I shook my head. “No.”
“Well, our scans tell us that all of his muscles are fatigued. He’s suffering from an overdose of lactic acid. Basically, your dog’s muscles are overly stiff. He’ll be all right in a day or two, but he should take it easy. Are you sure no one overworked him?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. I didn’t know exactly how to tell him that my dog had been hit with a weird baton by a shiny, mechanical- sounding man who told me he wanted to terminate me.
I headed back to class. I didn’t want to think about the shiny man, I couldn’t understand anything in most of my classes, and now that I knew Zavier was going to be all right, he didn’t weigh on my mind. Which left me thinking of Bren.
I didn’t know exactly what I was feeling. The only boy I’d ever loved had been Xavier, and that had come so gradually, over so many years, with so many changes, that I didn’t know how to handle this kind of rushing fondness. It hurt my heart. It hurt more so because I had no idea how he felt.
I’d always known how Xavier felt. I’d known him for so long, through so many moods, that there was no way to misinterpret his actions. He would never hide anything from me, anyway. He was my best friend, my brother, my love. And now he was dead, and I grieved for him. I wondered if it was that grief that was reaching out for Bren now, or if it was something more than that.
I considered how he had saved me, how Bren of all the people in the world had been the one to stumble over my stass tube, how he had been the one to wake me . . . wake me with a kiss, just like Sleeping Beauty. I hadn’t thought of it as a kiss at the time. I wondered if he ever did.
I caught sight of Bren as I exited my last class, now Romantic poets. My heart quickened, and I found myself running up to him. “Thanks so much for everything,” I told him. “The Romantics are so much better than turn- of- the-century lit. I was . . . a little put off by that.”
He smiled. “Yeah, my granddad said you’d probably like that better. He remembered reading turn- of- the- century lit when it was new, and he hadn’t been impressed by it then. What did you think of history? You prefer the Reconstruction?”
“It’s fascinating. How did they manage to maintain the out- planet colonies?”
“We haven’t gotten to all of that yet,” Bren said. “But I do know we abandoned the outposts on Ganymede and Ceres, and we had to abort a planned colony on Enceladus.” He looked over his shoulder. Nabiki and Otto were standing there, clearly waiting for him. “Ahm, I gotta go. I’ll miss the skimmer.”
I sighed. The stass chemicals had faded entirely, leaving me scared and jumpy, and I was afraid to be alone. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about my encounter the night before, I was shaken. I also wanted to be with Bren. “I could take you home in the limoskiff,” I offered, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “I mean, we’re both going to Unicorn.”
Bren hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay.” He jerked his head at Nabiki and Otto.
Nabiki shrugged and headed off to the skimmerport. Otto stood and stared at me for a moment, his yellow eyes glinting in the sun.
It made me uneasy.
“Have I offended Otto somehow?” I asked.
Bren turned to look at his alienesque friend and grinned. Otto gave his forced smile back, waved, and followed Nabiki. “Nah,” Bren said. “He finds you interesting. But, technically, you own his patent, which means . . . well, he’s human enough that he has human rights, but it’s complicated. He’s always afraid they’ll try another experiment. Once you come of age, that would be your decision.”
I balked. “I wouldn’t do something like that! Didn’t you say most of them died?”
“Horribly,” Bren said. “Don’t worry about it. I think he just wishes that he dared to talk to you, but you scare him.”
I gulped. “Do I scare you?”
Ben turned his regard on me, his brow furrowed. It was like having a strong light shone on me. I was suddenly aware of all my flaws. I hadn’t had my hair done professionally since the press conference. My clothes were rumpled and paint stained from bringing Zavier to the vet. I’d been chewing on my nails in my classes, either out of nervousness or boredom. Under Bren’s gaze I turned into a pimply, skeletal orphan, lost in time. “You do have to comm you’re odd,”
he said finally, and the light turned off. “Half your turns of phrase are off — it’s like talking to my grandmother. But then you’ll do something or say something that seems . . . don’t take this the wrong way, but very childlike. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said.
“So, you’re different. Almost like someone from another country, but not. I don’t know.” He shrugged, and he looked nervous. I suddenly wanted to reach out and ruffle his hair. “That answer your question?”
“I guess.” I swallowed. “The limoskiff meets me down here,” I said awkwardly.
He followed me to the skiff and climbed in after me. “I have to make a stop on the way home. Do you mind dogs?”
“Nope. Had one up until last year. Finally succumbed to old age. Poor Jack.”
“What kind?” I asked.
“Retriever,” he said. “He was a great fielder. He’d fetch any tennis balls that escaped the court.”
When I brought Zavier into the skiff, he tilted his head at Bren and then sniffed his legs. “Hey there, boy,” Bren said. He ruffled Zavier’s ears.
“Be gentle with him,” I said. “He had a rough night. He ate some paint.”
“Did you eat paint?” Bren asked Zavier in a low, confiding voice. He looked up at me. “Where’d he get paint?”
“My studio,” I said.
Bren stared at me with new respect. “Your studio?”
“Yeah, I . . . putter,” I said shyly.
“The Piphers gave you a studio?”
“Guillory did, I think,” I said. “It must have been in my records somewhere that I liked art.”
Bren shrugged, turning his attention back to Zavier. “Not that I saw,” he said.
“And I tried looking you up.”
“You did?”
Bren shrugged again. “Couldn’t find you anywhere. Actu-ally, I couldn’t find any records of your parents even having a child. I guess they guarded their privacy. I found a picture of you at about age ten or so with your parents, buried in one of the UniCorp archives, but you aren’t even labeled in it. You’re pretty much a ghost. No digital trail. Couldn’t even find your birthday.”
“Like I never existed in the first place,” I said. “I feel like that sometimes.
Everyone I ever knew is dead.”
Bren let Zavier go and sat back awkwardly. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “I’m getting used to the idea.”
“I’m still sorry.”
The limoskiff moved too quickly. We were already at the condo, and I was still scared to be alone. “Would you like to see my studio?” I asked. “It’s a bit of a mess. Zavier kind of knocked stuff around, but . . . Well, I have to get it cleared up before Patty and Barry get home.”
“You’re alone until then?” Bren asked.
“Yeah. ’Cept for Zavy.”
Bren seemed to hesitate and then said, “Yeah. Sure, I’ll come up.”
When I opened the door to my studio, I expected to see it in the ruin I’d left it in this morning. However, the maid had a key and apparently hadn’t heard Patty’s admonitions. She had cleaned the room for me, leaving it considerably more tidy than I ever could have.
“Wow!” said Bren as he stepped inside. He looked around at the paintings. I was a little glad now that my chalk drawing of him had been destroyed. I could see the crumpled, dampened remains of it peeking out of the incinerator tray. If he’d seen my drawing yesterday, it wouldn’t have bothered me. I’d have told him the truth, that I always drew the people around me. I even had a couple of sketches of Patty and Barry around, and one of Mr. Guillory in pencil. But as of today, with this awful fluttery feeling he gave me, begging for a name I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it . . . well, I would have felt awkward.
I longed to paint him, though. I would place him on a stool in the corner, with the bookshelf as a background. Or maybe against the window, particularly if I could persuade him to open his shirt just a little. Maybe even more than a little. Maybe take it off entirely, let the sun glow on his skin, bring out the contours of his well- muscled chest. I’d bring the color of his eyes into the foliage in the background, and . . .
I realized he had just asked me a question. I shook my head to clear it of visions of Bren half- naked in my studio. “What was that?”
“Why aren’t you in any art classes in school?”
“I don’t know. Guess Mr. Guillory didn’t think I needed one.” I gestured around the room. “I don’t mind. I’ve got all this.”
Bren went up to the wall where my biggest painting to date was still drying. It was one of my stass landscapes, an oil painting of brightly colored undulating hills and lightning- flecked clouds, which came off cheerful rather than foreboding. I was calling it Blue Dunes.
“You painted all these?”
“It’s just a hobby.”
Bren glanced at me. “They’re good,” he said. “Don’t put yourself down.” He tilted his head as he stared at my painting. “Noid, that’s so sky,” he said, bemused. “There’s something very . . . visceral about these landscapes.”
I looked at him. “Did you really just use the word visceral?” I asked. I hadn’t heard such a word since I’d left stass.
Bren shrugged. “My grandparents always dragged us all to these galleries. I’ve learned how to describe art.”
“Landscapes have always been my strength,” I told him. “I won an award for one once.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow, looking more closely at the canvas. After another moment he nodded. “I can see that.” He turned to look at some of my other pieces. “That would be, what, sixty years ago?”
“ Sixty-two,” I said. “It was just before I was stassed.”
“What was it called?”
“Undersky.”
“No, sped, the award,” he said, chuckling.
“Oh. The Young Masters Award. I was supposed to win a month- long art tour through Europe.” And a scholarship, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to accept it.
“You didn’t go?” Bren asked.
“Well, I was . . . indisposed when the trip came up,” I said.
I had been stassed right before the tour. Not that I would have gone, anyway.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I know it’s weird.”
He shrugged. “Only a little.” He flipped through some finished drawings on the counter. “Is this my mom?” He pulled out a sketch done in pencil on copy paper.
“Yeah,” I said, looking over his shoulder. “I did it in the hospital.” Mrs. Sabah had been an easy study. Her features had clean lines and a natural flow. I just hadn’t been able to bring out the startling green of her eyes.
“Could I make a copy of this? She’d love to see it.”
“Give it to her,” I said.
“Are you serious?”
I shrugged. “It’s just a sketch.”
He looked at me, almost excited. “Would you sign it?”
I frowned but dug a pencil out of a drawer. “Why?”
Bren laughed. “Because with this skill, you’ll be a famous artist any minute, and it’ll probably be worth Mom’s weight in gold.”
I wrinkled my nose. “No, I won’t,” I said. “Mr. Guillory needs me at UniCorp.”
Bren scowled. “Everyone says that.” He turned back to my sheaf of sketches. “It drives me nuts. You should do what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want,” I said. But I signed Rose Fitzroy below Bren’s mother’s portrait and titled the portrait Annie.
“You got everyone in here. Noid, look at that!” He pulled out the sketch of Mr.
Guillory. “You drew him like a troll in this picture!”
I tilted my head sheepishly. “Who, me?” I said innocently.
Bren laughed. He pulled up another sketch. “Who’s this? I think I recognize him. Kid at school?”
I frowned. “No,” I said. I turned away.
Only then did Bren notice the five other drawings of Xavier already on the walls. There were lots more, of course, but I doubted he’d connect the baby pictures with the portraits of Xavier as a young man. His tone turned more serious, and he asked, “Who is he?”
I didn’t want to tell Bren this. And yet I did. I wanted Bren to catch me up and tell me that he was sorry for me, tenderly kiss my forehead, my eyelids, assure me he would make it all okay. I turned to my drafting table and watched the fish behind it. “Just my old boyfriend.”
“Oh,” he said. Then, only half of what I wanted, he added, “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged.
There was an awkward silence. I could feel the heat of him behind me, drawing me toward him. “Well, ahm . . . thanks for the sketch. Mom’s gonna love it.”
“Anytime,” I said.
“Guess I’ll see you at school.”
By the time I turned away from the fish, Bren had already skittered out the door.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I huddled in my bedroom, my hand firmly on Zavier’s collar, my cell within easy reach. At every little click of sound, every time Zavier shifted his weight, at every light flickering over the walls from a passing skimmer, I was convinced I was about to be attacked again. At dinner I’d considered telling Patty and Barry about my attacker, but I really couldn’t bring myself to. They had such indifference toward me, and it seemed so impossible. I wasn’t an idiot; I’d checked the security logs —there had been no break- in. As far as of ficial records went, it had never happened. It didn’t make any sense.
As daylight began to glow through my window, I picked up my cell. “Dr. Bija’s of fice,” said the holoimage of her secretary.
“I’d like to make an appointment,” I said. “For this morning, if that’s possible.”
The secretary was brusque and dismissive. “This is urgent?”
I considered this question. My usual impulse when someone asked such a thing was to say no. “Yes,” I said, feeling ashamed.
“Do you attend the school?”
I nodded.
“Name?”
“Rose Fitzroy.”
“Oh!” The secretary’s demeanor suddenly changed, and her eyes began to dart away from mine, looking toward her screen. “Well, I can’t get you in before school starts, but I can arrange for an appointment at ten, at the start of third period. Dr. Bija can file an excuse for you over the net.”
“Thank you,” I breathed.
“Of course, Miss Fitzroy.” She disappeared, looking relieved to be off the phone with me.
I slept through social psych. I stayed awake in history to watch Bren, but by third period I was glad of the excuse to miss Chinese.
Dr. Bija seemed concerned when I showed up in her of fice. “Is there a problem, Rose?” she asked. “My secretary told me you’d scheduled an extra session.”
“I know I’m not supposed to meet with you until Monday, but I can’t sleep.”
“Have the nightmares gotten worse?”
“Not exactly,” I said, but I’d been wondering that since I’d gotten home the day before. There was really no evidence of the shiny man’s existence other than Zavier’s exhaustion, which might have come about from him going wild in my studio while I slept. “Sort of. Maybe.” I sat down on the couch, feeling confused and exhausted.
“What seems to be the trouble?” Mina asked.
“I . . . I thought I was attacked the night before last,” I said. “By this shiny, dead- eyed man who wanted to put a control collar on me . . .” I told her the whole thing, including how I’d run down to the subbasement and fallen asleep in my stass tube. “And when I came upstairs, my studio was trashed,” I finished.
“Did you tell Patty and Barry about this . . . experience?” Mina asked.
“No,” I said. “Patty was so angry when she got up and the room was a mess, and then I had to go to school. And by the time they got home last night, it seemed too weird.”
Dr. Bija nodded. “You realize that your building is a high- security zone, don’t you? No unauthorized persons can even set foot in the grounds, let alone walk through the corridors and into your condo, without a hundred alarms going off.”
“I know,” I said. “I checked the security logs. He wasn’t there. And most of my dreams involve being hunted by something, but this one felt so much more real. And my studio was trashed.”
“Could your dog have done it?” Mina asked.
“Maybe. But how could I have a dream that my studio was trashed, then wake up and have it true?”
“That happens very often,” Mina told me. “We hear things while we’re unconscious and incorporate them into our dreams. I’m more worried about the possibility of you sleepwalking. Have you had any experience with that before?”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t really have nightmares before now. But last night I was so scared, I just sat up all night.”
Dr. Bija nodded. “I’m going to arrange for you to get a prescription sleep aid.
Something mild,” she reassured me, “non- habit- forming. Take it only if you have real trouble getting to sleep, like last night. Do you know the name of your doctor? I’ll have to have him prescribe it.”
“No,” I said.
“I’ll contact Mr. Guillory. He should be able to tell me the name.”
“Do you have to go through Guillory?” He still made me uncomfortable.
“I won’t tell him anything about this,” Mina said. “But I can’t prescribe the medication myself.”
I sighed. “Okay. Rose the freak gets freakier.”
Mina laughed. “Do you really think you’re a freak?”
“What else do you call a teenager who’s a hundred years old?”
“I think it’s only seventy- eight,” Mina said, and I knew I’d said a bit much. I’d realized a few days ago that when Bren woke me up it had been a century since the day of my birth. A century and going on seven weeks. There were some things it was better that Dr. Bija didn’t know.
I didn’t have any more dreams of the shiny man, nor did I sleepwalk, as far as I knew. The pills Dr. Bija had sent over did help with my nightmares a bit. Or rather they helped me get back to sleep once I had them.
I continued going to school, which remained steadily dreadful. I continued my physical therapy, which was finally starting to take. It got to the point where I could actually take Zavier for a nice long walk after school without my muscles shutting down, though I still couldn’t run. I continued my art, which was surprisingly more polished than ever before —sixty- two years of stass dreaming hadn’t gone entirely to waste. I continued to see Dr. Bija once a week.
And I continued, almost against my will, to watch Bren.
“Did you bring in any of your artwork for me today?” Dr. Bjia asked as I walked into her office.
I shook my head. It had been almost four weeks since my sleepwalking incident, and for all of our sessions, I’d never remembered to grab one of my landscapes before I left home. “Sorry.”
Mina raised an eyebrow. “I see you’ve brought a sketch-book. Is there anything there you’d be willing to let me see?”
“But these are just sketches,” I said, surprised.
“So? I don’t need to see the Mona Lisa.”
I shrugged. “Okay.” I passed her the sketchbook.
The first few pages were landscapes. “Tell me about these,” Mina said.
“Just landscapes,” I said.
“Where did you draw them?”
“Ahm . . . during class, mostly,” I admitted. Over the last month I’d filled considerably more pages in my sketchbook than I had done schoolwork on my notescreen. Very few of my sketches were in color, but she seemed to appreciate even the charcoal- gray landscapes. Lots of them featured lightning storms — my stass dreams often did. She turned a few more pages. “And who’s this? Bren?”
I licked my lips nervously. “No,” I said. “That’s Xavier.” I’d forgotten I had sketches of him in there. I had been trying so hard to avoid mentioning anything about my old life, and here I’d just handed her a lead to it.
“Who’s Xavier?”
“Someone I used to know . . . before.”
I could suddenly feel her burning with questions, all of the questions that she had avoided asking about my old life. I did not volunteer any more information, and to her credit, she respected that. She simply turned another page.
“That’s Nabiki and Otto,” I said.
“Yes, I know.”
“You know Otto?”
“Otto’s a little like you. I think everyone knows him,” Mina said.
I caught something in the words that I probably shouldn’t have. “Is he a client of yours?”
“I can’t answer that,” Mina said. “You should ask him if you’re curious.”
I sighed. “I can’t. He won’t talk to me.”
“You’d be surprised how much Otto can say, if you’d let him.”
“I know all about that,” I said. “But he won’t touch me. My mind scares him for some reason.”
“Ah,” Mina said thoughtfully. “Did he tell you why?”
I shook my head. “Nabiki couldn’t translate it very well.”
“Have you tried asking him personally?”
“I told you: he won’t talk to me.”
Mina pursed her lips. “Have you tried contacting him over the net?”
I stared at her as if she’d gone insane. “If he can’t talk, he can’t use a cell, either.”
“Through your notescreen,” Mina clarified. “He writes very well.”
I simply hadn’t thought of that. I rarely even opened my notescreen, and it hadn’t occurred to me to use it to con-tact anyone. I’d never had anyone to contact before. “I’ll think about it,” I said, turning another page of my sketchbook. “That’s Bren.”
Mina smiled. “He’s a handsome one. Look at those eyes!”
I stared at them. “I know,” I said quietly. I’d highlighted his eyes in the sketch.
They seemed to shine out from shadow space. Bren’s eyes always drew me, until I found myself drawing them.
I’d drawn the entire lunch table crew on different pages of the book, so Mina was able to put faces to all the names I’d mentioned. Then she turned the page and landed on another portrait of Xavier. “Now, this is the same boy as before,”
Mina said, “but he looks younger. Is it his brother?”
“No,” I said. “That’s Xavier, too. I knew him for a long time.”
“How long?”
Pain stabbed me. “All his life,” I said.
Then she asked me the first solid question she’d really asked about my situation. “You miss him?”
I considered brushing it off or changing the subject, but I didn’t. “Every day,” I said. “I try not to think about him.”
“Yet you draw him.”
I sighed. “I can’t think about him, but I can’t forget him, either. It’s not right to forget someone you love.”
There was a long, long silence.”You think?” Mina finally asked.
This line of questioning had gone seriously awry. “Any-way, that’s my sketchbook,” I said, taking it back. “Just a bunch of doodles.”
“They’re very skilled,” Mina said, returning to her chair. “Do you think you’ll continue with your art?”
“Of course I will.”
“I mean, do you think you’d like to do that for a living?”
“I have UniCorp to tend to,” I reminded her.
“Ah, right,” Mina said. “That is a tricky one. Do you think you have the skills to run a multitiered interplanetary corporation like UniCorp?”
No one had ever put it quite like that before. My shoulders sagged. “No,” I admitted. “But maybe I could hire someone to run it. Maybe after college . . .”
She laughed. “Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about that right now.”
“No, you’re right,” I said. “I should study harder.”
...
I should study harder. That became both my litany and my shame, because as much as I said it, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew I was too stupid to understand, so how could my school subjects interest me?
But Bren interested me. And Otto interested me even more.
I was very interested in Otto, but I found it difficult to find out more about him.
I felt awkward offering him my net-number, particularly with Nabiki around (and she was always around). Nabiki liked to talk about him, though, and I managed to find out some. He was always there when I gleaned my little knowledge, and it felt very odd not to be getting the information directly from him — though at least we weren’t talking about him behind his back.
From what I could find out, Otto had won the Uni Prep scholarship without telling anyone exactly who he was. The scholarship had been awarded on the basis of an essay. Otto couldn’t speak, but he had a brilliant mind, and that came out in his writing.
Despite the scholarship, Otto almost didn’t get into Uni Prep. It took him six months and a civil rights lawsuit before he earned the right to an outside education. Before he’d come to the school, he and his family had been educated in a UniCorp laboratory, every nuance of their brain activity monitored and recorded.
Otto worked very hard at Uni Prep. His siblings —the other three Europa Project children who weren’t simple —were still being monitored by UniCorp, and he visited them on weekends. Though they weren’t being mistreated, all of them looked forward to the moment when they would come of age and be officially under their own guardianship.
Bren was a thing of pure energy in my head, a fluttering bird of feeling that consistently distracted my thoughts. Conversely, Otto was a weight. He lurked, a heavy burden standing in the corner of my mind, until I was dragging it everywhere. It ate at me that all of his hardships stemmed from the company I was supposed to own.
It didn’t help that I often caught him watching me —staring at me, really —but his face was virtually expressionless. I couldn’t read him. Other than the forced smile he’d obviously cultivated as a social lubricant, there was no way to tell what he was thinking. He was either interested in me or violently angry with me; I really couldn’t tell.
My opportunity came through pure accident. At lunch a few days after I showed my sketchbook to Dr. Bija, Nabiki and Otto left the table very quickly and both forgot their screens. I surreptitiously reached across the table and turned Otto’s on. There it was. I threw his number onto my own screen, so that I could contact him later.