Psion Alpha (13 page)

Within
seconds, he got his plane back on course. He called into the tower and
requested permission to land. He steadied his approach and performed a silky
landing. When the exam finished, he couldn’t suppress a smile.

He
was the first student out of the simulators. Diego completed his exam moments
after, and gradually, over the next ten minutes, the rest of the class’s first
aviation exam ended. The computer graded the scores, although students could
appeal to have Professor Wright re-assess their performance at risk of a
penalty. Byron went to the large screen where the scores would be displayed
from highest to lowest. Diego stood next to him, saying nothing, waiting. Byron
didn’t like being near him. Diego had a domineering presence, and something
about him made Byron’s skin crawl. Every time Byron saw Diego’s face, he
remembered the calculating expression Diego had worn when watching his friends
pour their drinks on Emerald’s head on Byron’s first day.

Soon,
the rest of the class joined them, all of whom appeared anxious or dismayed to
some degree, but none more so than Emerald. She looked to be on the verge of
tears. He’d seen her in the sims practicing several times. She couldn’t have
possibly performed as poorly as she believed. Trapper, Otto, and Xian filled in
the space between Byron and Emerald and watched for the scores. Otto bounced on
his heels while picking at the skin around his nails. Trapper hardly blinked as
he stared at the screen. Xian, on the other hand, picked at a bit of breakfast
stuck between his teeth.

The
screen came to life and listed over three hundred scores in six rows. Byron
started at the bottom right and steadily worked his way toward the top left
side of the list. Up and over he went until he saw his name third from the top,
tied with four others for the best score in the class at 99.1%. One of the
other top names, he noted, was Diego Newblood, also tied for first. This
surprised him, as Byron hadn’t seen Diego practice nearly as much as others.
Otto and Trapper both placed among the top forty students, and Xian in the top
fifty percentile, and Emerald.… Byron had to look a long time for her name. He
finally spotted it near the bottom. She had failed. Her expression was one of
utter humiliation as she pushed through the crowds to hurry out of the room.
Trapper, Xian, and Otto also noticed, and all four followed her.

“Emerald!
Hey! Wait up!” Trapper shouted after her once they reached the hallway.

Emerald
glanced over her shoulder and broke into a run.

“Come
on, talk to us!”

“Remember,
we’re all faster than you,” Xian said.

Emerald
stopped and turned. Byron saw no tears, only rage and frustration in her eyes.
“What do you guys want? To console the loser?”

“Talk
to us.” Byron noted the thicker lisp in Trapper’s voice, emphasizing his great
concern. “What happened in there? I thought you were ready for this.”

Emerald
combed her long brown hair out of her face. The subtle greenish tint that Byron
had noted back in January was gone, but the greasy, unkempt appearance remained
as well as the chubbiness. Though, with all the exercise forced upon them, her
face looked a little thinner than it had three months ago. When she raised her
arm, her sleeve slid back and exposed her collage of tattoos like a living
garden on her skin.

“I
thought I was ready, too,” she said. “Guess I wasn’t. No offense, but I don’t
want to be the stupid girl in the group. It’s so stereotypical that it makes me
want to hurl.”

Trapper
stopped her with his hands before she could escape. “Hold for a sec. No one
thinks that. You’ve gotten high scores on every other exam. Very high scores.
This one test—”

“This
one test puts me a single failure away from flunking out. I fail another
aviation simulation and I’m done. I have nothing to go back to. Do you get
that?”

Xian
put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re not gonna fail, bra. Ask my brother Byron
here for help. He practically aced it.”

Emerald’s
eyes fell on Byron. Her expression morphed from annoyance to loathing. She
pulled Xian’s hand off her and turned away. “I’d rather flunk.”

The
four boys watched her go. Byron’s joy from achieving top scores melted away,
replaced with guilt for doing so well. He liked Emerald even less for making
him feel that way.

“I
don’t know what you see in her, dude,” Otto said to Trapper. “She’s a pain in
the—”

“She’s
a tough nut to crack,” Trapper interrupted, “but she’s beautiful once you look
past the wall she puts up to protect herself. An absolute—”

“Witch
… sometimes,” Xian finished for him. “She might be pretty … ish if she lost
some more weight and smiled once in a while.”

“Yeah,
sorry, Trap,” Otto said. “I agree with Xian. But if you like her that much, dude,
you should go for it. Tell her.”

“What
do you think, Byron?” Xian asked.

Byron
shrugged. “I find it hard to be attracted to someone who hates herself as much
as she does. Not my thing.”

Trapper
shook his head as they walked toward their next class. “Really, guys? She’s our
friend. Quit talking about her like that. She’s gorgeous.”

“Too
bad. If she knew you weren’t gay,” Otto said, “she wouldn’t talk to you, either.”

“Has
she ever told you why she hates the Y chromosome so much?” Xian asked.

“No,
man,” Trapper responded, “and I don’t think she’s eager to—”

“GO!”
a deep voice yelled behind them. In the same instant, someone’s boot kicked Byron’s
left foot into his own right one, sending him sprawling to the floor.

“TEAM!”
the same voice continued as Trapper hit the linoleum next to Byron.

“ODDBALL!”
a second person shouted as Otto collapsed on top of Trapper.

Byron
already knew who’d done it, he didn’t need to see Omar and Markorian towering
above him, laughing like hyenas. Diego wore his smug smile as he looked on with
the rest of Omar’s posse. Something about his face leering down at them snapped
Byron’s reason. As Omar stepped over them, Byron put a hand next to his
assailant’s shoe and blasted, causing Omar to spin around and smack his head against
the wall.

Trapper
jumped on Omar before he could recover, raining blows on his head and shoulders.
Unfortunately, Trapper was no match for Omar’s hulking stature. Omar shoved
Trapper across the hall into the opposite wall, stunning him. Byron punched
Omar in the face. It was the first time he’d ever hit someone outside of the
dojos. Omar absorbed the blow and countered with a jab that knocked Byron down
and split open his lip. He followed it with a nasty kick to Byron’s ribs. A
fiery soreness blossomed in Byron’s face and chest.

“Cool
it,” Diego told Omar. “They get the point.”

Trapper,
however, was anything but cool. If not for Xian holding him back, the fight
might have escalated further. Omar stretched his jaw and rubbed the spot where
Byron had hit him. Then he shoved Xian and Otto out of his way. “Embarrassments.”
The fake lisp he employed to mock Trapper was surprisingly accurate. “All four
of you.”

Xian
grabbed Byron and helped him up while Otto kept an arm on Trapper to make sure
he didn’t do something stupid. “You all right, bro?” Xian asked.

“Your
lip doesn’t look so hot, Byron,” Otto added.

Byron
closed his eyes so he wouldn’t cry. “I suck at fighting!” His fat, bloody lip
made his words sound thick and cartoonish. “Screw what I said earlier! You guys
watch. I will win every golden skull. I will win them all if it kills me. And
then I will beat the crap out of that stupid, huge jackhole.”

Xian
patted Byron on the shoulder. “Sure you will, bro. But it’s best to not swear
such oaths in our wrath, you know?”

“Yeah,
plus … what’s a jackhole?” Otto asked, winking at Byron.

They
walked to mathematics and took their seats in the lecture hall. Diego and Omar
sat at an angle that allowed Byron to see them smirking and laughing out of the
corner of his eye.

I
hate you. I hate you. I hate you
, Byron told them silently.
His ribs hurt every time he took a breath and his lip stung as though he’d been
smooching a beehive. Halfway through the lecture, Emerald came in and took the
seat Trapper had saved for her. When she sat, she glanced at Byron and then did
a double take. Byron tried to look brave for her, but that hurt, too.

He
didn’t learn a lick about math during the lecture, and he left hoping someone
else on Team Oddball had taken better notes. Probably not Xian, though, since
he’d doodled dragons and knights being shot by ninjas wielding assault rifles
throughout the hour. As they walked from math toward the engineering lab, the
scent of oil and welded metal hit them when they were still a good distance
away. Byron felt a tug at his collar, and before he could cry out his surprise,
he found himself inside a girls’ bathroom with Emerald staring him down.

“Hey…
I’m—I’m—I shouldn’t have said what I said,” she told him.

“You
mean you are sorry?” Byron asked.

Emerald
grimaced, making her normally sullen face even more unappealing. “Yes,” she
finally grunted. The words came out robotic and hollow, but it was still the
first time he’d heard her say it.

“Okay.
Did you have to pull me in here to say that?”

“Yes.
I—I—” She glanced around the room and then bent down to peer under the stalls
to see if anyone else occupied the room with them. Her voice dropped to a
whisper. “I crashed my plane in the high winds segment, but I hadn’t been
flying well before that. My practices aren’t good. I need … just—not a lot—but
a few sessions to help me with aviation.”

Byron’s
eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You want my help finding you a tutor?”

Emerald’s
hand smacked her forehead. “I want you to tutor me! But, geez, if you’re this
dumb, never mind.”

“No,
no. I can help. I would be happy to as long as you never call me dumb again.”

“Fine.
Thanks.” Emerald stared at him hard for a long moment, sizing him up. “How old
are you really?”

Byron
blinked several times and shook his head. “Why do you guys keep asking me that?
Seventeen. I turned seventeen right before I came here.”

“Yeah,
right. Whatever. And you won’t tell anyone about this … about tutoring me?”

“Not
if you want me to keep it a secret.”

“I
do!” There was a desperate edge to her voice that Byron found both interesting
and sad. “Let’s meet Sunday. You always go to the chapel by yourself. I’ll meet
you in the sims after.” She grabbed his uniform and pulled him close. Her eyes
were wide and watery, but it was the whiff of her body odor that made him want
to put space between them as quickly as possible. “I can’t fail again. I can’t.
You get that? You have to help me.”

“Yes,
I get it. Let me go, please.”

The
next Sunday, as planned, he met Emerald at the flight simulation room where
they worked for over an hour on her technique. With so few hours in the day to
study, practice, and train in combat, Byron hoped he wouldn’t fall behind by
taking time to help her. He especially couldn’t afford to fall behind in
aviation.

For
their first session, all he did was watch her. He noticed Emerald didn’t seem
comfortable with the controls. It took him the whole hour to realize why. The
controls were built for man-sized hands, and hers were rather small. Without
her knowing, Byron spoke to Professor Wright about the problem. Wright said
he’d specially order a smaller set of controls for her. Byron had the
impression most of the other teachers wouldn’t have gone to such lengths for
one student.

Days
later, Wright installed the new part for Emerald. Byron trained with her again,
but saw that something was still wrong. While her grip appeared more
comfortable, she lacked something intangible, something he couldn’t put his
finger on. It became more and more pronounced the higher the plane climbed.
Emerald frequently wiped her hands off on her pants and cleared her throat
multiple times.

Finally
Byron asked her, “Is something wrong, Em? Er, I mean—Emerald?”

“Nothing’s
wrong.” She cleared her throat for the fifth time. Byron noticed that her eyes
were wide and fixed on a point straight ahead.

“Are
you scared?”

“What?
No! There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Do
you have acrophobia?”

Emerald’s
glare of death told Byron he’d gone too far.

“The
reason I ask is because you fly like you are scared.”

“Well,
it makes me nervous, but that doesn’t mean I’m scared. Nothing scares me.”

“What
do you have to be afraid of?”

“NOTHING!”

The
silent pause between them told Byron she had no intention of apologizing for
her outburst. He backed up until he bumped into the dome.

“Ow.”
He rubbed his head, frustrated at both the pain and the situation. “Listen,
Emerald, we are friends—well, sort of—but if you refuse to tell me what the
cause is of your problems, I see no way to help you. I hope you pass … I do,
but I think my time is better spent elsewhere.”