Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,29

GRC and tell them. I’m sure we’ll know what happened quickly, and it’ll be some kind of misunderstanding, but until then, if anyone needs help with it, we can do a support group. Okay? Okay, great.” He smiled. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Evan.

EVAN SAT ALONE outside Dr. Richardson’s office, his feet propped on her waiting table. Through half-open eyes, he followed the lines across the paper in front of him, thinly covered by a piece of schoolwork, tumbling through the associations of Emma’s final week and lining up details.

Zaza, Neesha, Aiden; before mass.

A violent mess in the chapel, with her boyfriend at the center of it.

Yanis immediately sent by the school to find her.

A phone call, from the booth ten feet away—to an unidentified number.

He hadn’t slept. Her testimonial journal had presented him with forty days’ worth of new data points, directly from the source itself, and he had to log them all before morning.

The writing in her journal was frustrating. There was little recounting of the particular details of her life, and almost no mention of classes or conversations. Sometimes he was able to glean details from the context of described interactions—assessments with Dr. Richardson, late nights with Neesha—but most moments were omitted or left to biblical parable. There were still inexplicable behaviors, and huge gaps and variables in her pattern.

On the other hand, it was the Emma he knew, the Emma of May fourteenth, pure and true. It was exactly what he needed to know about her, and he knew her now better than he ever had before. The depth of her sadness. The amount of her time that was spent wallowing in past nightmares. He wasn’t wrong. Emma was troubled, and she needed help. Now more than ever.

Dr. Richardson leaned out of her office. “Thanks for waiting, Evan. Come on in.” He watched over her shoulder as she typed four numbers into the keypad.

Her office was plain and warm, with soft light coming from lamps in all four corners, a large desk in the center, and neutral-tone bookshelves along the walls. It was intentionally welcoming, obvious S2—Subtext suggesting this was a place where students could feel safe. There were photos everywhere of Dr. Richardson, shaking hands or holding microphones next to political and academic types, waving to cameras and accepting awards. He wasn’t sure exactly what she’d done to earn her all this praise, but all the instructors at Redemption seemed overqualified.

She stared at him for sixty seconds, smiling as if she had learned everything she needed to know in one silent moment. Finally, she plopped open a thick folder on the desk.

“You wrote in a paper for Dr. Edwards that a creature whose purpose has been voided is living a nonexistence worse than death. ‘Only those with a mission, with a reason to have lived, will know true salvation.’” She smiled. “That’s very literal, Evan, and very biblical. Also, it’s a very serious standard to apply to life. Do you really believe that’s true?”

He nodded.

“Then what is your purpose?”

Evan’s eyes flittered around the room before returning to her. He didn’t look away or stutter. “This. Redemption is my purpose.”

He could tell in the creases of her eyebrows that she wasn’t satisfied by the answer, or she didn’t believe him. “Most students say that. And if you don’t succeed here? If you were, for some reason, to fail? What are we supposed to do with you then?”

“I . . . I won’t fail.”

She flipped over pages in the folder. He tried to make out what was written upside down, but she moved so fast through them, he only caught glimpses. A photo that looked like his family’s living room. A photo of the chess computer. A newspaper article about his victory.

Whatever she was looking for, Dr. Richardson didn’t find it. She readjusted in her chair. “Do you ever get sad here?”

It caught him off-balance. It was completely outside the pattern. There was no place in the conversation for a question like that. It had no visible S2—Subtext, no apparent S3—Intention, but it asked him to respond with S4—Emotion.

“Everyone gets sad,” he said with no inflection. “But I don’t, very often.”

“About what?”

“School. Friends. Sad movies.”

“Interesting,” she said. “You don’t seem to be a fan of these kinds of conversations. Is that fair to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“I understand. That’s common, particularly for exceptional students. We have a lot of those here. That’s on purpose, of course; we recruit the students we think are the most gifted, yourself included, so we