“Depends on who’s doling it out,” I say, lifting a shoulder. She doesn’t laugh or even smirk, so I move on. “I’m not scared of our teacher anyway.”
“Well, it’s not about being scared,” she replies, folding the edge of a page in the notebook. “Professor Dupont is intense but not really mean…usually. I had him for another class in the fall, and when we did breathing exercises or vocal warm-ups, I felt like I was gonna pass out any time he focused on me.”
“Yikes.”
“Plus, if you look online, there’s all kinds of stuff about him onThe Delphic Pages. Gossipy drivel that’s probably not true but still fun to read…if you like that sort of thing.”
“The Delphic Pages?”
Her eyes widen, and she dives into her coat pocket, pulling out her phone. On the screen, she taps a maroon app with an A and C on the icon, bringing up an online forum. She scrolls with a manicured index finger, showing dozens of threads under an account with the namePythiain bold.
Each post has hundreds of comments beneath, encouraging and begging for more.
“Pythia is Avernia’s…oracle, in a way,” she says. “For the most part, she posts rumors and relevant information, giving students insight and keeping us up to date on the weird stuff that happens around here. But she also posts a lot of outright lies, so it’s hard to tell when she’s being helpful or malicious.”
“And the school just…allows it?”
“Sure. Dean Bauer will let anything slide if he thinks doing so will prevent an overall disruption. Sometimes I wonder if the dean himself isn’t the one behind the account, just trying to constantly throw students off his trail.”
“His trail?”
“Oh yeah. Everyone thinks he’s in a murder-sex cult where the participants, like, worship the founders or something. I don’t know, it’s way too complicated for me to really care. I’m just trying to make it to graduation alive.”
I take the phone and type my name into the search bar at the bottom. Only one post is about me, a picture taken sometime this week as I scrambled to the observatory.
My academic adviser suggested a few supplemental courses to all the theater I’m taking, so I’m dabbling in astronomy and philosophy as well. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve admired the stars’ guidance and their reminder of how vast the universe is.
In comparison, human tragedy doesn’t matter. Or maybe it matters even more.
The website doesn’t really say much else about me, which fills me with relief. Speculation is thelastthing I need right now.
When I scroll back to last semester, I note that a lot of the posts have been archived, leaving only shells with timestamps in their places.
Meaning the school really did scrub all evidence of the deaths and kidnappings that happened. That makes Quincy’s warnings from before blare even louder in my head, but at the same time raises my confusion as to why she and Asher came back.
The urge to call our parents and let them know things aren’t actually that safe is strong, but I resist. If I do that, they’ll start asking questions about my mental state again, and I don’t have it in me to keep rehashing my screwups.
Avernia provides distance, if not clarity. I’m sure as long as I keep a low profile, things will be fine.
How dangerous can this place really be when there are new enrollees every semester?
I hand the girl her phone back, unease creeping slowly along my shoulders and digging into my skin.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Meg,” she replies, swiping out of the app quickly. Almost like she doesn’t want to be seen using it. “You’re Noelle, right?”
“Just Elle.”
“Okay, Just Elle,” she says with a nod. “Am I correct to assume you’re related to Professor Anderson, the head of the classics department?”
“Wow, word really does travel fast.”
The edges of her cheeks heat. “Oh no, I just happened to have her for a course last semester. You guys look a lot alike.”
That almost makes me laugh. “Don’t tell her that.”
“She wouldn’t think it’s a compliment?”
