Sam imagined herself dressed in a CatPack outfit, bouncing about and playing to the crowd.
No, actually, she shouldn’t imagine the sight because when she did, she’d see herself jumping about while trying to keep her glasses on at the same time—a book or her iPad stuck in the extra pocket she’d sewn into her short, short skirt falling out with each bounce. These girls didn’t care one iota, smidgeon, gram, molecule, or some infinitesimal quantum particle about anything in any way involving a worldview. Their lives were limited to the confines of the school and the city where they were treated like royalty simply because of who they were. Never mind the fact they hadn’t contributed or discovered a damn thing, never anything of worth to anyone beyond themselves.
Sam, on the other hand, had just made an amazing discovery she couldn’t wait to share with Dr. Donati, her supervisor at Ames. Not that Cara and the Clones would understand, much less care. But Donati surely would, because the pattern she’d uncovered was undeniably there.
Sam wanted a career in NASA. She wanted to become an astronaut and go into space as part of the next phase of the manned program. She wanted a different kind of crowd than this to applaud, as she made her way to the capsule of some futuristic spaceship.
Now flying for the USA, Samantha Dixon!
Just as she finished that thought, the crowd jumped to its feet, cheering. Sam returned her gaze to the field to find Alex Chin strutting away from a ball carrier he’d deftly avoided for a twenty-yard gain on a quarterback keeper, to the high-fives of his Wildcat teammates. She felt her own heartbeat slow again, after fearing herself caught in a fantasy.
But she wasn’t a cheater in the fantasy. There was no place for cheaters at NASA.
APPLICATION FOR SPACE PROGRAM SUMMARILY DENIED.
Sam saw that in her head now, her whole life ruined by one stupid mistake because she wasn’t brave or strong enough just to say no. Maybe she could tell Cara she’d lost her backpack, and thus the test.
Maybe she should just tell Cara to go to hell. A year from now, she’d be at Harvard, or Brown, or MIT, or Stanford. But they didn’t accept cheaters, either, much less give them the financial aid Sam needed with her overgrown-hippie parents too busy making pesticide-free products to make any money. Setting up “grow” communes for anyone who paid them a small deposit, with the balance almost never paid in full. No money, but a fridge full of tomatoes and a nook full of homemade jellies and jams. Wonder if one of my schools of choice might accept those in lieu of tuition? Strange how all Sam could think of was growing up while her parents never seemed to have grown up at all. Her father still called people “dude.”
Really?
Now they had taken to growing medical marijuana, having secured their grow license for a local dispensary. It had made her very popular in school once word got out, since any number of kids who’d never said a single word to her thought it would be no problem for her to clip a few buds off the plants for them. Sam reminded them that constituted a crime; “Just say no,” the saying went, and that’s what she did.
To distract herself as much as anything, Sam turned her attention back to the game, seeking out Alex, who was calling the signals from behind center. At least when she tutored him, she got paid. Even though she would’ve done it for free. And there was at least one good thing about being at the game tonight, at field level, no less: she got to watch Alex play, the crowd cheering as he threw a perfect strike over the middle for a thirty-yard gain that put the Wildcats in easy range of the Granite Bay end zone. The crowd leaped to its feet en masse, pounding the stands so hard the ground actually shook. In front of Sam on the sidelines, the CatPack bounced as if their sneakers were equipped with springs, pompoms shaking in rhythm.
That’s when she felt a man squeeze into the flat bleacher seat behind her. Sam smelled something like motor oil combined with fresh tire rubber and figured he must be an auto mechanic. But a quick glance revealed him to be well dressed all in black, the hands pressed atop his knees looking so clean the skin seemed sprayed on. Their eyes met but the man’s didn’t really regard her, and Sam turned away fast, trying to figure out why she suddenly felt so unnerved.
3
THE SECOND COMING