Instead, scarcely recognizing himself, he pulled the page free and placed it in the boy’s hand.
“We haven’t had an example from you, yet.”
Paul jumped, but Strauss was talking to the boy beside him, with a teacher’s well-worn glee at catching a student unawares. The boy hid the drawing under his desk and smiled, unabashed.
“Just two names to go, and I have to doubt you’re Ramona,” said Strauss serenely. “So you must be—”
“Julian,” answered the boy. “Julian Fromme.”
“I see.” Strauss glanced down at his roster again. “And I see I have you down as ‘undeclared’—surely the lives of the indecisive are beset with ethical quandary.”
A polite titter made its way around the room. In his place Paul would have wanted to melt into the floor, but Julian Fromme endured it without a trace of distress.
“It’s Psychology, actually, as of yesterday,” Julian said. “And I’m interested in social psychology in particular, which is inherently problematic. Every method of social research does some kind of harm. If you observe social phenomena from a distance, you often only see evidence that conforms to your hypothesis—‘objectivity’ is a lie scientists tell themselves, even in the hard sciences, and with qualitative research, forget it. But if you observe from up close, then your presence alters the nature of the data. And social experiments in controlled environments have certainly been conducted, but they all require some degree of deception to get untainted results—which may or may not cross ethical lines,” he added with a glance at Brady, “depending on the particular conscience your IRB has imposed on you.”
“Am I to understand, Mr. Fromme,” said Strauss, “that you want ‘social psychology in general’ listed as an ethical debate in the sciences?”
“Just put me down for ‘confirmation bias,’ ‘observer’s paradox,’ and ‘informed consent,’ please,” said Julian briskly. “I believe that’s the order I cited them in.”
Strauss raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Very well, Mr. Fromme,” he said. “I suppose we won’t throw you to the wolves just yet.”
Strauss turned toward the blackboard again, and Paul watched with alarm as Julian casually set the drawing on his own desk. He looked down at it for a moment, stone-faced and calm. Then he wrote something in the margins with a lazy flourish.
By the time the drawing arrived back in Paul’s hands, Julian’s scarlet ink had bled straight through the cheap paper.
Crime rate reduced to 0%, Red Menace permanently defeated—an apocalypse for the greater good.
(Sign this. I want to keep it.)
It didn’t occur to Paul to wait. At the end of class he pushed his books into his knapsack and zipped his army parka up to the throat. Beyond the second-story windows a soft snow was falling. With the stain of soot blurred by distance, flakes paler than the dark sky, it almost looked white.
He lingered at the top of the stairs to uncurl the ball of his knit wool gloves. Brady pushed past him. When Paul heard someone call out behind him—“Hey, wait a second”—he thought at first that Brady was the one being pursued. It took the sound of his own last name for him to turn and look back.
Julian Fromme smiled when he caught Paul’s eye. His gait was brisk but unhurried; he slung his scarf around his neck as he approached, a single languid movement that betrayed an unthinking sureness in his body.
“In a hurry?”
“Not really.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Julian joined him at the head of the staircase, fastening the last button on his double-breasted coat. He looked meticulously cared for, like a rare plant in a conservatory; Paul felt abruptly shabby beside him in his anorak and snow boots, too careworn and practical to be worthy of attention.
“You look familiar,” Julian said. “Did we see each other at orientation?”
Paul had forced himself to forget, the memory too humiliating to dwell on. They were supposed to remain strangers—the other boy had been meant to forget him, because Paul couldn’t be the first or last person he’d ever caught watching him. He remembered Julian’s faint smile, the slight rise of his left eyebrow. That eyebrow was sliced through by a thin scar near its outer edge, an incongruous imperfection Paul had noticed with sudden ardor and then stowed away.
He’d spent the rest of the mixer on a bench outside, waiting out the ninety minutes he had promised his mother. He remembered wanting the strange boy to follow him, but of course he hadn’t. They never did. That was how it was always supposed to end.
“I don’t really remember,” he replied, and reflected in Julian’s face he immediately saw the weakness of the lie. “I didn’t stay very long, those things give me a headache.”
Julian smiled, but he didn’t answer. He started down the steps, watching Paul impassively over his shoulder. He didn’t use the railing; Paul tried to ignore it himself, letting his fingertips skate along the edge on the way down as if he paid it no mind, but he’d been nervous about heights all his life and couldn’t quite force his hand to fall.
Once he was certain Paul was following, Julian smiled again and looked ahead. “You’re one of those people who worry all the time, aren’t you?” he said, and it was as much an accusation as a joke. “You’ve got that look.”
Paul hurried to catch up. He turned up his hood as they emerged into the snow, but Julian’s head was bare, so he quickly lowered it again. “I don’t worry,” he protested, and when Julian looked skeptical, he dug in his heels rather than let himself be mocked. “I ruminate. They’re distinct actions.”
“Are they?” said Julian. “From this angle . . .”
“Worrying,” said Paul, “means you’re afraid it’s going to happen. Ruminating is when you know it will, if it hasn’t happened already. One is neurotic, the other is fatalistic, and fatalism is supported by evidence. It isn’t the same.”
Paul didn’t notice his own tension until it receded when Julian laughed.
“That’s the most goddamn German thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.
Paul retrieved his bicycle from its berth outside and walked it alongside them, the fresh snow squeaking beneath its wheels.
“Speaking of German.” There was a note of keen interest in Julian’s voice, muted but unmistakable, and Paul’s chest tightened like a coil. “That thing you were saying, about the infrastructure of ethical oversight. Where did you get it?”
Paul’s excitement faded. “I don’t have to get it somewhere,” he said defensively. “I can think for myself.”
“Of course you can. Don’t be so eager to get your feelings hurt, it’s boring and beneath you.”
Something in the spiteful impatience of the remark put Paul at ease, far more than a more earnest reassurance would have. Julian coughed on a mouthful of cold air and pulled his scarlet scarf a little tighter. Against the dull gray of winter he was the only bright thing.
“Did you really just make that up?” said Julian after a pause. He didn’t sound disbelieving, though the fascination in his eyes was still remote and clinical in a way Paul didn’t entirely appreciate. “Didn’t they give you any of the world-weary Continentals in Phil 101?”