“Evocative. Also incorrect. Adding a y to the end of word doesn’t make you a creator of neologisms. It makes you ignorant.” Pippin put his pencil down. He closed his eyes like he had to force himself to be civil. “They won’t send us skyward until the terror threat is lowered back to reasonable levels. It should only be a few more days. Unless Ri Xiong Di decides to do to us what they did to JAFA.”
She rolled the rest of the way off the bunk and landed so hard that Pippin jumped and gripped his notebook against his chest. Chase held her hand out. “All right, give them to me. You know you’re not supposed to take your asshole pill twice in one day.”
“Me? You’ve been paranoid all week. I know you’re worried Phoenix will take Dragon’s spot in the trials, but take a breath. There’s nothing we can do while grounded.”
“What?”
They stared at each other.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t figured that out.” He sighed. “Now that they can’t surprise Phoenix on us at the trials, they really only need two jets to face off. Three is overkill. Sylph is going ballistic over the fact. She should. She’s the slowest. They’ll probably run a few hops to suss out the worst candidate and ground him or her.”
Chase’s mouth was hanging open. Phoenix could replace Dragon or Pegasus?
Pippin cocked his head. “If that’s not what’s bothering you, what is?”
“Nothing,” she lied. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now.”
“Spill.”
“You first.”
“Touché.”
Chase bit off the edge of a hangnail while Pippin went back to scribbling. She hadn’t told her RIO a thing, and yet he’d picked up on her anxiety all the same. Maybe she should tell him. Would it help? She felt newly close to giving it a try. After all, if she couldn’t talk to Pippin, then she couldn’t talk to anyone.
Baby steps, she thought.
“Pip, how about a change of scenery? Let’s go down to the hangar and see Dragon.” She moved a little closer, and he snapped his notebook shut.
“The jet is not a grandma in a home. It doesn’t need visitors.”
Whoa. She stepped back. Pippin didn’t usually dismiss Dragon, although Chase had to admit he didn’t love the Streaker the way she did. He didn’t love anything at the Star the same way. And suddenly, the fact that he wouldn’t even tell her where he’d just been proved that she couldn’t possibly talk to him about what Tristan knew.
Anger twisted down her arms. Her fists closed tight. “Are you thinking about quitting again? Do I have to remind you about the trials? Christ, I need you up there!”
“Stop yelling. I’m not going to quit.” He spit the words. “I can’t, if you haven’t noticed. Not unless I want my brothers to starve.”
She made herself lower her voice. “Look, I’m feeling it too. I don’t want the Star to get leveled like JAFA or to lose Dragon, but—”
Pippin laughed so hard that she took another step back. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping bizarre tears from his eyes. “You’re so far off the mark that it’s funny.”
“Yeah. Hilarious.”
He reached for his headphones, but she was faster. She flung them across the room, and they hit the wall before flopping onto his bed. He met her gaze coolly. “Do you want to fight?”
“No. Do you want to fight with me?”
A knock sounded on the door, followed by Riot’s voice. “Nyx. Food.”
They continued to stare at each other while the moment released slowly. Too slowly. She’d never fought with Pippin before. They snarked and rubbed elbows sometimes, but this felt so strange. Borderline hostile. When Chase forced herself to speak again, her voice cracked. “We’re going to the chow hall. Come with us?”
“Not hungry.” He returned to his notebook.
“Eat. Let’s go,” Riot called sluggishly.
“What a dreamboat,” Pippin mocked. She could tell he was pressuring himself to sound normal too. “How do you contain yourself?” Chase play-punched his shoulder, and Pippin grabbed her hand, a hint of wild right behind his eyes. “I’ll talk to you later, but you have to share too. Deal?”
She braked again. She couldn’t help it. “Yeah…right.”
Pippin must have heard the taillights in Chase’s tone. He let go of her hand with a frown and went back to his notebook, scribbling so hard his pencil went off the side of the paper and he wrote across the desk.
? ? ?
Riot and Chase got their lunches to go and sat beneath the largest tree on the Green. The sunlamps shone a very brilliant orange-yellow, but Chase looked beyond, past the glass ceiling to the navy sky tinged with flame blue. The color reminded her of Tristan’s eyes reflecting JAFA’s blaze.
The fire was so high…
Her imagination hacked her consciousness. She saw red drones overhead. Missiles falling hard and fast. Her world turned to fire and screams and broken glass. Is that what it had been like for Tristan? Is that what it would be like if this face-off opened itself to another world war?
Her mouth had gone thick and dry, near-panic leaning over her like cloud shadow. She tossed her sandwich to Riot.
“Where’s Pippin?” Sylph sat cross-legged in the grass beside them, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “We need to discuss our anti-Canadian strategy for the trials.”
“He’s busy.”
“Busy with what?” Riot asked.
“With whatever he wants to do,” Chase said, trying not to give away the fact that they’d been arguing. Just thinking about how they’d snapped at each other made her feel red—both aggravated and embarrassed. Truth was, Chase wasn’t used to fighting with anyone. Whenever she disagreed, she cut and ran. It was a policy that had kept her from having scores of friends but also from all the suffocating drama at the Star.
A policy that had just failed.
“Pippin’s not with us.” Sylph produced an inch-thick folder.
Chase peered over at the stream of notes. OFF-THE-CUFF was written across the top in intensely red ink. “A collection of your thoughts on my flying?”
Sylph eyed her coolly. “We’ll get to that soon. More importantly, we need to discuss our major weaknesses. And your primary one is that Pippin is irreversibly contaminated. He’s been hanging out with the Phoenix team.”