Page 40 of White Lights
Dez has no idea what coupling entails, but she doesn’t like the passive construction of the director’s words. It sounds like something that’s supposed to happentoDez, whether she wants it or not.
“Well?” Moriah says. “Am I correct?”
“Yes,” Dez says. “I—I’m still a solo artist.”
“THEN LEAVE!” Moriah thunders at Rafe.
“Catch you on the flip side.” He grins at Dez, then glides to the edge before practically leaping off the slope and vanishing into thin air.
“First-years, line up!” the director shouts. “In alphabetical order, according to your middle names.”
This is the strangest command Dez has ever heard. Her middle name is Ruth, and she doesn’t have a clue what anyone else’s is. Which must be the point. To pull this off, the first-years will have to become better acquainted.
She starts with Simon. “What’s yours?”
“It’s Cherokee, don’t laugh.”
“I won’t,” Dez says.
“My full name is Simon Afraid of Choosing Nelson.”
“‘Afraid of Choosing’? You’ve been this way since birth?”
“White people,” Simon snickers, and shakes his head. “My middle name is Joe.”
Dez laughs for the first time since she’s been at Acheron, for the first time since she hurt her brother. And all around her, as Dr. Moriah eyes them like a cat watching an aquarium, first-years introduce themselves, eyes gleaming, cracking up, awkward in their Acheron skis.
“Faster!” Moriah shouts, and the students begin to align.
“Someone told me you’re Ruth,” a cute first-year guy with an English accent says to Dez. “Since I’m Rowan—that is, Paul Rowan Wilkes—I think we’re in sequence.”
“We must be,” Dez says, and falls into line next to him.
“I heard you’re a Visionary?” Paul Rowan Wilkes says. “I’m a Scribe.”
“Have you gotten to see the Vault yet?” Dez asks. “Where we work?”
“No one has. Not until tonight. But the suspense is killing me.”
Dez nods, agreeing. And if this were all that coupling was, just a little flirty icebreaker on a fourteener in the freezing cold, she could handle it. But the look in the eyes of the terrifying snake lady overseeing them tells Dez something more’s on the horizon.
Moriah stalks the lined-up first-years like a drill sergeant on the first day of basic training. “How much can you bench-press?” she asks Simon.
“About a hundred?” he says, clearly never having bench-pressed in his life.
Moriah narrows her eyes in disbelief before passing on to another student in line.
“Describe your gag reflex.”
“Pretty good?” the woman says.
Moriah stops in front of Paul Rowan. “Do you tend to be the dumper or the dumpee?”
“I’ve been in a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend for six—”
“Enough,” Moriah cuts him off with a slice of her hand. She looks at Dez. Her eyes are slits as she asks, “Do you have great tolerance for pain?”
Dez swallows, her burned hand still aching, wondering what these questions have to do with getting paired with a mentor at Acheron. “Sometimes I think I do. Not that I want to test it.”
