There’s the flutter of wings in my stomach with the realization that Rondo is outside my ’wam. Wide awake now, I stand and step softly over to the door, sliding it open an inch at a time to avoid waking Alma. I pad down the hall to the front of the ’wam, praying both my parents are either deeply asleep or deep in their work in the Zoo. The kitchen is black except for the faint white light coming through the single window, moonlight guiding my path.
The ’wam door whispers open and I hold my breath, expecting to find Rondo there waiting. But there’s no one. The heat of the main dome slides inside the doorway and washes over me. I’ve never worn my nightclothes outside before, and without a chest wrap, the flowing cloth of my shirt and pants lets the air crawl up inside the fabric and run over my skin. I cross my arms over my chest in case Rondo is watching.
Barefoot, I step out into the commune. Silence except for the distant trickle of the stream. It feels empty here, even with the trees. I wonder what the jungle outside our walls sounds like at night. Alive, I’m sure. Full of breath.
“You’re awake.”
I jump, even though I’d been expecting him. Rondo materializes from the shadows, moving toward me from the direction of our bridge. He’s wearing his skinsuit, I notice, with a shade of disappointment. Not only would I feel less strange for wearing my nightclothes in front of him, but I’m curious what he looks like outside his skinsuit. I’ve never seen his collarbones, and suddenly, here in the silver light, all I can think about is his skin, those two graceful bones beneath his throat. Behind me, the door to my ’wam whooshes shut.
“Yeah, thanks to you,” I whisper. “What are you doing? What happened?”
“Why do you think something happened?”
“It’s the middle of the night,” I hiss.
“I was awake,” he says. His voice is low, but not quite a whisper. “And I was thinking about you.”
I squint at him in the moonlight. As I gaze at his face, I’m reminded strangely of a lecture Dr. Espada had given about plant patterns: the mesmerizing angles and waves in tree bark. The asymmetry of Rondo’s broad nose is like that: unique, strong. Elegant. The ogwe trees and their relaxing smell . . . What is Rondo’s scent?
“I wish I could read your mind,” he says. He’s within arm’s reach, my skin awakening like the flowers that grow along the stairway, changing color at his nearness.
“No you don’t,” I reply.
“Why not?”
“Because my mind doesn’t make sense.”
“Not everything has to.”
“No,” I say. “But I prefer it to.”
He frowns, studying me. Looking at him, it’s a different kind of research. I’m examining the curve of his lips and committing them to memory. My brain holds innumerable facts, but right now I’d wipe the slate clean to make more room for his face.
“Seriously, O,” he says. His voice is as soft as the dark we stand in. “You’re too hard on yourself. Why?”
I squeeze my arms more tightly around myself. Whenever I’m asked a question, I know the answer. If not right away, I can figure it out. But right now, every page, every text—they’re all blank.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“But we will.”
And then he’s kissing me. Or maybe I’m kissing him. The smell of ogwe rises in my nostrils, making my body go loose and relaxed. His lips are softer than I thought they’d be. His hands rise from his sides and rest on my hips. My arms around his neck—had I put them there? My palms slide down to his shoulders, down his arms. My hands find his as they move up to my waist.
I’m out of breath and pull back. He squints at me in the way only he can—one eye almost winking. I swear I can hear the music of his izinusa drifting through my head like clouds moving over the moon. I smile broadly, and when he smiles back, it’s as if his teeth are the source of all the light in the world.
Then his smile disappears.
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
He grabs my arm and drags me around the side of my ’wam. Déjà vu springs up before me: we’ve done this before. What is it about Rondo that always makes me end up hiding in the dark?
Someone is approaching the ’wam. I chance a peek around the edge. It’s my mother. She strides down the path from the direction of the Zoo, her face obscured in shadow. I recognize her from her hair—the graceful mass of her locs piled high on her head. Her gait is resolute and she stares down at her slate, its screen glowing dimly. I jerk my head back around behind the ’wam and I hold my breath as she approaches.
Silence. I don’t hear the hum of her palm sliding to open the door. The door doesn’t whisper. I don’t hear her footsteps either. She seems to be standing at the entrance, not moving. Rondo catches my eye, his expression unreadable in the shadows. My head begins buzzing. I wiggle a finger in my ear, still holding my breath. Rondo holds a finger to his lips.
And then the moment passes. The door slides open and my mother goes inside. Rondo and I crouch alongside my ’wam for what seems like hours but what must be only a few minutes, waiting. When eternity has passed, I stand from where I’ve been crouching, the muscles in my thighs cramping in protest.
“Where are you going?” he whispers.
I look at him like he’s a fool.
“Inside! We almost got caught!”
He is only lips and eyes in the near dark. As he starts to open his mouth to argue, I silence him with another kiss.
“Bye,” I say. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Outside.”
He says nothing, just watches me leave. When I slip back into my ’wam, I spend a moment leaning against the wall inside, letting my heartbeat float back to normal, swaying to the music he left inside me.
CHAPTER 17
We have new skinsuits. They’re bright red, made of the same maigno-inspired material but with a couple of features we don’t have in our white day-to-day clothing. For one, they are infused with the smell of a rhohedron—the large flowers that grow in the jungle, only recently cataloged by N’Terra. The color imitates the flower as well. “Better for an animal to mistake you for a rhohedron than something more vulnerable,” says the finder in charge of the collection group we’re joining, who has asked to be called Manx.
She goes on to reiterate the majority of what we already learned from the assignment in our slates and I tune out. Instead, I watch Rondo, whose smile of greeting this morning in the commune had planted a speck of stardust in my chest, which now grows into a sun. His fingers move in their distracted rhythm—I wonder what tune he’s playing on the izinusa in his head, if he’s remembering our kiss and turning it into a melody.
“Yes?” Manx says, angling the question at me with a frown.