Chapter 4: Plateau

Four hundred twelve files.

Every picture I'd taken of the five of us since we were fifteen.

Kenzie had been awake at five in the morning, in my bed, two doors down from the study where I slept.

The gate agent called my row.

I stood in line with my thumb over the screen.

I couldn't take back what she'd already copied.

I could stop her taking anything else.

I removed all four of them from the folder.

Then I changed the password on everything I'd ever shared with any of them.

Then I turned my phone off and walked down the jet bridge.

The shuttle from Phoenix dropped six of us bridge students outside the science building at dusk.

The air was thin and cool and smelled like pine.

A tall guy in a canvas jacket leaned against a white van with a cardboard sign.

GREER PENNOK.

I stopped in front of him.

"There's a C."

He looked at the sign, then at me.

"Where?"

"Before the K. Pennock."

He took a pen out of his pocket, wrote a tiny C above the gap, and held it up again.

"Welcome to Flagstaff, Greer Pennock."

His name was Boone Hatfield.

He was a junior in physics, the student lead for the bridge program, and president of the astronomy club.

He grew up on a cattle ranch outside Williams, an hour west.

I learned all that over the next week, one fact at a time, because Boone said about four sentences a day.

My roommate was louder.

My roommate came through the door of our dorm with a cooler on her hip and red hair in a claw clip.

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