PARADISE PARADOX (#1 PARADISE ISLAND duology)

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Did Ivy League Universities have actual ivy all over their buildings, weaving between pillars, spiraling up and down the bulky brick or polished stone facades?

Were they as elaborate and elegant as described in the old, early two-thousands movies? With luxurious entryways for every dorm-room? Intricate, carved-out lettering to denominate every building? Fancy balustrades protruding from ornate window-frames?

Were there glorious green gardens spaced between the structures, with round fountains where undergraduates would sit to study, read, flirt? Large grassy areas where jocks would throw footballs? And where horny damsels would prop themselves against tree trunks to watch while gossiping over which professor had a thing for dating students?

Kera wasn't sure many young adults her age pondered these questions as much as she did. Not many had been old enough to witness such glorious buildings in their prime; and Kera hadn't been either, but she'd been obsessed with all those movies and books portraying the stereotypical characters that were once real people, and were now all myths.

As she scaled the walls of a newly constructed, durable building on her own campus—not an Ivy League—searching for its secret entrance, she couldn't help thinking of how things might have been had she been sneaking about an Ivy League campus, instead.

She'd researched them, so she could envision herself now, creeping about the lush landscapes and concealing herself in the shadows of the immense and old structures that once contained thousands of bright-eyed young adults.

She dreamed of them. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, and the like—magnificent places so many teens aspired to attend, to live in dreamy dorms and rack up immense amounts of debt they'd be repaying for the rest of their lives.

But those colleges were all extinct now, in twenty-twenty-nine, after the effects of the twenty-twenty pandemic. And Kera, who'd been raised with dreams of attending a distinguished school to make her parents proud, had been disappointed to see them collapse.

Technically, this school—Valence, named after one of the many victims of the twenty-twenty epidemic in Providence—was a descendant of the Ivy Leagues. It was created as a remnant of their spirit, built after Harvard, Yale, and Brown had been burnt to the ground, and their campuses erased from history.

Valence was meant as a custom, a courtesy, in respect for the fallen Ivy League Schools; and others like it had popped up around the country, smaller subsidiaries in nearby towns, to keep their memory alive. And enabling undergraduates with lesser means—like Kera—to enroll.

Kera should have been proud of attending Valence, and she was, most days. But she often reminisced about the pretty pictures from the films she'd watched with her mom, as a kid. The pristine halls, the over-populated cafeterias, the giant libraries filled with books from all centuries and in all genres, the government-funded laboratories, the famous sports teams—all were in the past. How she wished she might have been alive during those times, to experience that world. The pre-pandemic world.

It was chilly tonight. She'd bundled up in a thin, wool-lined jacket, but regretted not slipping on a pair of gloves. Her hands, usually a warm brown shade, had nearly turned white from the cold. She rubbed them together, blowing into her palms, then ensured her hair was still tight in its bun and under her hood—the icy, dyed blonde strands would draw attention in a heartbeat, even in the darkness.

Lowering into a crouch, she pursued her mission, hoping she'd soon locate the sneaky entrance to the large property she'd been crawling around for half an hour.

Not that this particular structure wasn't massive and impressive, like others she'd seen in her childhood movies. It was sturdy, with reinforced walls—to avoid the destruction that the Ivies had endured—covered by brick, then layered with decorative stones that were, in fact, steel, to further protect it from damage. It looked more like a military facility than campus housing; as did most of the buildings on site. They were modern, sleek-walled, with mirror-like surfaces for some, steely stone for others.