105

The campus was empty. The sidewalks were slippery, lonely. The sun had come up on the horizon and turned the untrodden snow—the great mounds and blankets of it—into a blinding moonscape. Now, this was a perfect campus for ghosts, Mira thought. For the invisible. The gone. No one would be able to see them strolling along through this snow. There was no one to see them. The students were all in their beds, asleep. She thought of Perry, dreaming. She imagined his eyes moving rapidly behind his lids—that frantic dancing that was actually complete peace.

It was hard to walk through this much snow, and Mira tried to think but could remember no November snowfall like it in all the years she’d lived in this town. Luckily she’d worn flat leather boots. Although they were cold, with a bad tread, she could march through the snow on the sidewalks, trudge through the slush in the streets. It seemed that a few trucks and cars must have passed already through town, because she could see the tracks of their tires, but she didn’t see any vehicles now. At the corner she didn’t bother to stop for the Don’t Walk sign.

“Professor Polson,” the man said, standing as she stepped into Dean Fleming’s office. She had never seen him in person before, but she knew who he was from the photo on the university website, the photo that came up right next to the gold seal bearing the university’s dates and the Latin motto under its name (Utraque Unum: “Both and One”) every time she double-clicked on Home.

“President Yancey,” Mira said.

The dean was standing in the corner, as if he’d been banished to it. He didn’t meet Mira’s eyes.

“Sit down, Professor Polson,” the president said, gesturing to the seat across from him. He held a piece of paper in his hand. “This is very serious. Very serious indeed. Serious complaints have been filed against you by your students—” She sank into the chair across from him. He handed her the piece of paper he’d been holding, which she could only glance at before feeling as if she might faint, recognizing a few names and signatures beside them:

Karess Flanagan. Brett Barber. Michael Curley. Jim Bouwers.

“But the real news of the day,” President Yancey said—and there was no mistaking the hysterical little laugh in the way he said it—“is that one of your students has been killed. Shot. After a B-and-E at the OTT house—”

Mira was swimming through the initials, and found herself moving her arms at the same time that she stood up. “Who?” she said.

“Sit down,” the president said, pointing at the chair she’d just stood up from. “Sit down, now, Professor. I have no doubt you’ll be hearing from the police soon enough, but in the meantime you’re to clean out your office. In the meantime, you’re to tell me in all the detail you can come up with why it is that this student of yours, this Perry Edwards, this student with whom you were working closely, might have broken into a sorority at three o’clock in the morning and managed to walk straight into a terrified young lady with a weapon, and gotten himself shot.”

“Oh, my God,” Mira said, and fell back into her chair.

“Oh, my God is fucking right,” President Yancey said. “Do you have any fucking idea what this will mean, Professor Polson, for this fucking university?”

The Raising
Cover.xhtml
Title_Page.xhtml
Dedication.xhtml
Epigraph.xhtml
Contents.xhtml
Prologue.xhtml
Part_1.xhtml
Chapter_1.xhtml
Chapter_2.xhtml
Chapter_3.xhtml
Chapter_4.xhtml
Chapter_5.xhtml
Chapter_6.xhtml
Chapter_7.xhtml
Chapter_8.xhtml
Chapter_9.xhtml
Chapter_10.xhtml
Chapter_11.xhtml
Chapter_12.xhtml
Chapter_13.xhtml
Chapter_14.xhtml
Chapter_15.xhtml
Chapter_16.xhtml
Chapter_17.xhtml
Part_2.xhtml
Chapter_18.xhtml
Chapter_19.xhtml
Chapter_20.xhtml
Chapter_21.xhtml
Chapter_22.xhtml
Chapter_23.xhtml
Chapter_24.xhtml
Chapter_25.xhtml
Chapter_26.xhtml
Chapter_27.xhtml
Chapter_28.xhtml
Chapter_29.xhtml
Chapter_30.xhtml
Chapter_31.xhtml
Chapter_32.xhtml
Chapter_33.xhtml
Chapter_34.xhtml
Chapter_35.xhtml
Chapter_36.xhtml
Part_3.xhtml
Chapter_37.xhtml
Chapter_38.xhtml
Chapter_39.xhtml
Chapter_40.xhtml
Chapter_41.xhtml
Chapter_42.xhtml
Chapter_43.xhtml
Chapter_44.xhtml
Chapter_45.xhtml
Chapter_46.xhtml
Chapter_47.xhtml
Chapter_48.xhtml
Chapter_49.xhtml
Chapter_50.xhtml
Chapter_51.xhtml
Chapter_52.xhtml
Chapter_53.xhtml
Chapter_54.xhtml
Chapter_55.xhtml
Chapter_56.xhtml
Chapter_57.xhtml
Chapter_58.xhtml
Chapter_59.xhtml
Chapter_60.xhtml
Part_4.xhtml
Chapter_61.xhtml
Chapter_62.xhtml
Chapter_63.xhtml
Chapter_64.xhtml
Chapter_65.xhtml
Chapter_66.xhtml
Chapter_67.xhtml
Chapter_68.xhtml
Chapter_69.xhtml
Chapter_70.xhtml
Chapter_71.xhtml
Chapter_72.xhtml
Chapter_73.xhtml
Chapter_74.xhtml
Chapter_75.xhtml
Chapter_76.xhtml
Chapter_77.xhtml
Chapter_78.xhtml
Chapter_79.xhtml
Chapter_80.xhtml
Chapter_81.xhtml
Chapter_82.xhtml
Part_5.xhtml
Chapter_83.xhtml
Chapter_84.xhtml
Chapter_85.xhtml
Chapter_86.xhtml
Chapter_87.xhtml
Chapter_88.xhtml
Chapter_89.xhtml
Chapter_90.xhtml
Chapter_91.xhtml
Chapter_92.xhtml
Chapter_93.xhtml
Chapter_94.xhtml
Chapter_95.xhtml
Chapter_96.xhtml
Chapter_97.xhtml
Chapter_98.xhtml
Chapter_99.xhtml
Chapter_100.xhtml
Chapter_101.xhtml
Chapter_102.xhtml
Chapter_103.xhtml
Chapter_104.xhtml
Chapter_105.xhtml
Part_6.xhtml
Chapter_106.xhtml
Chapter_107.xhtml
Chapter_108.xhtml
Chapter_109.xhtml
Chapter_110.xhtml
Acknowledgments.xhtml
About_the_Author.xhtml
Also_by_the_Author.xhtml
Credits.xhtml
Copyright.xhtml
About_the_Publisher.xhtml