Rawlins surveyed the students in the cohort. They would all make diligent and capable scholars, and for that, he should feel grateful, even relieved. He could teach their lessons and grade their papers and write their recommendations without fear of any catastrophe like the one Max had caused.
And yet…there was something he missed, even if rationally he knew better. Rawlins had always been fascinated by the mysteries of the arcane. His first attempts were simple levitation rituals undertaken surreptitiously in his childhood bedroom, and ever since, hisinvestigations in the field had been shot through with a current of illicit excitement.
As he grew older and built a career as a scholar, he had tried to accept the limitations that academic institutions and the culture at large had placed on that study. But on some deep level, he could not. Some corner of his mind still yearned for arcane practice that feltdangerous.For a ritual that might surprise him, and a student who was not merely a pupil but a protégé. Someone who could challenge him, who had a curiosity and an intellect that matched Rawlins’s own. Someone who could make magic feelmagicalonce again.
For a time, he had found exactly what he was looking for in Max. The boy had arrived on campus when Rawlins was still in the bloom of his idealism about teaching. Max was a cocky freshman, but Rawlins soon found that Max’s talent and intelligence exceeded even his considerable ambition. For a few glorious months, Rawlins had provided academic counsel that evolved into private tutoring, far beyond the reaches of whatever would have been permissible to teach an undergraduate; he delighted at the discovery that Max would read books as quickly as Rawlins could recommend them, memorizing passages and reciting rituals as if they were nursery rhymes. Rawlins encouraged him—more than encouraged him; he pushed him, thrilled by Max’s accelerating progress—without ever pausing to consider the potential consequences.
Even after everything that happened, as he looked at his graduate cohort, Rawlins couldn’t help but feel a guilty twinge of disappointment. That none of them would ever ask questions with the same impatient, carnivorous hunger for knowledge. None of them would ever possess the arrogance needed to challenge dogma and revolutionize the field.
But he tried to remind himself:That is a good thing.Because none of them was likely to cause the death of three other students. None of them would ever end up in the back of a police car, staring out at Rawlins with terrified, hopeless eyes. None of them would break down in tears when they were sentenced to spending the rest of their lives in prison. And none of them would haunt his dreams for years to come.
From:Rawlins DAA
To:Dean Lennox
Subject:Max
Maggie,
Hope you’re well.
I’m writing to remind you that Tuesday is Max’s birthday. While I’m sure that the date is not one you’re likely to forget, I suspect you may need some encouragement to actually make an effort to reach out. A card at least, or even a visit, would go a long way.
I understand that you feel the need to protect your status as dean, and you might be fearful of keeping him in your life. Might even convince yourself that he doesn’t want to hear from you. But he needs to know that he has not been forgotten. We owe that to him, at the very least.
Sincerely,
Tad
From:Dean Lennox
To:Rawlins DAA
Subject: Re:Max
Thaddeus,
What a cruel and unnecessary email. Benjamin and I do not need a reminder of the birthday of our son.
I’m sure it helps alleviate your guilt to take a position of moral superiority toward me and the whole situation; perhaps casting me as a cold, uncaring mother allows you to feel less guilty for the direct role you played in the disaster seven years ago.
I do empathize, and so I will forgive your unsettlingly casual tone, writing as though Maxwell were an undergraduate organization I had forgotten I had agreed to chaperone. I greatly value both our friendship and the important role you play at the university. If you do the same, this will be the last time you mention Maxwell to me.
I hope your arcane cohort is as promising in person as they are on paper. I look forward to getting to know them more at our department’s autumn dinner.
M
Ellsbeth
She had waited at The Puddle Jumper for three hours total, or the duration of two milky mugs of tea and one and a half slices of slightly dry lemon loaf. The Puddle Jumper was a cozy café, with vintage bicycles strung up on the ceiling and bulletin boards plastered with a decade of advertisements for piano lessons and Latin tutors. Ellsbeth had brought a book—The Letters of Madame de Staël—but she found herself too distracted to offer it much focus. She would skim a paragraph and glance up at the door to see if Professor Rawlins had arrived, look back down at the book and realize she hadn’t retained a single thing she read. It took her forty minutes to get through a single page.
The café buzzed with the September energy of students excited to be back at school, undergraduates with faces still pimpled from their teenage hormones. She listened in on the way they talked to one another in proud declarative statements—convinced their every opinion was brilliant and every obvious, self-evident observation was a philosophical breakthrough. It should have made her smile, the ability granted by a few short years to float above their harmless youthful arrogance. But instead, Ellsbeth realized she was grinding her teeth. She hated them—the rosy-cheeked strangers in new sweaters, peeling plastic off their textbooks and playing grown-up with their newly cigarette-stained fingers. Shehatedthem. What did they know of life, of pain, of loss?
Ellsbeth had never visited her sister back when Bertie had been an undergraduate here at Newlyn, but she still felt her presence lingering like smoke from a cheap candle in a small room. Had Bertie sat in this very café? Had she ordered coffee during those lonely months, waiting for a friend or professor to sit across from her and ask if she was all right? Waiting for Ellsbeth to call? Students and faculty members bustled through The Puddle Jumper, clutching their coffees in to-go cups. Any one of them might have known Bertie last year, might have passed by her, might have guessed she was suffering and done nothing. Ellsbeth knew what happened wasn’t their fault, but still, she hated them all the same.
Ellsbeth was well practiced in the art of self-flagellation, of resurrecting memories of her sister that became weapons of masochism. She forced herself to turn her attention back to her book.One must, in one’s life, make a choice between boredom and suffering,Madame de Staël wrote. Ellsbeth wished she could be the type of person who might be satisfied with boredom. Withcontentment.Instead, she was here at Newlyn, torturing herself with the memory of her sister and the pursuit of a professor who was not showing up for tea.
Ellsbeth checked the time again on her phone. It was certain now that Rawlins wouldn’t be coming. He was probably across campus, already beginning his next graduate seminar. She sighed and returned Madame de Staël to her backpack, brushing a handful of crumbs into her palm to throw away before a trio of infuriatingly perky students in matching a cappella group sweatshirts swooped in to claim the table.
