35 Students Remaining #3
I wasn’t planning on sharing this little tidbit about my past, so I’m surprised when it slips out. Even more surprising is how raw my voice sounds when I say the words, like the wound is still fresh, not even scabbed over yet.
Ian stares at me. “Why?”
I swallow and keep going. “He was unstable…obviously. He’d just gotten expelled from his grad program for telling a bunch of students they needed to ‘set their minds free.’ ”
“What does that mean?”
I shrug. “He thought our country’s educational system was corrupt.
Is corrupt. That it needs young people to buy into a corporate, consumeristic agenda in order to continue functioning.
” This is actually a direct quote from his manifesto.
Weird how I can recite it word for word, despite only having read the thing once, years ago.
“So he became disillusioned with education and got expelled from grad school,” Ian says. His eyes are narrowed, the way they get when he’s trying to remember something. I want to tell him he’s not going to be tested on this information, but then he asks, “What happened next?”
I look down at my lap, trying to figure out how to explain.
What happened next was that my dad tried to convince my mother—my pregnant mother—to move to the woods with him.
He wanted to live off the land, raise me without the influence of capitalism and consumer greed.
When my mother refused, he lost what little grip on sanity he still had.
But that part feels too personal to share, so instead, I say, “He set off three bombs at the school. Two people were killed instantly.”
Shame burns through me as soon as the words leave my mouth.
What my dad did is the worst thing about me.
It’s the black mark on my foster care papers, the first thing kids always whisper about after they Google my name, the reason teachers don’t meet my eye or call on me in class.
It’s the reason behind absolutely every bad thing I’ve ever done.
What do you expect? You know that’s Eli Michaels’s daughter, right… ?
I’m used to people knowing this information before I’m ready to tell them.
Usually someone figures it out soon after I start at a new school and they tell someone, who tells someone else, and on it goes until everyone knows.
I figure the only reason the rumor hasn’t spread through Luminary is because our access to the internet is so limited.
We can log on through our tablets, but there are all sorts of controls to keep us from looking up porn or doomscrolling.
Besides, we’re all new here. It’s not like when I’m the only new student starting school in the middle of the year, with everyone trying to figure out my deal.
If I’m careful, I could go the rest of the year without anyone figuring out who my dad is.
Or I could have. If I hadn’t just blurted out the whole story to the worst person I know.
It takes me a second to look back up at Ian’s face, and when I do, I find him staring carefully back at me, unblinking. After a moment he says, “What happened to your mother?”
“Eli didn’t know she was in one of the rooms where he put a bomb.
She went into a coma, and they managed to keep her alive for two and a half weeks, long enough for the doctors to perform an emergency C-section.
” I swallow, watching Ian’s face to see whether he’s making the connection.
The day I was born, my mother became Eli Michaels’s third victim.
Which makes my birthday the anniversary of my mother’s death. Neat, huh?
Ian nods and I brace myself, but he just says, sounding like he means it, “I’m sorry.”
Both of us turn back to the food, but we’re not eating it anymore. We’re just sitting there, not talking. It’s awkward.
And then, after a few minutes, it’s not awkward anymore. It’s even kind of…
Nice.
Later, when Carl the trolley driver finally drops me back at my dorm, I slip a hand in my pocket, fingers brushing against the edges of Ezra’s key card before I find my own.
I slipped the TA’s master card out of Ian’s pocket while he was getting the food from the kitchen.
I’m sure he’ll figure it out and demand the card back.
But not before I have a chance to clone it.
Maybe I’m not quite as reformed as I thought I was.
I’m still smiling to myself when I collapse into bed, prepared to drift into what I desperately hope is a deep and dreamless sleep. Then I notice that one corner of my sheet has pulled up, exposing the bare mattress below.
I groan and roll over to tuck the corner of the sheet back below the mattress. As I do, my finger brushes against a slip of paper. Not a mattress tag, but something worn and folded. A note.
Frowning, I tug it out—
It’s a crumpled receipt, folded twice, the kind of thing someone might have found at the bottom of their backpack and used out of desperation. I can see the edges of a message written hastily in ballpoint pen. I unfold it, my frown deepening as I look over the scrawled handwriting:
Get out, the note reads.
Before it’s too late.