THE FIRST DAY of school, Rylin stepped out of Berkeley’s main quadrangle, lifting a hand to her eyes to shade them even as her contacts switched to light-blocking mode: one of the few things they were able to do on school grounds. The UV-free solar beams prickled pleasantly on her arms.
Ahead of her rose the science building, surrounded by a turquoise reflecting pool that was filled with multicolored koi and a few croaking frogs. Rylin shuddered as she passed. She’d had to dissect a frog last year in biology class, and even though she knew it wasn’t real—that it was actually a synthetic frog-like thing built specifically for high school students to avoid animal cruelty—she still didn’t like the sound of the real ones.
She hadn’t wanted to take a science class this year at all, but since it was mandatory, Rylin had settled on the most innocuous-sounding option: Introduction to Psychology. Actually, her summer boss, Raquel, had been the one to suggest it. “All good storytellers study psychology,” she’d proclaimed, drumming her fingers idly over the film storage boxes. “Novelists, filmmakers, even actors. You have to know the rules of human behavior before you can make your characters break them.”
That sounded reasonable to Rylin. Besides, psychology seemed so much friendlier than the other options—no test tubes or scalpels, just surveys and “social experiments,” whatever that meant.
She started down the two-story science hallway past the robotics lab, where electrical sparks jumped from one wire to another like fiery spiders; past the meteoroculture lab, where students gathered around a massive holographic globe, studying the weather patterns that broke in soft gray waves over its surface; past the massive steel door marked SUBZERO LAB: THERMAL PROTECTION REQUIRED. The so-called “ice box,” where the Advanced Physics class conducted below-freezing experiments in subatomic particles. Rylin didn’t even want to know how much it cost to maintain that temperature.
When she turned into room 142 at the end of the hall, Rylin was relieved to see rows of two-person lab stations, each equipped with nothing but a pair of holo-goggles. She took a seat at one of the empty tables and pulled up the notepad function on her school tablet—just in time.
“Humans are illogical and irrational. That’s the first rule of psychology.” A glamorous Chinese woman strode into the classroom, instantly skewering them all with her stare. Her heels clicked lightly on the floor.
“Psychology as a science was born because humans have been trying for millennia to understand why we do the things we do. Psyche, meaning mind, and logos, study. We’ve been doing this since the ancient Greeks, and yet we still haven’t come close to making sense of it all.
“I’m Professor Heather Wang. Welcome to Introduction to Psychology,” she announced and narrowed her eyes. “If you’re here because you think this is the ‘easy’ science class compared to physics or chemistry, think again. At least elements and chemicals behave in a predictable way. People, on the other hand, are shockingly unpredictable.”
Rylin couldn’t agree more. Sometimes she felt as if she couldn’t even predict her own actions, let alone those of the people around her.
The door to the classroom pushed inward, and a familiar dark head appeared. Rylin barely bit back a sigh. Of all the classes he could have taken, Cord had to be in this one?
Professor Wang gazed coolly at him. “I know you’re all seniors and have one foot out the door already, but I don’t tolerate lateness from anyone.”
“I’m sorry, Professor Wang,” Cord said, with his usual charming forgive-me smile. Then he marched right over to Rylin’s lab console—ignoring the several other empty spots—and slid into the seat next to her.
Rylin kept her gaze studiously forward, pretending not to see him.
“Despite being coerced and at best halfhearted,” the professor went on, addressing the class, “what you just heard from Mr. Anderton was an apology, a prime example of the types of social interactions we will study this year. We will explore the different forces influencing human behavior, including established social norms. We’ll discuss how these norms came to be, and what happens when someone chooses to violate them.”
Like violating the unspoken norm of sitting next to your ex-girlfriend in class when there are plenty of open seats?
“Today we’ll be performing the Stroop effect, a classic demonstration of how easily the human brain can be tricked. Our brains are the computers with which we interpret the world, and yet their operations are compromised far too easily. We misremember information, we forget whole stretches of time. We convince ourselves of things we know to be untrue. Now let’s get started.” Professor Wang clapped, and their tablets all lit up with the text of the lab instructions.
Cord leaned forward onto the lab table. He’d rolled up his sleeves, in blatant defiance of the dress code, revealing the muscles of his forearms. “Long time no see, Myers.”
Rylin kept her eyes on the lab instructions to keep from looking at him. She’d been avoiding Cord since she saw him kiss Avery at the Dubai party last year. And she had been mostly successful, until now.
“It says here that one of us needs to put on the VR headset,” she pointed out. If Cord noticed that she was tapping at her tablet with unusual vehemence, he didn’t comment on it. He just kept looking at her with that amused smile, his lips slightly parted.
“How was your summer?”
Why was he trying to make small talk? “It was good,” Rylin said shortly. “You?”
“I traveled with Brice for a while, mostly around South America. Windsurfing, scuba, you know.” No, Rylin thought, I really don’t know.
Cord was close with his older brother, Brice, but then—like Rylin and Chrissa—they were all each other had. The Andertons had died years ago in a freak plane crash, making Cord an orphan, a celebrity, and a billionaire all at once. He had been ten years old.
When Rylin’s mom died, Rylin had inherited nothing but a massive stack of unpaid medical bills.
“What about you, did you go anywhere fun?” Cord asked.
Go anywhere fun? “Not really. I had a job working for an archivist, going through film at the public library.”
“Oh, right. I saw your snaps. That looked cool,” Cord agreed. Rylin was startled to hear that he’d been following her on the feeds.
“I missed you at my party on Saturday,” he added. “I was excited to see what you were going to be dressed as—I couldn’t decide which was more likely, Catwoman or a punk rocker.”
“I don’t really do costumes.” Did Cord seriously think that she would show up to the very party she’d worked for him last year, the party where he’d first kissed her?
“Don’t do costumes? Where’s the fun in that?”
“It doesn’t always have to be about ‘fun,’ you know,” Rylin snapped, more curtly than she’d meant to. She knew she wasn’t really being fair. But Cord needed to stop and think sometimes before just saying whatever popped into his mind.
And there wasn’t anyone else in Cord’s life who was about to call him out like that.
She picked up the virtual reality headpiece and settled it clunkily over her brow, shutting out the whole world, including Cord. “I’ll go first,” she said into the silence. Illuminated before her on the goggles was a blank white background.
After a moment, Cord tapped at something to begin the lab. “Tell me what color you see.”
The word hello appeared before her in vibrant green. Rylin blinked at it for a moment, disconcerted, before remembering that she was supposed to say the color. “Green.”
The word disappeared, to be replaced by a dark red block letters that read purple.
“Purple,” she said automatically and felt herself flush again. “No, wait, I mean, red—”
Cord laughed. She tried not to wonder what his expression looked like beyond her blocked-out field of vision.
“Don’t you see how easily your brain can be tricked!” Professor Wang’s voice crowed nearby.
Rylin flicked a switch on the side of the VR headset and its screen evaporated into transparency. She glanced through her now clear goggles to see the professor hovering near their lab station. “I just read the word automatically,” she tried to explain.
“Exactly!” the professor cried out. “Your analytical and visual identification neurons were firing at cross-purposes, and chaos broke out! Your own brain betrayed you!” She tapped one finger to her head before swishing off to another lab station.
It only betrays me when Cord is around, Rylin thought with some resentment.
She reached up to flick the side of her headset, letting the view screen repopulate with the lab program. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Rylin . . .” Cord reached over as if to lift the VR headset from the crown of her head, but Rylin instinctively jerked back. He didn’t get to touch her hair as if it meant nothing. He’d forfeited that right a long time ago.
Cord seemed to realize that he’d crossed a line. “Sorry,” he mumbled, chastened. “But—I’m confused. What’s going on? I thought we were becoming friends again last year, and now I feel like you’re attacking me.”
We were becoming friends, until I wanted to be more, and then I saw you with Avery. “Don’t worry about it,” she said stiffly. “It’s fine.”
“It’s clearly not fine,” Cord protested.
“Look, can we just get this lab done with, and—”
“Forget the lab, Rylin.”
She was startled by the flash of anger that ran through Cord’s words. Reluctantly she took off the VR headset and set it on the table.
“What is it?”
“Why are you acting like this?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rylin protested weakly—because she knew exactly what he meant, and felt suddenly ashamed of herself. She fiddled awkwardly with the strap on the headset.
“Did I do something to upset you?” Cord pressed.
Their eyes met, and Rylin felt herself flush a bright agonized red. Telling Cord the truth meant admitting how she’d felt about him last year: that she’d gone all the way to Dubai chasing him. Yet some part of her insisted that she owed Cord an explanation, no matter how much it stung her pride.
“I saw you with Avery. In Dubai,” she said quietly.
Rylin watched as he sorted through the implications of her words. “You saw Avery kiss me?” he demanded at last.
Rylin gave a miserable nod, not trusting herself to speak. Even though it was months ago—even though she was with Hiral now, and it shouldn’t matter—Rylin felt the shame of that night stealing over her, as sticky and suffocating as ever.
She’d gone to Dubai buoyed by a ridiculous hope that she could find Cord and tell him how she felt. That they could start over. She’d looked for him that whole night, but when she’d finally found him, it was too late. He was with Avery. Kissing her.
“Nothing ever happened again between me and Avery,” Cord said slowly. “We’re just friends.”
Rylin had figured that out eventually, once Avery left for Europe and started dating that Belgian guy or whoever he was. She felt a little foolish. “You don’t owe me an explanation,” she said quickly. “It was all so long ago, it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Except that it clearly does matter.” Cord’s eyes were unreadable. “I wish you’d said something,” he added softly.
Rylin felt her blood hammering underneath her skin. “Hiral and I got back together,” she felt a sudden need to say.
“Hiral?”
Rylin knew what Cord must be thinking. He was remembering what Hiral had done last year when she’d been working for Cord. “It’s different this time,” she added, not sure why she was explaining herself to Cord anyway.
“If you’re happy, Rylin, then I’m happy for you.”
“I am happy,” she agreed, and she meant it; she was happy with Hiral. Yet somehow the statement had come out a bit defensive.
Cord nodded. “Look, Rylin, can’t we start over?”
Start over. Was that even possible after everything they’d been through? Perhaps it wasn’t a start-over as much as a start-from-here. It sounded nice, actually.
“I’d like that,” Rylin decided.
Cord held out his hand toward her. For a moment Rylin was startled at the gesture, but then she tentatively reached out and shook his hand.
“Friends,” Cord declared. Then he reached for the VR goggles to begin his section of the lab.
Rylin glanced over at him, curious at something she thought she’d heard in his tone, but his expression was already hidden behind the bulky mask of the goggles.