Page 81 of White Lights
But he’s still holding her arm. And where his fingers touch her skin, it’s so warm she aches inside. She can’t make herself pull away.
“Please let go,” she whispers, even though part of her wants both his arms around her until there’s no space between them. Part of herwants him to tell her everything isn’t as scary as it seems. That everything’s going to be okay.
“You’re trembling,” he says, softer now.
He lets go of her arm. She draws both of them to her chest. “I’m scared.”
“That suicide is contagious?”
“Two people have died in the last two weeks.”
“A hundred and fifty thousand people die every day. I can’t let each one concern me.”
“I don’t think anyone is safe here. Any first-year, that is.”
He gives her a serious look. “You are the safest person here.”
“How’s that?”
“Because I’m looking out for you,” he says. “And don’t forget you’re safer here than you would be the second you left this campus.”
“Maybe I’m ready to take my chances.”
“In jail?” He seems amused, almost daring her.
“I might prefer that prison to this one,” Dez says, and walks away.
THEY HOLD ALICE QUINN’S MEMORIALservice in the Vault the following day. Her body was sent back to her family in Minnesota for a funeral, but the Acheron memorial service is required for all students. Someone ordered a large bouquet of white gerbera daisies. And someone placed a life-sized, framed photograph of Alice on an easel near the front of the Vault. But the service seems impersonal and remote.
The picture features Alice smiling tepidly in a ski suit, perched on the mountaintop the first day of the term, just before the coupling ritual. Dez remembers Alice that day, scrambling like the rest of them to find their place in a sea of middle names. But she can’t remember Alice’s middle name, and the guilt she feels over this is oppressive.
Why hadn’t Dez been more of a friend to her?
She sits by Simon and Esther, cold and tired, in a state of shock. When she closes her eyes, she can still see the body on the topiary hedge. It doesn’t feel real or right that they’re saying goodbye like this.
Yael approaches the podium wearing a black dress and black veil. “As all of you know, I’m devastated,” she says in a convincingly wreckedvoice. “I’ll never forget the day I coupled with Alice as my protégé. I may not always have shown it, but I believed in her.” She dabs her eyes with a black gloved fingertip. “I was looking forward to—”
She breaks off into a silent sob that makes Dez wonder how much went on between Yael and Alice that Dez didn’t see.
There’s more to Rafe and Dez’s mentorship than the others know. Could the same be true for Yael and Alice? For Simon and Jet? For all the mentors and protégés?
The thought makes Dez’s stomach turn. It’s ridiculous, of course.
“I’m sorry,” Yael whispers, placing her hand on Alice’s cheek in the photograph. “Farewell, little one. May you find the peace you couldn’t have here.”
Dez hangs her head. It hurts to imagine Alice’s family learning of her death while she was away at school. Dez thinks of Moses. She’s been thinking of her family more than usual today. What she wouldn’t give to fold her brother and her mother in her arms right now and tell them she loves them.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” Dr. Ezekiel says from the podium next to Yael.
Dez feels like she can’t breathe.
When the service is over, she can’t bear the reception. She needs air. She moves quickly out of the Vault and steps out onto the empty campus, trying to catch her breath. She zips her coat and pulls her hood up as she walks through the falling snow on the tri. Tears slide down her cheeks as she imagines Alice in her final moments. What was it that finally made her do it? What did she feel on her way down? Did her life flash before her eyes at the end, and if so, what did she see?
Dez wishes she could go back and do so many things differently, be kinder, more generous, less self-absorbed. Would anything have changed the course of Alice’s life and death?
Dez hears a strange sound coming from above. Something whirring in the wind.
She follows with her eyes.
