Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,27
all stemmed from Emma; every misbehavior and anxiety was the result of this toxic and lucrative relationship.
She waited outside, gnawing her way nervously through the pack of Marlboros until the warning bell sounded. She took the long way to class, crossing as much of the back lawn as possible, close to the forest, before cutting inward to the C-School. As she passed the bench outside Human, she saw someone had dug up two branches from the forest and planted them in the mud, sticking straight up. It looked like an absentminded art project, but for whatever reason, she was unable to look away. She stopped, alone in front of a walking path to the forest, and stared. It felt like it had been left there for her. To warn her.
By the time she got to her pharma lab, everyone was buzzing about Emma’s disappearance.
“I overheard her in church saying a prayer for something.”
“You can’t disappear from praying.”
“Unless God beams you up.”
“That’s not how God works.”
“I heard her say the other day she was super tired. Maybe that’s what happened?”
“She fell asleep?”
Neesha steered clear, sinking into the farthest possible chair to avoid looking interested.
“She told me she didn’t have a pen, when I asked her in homeroom last week, but she seemed really sad about it. Like, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t think this is about the pen.’ I think she might have been depressed or something.”
“Do you think she killed herself?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“That would explain why no one has heard from her. I feel like at least the school would have heard from her by now if she’s not dead.”
“No way, she didn’t kill herself. She was selling Apex. It probably has something to do with that.”
“Like someone from outside the school came and killed her?”
“She was on the phone a lot.”
“Maybe someone inside the school killed her.”
“Who in the school would kill somebody?”
“Aiden almost killed Eddy.”
It was embarrassing, listening to these plebes talk about her with half-informed speculation. None of them actually knew Emma.
“I don’t know. But I talked to the guy who’s looking for her, and he’s big. I don’t think they’d get somebody that big if it wasn’t serious. . . . Neesha, do you have any idea what happened?”
The last one to talk was Margaret Chun, a Year Four from Taipei who had invented some kind of device for a telephone, and then come to school and turned into Redemption’s resident speakerphone. If Margaret knew something, everyone knew it.
Neesha sat up, realizing that she was tucked into the back corner, not reading or writing, just staring angrily at them. Behind Margaret, she saw Zaza sit up, too.
“No,” she snapped. “Of course not. Why are you asking me?”
“Oh—” Margaret looked between a few other classmates. “Aren’t you her roommate?”
“Oh . . . yeah, no, she didn’t come back last night. That’s all I know.”
Margaret Chun licked her lips, checking to be sure Yangborne wasn’t listening, then leaned closer. “Did she tell you anything about Apex?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Margaret,” she said, and flipped open a textbook to a random page.
Yangborne was extra manic today. He started class with a lecture on mirror neurons that sounded like it was being assembled as it was happening, scientific basis included. They had a joint experiment with the B-School that night, and he was always on edge on test days. All he ever wanted to talk about was the experiment. Two hours into the lecture, the dam finally broke. “And—and I don’t mean to get off track here, but I think we’ve really got it this time, friends. I mean, this is not unrelated to the topic at hand, but I really think this is our moment, in open election communication. This is the breakthrough.
“And like I always say, one breakthrough in a hundred is good science. That’s a high percentage, in our work. But I really think this is our day.”
Eyes rolled back around the classroom. Yangborne said this every test day, at least a dozen times, totally unable to take his own advice and understand that if only one in a hundred experiments were supposed to work, then ninety-nine of the days weren’t “our day.”
“You may say I’m overconfident. But I’ll tell you why. . . .” He paused. “I know it’s irresponsible to talk about the Discovery this early, in October . . .”
Chairs around the room squeaked as everyone sat up, listening closer.
“But the reason for confidence tonight is in the incredibly hard