Chapter 6
Cold dread snakes like liquid nitrogen through my veins. I spin in the opposite direction and allow my brain to autopilot me away from a conversation that’s clearly none of my business. Except it is. My attempt to process stalls at those three devastating words: Ivernia could close.
Sumner stands a few feet away, his lips slightly parted. He looks physically pained, which is how I know with sudden certainty I’m not the only one who overheard.
They’re going to close the school?
It feels impossible, like trying to eliminate gravity. Ivernia is one of the oldest coed boarding schools on the East Coast. It’s existed for well over a century. Longer, even. They can’t get rid of it…can they?
I’d always held on to the guarantee you could return to a geographical place.
That it can exist long after you’re gone, adapting and growing in its own way while remaining on the same foundation it was built upon.
A place is a constant that can’t be taken away from you, which is why this revelation hurts.
Ivernia was my dad’s favorite place in the world.
It was supposed to exist even after he didn’t.
This was where he broadened his knowledge, where students learned from him and he learned from them.
Even though I’d go on to graduate and attend college, I knew I could always return. Now, I realize, that won’t necessarily be true.
Sumner closes the distance between us. His glasses slip down his nose as his chin dips down toward me.
“Did you—?”
“Yeah,” he says, scrubbing a hand along his jaw. He suddenly looks ten times more tired than he did five minutes ago. “But we’re not going to think about that now.”
A lump of panic rises in my throat. “But what if—?”
“Carmichael.” His slate eyes find mine. “Later, okay?”
I nod, but my nonverbal confirmation doesn’t stop my breathing from quickening.
It also doesn’t halt my racing thoughts.
The ones that pierce the shrapnel of reality directly into my heart: Ivernia won’t belong to you anymore.
It won’t belong to him. It’ll cease to exist, just like he did.
In another hundred years, it won’t matter to anyone, because no one will remember it.
Or him. In the grand sense of our reality, nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
The rapid pattering in my chest accelerates.
I blink, trying not to cry. The last thing I want to do is break down.
Not just in front of Sumner, but in front of the entire school.
But those thoughts claw through. They spill over the edge of my composure and straight into the dark expanse of my internal fears.
“Hey, take a breath.” Sumner lays a hand across his chest and takes a slow inhale.
I copy him. Release the built-up pressure behind my rib cage.
He leads me through another silent breath.
I latch on to the way his long fingers linger on the threads of his maroon sweater peeking out from under his jacket.
There’s a dark ink stain down his wrist, and incoherent scribbles curve along the length of his forearm and trail down his sleeve.
For some reason, this is the thing that grounds me. The crushing despair begins to shrink.
When I lift my gaze toward Sumner, he’s worrying his lip.
“What’s on your arm?”
He tugs on his sleeve as if revealing a tattoo. “Green’s theorem,” he says. “If a C curve is closed and oriented clockwise—”
“Better question,” I add, “why is it on your arm?”
“Because I want to understand it and I don’t just yet.” He holds my gaze a beat before shifting it toward the fountain. “Got your penny?”
My hands slip inside my pockets. That’s when I realize I’ve forgotten to grab the most important part of this evening. How could I leave so unprepared? It’s unlike me. I should have double-checked—
“Here.”
Sumner places a coin in my palm, both of us jerking away from his sudden contact. I pretend not to notice. He does the same.
“You can tell me to fuck off if you want,” Sumner says, so casually it almost makes me laugh. “Or were you saving that as your wish?”
I press back a smile. “You would assume I’d save my wish for you.”
There’s a mischievous glint in his eye. “One can hope.”
The dense congregation parts wide enough for us to slip toward an open space near the fountain. Sumner checks the time on his phone, then flashes it my way. 11:58.
“To be clear,” he says. “You don’t have to wish for me to get any more attractive. The genetic gods have already bestowed a timeless treasure upon mankind. A rival to Adonis, some might say.”
“Who is some?”
“My adoring fans, Carmichael, keep up.”
“You,” I emphasize, “are a walking lesson in humility.”
“Finally, she admits my greatest strength.”
“Second greatest. First is your inability to shut up about trigonometric functions.”
“And when you’re done denying yourself life’s simple pleasures, you know where to find me.”
“Sure, except it’s so dark there, deep inside the garbage bin.”
A laugh catches him by surprise. “And here I thought you believed I came from a place with fire and brimstone.”
“If anyone could annoy the devil himself, it’s you.” I look him up and down. “And don’t let the fans get to your head. You’re conventionally adequate, at best.”
“High praise coming from you.”
We’ve regained footing on familiar territory, returning to a shred of normalcy. Meaningless conversation speckled with mild roasting.
I turn toward the glistening water, eyes roaming over all the copper wishes sleeping soundly at the bottom.
Wishing has always felt indulgent. For so long, my only wish was for my dad to get better.
So I followed his decisions, lived up to the identity my parents had defined.
I morphed into who they wanted me to be, because if I remained the pragmatic and unproblematic child and avoided conflict and did everything right, then maybe I could earn that wish.
Maybe it would be enough to prove he deserved to get better.
All I’d learned is life doesn’t work that way.
I crane my neck skyward, into the depths of inky blackness and tiny pinpricks of freckled stars decorating the night’s canvas.
It’s another thing my father appreciated about this place.
The way you could see the universe so clearly.
He used to say, in a great cosmic sense, the world was immeasurable.
We were such a singular part of celestial coordinates that make up ever-expanding galaxies.
I’ve never felt that more than I do now.
Above the blanket of the universe lies so many unanswered questions.
It feels trivial to be bogged down with my own humanity.
Disappointment creeps in. I’d been hoping for a sign.
A hint he’s out there, somewhere among the stars, not fully untethered from us.
Right now, I want to witness the grandeur and splendor he taught.
Ripples of haloed auroras streaking through the night sky, large and loud and bright.
Instead, the universe offers me stillness and with it, silence.
My throat works around a knot. Is there such a thing as cosmic significance? Because if the people and places you care about most in this world can cease to exist, does anything actually matter?
I’ve already lost him. I don’t want to lose this place too. Not when so much of him remains here.
If there’s even the slightest chance I can ensure the school closure doesn’t happen, then I’ll do whatever it takes. Because if we really do matter, if we all exist in this one time and place for some great universal reason, then maybe this is what I’m supposed to do.
Sumner’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. “Got your wish?”
“I think so,” I say quietly. “You?”
He doesn’t break his gaze. “Yeah,” he says. “I got it.”
An eruption of cheers breaks through the conversation as midnight strikes. Students begin to let go of their wishes. Glints of copper rise high in the air before falling into the wide pool with a sound like heavy rain.
I tighten my fingers around the coin, closing my eyes. Of all the wishes I’ve made over the years, this one has to count. If this is the final time I put my trust in the universe, I need it to show me that I’m capable of doing this for my dad.
Give me what I need to make this place his again.
My eyes open. I wind my hand back and release it skyward with as much force as I can muster. The penny goes up, up, up—
And then, with the faintest plop, it splashes down into the water.
Sumner’s penny lands seconds after mine. Tiny ripples lap at the stone basin, the glistening floor winking with shiny copper. So many wishes and hopes and desires. Everyone has something they want.
Students begin to shuffle away from the fountain. People huddle together in close circles, their voices slowly rising.
“Winchel!”
Our attention veers toward the incoming shout. Brayden Oram, Sumner’s old roommate and my ex, waves before heading toward us.
Last year an unearthly demon somehow possessed my brother, because he randomly decided to ask if I had a crush on Sumner in front of the entire Hyde common room.
I’d never told Jared about my short-lived feelings back in our first year, so it came out of nowhere.
Sumner had been working on his calculus homework while I read in an armchair across from him, but he’d had such a visceral reaction to Jared’s question that he’d flinched, his knee knocking his textbook onto the ground, while my first instinct was to chuck a pen at Jared’s head from across the room and yell, “No, you moron.”