Extraordinary Means

My room was at the very end of the hall, a corner room. I assumed that was why it was so narrow. Best coffin in the place, I thought, and then instantly hated myself for going there. It wasn’t terrible. I mean, sure, all the furniture was miniaturized. There was a twin extra-long bed, which still didn’t make it any roomier. I had a massive bed at home, and I loved her dearly. She was my queen, and I was her loyal subject. Well, her loyal subject in exile.

At the foot of my minibed was a wardrobe that looked suspiciously like a locker, a vestige of when this place had been an all-boys’ boarding school. I’d tried and failed to squish my still-packed suitcase inside the night before, and had kicked it under the bed in defeat. It stuck out, and I’d already tripped over it. Twice.

I also had a wooden desk and chair, and two huge windows that were stuck open permanently, for fresh air. The best part about my room, though, was the view: an endless stretch of woods and sky, with a distant haze of mountains. If I hadn’t known why we were in the middle of nowhere, it might have been peaceful.

I rummaged through my desk drawers until I found the thick, glossy handbook I’d been given the night before, and climbed into bed to read it. I figured studying the rules was the best thing to do, since I didn’t want to accidentally fail breakfast again.

God, the handbook was tedious. I could feel myself falling asleep as I read about suggested Wellness dress options. I tried to stay awake, but I’d been up for most of the night, and there hadn’t been any coffee at breakfast. . . .

I woke up groggy and disoriented. The handbook was on the floor, pages down, like it was trying to scuttle away. I didn’t blame it. When I checked my wrist, I realized I’d been out for a while.

I stretched and walked over to the window that faced the woods, watching for the four students to return. It was getting late, and I wondered if I’d missed them entirely. We were all supposed to dress out for PE, which was ironically called Wellness, by two thirty. Except I wasn’t cleared for Wellness yet. I was supposed to go to the medical building instead.

I was just about to head over when I saw them emerge from a grove of trees. Sadie was out front, an expensive camera swinging over her shoulder. Nick was there, too, his horn-rimmed glasses glinting in the sun. Bringing up the rear was this punk kid in black ski

I watched as Sadie stopped to take a picture of the group, solemnly raising her camera and fiddling with the lens. Instead of posing, they stopped where they were, as though frozen, letting her capture the moment forever.

I remembered at least this much about her: she’d taken photos all the time at summer camp, sneaking out to the woods and disappearing for hours. She was all elbows and ski

My memories of that summer were hazy and mostly had to do with being terrified of this one asshole cabinmate of mine who threatened to piss on everyone’s beds if we didn’t give him our commissary snacks. We were starting eighth grade in the fall, and almost overnight everyone had gone from pointing out girls with visible bra straps to girls who were definitely go

I hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of sentences with Sadie. I didn’t say much of anything during that terrible summer, where two guys got kicked out of my cabin for stealing and a disgusting game of soggy cookie had ended so badly that my only real friend went home two weeks early, his parents threatening a lawsuit. But I still remembered Sadie, with purple rubber bands in her braces and these tie-dyed shorts, always alone, and always stooping to photograph a leaf, or a flower.

It had seemed impossible that I’d recognize anyone at Latham, that there could be a familiar face up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, hundreds of miles from home. But the more I considered it, the more it made a terrible kind of sense.

At Latham House, we were asked to believe in unlikely miracles. In second chances. We woke up each morning hoping that the odds had somehow swung in our favor.

But that’s the thing about odds. Roll a die twice, and you expect two different results. Except it doesn’t work that way. You could roll the same side over and over again, the laws of the universe intact and unchanging with each turn. It’s only when you consider the past that the odds change. That things become less and less likely.

Here’s something I know because I’m a nerd: up until the middle of the twentieth century, dice were made out of cellulose nitrate. It’s a material that remains stable for decades but, in a flash, can decompose. The chemical compound breaks down, releasing nitric acid. So every time you roll a die, there’s a small chance that it won’t give you a result at all, that instead it will cleave, crumble, and explode.

CHAPTER TWO

SADIE

WE WERE OUT in the woods behind the cottages when Nick mentioned what had happened in the breakfast line. It was one of those beautifully crisp fall days that was starting to give way to a warmer afternoon, and we’d all taken off our sweaters and tossed them into a pile with our book bags.

Charlie was sitting under a tree, sketching sword ferns. Marina was modeling for me in this great old dress she had. And Nick was sorting the leaves that we’d collected, stacking them by color family.

“Is this one more jaundice yellow or liver-failure yellow?” he asked, holding up a leaf.

“I can’t look,” I said, because I was using a fixed-length lens and had finally managed to get Marina perfectly in frame. “But please tell me you’re not sorting them by pathology.”

“Two pathologies diverged in a yellow wood,” Nick said, using his Mock Trial voice. “And I, I took the one less traveled.”

“Ugh, that was awful,” Marina complained. “Besides, that’s not even the quote.”

“Of course it’s the quote,” Nick said, but he sounded unsure.

“It’s two roads diverged,” Marina insisted.

“We’ll Google it,” said Nick. “You’ll see.”

I laughed, because Nick was always doing that. Messing up and stubbornly defending himself, like he could argue his way out of being wrong.

“The poem is literally called ‘The Road Not Taken,’” I informed him. “Now, can you put three more leaves on Marina’s skirt, the gold-yellow ones?”

“Path, road, lane, whatever,” he said, adding the leaves. “Actually, that was the new kid’s name. Lane. The one I helped piss off the nutritionist.”

My camera almost slid off the rock.

“Lane Rosen?” I asked.

“I have no clue.” Nick placed the last leaf with a flourish. “Who introduces themselves with their full name?”

He had a point, but I wasn’t going to admit it.

“Maybe I will from now on, just to a

I took a test photo, to check that it wasn’t still blurry, but my lens wasn’t the only thing out of focus. I had to force myself to concentrate, because my head was spi

Lane wasn’t a common name. I vaguely remembered some hiccup at the front of the line, but I’d figured it was just the nutritionist being a raging bitch, per usual. Not the casual arrival of someone I hadn’t thought of in a long time, and was perfectly happy never to see again.

“Hello, Sadie?” Marina sounded like she’d been trying to get my attention for a while. “I asked how it looks.”