Free to Fall by Lauren Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

exhaustion, and partly because I’d eaten so much lobster and steak that all the blood in my body had rushed from my head to my stomach, draining me of whatever mental energy I had left. I drifted off with the silver pendant between my thumb and index finger, wondering if they’d served surf ’n’ turf at the welcome dinner nineteen years ago and whether my mom had felt as out of place then as I had tonight, but I awoke later with a start, my hand still pressed to my collarbone. My chest was heaving a little beneath it. I’d been having a nightmare—running somewhere, or from someone—but the details slipped away from me as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dark. I listened for Hershey’s breathing, worried that I’d cried out and woken her. But the room was quiet. I slid my hand under my pillow, feeling for my Gemini, and blinked as my screen lit up: 3:03 A.M. Still rattled from the dream I couldn’t remember, I tiptoed to the bathroom for some water, using my handheld as a flashlight. As I passed my roommate’s bed, I realized that the tiptoeing was unnecessary. Hershey wasn’t in it.
    I quickly sent her a text: where r u??
    Half a second later, her handheld lit up in the dark. She’d left it on her nightstand. I picked up her Gemini and erased my text.
    I lay awake for a while after that, wondering where Hershey had gone. It was stupid, but I felt a pang of disappointment that she hadn’t invited me to go with her. Not that I would’ve gone, but still. When an hour passed and she still wasn’t back, I started to worry. You’re not your roommate’s keeper, I told myself, forcing myself to go back to sleep.
    It wasn’t even light yet when I woke up again, jolted awake by the screaming chorus of a This Is August Jones song. Hershey’s alarm. She fumbled for her Gemini, knocking it off the nightstand in the process. “Sorry,” she mumbled, then pulled her pillow over her head and promptly fell back asleep. Her alarm was still going off. Any relief I felt about the fact that she wasn’t dead in the woods somewhere was overshadowed by the immense irritation of having my eardrums accosted by excruciatingly crappy pop music at 5:45 in the morning.
    “Hershey!” I barked.
    “Fine,” she grumbled. She slid her hand along the floor, feeling for her Gemini. It took her another thirty seconds to actually turn it off. By the time she did, we were both wide-awake. I rolled onto my side. I’d seen Hershey wash her face before we went to bed, but she had mascara smudges around her eyes now.
    “Five forty-five? Seriously?”
    Hershey rubbed her eyes. “I may have forgotten that my phone readjusted itself for the time difference.”
    I burst out laughing.
    “I was tired when I set it,” she said irritably. I expected her to elaborate, to boast about her late-night escapades or at least hint that she’d snuck out, but she turned away from me, toward the opposite wall.
    “How’d you sleep?” I asked, giving her another opportunity. She didn’t take it.
    “Great,” she replied. Her Gemini lit up again as she launched Forum.
    I watched her back for a moment, wondering what other secrets my roommate was keeping, and why.

5
    A SMALL CROWD WAS GATHERED at the doorway to my first class. There was a sign next to it that read ELECTRONIC DEVICES MUST BE LEFT OUTSIDE. NO EXCEPTIONS , with a cubby station beneath it. I figured no one wanted to abandon their phones until they absolutely had to, but when I got closer, I noticed that none of my classmates were looking at their screens. They were all staring into our classroom, which was still out of my view. I moved toward the door and peered inside.
    The room was the most hi-tech I’d ever seen. Every wall was a screen, and instead of desks, there were twelve egg-shaped units that reminded me of those sleeping compartments they had on luxury airlines, except that those are made of gray plastic and these were made of something shimmery and translucent and almost