Sophia smiled thinly. “Can they talk about how they felt after they returned?”
Highsmith nodded. “Of course.”
Reese began to tell Sophia about the rapidly healing cuts on her palms that had led her to believe something had been done to her at the military hospital, but Highsmith interrupted again. “Do you have proof?”
Reese looked at him in surprise. “You’re asking
“That’s classified,” Highsmith said calmly. “I’m asking if you have independent proof.”
“We’re working on that,” David said. “My father’s in touch with several UCSF professors about setting up an academic board to evaluate us.”
“So you’re saying no, you don’t have proof,” Highsmith said.
Sophia stood up. “Jeff, let me talk to you for a minute.”
He followed her to one corner of the biology classroom, where they turned their backs to Reese and David and huddled in front of a poster depicting the evolution of humanity, from Lucy to
David nudged her with his knee, leaving it in place against her thigh. A shiver traveled through her as she registered his presence in her mind.
They returned a few moments later, and Sophia said, “Let’s pick up again. How did you feel when you got back to San Francisco?”
They told her about their abilities to communicate with each other mentally when they touched, and Sophia avoided the issue of proof, though she did ask David to elaborate on his father’s plans to form an academic review board. When Sophia skipped over their abduction by the men in black and their time at Blue Base on Area 51, Reese knew that Highsmith had prevailed.
“One last thing,” Sophia said, flipping through her notes. “At the press conference in front of your house, you and the Imrian girl, Amber Gray, seemed to know each other. Did you know her?”
A flash of interest crossed Highsmith’s face, which made Reese immediately wary.
“I knew her,” Reese said. She didn’t want to go into the details, not only because she didn’t want to give Jeff any new information, but also because she wasn’t comfortable telling the public that she had been in a relationship with Amber. She could already imagine the comments online.
“Did you know she’s an Imrian?” Sophia asked.
“Not at first.”
“So she lied to you?”
Reese hesitated, and then wondered why she was hesitating. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“She was sent to keep tabs on me and David.” The government already knew this, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to Highsmith.
“The Imria are in discussions to speak at the United Nations next month, and they say they’re here for peaceful purposes. But they lied to you and spied on you. Do you believe their motivations are peaceful?”
Sophia’s characterization of the Imria—of Amber—unexpectedly stung. Reese found herself wanting to defend them, and it irritated her. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I hope so.”
The last portion of their interview was shot in Mr. Chapman’s old classroom, where the debate team met after school. Some of Mr. Chapman’s posters were still on the wall, and though the whiteboard had been erased, a ghostly trace of his handwriting remained in shadowed letters that could still be read:
“This was your debate coach’s classroom, wasn’t it?” Sophia asked.
“Yes,” David said.
Sophia asked them about Mr. Chapman, and David explained how the teacher had encouraged him to join the team, and how he had paired David with Reese last year. Reese barely noticed that Sophia was nudging them toward the part of the interview she had dreaded the most.
“You sound like a good team,” Sophia said, smiling. “And you just went through a pretty difficult situation that I think would bring a lot of friends closer together. What about you two?”
The question was phrased more delicately than Reese had expected. There was still wiggle room; they could avoid it if they wanted. Reese glanced surreptitiously at David, forgetting that the camera was trained on her. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, and for a long, anxious moment, she was convinced he would deny that anything had happened between them.
“We—” As she started to speak, David reached for her hand. Startled, she sensed him right there with her. He hadn’t changed his mind.
“We’re together now,” he said, and a tentative smile reached his eyes.
She was certain that the makeup was doing nothing to hide the splotchy red flush on her cheeks, but somehow, she didn’t care.
While Sophia Curtis interviewed their parents in the school auditorium, Reese and David snuck up to the bell tower. It no longer had bells in it, and access was supposed to be restricted at all times, but last year someone had made a copy of the key and hidden it behind the bust of Albert Einstein outside the chemistry lab.
When they got to the statue, Reese reached into Einstein’s bronze collar and pulled out the key. At the end of the hall she unlocked the door to the tower, and she and David slipped through into the stairwell. It always felt illicit to be up here—she had accompanied Julian to smoke a few times—but there was an intoxicating edge to sneaking into the tower with David.
At the top of the stairs, sandstone archways framed a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the city. She leaned against the waist-high wall and looked northeast at the downtown skyline. For the first time in a long time, she felt free. Nobody was watching her.
David stood beside her, his arm brushing against hers. “I wonder who put that key behind Einstein,” he said.
“I heard it was Chris Tompkins. He stole it from the principal’s office and made a copy.”
“I heard it was Jamie Yung, and
Reese laughed, and the sound of it echoed faintly in the cupola. “I guess we’ll never know.”
“Hey, my friend Eric’s having a party on Friday. You want to go?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Like a house party?” She wasn’t really friends with Eric Chung’s group, and she wasn’t really into house parties, either.
“Yeah.” He smiled at her, and she swore her heart skipped a beat. Who was she kidding? She would go to a party with David.
“Sure, I’ll go.”
“How about I pick you up at seven?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “But Eric lives near you. Why don’t I just meet you there?”
His eyebrows rose briefly. “Because I’m asking you on a date.”
Her stomach flipped. She felt like a dork. “Oh, sorry. I mean, okay.”
He shook his head slightly, as if he thought she was funny, and reached out to smooth a piece of hair away from her eyes. His fingers lingered on her cheek, light as a feather. Her breath caught in her throat. And just like that, both his hands were in her hair, cupping her head, tipping her face up to his while he bent down to kiss her. His mouth was warm and firm on hers, his hands steady, but inside she felt him trembling like a butterfly on a leaf. She put her hands on his waist, drawing his body against hers. She felt the tail of his shirt hanging loose from the back of his jeans, and she ran her fingers under it and the T-shirt beneath, touching his skin. He shuddered in a long, twisting shiver that ricocheted through her, making her legs wobble. She pulled him closer so that she wouldn’t fall. He pushed her gently against the wall of the tower. The ledge pressed against the middle of her back, a hard edge above which was nothing—only the air over the city. A delirious confidence filled her. If she tumbled out of the tower, she would surely float, as if she were made of cloud and sky rather than flesh and
