Free 31 Hours by Masha Hamilton Page A

beauty, but it was the ideal flaw because it made him look focused. Which he was. He also had no idea how attractive his shyness made him. And then there was his curly blond hair—who could resist that?
    Vic already loved dance, and that contributed to her indifference as a student. She was one of those you-have-such-potential students. When she needed help in science, as she inevitably did, she asked the guy who sat two seats in front of her. Jonas. She found out they lived near one another, and that was how they started. Study partners. Two times a week for the rest of that year, and they kept it up over the next three years. In the beginning, Vic was sure heads bent over a book would develop into something else. And then Jonas didn’t seem interested, which surprised her. Vic was accustomed to boys’ interest. But she accepted Jonas’s indifference. He was too moody and serious for her, anyway, she decided; she had wild oats to sow. Besides, he was a greatfriend. She was glad to have him for that. Still, every now and then she would become aware of the golden skin of his forearm or the way his back curved sweetly before it reached toward his legs, and a lusty thought would pass lazily through her mind. But mostly, before August, she’d just thought of him as study-buddy, steady-buddy Jonas.
    Finally with the tea ready, Vic puffed up the pillows on the couch and the two women sat together. Vic couldn’t call Jonas’s mother Carol, so she decided to just call her nothing. They pointed their knees in each other’s direction, and Vic waited.
    Jonas’s mother sipped her tea, then took a deep breath. “I feel a little silly,” she said, stumbling over her words a bit. “I’ve been worried, and maybe I worry too much, but then I thought, Well, if anyone would know, it would be Vic , because you two are so close and you’ve been that way for so long.”
    She looked expectantly at Vic, but so far there was nothing for Vic to reply to, so she just nodded encouragingly, aware of her heart moving up into her throat even though she couldn’t say why.
    “Well, okay, here’s the thing, I don’t know, Vic, but I don’t think he’s going to any classes anymore, even though he told me a couple weeks ago that he was. And Jonas doesn’t normally lie to me, at least I don’t think so.”
    “I . . . I thought he was going to classes,” Vic said. She knew Jonas considered many of the classes to be “dishonest”; that was how he’d put it. But he hadn’t mentioned to her that he wasn’t attending at all. It wasn’t impossible to imagine. Jonas had already dropped out once, midway through freshman year. He’d spent a year traveling around Europe—the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Italy, and France—and then he’d returned and begun to work at that center he loved so much—the World Understanding Center or something like that—answeringphones and preparing class cards in return for a small salary. He studied comparative religion and meditation there, Ayurvedic medicine, Kabbalah and Sufism and who could keep track of what else—searching for something, a quality Vic found endearing. Then his parents insisted he start classes at NYU full time again in September. It seemed to be going pretty well, although, come to think of it, he never mentioned classes. But after all, it had only been—what? Ten weeks? They’d had other matters on their minds, the two of them.
    “It’s not only that,” Jonas’s mother said. “He’s been strange, distant. Oh, I know it’s normal for young men to pull away from their mothers. But this feels bigger than that. I mean, I can’t reach him, and . . .” She pulled a little on the fabric of the couch. “He came over two weeks ago, and he didn’t look good,” she said, almost as if she were speaking to herself, her gaze on some middle distance. “His face was gray. He carried his body like it weighed a hundred tons, though he looked like he’d actually lost weight. I