Newton's Law.

NEWTON'S LAW / I'm Not Angry Anymore.

Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest, holding onto it and not letting go. Now let it go.
RICHARD SIKEN / You are Jeff.

After a few hours' sleep, the father had a dream that his child was standing beside his bed, caught him by the arm and whispered to him reproachfully: "Father, don't you see I'm burning?"
SIGMUND FREUD / The Interpretation of Dreams.

Newton's Third Law decrees that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. When a small bug, so crushable beneath man's fingertips, flies into the windshield of a car, this last pattern dictates that it must impact. It's the greater force of the car that dictates the bug dies, even if it meets the car with its own force. Or when gravity pushes you towards the ground, knees scuffed with the dirt of Mother Earth, the ground is pushing up against you. This is a fact. This is science.

But this is life.

When a woman dies, no matter how young you are, the aftermath feels like a ripple. Even a flash—a photo, blemished by the pixels of a computer screen—is enough action to create crashing waves of reaction induced by grief. It begins a complicated process where the handle of an Exy racquet and the neck of a bottle are more reachable than the truth: Valentine Wymack is dead and Emerson Wymack has been left alive. Left with the pieces of a cracked mosaic; where she can still feel the arms of the woman who gave her the gift of breathing, only for her to be taken away too soon.

Picking up the pieces of herself and the rest of her Foxes, Emerson expects her 4th year at Palmetto State University to go the same as the last. A cycle: eat, sleep, go to class, play Exy, repeat. But she's swiftly proved wrong.

Newton's Third Law decrees that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. When a boy—built of lies and omissions, falsehoods and fabrications—arrives on the doorstep of Palmetto State, so clearly half-dead on his feet and scraping by to survive, there has to be an impact. This is the spark that starts the fire. It's the greater strength of outside forces that dictates the splatter, the web of repercussions.

There's no denying that Neil Josten is a recipe for disaster, but he's theirs now. He is a Fox, and Emerson wouldn't have it any other way, even in the brunt of the reaction. She will deal with it, like she always has.