Page 10 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

Science and Nature

Evangeline almost didn’t join the study group. The last time she’d joined something, that “astronomy club” for Tulane students, it turned out to be a convenient credit-accruing cover for people more concerned with drugs and partying. That same group then led to some of the worst months of her entire life, and a change in how she saw herself fundamentally. Only with the distance of time could Evangeline see just how soundly what happened to her in that old warehouse had shaped who she was and who she would become.

For instance, she knew she’d never move home to New Orleans, something she’d realized only recently.

But this club was long established at MIT; one that the campus itself endorsed and encouraged, unlike the astronomy club that she’d found through the classifieds in the Times-Picayune. They met on campus only, in a quiet corner room of the library the school reserved for the club, and there was an official process to sign up, which allowed the college to vet any members and confirm they were, in fact, students. Everything about this study group read as SAFE, CLEAN, INVITING. Neon letters optional.

She needed something, that much was clear. Having kept to herself for her first year, she’d been fine living as a relative loner until that loneliness caught up and hit her with gale wind force. It was fine until it wasn’t, as her family liked to say.

So far, she loved it.

The MIT Study Crew had several different groups within the main one. Each met at different times, in their private library office. Evangeline chose the overnight crew, which had less membership and attendance than the others, but she wasn’t sleeping anyway, so it was better than lying awake and letting her imagination take her to bad places.

The Midnight Marauders, as one of the third-years dubbed them, consisted of three to five students, depending on the night. There was Ian, the Statistics major, who never spoke, choosing instead to communicate through his scratchpad or his own peculiar version of charades. Back in New Orleans, kids would have teased someone like Ian, but here, among the most brilliant minds in science and tech, his otherness wasn’t other at all. Janice was a Biochem major who put eleven scoops of sugar in her coffee, which she was always drinking, even well into the early morning hours when they all went back to their dorms and apartments. Whenever she asked Evangeline, a general Chemistry student, for her opinion, she did so at the frequency of a honeybee. Evan was an Engineering major from Canada, who used the chalkboard nonstop, and not gently. He often did his thinking out loud and tried to bring others into it, especially Sven, the other Engineering major in the group, who was from Norway. Sven’s English was not fantastic, so they spent most of their exchanges trying to find new ways to communicate his questions.

The last of the group, Cassie, was in the newly-formed Computer Sciences program. She was from a small town in Oregon that had little to no educational funding, and had tested so far above the other students that her principal himself had reached out to different schools to try and help get her placed somewhere worthy of her talents. Unlike all the others in the Midnight Marauders, Cassie was the only undergrad, a second year who kept mostly to herself, but when she did speak, had plenty to say.

Evangeline liked Cassie. The first time she met her wasn’t at study group, but passing in the quad. Cassie stopped to break up a colorful fight between some young lovers, standing up to the man, who was at least a foot taller, without fear or hesitation. He smirked at the young woman daring to challenge him, but something in her eyes caused him to back down. Evangeline came upon the scene, Cassie comforting the girl but standing firm in her advice that she should notify someone of the abuse. She even offered to accompany the young woman to the police.

Evangeline didn’t stop, or say anything then, but when she met Cassie officially in the study group, she knew immediately they’d be friends. Cassie was the kind of person who was more concerned with what was right than being liked, and that was a trait Evangeline didn’t know she needed in a friend until she saw it in Cassandra Collins.

Cassie lived on campus, like many of the undergrads, but her dormitory was on the way to Evangeline’s apartment, so they walked together each morning after study group, just before the sun crested over the eastern horizon. Evangeline would wave as Cassie disappeared inside the glass doors, as she continued another four blocks to her own place, which lay at the outer edge of campus.

One night, huddled together under an umbrella as the spring rains assaulted them, Cassie stopped by a covered bulletin board that held announcements and requests for roommates, sales of items, and other various things. Evangeline, freezing cold, told her to come on, but Cassie was firm.

“Look at this, Evangeline,” she said, jabbing her finger at a poster larger than any of the other announcements. The top of the black and white printout said MISSING. The face below was their age; a young woman with dark hair, a strong nose, and a beautiful smile. “Darcy Banks, missing since last week. She’s a student here. Do you know her?”

Evangeline shook her head.

“Says her boyfriend saw her the night before she went missing. You think he did it?”

“Statistics aren’t in his favor,” Evangeline replied.

Cassie made a light sound, both humor and hardness. “Scary is all. You know?”

“I grew up in New Orleans,” Evangeline said. “Girls went missing all the time, unfortunately.” Some survived but were worse for it.

“A girl in my small town was assaulted once,” Cassie said. Her finger still made its way over the plastic covering the flier, scanning the details. “It was a very big deal. The whole town came to a stop until the case was solved.”

“We had very different upbringings.”

“We did,” Cassie said. “But life is life. It has value, whether you grew up in a town with three thousand, or three million.”

Evangeline nodded. This was true, of course, and being hardened to the fact didn’t change that this girl, Darcy Banks, mattered. The odds were not good in finding her alive, given the time that had passed since she was last seen, but she was someone’s daughter. Someone’s friend. Someone. “Look at the bottom. They’re asking for volunteers to knock on doors.”

“Yeah.” Cassie had a faraway look in her eyes, one that made Evangeline want to know where she went.

“We could do that?” She formed it as a question, rather than a solid suggestion, and didn’t know why.

“We should do that,” Cassie agreed. “In fact, Evangeline Deschanel, I think we will do that.” She dug into her bag for a pen and wrote the phone number for volunteers on the inside of her palm. “I’ll ring this after a couple good hours of the snoozefest calling my name at the end of this path. If you’ve got anything on your social calendar, move it.”

Maureen had been taught that self-pleasure was a sin, and so she’d adroitly avoided anything resembling it. It was one of the few teachings of her childhood she followed. She didn’t know why she chose this, and nothing else, to adhere to her moral standards. Surely her promiscuity in her teenage years was more of a sin, but somehow, to her, it felt less so, perhaps because she knew they were created by God in order to procreate.

This rule of hers was now contributing to some of her unhappiness. Not total unhappiness; she was born anew in the love of her daughter, Olivia, who was a year old now, and Maureen really had adjusted to being the mistress of Blanchard House, even if their St. Charles mansion was rather dark and depressing. But her husband’s insistence on an abstinent marriage meant that Maureen’s own needs, which had always been so loud, screaming at her in their impatience, went unanswered. She knew very well that he practiced no such teetotaling where his own sexual desires were concerned. The rumors she once ignored when she was only his young, beautiful secretary were now permeating her life as his wife, and he’d gone through three, maybe four young women just like her in their short marriage.

Maureen tried not to care about this. She was sensible enough to know this was the way of things between them and had no designs on changing his proclivities. But it put a finer point on her own sexual misery, and if he could satisfy his urges, then why couldn’t she?

She worked up the courage to have this conversation with him over their shared dinnertime—the only time, really, that they were ever alone together unless they were attending an event, and that wasn’t the same at all. The thirty minutes together, her gazing at him across the longest dining room table in the world, it seemed, waiting for acknowledgement, or even a smile, was her time to get his attention, if she needed it. His mood always dictated how much of it he was willing to offer.

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