Chapter 5
“Okay,” Inessa says. We clatter down the stairs, the wood groaning and sighing as we descend. “I just had the best idea.”
“We’re not watching the presentation you made in defense of the most underrated Mario characters,” Sabine says. “Again.”
“Excuse me,” Inessa chides. “You love it.”
“It’s thirty-four slides too long.”
I was supposed to head to wish night with Analiese, but she got caught up chatting with The Herald’s features editor. When I ran into Sabine and Inessa in the hallway, they insisted I walk with them.
“It’s about Capture.” Inessa lowers her voice. “I’m going to invade Segner right after midnight.”
Sabine gives a delighted gasp. “Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”
It’s a solid plan. Segner House won’t expect another attempt so soon after my last break-in. Plus, everyone goes to wish night. They won’t have anyone defending their camp.
A palpable boom of excited conversation ricochets down the stairwell as Sabine’s hands fly to her pocket. “I’m updating the group chat.”
We reach the bottom of the stairs. Students maneuver around us like ants trailing around a blockage.
Anticipation thrums through my fingertips. “I can help.”
Inessa spins me toward her. “See, I knew you’d want to jump back in.” She grins at Sabine. “Didn’t I say that earlier? Delaney’s a secret badass.”
Am I? It’s strange to be perceived this way. Almost like I’m trying on someone else’s persona. Someone cooler. Braver.
I like Inessa. She’s one of the only senior girls in coding club and 1,000 percent the only member who maintains a regular shower schedule. I don’t know how she puts up with the ripe smell of a dozen unhygienic boys. Nevertheless, she’s been set on MIT since she first stepped foot in Ivernia.
Sabine lowers her phone. “Inessa should go solo. You and I will keep an eye out.” She raises her brows. “If anyone from Segner notices you’ve disappeared, they might get suspicious.”
“Right,” I say, masking my disappointment. “Okay, you know how to enter through the locker room?”
“Girl, since Julian Montfort, sophomore year.” She flashes a cheeky grin. “I’m a pro.”
I glance between them. “So we’re doing this?”
“Hell yeah, we are,” Sabine says.
In a fit of loose energy, Inessa tackle-hugs Sabine and accidentally gets a mouthful of her dark hair.
They laugh as they begin to jump up and down, miming silent screams of excitement.
Sabine stops to hold the door open, and Inessa links her arm through mine as she skips out, tugging me along.
I laugh, caught off guard, and match her enthusiastic prancing.
Tonight, anything feels possible.
Sabine quickly catches up. A muted chill tugs through my hair. I free my arm from Inessa’s to readjust the headband I’d thrown on last-minute.
“I can’t believe this is our last wish night,” Inessa says.
“Don’t start,” Sabine warns.
A pinch of heartache tightens in my chest. I try to ignore it, but it’s persistent, as if daring me to accept the obvious.
This is a year measured in things I will lose.
Wish nights and quiet lake walks and common room conversations and early morning mist evaporating in the glossy sunlight.
Lasagna night with fluffy garlic bread in the dining hall and weekend movie gatherings in the lounge.
The hum of the old heater in the library barely audible over clacking keyboards.
Traditions, rituals, routines. Everything ends.
I push those feelings aside in favor of conjuring excitement. It’s so easy for me to fall into a silent space of lamenting.
Ahead of us, Luke Stelmak gestures for Inessa, a finger crooking her toward his group of crew guys.
She rolls her eyes. “Let me see what this fool wants.”
As she sashays away, her cream ribbon swishing at the base of her neck as she goes, Sabine turns to me.
“Hey, I hope this isn’t weird,” she says, “but I’m really sorry about your dad. And I know condolences don’t change anything—I mean, I always felt awkward when people said them after my mom died—but I just wanted you to know I’m here if you ever want to talk.”
My lips part in surprise. I had no idea Sabine’s mom died. She doesn’t owe me this personal information, but it’s kind of her to offer.
I learned early on everyone moves forward with their lives even if it feels like yours has stopped. When I returned to Ivernia, I thought, Everything is so normal. And why wouldn’t it be?
“Thank you,” I tell her. “I feel so…”
“Adrift?” she suggests.
A corner of my mouth lifts. “Exactly.”
“I did speech and debate with Jared and remember him mentioning you grew up here—and your dad also taught here, right?” At my nod, she continues. “I could tell from his stories that you all loved this place.”
Ivernia has always been such an integral part of me because it was such an integral part of my dad.
When he was in his early thirties, he wanted to get out of the competitive world of astrophysics research at Cornell and found a school seeking an astronomy instructor.
Three years later, this is where he met my mother.
She was a substitute teacher at the time, working her way through graduate school, where she’d go on to earn her master’s in library and information science.
Her path shouldn’t have crossed with his—until she’d accidentally entered the wrong classroom.
She was meant to substitute for a ninth-grade honors English class, but there he was, an astronomy instructor so captivated that, every time he recalled the story, he’d say in the most enraptured tone, “It felt as though, in that very moment, the earth stopped rotating. She was a force.”
They hit it off right away. He sat with her in the dining hall during lunch breaks and discovered she was covering for Mrs. Gupta’s class for a few days.
By the end of her stay, his crush was so obvious, she knew he was going to ask her to dinner.
And since she was equally enamored, she’d already planned on saying yes.
Once things became more serious and my mother finished graduate school, she moved in with him into off-campus housing and searched for librarian positions, eventually accepting one in Burlington. Several months later he proposed to her on the banks of Ivernia’s lake.
Lake Placid was my first home. We grew up exploring the woods and hiking trails and walking the jogging loop around campus, so of course officially attending Ivernia School sparked Jared’s interest first. We missed it here.
And because I wanted to do everything Jared did, Ivernia became my goal too.
He was the first to get accepted with a partial scholarship.
A year later, when it was my turn to apply, I dedicated months of my life to perfecting my application.
Not only did I have to get in, but I also had to get in with tuition assistance.
My parents were adamant the three of us would go to college, so Ivernia was out of the question unless we had help.
My scholarship was small, so small that my mom almost said no, but my dad was convincing.
He picked up paid guest-lecturing opportunities on top of his teaching salary, and we agreed I’d come home and work through the summers to help offset the cost. So that’s what I did.
We’d spread his ashes out on the lake, near the spot he’d proposed to my mom.
“The school meant a lot to him.” The softness of the earth muffles our footsteps as we cut across the grass. “No one loved learning—or teaching—more than he did. It was like this compulsion. To try and figure out…everything, I guess.”
Sabine smiles. “If that isn’t life.”
She carries the slightest lilt of French in her voice. We’ve shared a few classes over the years, but this is the first time we’ve really talked. It’s refreshing in a way I didn’t expect.
“What was your mom like?”
“Oh my god, so strict.” She laughs. “Later I understood it was her way of showing love. That protectiveness. She was scared of letting anything bad happen to me, but it happens anyway, right? We cannot escape it.” She gives me a sidelong glance.
“She died when I was eleven. My dad travels a lot for business, so it was my idea to come here. We’re really close, don’t get me wrong, but I need the structure because…
well, she shaped me into needing that. And I love her for it. ”
“You know,” I say, “I think she’d be happy you understand.”
“I told you, Sabine. For you, I want the best,” she says, laughing as she imitates her mother’s heavy French accent. “She so would.”
We fall into a comfortable silence. In front of us, the stone fountain stretches out into a smooth oval, roughly the size of a large swimming pool.
At its center, a spewing geyser erupts skyward.
Enthusiastic chatter permeates through the quad as hordes of students pull each other into conversation, their voices growing louder with eager anticipation.
Many have already found a seat on the lip of the fountain’s cement basin.
Wish night is an Ivernia-approved event, the one day a year where curfew is extended under instructor supervision.
Naturally, everyone goes. Teachers haul Igloo coolers full of soda to pass around, steaming cups of coffee in their hands as they catch up with their fellow faculty from the sidelines.
It marks the start of a new year, one that holds potential and possibilities.