This time, her laugh wasn’t forced at all, and it gave Carswell a warm, tender feeling somewhere under all the bruising. He wished he could have laughed with her without it causing a flash of pain in his skull.
“Think Professor Gosnel would give me extra credit?”
“I’m sure she would,” said Kate. But then her sympathy was back. “It wouldn’t help with your math grade, though.”
“True. If only studying algebra formulas was half as much fun as corny space adventures.”
“If only.” Pursing her lips, Kate glanced up at him through her cascade of hair. Then she took in a deep breath. “I’ll let you copy my math homework.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Until … until your grade is up. And when we come back from break, I can help you study, if you still want me to.”
“Thank you.” He smiled, and he didn’t even have to fake his gratitude, though the relief came with that peculiar undercurrent of shame again. He knew that she felt guilty, that she felt as though she owed him something. He knew he was taking advantage of those feelings.
But he didn’t argue, and he didn’t reject her offer. Because in the back of his head, he was already counting up the hours this would save him, the money he could earn with that time. He was already moving past Kate and her portscreen and her gentle laugh and the lingering pain from his first fistfight.
Already, he was moving on to the next goal, the next dream, the next obstacle. Carswell grinned, just to the point where it started to hurt, and rubbed a thumb over his tie tack.
For luck.
After Sunshine Passes By
At nine years old, Crescent Moon was the youngest infantry soldier in Luna’s great warrior army. She stood at perfect attention in the front line of her platoon—back straight as a pin and arms locked at her sides. She was proud of her service to the queen. Already she had been hailed for her bravery and even honored with a medal of courage from Commander-General Sybil Mira after the battle of—
“Crescent.”
Mistress’s voice interrupted the fantasy, and Cress snapped a fist to her heart in salute. “Yes, Commander—um, I mean, Mistress?”
Some of the older kids snickered down the line and Cress felt her cheeks flame. Though she had pinned her gaze respectfully to the bunk beds against the opposite wall, she tore them away now to look at Mistress Sybil, who stood at the end of the long, narrow dormitory. Her lips were thinned and white.
Cress swallowed hard and lowered her hand. Her body shrank, mimicking the same meek posture the other kids had when they lined up for the monthly blood withdrawals. Of course, she wasn’t really a soldier. She wasn’t even sure what the word infantry meant. But that didn’t keep her from fantasizing, from imagining herself somewhere better than here. Anywhere but here.
She couldn’t understand why the other shells were so content to accept their stifled existence, why they mocked her for trying to escape, even if the escape was only in her own mind. Yet mock her they did. At least, until they wanted something from her; then they were sweet as syrup.
Sybil’s nostrils flared as she inhaled an impatient breath. “Did you hear what I said, Crescent?”
Cress racked her brain, even though she knew it was useless. Her face grew hotter as she shook her head.
“I was just telling the rest of your peers that we have received evidence that someone recently hacked into the feed of the educational programming intended for Luna’s most promising youth.” Her gray eyes narrowed at Cress. “I was unsurprised to find that the feed had been copied, and was now being broadcast here, in the shell dormitories. Can you explain this, Crescent?”
She swallowed and shrank back again, and her shoulder bumped into the boy beside her. “I … um…”
“It was my idea,” said Calista, who stood near the front of the line. Sybil’s piercing eyes shifted to her. “Don’t be mad at Cress. I put her up to it. I just thought … we just thought…”
Sybil waited, expressionless, but Calista seemed to have lost her gumption. A silence filled the dormitory, and though the temperature was static, Cress began to shiver.
Finally, Arol spoke. “We thought it could teach us how to read.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, those of us who don’t know how…”
Which was most of them. Cress had managed to download a Beginning Readers app to their shared holograph node a few years ago, and she and a couple others had made it through the entire course before Sybil had found out and blocked it from them. They had tried to teach the others—those who wanted to learn—but without paper or portscreens it was a slow, tedious process.
Most of them wanted to know, though. There was something liberating about it. Something powerful.
She thought Sybil knew that too; otherwise she wouldn’t have been opposed to it.