Free to Fall by Lauren Miller

shoe, planted in a square plot of grass the same size as the building, surrounded on all sides by the cemetery’s stone sidewalk. “The rain’s gonna start any second, so unless you want to get soaked . . .” He clasped his fingers together, making a little platform, and nodded at my foot. I put a hand on his shoulder and stepped up.
    It started coming down just as North dropped inside the fence. “C’mon,” he said, grabbing my free hand. We sprinted across the grass toward the entrance, weaving around headstones. The air smelled like wet stone. I kept my eyes on the ground as we darted past the statue of the angry angel in the center of the cemetery, avoiding his menacing gaze.
    We were both laughing as North unlocked the structure’s gated door and we stepped inside the narrow overhang. With his guitar on his back, North had to stand away from the wall behind him, which left less than a foot between his chest and mine. My limbs were electric with his nearness.
    “Now what?” I asked, keeping my voice light, as if I were used to being in tiny semi-enclosed spaces with boys I barely knew. I brushed my hair out of my eyes, but a strand fell back down. North reached for it, twisting it gently before tucking it behind my ear. My bottom lip quivered a little when his fingers brushed my cheek. I bit down on it, hard, reminding myself he was a complete stranger.
    “Now we go inside,” he said. He leaned into the granite wall beside us, and it retracted then slid smoothly aside.
    I did a double take. “How did you . . . ?”
    “It’s a lever and pulley system,” North explained, gesturing for me to follow him inside. “The stone’s actually sliding down, not over.” The inner chamber was dark even with the door open, so I moved carefully, not wanting to walk into anything. To my surprise, the air inside wasn’t heavy or dank like I expected it to be, but smelled fresh, like the room had just been cleaned. I heard a soft thud and the sound of a zipper. A few seconds later, the room lit up.
    North’s backpack lay open on top of the marble coffin in the center of the room, next to an LED lantern. The walls and floor were marble too, and the ceiling was covered in gold leaf. The room was much bigger than I expected it to be, nearly as large as my dorm room, and empty save for the coffin and the low ledge that lined the walls. A bench for mourners, I supposed.
    “This is a mausoleum,” I pointed out.
    “No wonder they let you into the academy,” North teased. He started lifting things out of his backpack. A thin silver laptop. A tiny black microphone, no bigger than a button. Two metal coffee canisters. A thick rusty chain. A plastic Baggie of coins. Outside, rain pounded on dry earth.
    I tried again. “You record music in someone’s internment space?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Internment space. Nice use of a vocab word, Rory.” It was the first time he’d said my name. I liked the way it sounded on his lips. The r ’s rolled just a little, not like he was trying to roll them. It was just the way he talked.
    Just then there was commotion outside, and the stone door slid open. Three soaking wet guys tumbled in out of the rain. They were laughing and cursing at the same time.
    “Rory, meet Nick, Adam, and Brent,” North said, pointing them out. “Aka, Cardamon’s Couch. Guys, meet our snapper.”
    “Hey,” they said in unison, dropping their instrument cases onto the marble.
    “Holy crap, it’s pouring,” Brent said, shaking the rain out of his hair. He looked younger than the other two, younger than me even, and his red curls were the exact same shade as Nick’s.
    “I told you guys to leave when you heard thunder,” North said.
    “Yeah, but genius here said it had to be a thunder clap , not a rumble,” Nick replied, punching Adam in the shoulder.
    “I didn’t want to schlep all the way out here if it wasn’t going to actually rain,” Adam said defensively, shrugging out of his wet