Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)

Cora’s mouth shut with a snap. Nadya continued to gawk. Both of them had traveled to places where the rules were different—Cora to a world of beautiful Reason, Nadya to a world of impeccable Logic. None of this had prepared them for women who dropped out of the sky in a shower of turtles and started yelling, especially not here, in a world they both thought of as tragically predictable and dull.

Cora recovered first. “Do you mean Miss Eleanor?” she asked. Relief followed the question. Yes. The girl—she looked to be about seventeen—would want to talk to Miss Eleanor. Maybe she was a new student, and this was how admissions worked mid-term.

“No,” said the girl sullenly, and crossed her arms, dislodging the turtle on her shoulder. It fell back to the pond with a resounding plop. “I mean my mother. She’s in charge at home, so she must be in charge here. It’s only”—her lip curled, and she spat out her next word like it tasted bad—“logical.”

“What’s your mother’s name?” asked Cora.

“Onishi Sumi,” said the girl.

Nadya finally shook off her shock. “That’s not possible,” she said, glaring at the girl. “Sumi’s dead.”

The girl stared at Nadya. The girl bent, reaching into the pond, and came up with a turtle, which she hurled as hard as she could at Nadya’s head. Nadya ducked. The girl’s dress, finally chewed to pieces by the water, fell off entirely, leaving her naked and covered with a pinkish slime. Cora put her hand over her eyes.

Maybe leaving her room today hadn’t been the best idea after all.

*

MOST PEOPLE ASSUMED, upon meeting Cora, that being fat also meant she was lazy, or at least that she was unhealthy. It was true she had to wrap her knees and ankles before she did any heavy exercise—a few strips of tape now could save her from a lot of aching later—but that was as far as that assumption went. She had always been a runner. When she’d been little, her mother hadn’t worried about her weight, because no one who watched Cora race around the yard could possibly believe there was anything wrong with her. She was chubby because she was preparing for a growth spurt, that was all.

The growth spurt, when it had come, hadn’t been enough to consume Cora’s reserves, but still she ran. She ran with the sort of speed that people thought should be reserved for girls like Nadya, girls who could cut through the wind like knives, instead of being borne along like living clouds, large and soft and swift.

She reached the front steps with feet pounding and arms pumping, so consumed by the act of running that she wasn’t exactly looking where she was going, and slammed straight into Christopher, sending both of them sprawling. She yelped. Christopher shouted. They landed in a tangle of limbs at the base of the porch, him mostly under her.

“Uh,” said Christopher.

“Ohfuck!” The exclamation came out as a single word, glued together by stress and terror. This was it: this was the moment where she stopped being the new student, and became the clumsy fat girl. She pushed herself away from him as fast as she could, overbalancing in the process, so that she rolled away rather than getting back to her feet. When she was far enough that they were no longer in physical contact, she shoved herself up onto her hands and knees, looking warily back at him. He was going to yell, and then she was going to cry, and meanwhile Nadya would be alone with the stranger who was asking for a dead person. And this day had started so well.

Christopher was staring back at her, looking equally wary, looking equally wounded. As she watched, he picked his bone flute out of the dust and said, in a hurt tone, “It’s not contagious, you know.”

“What’s not contagious?”

“Going to a world that wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. It’s not catching. Touching me doesn’t change where you went.”

Cora’s cheeks flared red. “Oh, no!” she said, hands fluttering in front of her like captive parrotfish, trying to escape. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—I mean, I—”

“It’s okay.” Christopher stood. He was tall and lean, with brown skin and black hair, and a small, skull-shaped pin on his left lapel. He always wore a jacket, partially for the pockets, and partially for the readiness to run. Most of them were like that. They always had their shoes, their scissors, whatever talisman they wanted to have to hand when their doorways reappeared and they had to make the choice to stay or go. “You’re not the first.”

“I thought you were going to be mad at me for running into you and call me fat,” blurted Cora.

Christopher’s eyebrows rose. “I … okay, not what I expected. I, um. Not sure what to say to that.”

“I know I’m fat, but it’s all in how people say it,” said Cora, hands finally drifting back to rest. “I thought you’d say it the bad way.”

“I get it,” said Christopher. “I’m Mexican-American. It was gross, the number of people at my old school who thought it was funny to call me an anchor baby, or to ask, all fake concerned, if my parents were legal. It got to where I didn’t want to say ‘Mexican,’ because it sounded like an insult in their mouths when it was really my culture, and my heritage, and my family. So I get it. I don’t like it, but that’s not your fault.”

“Oh, good,” said Cora, sighing her relief. Then she wrinkled her nose and said, “I have to go. I have to find Miss Eleanor.”