Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,30

can develop those gifts. That’s the way we’ve operated for twenty years; it’s the reason we have the results we do.

“But one of the unintended consequences of orienting students like that, toward the pursuit of being the best at what they do, is that they tend to underestimate the value of the way they feel. To be the best basketball player, the best debater, to win at chess—these goals are so urgent and defined, everything else feels like it just gets in the way. Feelings of stress or loneliness can seem like an obstacle to the more important thing we know we’re destined for. So students ignore those feelings, over and over again, until eventually they’ve built mechanisms to shield themselves. And one of those mechanisms”—she flipped the folder shut—“is not talking about it.”

She looked into his eyes. “Feeling alone, or scared, or empathetic—those feelings are who we are. They’re the engine that makes the rest of it go. If we weren’t constantly in pursuit of love, or afraid of the loss of it, we wouldn’t have any reason for doing anything.

“And talking about them is how we make sense of them. The practice of trading empathies is what creates our moral baseline. After all, how am I, as one of the heads of this school, to understand the pain of stress on students, unless you express that pain? How am I supposed to know what’s blocking your progress, if I don’t know what’s going on inside you?”

It was a rhetorical question. Evan let it hang in space for a moment.

“The lesson is this,” she continued. “Don’t disconnect from the forces that drive you from the inside. Listen to them. Experience them. Because if you don’t control them, they will come back to control you, in terrible ways. Like a stutter.”

She let it sit with him for a long moment. But he didn’t flinch.

“Okay.”

“Good.” She sat up. “The first step, of course, is you and I working together to understand what has shaped you into the person who sits before me. In order for that to happen, I need you to make me a promise. You have to be completely open. You have to tell me everything. No secrets, no rules, no punishment. Can you promise me that?”

Her lips curled upward. She could already see through his skin.

Evan nodded.

“Wonderful.” She nodded. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He stalled in the lobby after the assessment, watching as the next student, a Year Four named Archie, disappeared behind the thick wooden door. She was right. He didn’t like talking about sadness. But not because it was uncomfortable. And not because it wasn’t important.

He didn’t want to talk to her because as soon as you told someone something about yourself, it was no longer yours. In chess, signaling information was the quickest way to lose an advantage. Some argued information sharing was evolved, that the most advanced forms of civilization, reserved exclusively for ants and science fiction, used hive minds to share information simultaneously between all members of their species. In the human world, however, where there was no such thing as a parity of power, there was no such thing as a parity of information, either. Advantage could only be gained by keeping information in your own head, for yourself alone.

Checking to be sure the lobby was empty, he slipped inside the phone booth.

There was a slot in the front of the machine where you could feed dollars or coins, below an analog timer that ran counterclockwise, counting back the time you had left on your call. Evan pulled three one-dollar bills from his bag and inserted all three. The timer’s needle swelled up to 180 seconds.

There was no direct dial on the phone system. Instead, you gave the number to the school’s operator, and she placed the call for you.

“Operator.” It was the same woman as always; her voice was bright and loud. “Is this a student call?”

“This is Evan Andrews.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Evan Andrews, student number eight, eight, eight, four, five, two, three, two. I’d like to make an outgoing call.”

“Oh, hi, Evan! Oh my gosh, it’s been forever.”

“Five months.”

“Right, wow. Well, same number as always, or—”

“Different number.” From his pocket, he pulled the list of names and read the phone number from the top.

The operator went to work. He hadn’t used the phone system since May fourteenth. He used to sit down in the booth equipped with twenty-dollar bills his mother had mailed him. They would run through nine or ten in