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H.E.A.R. - Hardcover

Epstein, Robin

 
9781616955816: H.E.A.R.
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1616955813 ISBN 13: 9781616955816
Verlag: Soho Press Inc, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

When her acceptance to Columbia is revoked just weeks before graduation, Kassandra Black is desperate. She hastily enrolls in the summer program at Henley University under the watchful eye of her great-uncle Brian. She figures successfully assisting him in his H.E.A.R. program (Henley Engineering Anomalies Research), will get her into college somewhere. As Kass gets to know the four other H.E.A.R. students, she realizes that she overlooked the “Anomalies” part of their acronym. They’ve all been recruited to help Brian run experiments that gauge Extrasensory Perception—including, to her astonishment, Kass herself. But Kass would know if she were psychic, right?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robin Epstein teaches sitcom writing at NYU. Lead writer on several video games, Robin has also written for The New York Times and is a contributor to This American Life. Her previous young adult novel, God Is in the Pancakes, was selected for the New York State Reading Association Charlotte Award Master List. She lives in New York City.

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Chapter One

There’s no announcement when we arrive. Everyone else just seems to know we’ve reached the final destination. I wait for a moment before I stand and watch those around me hoist their suitcases and backpacks. They all look calm and confident. Even the ones who are forced to turn around when they see the train conductor’s “wrong way, asshole!” gesture. But I’m as nervous as I am excited, and I’m so excited I feel like I might throw up.
     I still can’t believe I’m here. I’m lucky, I know it. I always have been. Henley University’s footprint is small, but its reach and reputation make it one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country, a staple on those U.S. News and Blah-Blah-Blah lists. And though my father took advantage of the system to get me here, I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay.
     When I step off the train, the sticky-hot summer air assaults me. It’s as if the atmosphere itself is testing me by turning up the heat.
     “Kassandra?”
     I turn to see a tall elderly man striding in my direction. He’s dapper in a crisp Oxford shirt rolled up to the elbows and green-and-white-striped seersucker pants. Though I haven’t seen him since I was little, I recognize Great-Uncle Brian right away because the family resemblance is striking; he’s the much older image of my dad.
    “Kassandra?”
    “Kass,” I say with a nod.
    “Welcome to campus, Kass.” He scans my face as if doing a
computer analysis. “Well, you look nothing like your father.”
    “Thank you,” I reply quickly, before realizing the potential
offense. “I mean—”
    But Brian laughs. “Come, let’s go. I’m afraid we have quite
the hike back to my office. They built the engineering quad on the other end of campus, presumably to prevent our majors from trying to escape.”
    Uncle Brian is the reason I’m here, and I need him to like me. He only let me into his summer workshop because my father begged him—and though Dad wouldn’t tell me the specifics of how the deal was struck, he did let me know that the favor was costly. So if my great-uncle wants me to take that hike barefoot on glass, off go the shoes.
    He threads his way through the people loitering on the train platform. As we trek across Henley’s campus, I gawk at the buildings and their cool mash-up of designs. I didn’t appreciate the details when I was here as a kid, but there’s a heavy dose of Gothic architecture interspersed with hypermodern stuff, which makes it all feel vaguely CGI. It’s like it’s a movie-set version of a college, not the real thing.
    “Not far now!” Brian says over his shoulder. I approach the curb where he’s waiting for the light to change. “Once we get to Greaves Street, our quad is right there.”
    “And how much farther is Greaves Street?” I ask.
    “A mile or so.”
    “What?” I gasp.
    “That’s not so bad, is it?”
    Maybe this is a test. “No, no, that’s fine,” I say as I try to
rebalance the beast of a bag I’m carrying before it cuts off the circulation to my right arm.
    Brian smiles. “Okay, green light. Let’s roll.”


Twenty minutes later, my arm feels as if it’s about to fall off.
   “We have arrived,” Brian announces. “Welcome to our SEAS, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. We’re big on the acronyms here at Henley.”
   I have no idea what Brian’s specific area of study is. All I know
is that he’s the J. J. Dyckman Distinguished Professor of Applied Engineering. He opens the glass doors of the Merion Building, and we enter a two-story atrium. The space is open and bright: floor-to-ceiling glass partitions, white walls, oak doors.
   There are a few indoor picnic tables, and he points to a fancy-looking hot-dog truck with a Henley blue-and-gold umbrella in the corner of the lobby. “If you’re hungry, the Snack Wagon has all manner of sugary supplements as well as a large selection of healthy items. Too many healthy items if you ask me. But we’re very fortunate here.”
   I nod, struggling to keep up.
   “Most of the other buildings in the SEAS quad were designed in the nineteen seventies, by people I assume were blind,” he continues dryly. “They were constructed almost entirely out of cinder blocks, giant fortresses of ugly. The Merion Building, however, was built by architects who knew something about aesthetics—it even features drywall.” Brian raps on one of the walls with the knuckles of his right hand. He seems genuinely enthusiastic about the white drywall. Before I can wonder why, he adds, “You can tell how important a professor is by how much drywall he has in his office. Onwards.”
   His office is almost too predictable. There are papers and books piled everywhere; models of an anatomical cross section of the human head, the solar system, some sort of chemical structure. What’s surprising is how sunny it is. Of course, this might have something to do with all the bright-white drywall. There’s a lot of it.
   “Sit, sit, please!” He removes the stack of papers from the visitor’s chair. Pile in hand, he walks behind his desk then promptly dumps it on the floor. “It’s my own system of organization. I call it ‘dis-organization.’”
   I try to smile, try to feel at ease. Not so easy. Dad gave me the impression that Uncle Brian was, in essence, a brain with teeth. Someone so brilliant he couldn’t relate to normal people. “Peculiar,” “cold,” “never been married”—those were the descriptors overheard at the family gatherings Brian didn’t bother to attend. The party line is that for all his eminent genius he isn’t “quite right in the head.” On the other hand, by letting me come here, he’s saving my ass, so I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
   “Kass, close the door, will you?”
   “Sure.” I turn around in my chair and swing the door shut. On the back of the door is a poster with four class photos attached. At the top someone has stenciled hear summers, and underneath each headshot, names are printed.
   “What are HEAR Summers?”
   “Ah yes,” Brian says. “They’re the Henley Engineering Anomalies Research team. Meet Mara, Alex, Dan, and Pankaj—pronounced like punkedge.”
“Punk edge?”
   “Run it together like one word,” he corrects. “Punkedge.
   They’re the students you’ll be spending your time with while you’re here. Now look at me.”
   As I turn back from the door, his phone’s flash snaps in my eyes.
   “Not bad.” He nods and hits a few buttons on the screen. The picture begins to materialize from his printer. “An action shot. Here.” He hands me the printout along with a thumbtack. “Will you put that up there with the rest? I’ll print another to use...

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Verlag
Soho Press Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1616955813
ISBN 13 
9781616955816
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
260
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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