Chapter 3

Alexa Perry POV:

Friday morning the clouds came down over the suburbs and the unpaved shoulder of the road soaked into thick mud.

The university registration system closed at noon. I had to upload my physical exam report and vaccination records before then — eleven megabytes. If the upload didn't go through, my course selection for the term was locked out.

The home broadband was on the plan my father had upgraded to. He'd said bandwidth went first to "the people who really need it." Colton was downstairs watching game film; Blake was upstairs video-interviewing with that dance academy.

I stood by the router with my laptop and watched the upload bar crawl. Ten minutes, three percent.

My mother came out of the kitchen with coffee.

"Mom, can I have ten minutes of internet first," I said. "I have to send a file. Deadline is twelve."

She glanced at the stairs. "Blake is interviewing. Colton is watching film of Saturday's opponent."

"I only need ten minutes."

"Can't you do it after they're finished?" she said. "Whatever you've got isn't school business."

"It is school business."

She didn't answer. She carried her coffee into the living room.

I closed the laptop, put it in my bag, walked twenty minutes to the public library, and uploaded the file on their connection with seven minutes to spare.

It had been overcast all morning but the rain never fell. That was my luck for the day.

On the way back I took the bus to the county road junction, then walked a mile and a half home along the drainage ditch beside the highway, working around the standing water and dodging the spray off truck tires.

At home I stood at the door for forty seconds and rang the bell. Blake opened it. My shoes were covered in mud and my pants were wet to the cuff.

Blake looked at my cuffs, stepped aside to let me in, and said nothing.

Inside, Colton was sitting on the stairs adjusting a knee brace, with muddy cleats, two grass-stained training towels, and a half-empty blue sports drink at his feet.

"Hey, wash those two towels right now," he said. "I need them dry by five. Also, who left this junk behind the dryer."

He held up a piece of cardboard. It was my high school science fair board, with my handwritten title still on it.

The board had been cut in half down the middle, with pencil marks along the edge.

"Found it in the garage," Colton said, tossing it on the floor. "Blake used it to practice signatures on, cut it in half. He told me to throw it out."

I looked at the half board.

Sophomore year I spent three weeks on it. The Fibonacci sequence model was built out of toothpicks, one at a time.

My parents never went to that fair.

The year Colton made the all-county second team, Craig spent three hundred and fifty dollars having his jersey professionally framed — custom mahogany display case, museum-grade UV glass — and hung it above the living room fireplace.

"Throw it out," I said quietly, and leaned the board against the wall by the trash can.

Colton looked at me for a moment, surprised I didn't argue, shrugged, and stood up.

"Don't shrink the towels in the dryer," he said on his way upstairs.

I stood there until the kitchen door closed.

Behind the water heater I dragged out the hard-shell suitcase.

Three pairs of dark trousers, four cotton shirts, two heavy sweaters, one charger, three pairs of socks.

Everything I owned went into that one case, and there were still four inches of room when the lid closed.

I sat on the edge of the bed and zipped it shut.

There was only one person in the department who would write me a recommendation: Professor Whitley, who taught my advanced probability course. Three letters. She never asked me for money, never asked about my family. She asked one question: where do you want to go. I said, as far as possible. She smiled and sent them.

My phone lit up on the bed.

An automated message from the Zurich airport transfer team.

"Notice for Miss Perry: your airport connection coordinator, Mr. Stefan Meyer, will be waiting at Terminal 2 arrivals at 08:30 Central European Time on August 29."

The attachment was a mockup of the sign, my full name in black letters.

Alexa Perry.

Not the oldest. Not the built-in babysitter. Not the one in the laundry room.

I deleted the notification, cleared the screen, and pushed the black flash drive and the passport into the zippered pocket inside my backpack.

It was August twenty-seventh.

The flight out of O'Hare was tomorrow night at ten forty-five.

Downstairs they were deciding which shoes to wear for championship week and whether to add a spare pair of cleats.

This time the day after tomorrow, I would not be in this country.