Despite my resolve to study harder, school continued to be a drain on me, mentally and physically. I wasn’t really trying. I spent my days disappearing into my sketchbooks and into my studio. The only time I woke up at school was in history, when I could watch Bren and his glinting green eyes.
Even seeing him down the hall brightened the day, as if a ray of sunshine had pierced the clouds. I didn’t know what I was feeling. It hadn’t been this giddy, confusing rush of conflicting emotion with Xavier. With Xavier my affection had been concrete, immovable, my touchstone. Xavier had been the only real constant in my life, and now that he was gone, I felt rootless. If Bren were gone, I knew my world would not completely crumble, but there was something almost addictive in watching him. What I felt for him had similarities to what I felt for Xavier, but it wasn’t an exact match, and that was confusing.
I frequently invited Bren to ride home in my limoskiff. He accepted more often than not, which I took as a good sign.
He’d tell me about upcoming tennis matches or the workings of UniCorp, which he heard a lot about. He told me the gossip about his friends — how people took it when Otto and Nabiki had originally hooked up, how Anastasia had a huge crush on Wilhelm, who was obsessed with a senior from his advanced astrophysics class. It was fun talking with him.
I’d have said Bren and his friends were my saviors, but it was fairly clear to me that apart from Otto, who didn’t talk, his friends put up with me only because Bren seemed to like me. It wasn’t that they disliked me, but there was no obvious warmth toward me, either. It wasn’t surprising. Apparently the entire group of them had been friends since middle school. They seemed very diverse, coming from all over the planet and the colonies, but something about their parents’ standing in UniCorp had drawn them together, almost as if they were UniCorp nobility, with Bren as the crown prince. The only additions had come three years ago, at the start of high school, when Anastasia’s parents had sent her over from New Russia, on Io, and Molly and Otto had won their scholarships. For all that Otto had called me “Princess” when he’d first spoken to me, I did not seem to fit their idea of UniCorp royalty. Technically, I should have had higher status than Bren, but they’d never heard of me before a few months ago. They didn’t know what to make of me.
Bren, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to his friends’ coolness.
He genuinely tried to bring me into the group discussions when we sat down together at lunch, and for that I was very grateful.
And a little obsessed. When I wasn’t suffering nightmares, I tried to fill my dreams with Bren. Xavier was too painful a memory, and nothing else was powerful enough to engage my attention. I did portrait after portrait of him, using different angles and different expressions, trying to understand what went on behind those eyes. I feared him seeing my sketchbook and knowing how often I thought about him.
Until I realized that such stealth was silly. I wanted him to know how I felt.
Otto?
It was less than ten seconds before my screen chimed back. We linked up almost every night at ten now. Here! Hello again!
Hi. Can I ask you a question?
You always ask me questions. My turn.
Damn, I wrote. Just trust me: there’s nothing very interesting about me.
Humor me. You avoided my question when I asked it before. What was it like coming out of stass?
It hurt, I wrote. Really, Otto, it doesn’t make much sense. Between the shock and the stass, everything was a blur for the first week. Then things just crumbled from there. I didn’t know how to work the stove; all the computers were incomprehensible; I could barely understand half of what people were saying to me. I couldn’t go out to buy underwear without half the reporters in the world following my every move. Before school started, I felt like a stranded jelly fish, sort of formless and electric. As if the water I was meant to swim in had been taken away. Patty and Barry might just as well not be here. Everyone I knew was dead. Couple that with stass fatigue and worldwide infamy all in one fell swoop and I’m probably about as miserable as you.
I’m not miserable. Not anymore.
Not since Nabiki? I asked, thinking of Xavier. And Bren.
Not since the scholarship.
That sounded hollow to me. I felt bereft without Xavier. All the scholarships in the world wouldn’t have helped that. Nabiki has nothing to do with it?
All my friends have something to do with it. Jamal brought me into the group.
He was my roommate from the beginning. Bren and Wil were his friends.
I sighed. Did they warm up to you right away?
Of course not. I take some getting used to. There was a moment before he continued writing. It surprises me that you warmed up to me as quickly as you did.
You’re nice.
You figured that out from talking with me exactly once? Upon which I immediately rejected you?
Well . . .
I’m used to people avoiding my gaze, acting awkward, even with outright loathing. You did none of that.
I’d be pretty hypocritical if I did, I wrote back. Besides, you did freak me out at first.
You freaked me out, too, he wrote.
Pair of odd ducks.
True enough. So what was it you wanted to ask me?
Oh. It was just about Bren.
What did you want to know?
Well, how well do you know him?
Known him for nearly three years.
Can you tell if he actually likes me or if he’s just being polite?
I will not tell anyone what I see in someone else’s mind.
And I wouldn’t ask you, I wrote, a little offended.
Oh. Sorry.
No, just from observing him. Or what he’s said. Or what other people have said.
I’m asking for gossip, really.
There was a long, long moment before Otto wrote, I’m really not the one to ask.
Well, who, then? I wrote, feeling exasperated. Apart from you and Bren, I don’t talk to anyone else.
You don’t?
No!
I’m sorry. Why not?
I don’t know anyone.
If you’d talk to people, that would change.
I don’t know how to get to know anyone. I’ve never done it before. I’ve only ever had the one friend, really. And with him it was kind of like what you can do; I could all but read his mind.
How did that happen?
I’d known him since I was seven.
Was he your boyfriend?
Yes.
You lost a boyfriend you’d known forever?
Yes.
He let that sink in before the word printed itself on the screen. Owtch.
I laughed in spite of myself. Yeah. Big owtch.
I’m so sorry.
I’m getting used to it.
Is he that boy you’re always drawing in your sketchbook?
How do you know that?
I watch over your shoulder. I recognized all the faces except one. I take it you have a crush on Bren?
Okay, I thought you couldn’t read my mind unless you were touching me.
Well, all right. I quietly borrowed your sketchbook at lunch last week when you weren’t looking. That boy and Bren are all over that thing.
You little blue thief!
That’s me, he wrote, without apparent chagrin. And how did you get my screen number, may I ask?
Touché, I wrote.
I’m sorry if it was private.
It isn’t, really. Particularly not to you, who knows everyone’s secrets. I can trust you not to blab anything around, right?
Doubly so.
I almost laughed at that. I just wish you could have asked.
Sorry about that. I was curious. I wanted to know what you thought you needed to understand better.
I chuckled. Everything. I’m out of my element in this time.
What are you trying to understand with the landscapes?
I thought about that for a long time. Me, I think, I wrote. Life. Stasis.
Landscapes are more . . . I guess you could say they’re more meditative than the portraits. Though my portraits are meditative, too, in that I’m understanding a person.
Nice sketch of me and Nabiki, by the way. I didn’t think you’d have captured her so . . . sweet- looking, since she’s always so cool with you.
She was looking at you.
Ah, Otto wrote. That would do it. So, do you have a crush on Bren or not?
I don’t know what I have. Except too much free time and not enough sense.
I don’t know if he likes you or not. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.
Anyone he does like?
Not that I’ve noticed.
Okay. Good to know.
Now I have a question, Otto wrote.
Fire away.
What do you see in him?
Apart from the obvious?
What’s the obvious? I’m afraid I’m not a teenage girl.
I tried to figure out a way to say it that didn’t, in fact, sound like a gushing teenage girl. He’s very aesthetically pleasing.
That’s it?
Well, he’s nice to me. He talks to me. He’s nicer than everyone else.
Even me?
Nothing personal, Otto, but you don’t talk to me.
Yeah. I know.
I don’t really know what it is. There’s just something that draws me. I am fascinated by him. I keep wanting to draw him. That has to mean something, right?
Of course you want to draw him, with his athlete’s muscles and the wood- tone skin and the eyes like a beam of light.
I blinked at the screen. Well, yes. Where did that come from?
Molly, about a year ago. But she got over him.
I went over Molly in my mind, assessing my competition. I wasn’t worried.
Since she was born on Callisto, her skeletal structure was more compact than would be considered attractive. She’d obviously spent plenty of time doing gravimetric exercises, but her parents weren’t rich enough to afford the full corrective exo- surgery kit, and it still showed in her figure. Then I caught a glimpse of my own toothpick wrist and wondered what I was doing feeling con fident.
Still there?
Yeah. I was just musing over my own aesthetic con figuration. Or lack thereof.
I think you’re very pretty.
You said I looked like a skeleton.
I said you’d look better if you filled out more. Not that you weren’t pretty.
Oh. I suddenly wanted a mirror. I glanced at myself in the window instead. I was only a shadow. Thanks.
Of course, I don’t think pretty is the best compliment I can give you.
Stop with pretty. Go any further and I won’t know how to handle it.
I believe that.
Besides, there’s not much else going for me.
Oh, I could try talented, accepting, enchanting, or demure, but I’ll stop with pretty. Don’t want to overwhelm you.
Stop it. You’ve got me blushing.
Burn it. I’m missing it. There was a bit of a pause. If you really want him, I think you should go for it.
You really think I’ve got a shot?
I don’t know. All I know is that you should be happy. Can I ask another question?
I guess. I was afraid it would be more about Bren, and I was starting to feel embarrassed. I needn’t have worried.
You weren’t offended when I said I wouldn’t touch you?
Not at all.
Why not?
I shrugged, then remembered he couldn’t see it. I don’t know, I wrote. It just seemed . . . I don’t know. I think if I had to encapsulate what I was thinking, it was something along the lines of “of course.”
Are you that used to rejection?
I don’t think so, I wrote at first. Then I thought about all the schools I’d gone to, and all the maids our family went through, and all the times Daddy told me not to get in his hair. Yes, I wrote.
There was a bit of a pause before Otto wrote, Me too.
I didn’t really know what to write. After a minute Otto added, I wish I could talk to you. I really wasn’t trying to reject you. I’m so glad you wrote me.
I’m sorry I scared you.
I’m sorry you have to have things in your mind that do scare me. Do you have any idea what they are?
No, I wrote. Those moments of bright memory I can answer, though. Stasis holds thoughts in your head until they stay more clearly than they would have.
There were an awful lot of those, he wrote.
I swallowed. Yes. I suppose there were.
Then what are the shadowy, briary, tangled places? Because they aren’t the same thing as the bright spots.
I don’t know, I wrote. I wasn’t sure what about my stass visits would have caused tangled bits in my mind. I don’t think I have any memory gaps.
I don’t think so, either. They felt more like emotion.