Grey Zone by Clea Simon Read Free Book Online Page A

good student – not as brilliant as Raleigh, perhaps, but bright and amenable to hard work. If anything, Dulcie thought, the fresh-faced student had been a little too enthusiastic. The previous year, she’d told Dulcie, she’d let herself get overextended; it was easy, with so many extracurricular competing for attention. And fresh off academic probation, Corkie couldn’t really afford to miss their weekly tutorials. Dulcie would have to keep after her. But since the errant junior had canceled and wasn’t responding to her tutor, Dulcie was going to seize the moment.
    â€˜Sweetie? It’s me.’ She wasn’t being grammatical, but Chris wouldn’t care. ‘My day just opened up. Wanna have lunch?’ She paused. ‘Breakfast?’ With Chris’s crazy schedule, it was always possible that he had gone back to sleep. But when they’d talked earlier, he’d made some noise about being free, hadn’t he?
    That had been before Dulcie had brought up her latest theory, and before he’d dashed it to the ground, leaving her a little too miffed to want to make plans. But he’d been tired, and even with his new tutoring gig he’d been stressed about money recently, too. And she, Dulcie could now see, had been a little overzealous. After all, Chris had been right. Dulcie had been through a couple of run-ins with the police recently. The last one, which had resulted in the retirement of her first thesis adviser, Professor William Alfred Bullock, had nearly taken her life. Now that she had a little distance on the morning’s conversation, she could see how maybe she had gone too far. Well, that was fine. As soon as she saw Chris, she’d explain. Or, no, she’d apologize. As soon as he called her back.
    She’d reached the top of the stairs as the church bells sounded the hour, and she stood to the side, letting the rush of students pass by. A steady stream flowed into the Science Center, its glass and chrome livened by the variety of their late-winter attire. Ahead of her, dozens of students took to the paths across the Yard, funneled on to the pavement by the mud and last patches of melting snow. One student, either braver or running farther behind than his colleagues, took off across what would soon be lawn, splashing up brown water as he ran. Over by University Hall, a young woman waved as he made it back to solid ground and took her in his arms. The campus was alive, and Dulcie loved it.
    The sound of an old-fashioned telephone ringer broke her reverie, and Dulcie put the phone up to her ear. ‘Chris?’
    â€˜Why? Is he in trouble?’ The voice on the other end rose in concern.
    â€˜Hi, Lucy.’ Dulcie rarely called her mother by anything but her first name, but that didn’t stop her mother from worrying about her only child. ‘No, everything’s fine.’
    â€˜And you two?’ Lucy paused, and Dulcie imagined she could hear the wind through the trees. In truth, Lucy would probably be calling from the commune’s kitchen, since the eco-friendly yurt they had shared didn’t have a phone. But whenever Dulcie thought of her home, she thought of the great, stately pines that had served as her first study hall.
    â€˜We’re fine.’ Dulcie paused. Knowing her mother wanted her to ask didn’t make it any easier. ‘Why? What’s up?’
    â€˜Nothing, dear.’ Dulcie could hear her mother fussing with something. Had she called while cooking? ‘Nothing important.’
    â€˜Mom . . .’ Lucy Schwartz undoubtedly missed her daughter, but her means of expressing her empty-nest loneliness could be annoying at times. ‘Did you have another dream? Did Karma see something in the I Ching?’ Another silence. ‘Were you two doing peyote again?’
    â€˜It’s a vision quest, dear. When you say it like that, it sounds somewhat tawdry.’
    Dulcie waited. If Chris was