Page 37 - DivineSparkRisingFinal

Nicholas Boothman
“Álvaro?” he murmured. Saying it out loud
made it real. Álvaro from university. The one
who’d vanished before finals, who people
whispered had gone abroad.
He leaned back, eyes drifting to the patterned
shadows on the cobblestones, and the memory rose
without asking. He was leaning against the iron
railing outside the old library at Faculdade de
Letras, the terracotta roofs of Lisbon tilting toward
the river. The air had smelled faintly of coffee and
eucalyptus from the courtyard below.
That afternoon, he’d skipped his regular tram
home and wandered across the city to Instituto
Superior Técnico. In a stark lab filled with the hum
of old computers, a graduate student sat at a
terminal, the screen alive with permutations, words
dissolving and reforming in a blur.
She glanced up when she felt him watching.
Dark hair pulled back, eyes steady, fingers darting
around the keyboard. “Carolina,” she said, before
he could ask. No handshake, just the name, like she
already knew he’d remember it.
In the corner, half in shadow, another student
closed a notebook with quiet precision. He said
nothing, only studied them both for a moment
before slipping past the rows of machines and out
the door. Henry barely noticed him then. But a faint
whiff of peppermint lingered in the air, sharp and
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