“Come on,” Nick said, tugging my arm. He pulled me past the plesiosaur and iguanodon skeletons and unlocked a stairwell. He prodded the button to call the elevator. When the thing came it had one of those old iron grilles, which he shoved aside for entry. He pressed me against the back wall of the box and kissed me.
He has lovely hands. Later, when the people making “missing” posters asked for a detailed description of him, I uselessly went on about his perfect hands.
When the elevator went ping at the top floor, he stalked out down a long, dingy hallway. I trotted after him. I’d forgotten that he had an office up in Earth Sciences—but of course he would. It was a tiny space, nothing more than books and a coffeemaker and a desk and a lock on the door, which was enough. We perched on the desk and he pulled my face to his.
I don’t think he meant for much more than petting—he didn’t seem like someone who would rush anything. But when he started to unbutton my shirt, I said no. I’m certain I did, but it got muffled in his cheek. So he undid the next button. I said no again. I pushed his shoulder, hard. Nick was surprised. I was too. I mean, it’s fine to say no to anything, but this was abrupt. He leaned in to kiss me again. I don’t think he deliberately ignored me; I think he was just on a roll. So was I, frankly. I kissed him back, which was disorienting—he had a right to be even more confused. It was all so …
There was this line. I wanted to be on one side of it. I tried to stay there, and haul him back. But he couldn’t see the line. All he knew was that I was still leaning into him. He kissed me all down my neck, and then lower, down into where my shirt was open from the first two buttons. It made me crazy, in a good way, and it made me angry, which was strange. I shoved him so hard that he was suddenly standing upright; I had pushed him off the desk onto his feet. I leaned over the other side of the desk and vomited into his trash can. It had papers in it, not crumpled, just all smooth and rounded, clinging to the side of the basket. I vomited in it, and then over it onto the floor.
The sounds were horrible. I tried to stop. I covered up my mouth but just ended up with stuff on my sleeve.
Nick put his hand on my back. I elbowed him off. More stuff came out of me. I didn’t think I’d eaten enough for it to go on this long.
When it finally stopped I held still. A minute flipped on his clock, one of those old “digital” clocks that has the numbers on little cards attached to an axle.
Nick said something. I made a noise to cover it up and bolted. I didn’t wait for the elevator; instead I lurched onto the stairs, which I hadn’t realized go on forever. Every corner I turned there was another flight down. I passed the museum level by mistake. Then the ground floor stopped everything.
Through the window in the stairwell door I saw a dozen students gathered, for a club or a meeting. My shirt was still open at the top. I turned to the wall. It took me a few tries to mash the buttons back through their slits.
I wanted to brush my teeth. I wanted to change my clothes. I rushed back up one flight to get my jacket from the window seat in the gem room. On Trumpington Street I started running.
CHAPTER 1
That whole thing in Nick’s office happened just around what would have been Thanksgiving. Home was, no doubt, drenched in crackling, flashy leaves. England does the season differently. Students at Cambridge are discouraged from having cars, so autumn comes with a flurry of bicycles. Leaves barely bother to brown before falling listlessly—the bikes make up for that in their number, variety, and motion. They swirl everywhere, as if blown into little cyclones by the wind.
I used to live in New Hampshire, which is all spectacular falls and knee-high winters, and summers thick with humidity and mosquitoes. It’s a parade of nature there; that’s what makes it special. But here in Cambridge, instead of trees and mountains and extremes of weather, there are buildings,