneros.”
“Seriously?” Dez says, turning around. Samantha Cisneros is one of Dez’s artistic idols, the director of several of her favorite films. “You got an internship with Cisneros?”
Yael nods from the couch. “Acheron made it happen. And right before she died. So, just saying, even when this place breaks you—and it will—it’s still worth it.”
Dez nods, closing herself in her room. She lets out her breath. So far, all her interactions with her fellow students have gone far worse than expected, but at the same time, the amenities at Acheron are all far nicer than she dreamed. She looks around her new room in quiet disbelief. She runs her hand along a soft white duvet on the king-sized sleigh bed in front of her. A colorful woven rug underneath pulls the room together. Two stained glass lamps on two end tables, and a bookshelf filled with books. On top of the bookshelf is a folder with her name on it. The orientation packet she should have read last night. And which she’ll have to read later once her headache subsides.
She opens the door to the bathroom. She’s never had her own bathroom in her life. Now she has her own clawfoot tub. She looks in the closet, amazed to see it filled with tailored, professional clothes. She checks one of the sizes and understands all this is going to fit. All this is hers to wear while she’s here at Acheron?
She sits on a salmon-pink cushion on the sill of a large bay casement and draws the white blinds aside to look out at the view. Her room faces east. Through the snow coming down with blizzard force, Dez perceives the outlines of a triangular-shaped lawn. The tri. A vast stand of snowcapped pine trees beyond it. And somewhere out there, far away, her brother and her mother. Dez closes her eyes and puts her palm against the glass.
For the first time in a long time, she has enough privacy to take amoment and let everything all the way out. But she fears if she opens that door, she’ll never be able to close it. What she needs to do now is the opposite. Condense all the worst things in her life to an infinitesimal spec inside her. Take everything that happened at the Dairy Barn, to Mo, with the police and Rafe and that drink last night and Yael this morning and her fucking golden scarf and make it very small. Lock it away.
There’s a knock on her door.
“You okay in there?” Simon calls.
Dez is tempted to answer honestly, but the words die in her throat.
“Look,” Simon says through the door. “Since I know you didn’t read the—”
“If you sayliteratureone more time—”
“Just saying orientation starts in fifteen minutes,” Simon says. “I’ll wait for you out here.”
