Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(5)

It’s the other stuff that scares me: the dark, windowless room in my vision, what’s going to happen in that place, the bad thing that’s happened before I end up hiding there. The possibility that this is going to be my entire life: one vague, terrifying vision after another, for the next hundred years. That’s what’s scary. That’s what I am trying very hard not to think about.

Pierce writes a five-digit number on a Post-it and holds it out. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll come running.”

He’s flirting, I think. I take the Post-it. “Okay.”

Just then Angela bustles in, running her hands down the sides of her leggings like she’s wiping off her mother’s emotions. She stops short when she sees Pierce.

She doesn’t look scared, either. She looks like she’s come to conquer.

“Zerbino, Angela,” she says matter-of-factly when Pierce opens his mouth to greet her. She glances at the folders on the table. “Have you got something in that pile with my name on it?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, flustered, and rummages through the folders until he lands on Z and a packet for Angela. Then he fishes one out for me. He gets up. Checks his watch. “Well, nice to meet you, girls. Get comfortable. We’ll probably start our getting-to-know-you games in about five minutes.”

“What’s that?” Angela gestures to my Post-it as he walks away.

“Pierce.” I stare at his retreating back. “Anything I need, he’ll come running.”

She shoots a glance at him over her shoulder, smiles thoughtfully. “Oh, really? He’s cute.”

“I guess.”

“Right, I forgot. You only have eyes for Tucker still. Or is it Christian now? I can never keep track.”

“Hey. Like, ouch,” I say. “You’re being awfully rude today.”

Her expression softens. “Sorry. I’m tense. Change is hard for me, even the good changes.”

“For you? No way.”

She drops into the seat next to mine. “You seem relaxed, though.”

I stretch my arms over my head, yawn. “I’ve decided to stop stressing about everything. I’m going to start fresh. Look.” I dig around in my bag for the rumpled piece of paper and hold it up for her to read. “Behold, my tentative schedule.”

Her eyes quickly scan the page. “I see you took my advice and enrolled in that Intro to Humanities class with me. The Poet Re-making the World. You’ll like it, I promise,” she says. “Interpreting poetry’s easy, because you can make it mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean. It will be a cakewalk kind of class.”

I seriously doubt that.

“Hmm.” Angela frowns as she reads farther down. “Art history?” She quirks an eyebrow at me. “Science, Technology, and Contemporary Society? Intro to Film Studies? Modern Dance? This is kind of all over the place, C.”

“I like art,” I say defensively. “It’s simple for you, since you’re a history major, so you take history classes. But I’m—”

“Undecided,” she provides.

“Right, and I didn’t know what to take, so Dr. Day told me to enroll in a bunch of different classes and then drop the ones I didn’t respond to. But look at this one.” I point to the last class on the list.

“Athletics 196,” she reads above my finger. “Practice of Happiness.”

“Happiness class.”

“You’re taking a class on happiness,” she says, like that has got to be the most total slacker class in the universe.

“My mom said I was going to be happy at Stanford,” I explain. “So that’s what I intend to be. I’m going to find my happiness.”

“Good for you. Take charge of yourself. It’s about freaking time.”

“I know,” I say, and I mean it. “I’m ready to stop saying good-bye to things. I’m going to start saying hello.”





2


BAND RUN


That night I wake up at two in the morning to somebody pounding on my door.

“Hello?” I call out warily. There’s a jumble of noise from outside, music and people shouting and frantic footsteps in the hall. Wan Chen and I both sit up, exchange worried glances, and then I slide out of bed to answer the door.

“Rise and shine, dear freshmen,” says Stacy, our RA, in a chipper voice. She’s wearing a neon-green plastic circle around her neck and rainbow clown hair. She grins. “Put your shoes on and come out front.”

Outside we’re met by a scene that seems straight out of those bad acid trips you see in the movies: the Stanford marching band in what appears to be mostly their underwear and glow-in-the-dark necklaces and bracelets and stuff, rocking their respective instruments, trumpets blaring, drums beating, cymbals crashing, the school mascot in his big green pine tree costume zooming around like a crazy man, a bunch of half-dressed, partially glowing students jumping and bumping and whooping and laughing. It’s incredibly dark, like they’ve turned out the streetlights for the occasion, but I search for Angela and spot her looking supremely annoyed, standing next to two blond girls—her roommates, I assume. I weave my way over to them.

“Hi!” Angela yells. “You have bed hair.”