Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon (27 page)

he lights turning on woke me up properly. I looked around for a light switch, and didn’t see one. Lying in bed late was evidently not a thing on Jupiter’s moons.

My door stood slightly ajar, and from outside came the sound of feet thumping and girl’s voices. Just barely, the sound of showers starting to spray filtered through.

I made the obligatory grumble and sat up, dangling my legs off the side of the bed.

The door opened wide, and Claire skipped in. There might be no sunrise this far out in the solar system, but her glowing blond presence and early-morning energy tried to make up for that.

With a bit of a jolt, I realized she was only wearing underwear, but so were the girls stampeding through the hallway around her. They just wore a lot more underwear. Poofy bloomers and shapeless undershirts? I didn’t wear that much fully dressed!

The awkward sensation creeping up must have shown on my face, because Claire skipped a greeting and went straight to, “The boys’ rooms are locked, silly.”

As a proper daughter of the Lutra family, she had, of course, checked. Not making me feel any less embarrassed, Claire!

At least she immediately changed the subject. “How did you sleep?”

“Interesting question. The beds are nice, but I had the-”

I didn’t get to tell her about my dream. Clicking and rattling presaged an automaton rolling down the track to stand in front of my door. Her head and shoulders shook and flopped, but the voice was even more convincingly human than the automaton in the lobby. It conveyed strict disapproval particularly well. “Get to the showers, girls, or no breakfast.”

Claire gave her the classic singsong reply, “Yes, Miss Brassfarthing.”

I looked around for my jumpsuit. It had disappeared from the floor. How did they manage that?

Claire didn’t let me stall. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of bed and out into the hall. Yes, all the other girls were in their underwear too, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

As she’d said, every door on the boys’ side of the hall was shut tight. All the doors on the girls’ side stood open. The hall had doorways besides the bedrooms, and Claire pulled me into one.

Oh, criminy. A communal shower. Really? What was this, an athletic summer camp?

Most everybody’s underthings had already been dropped into a laundry hamper. I put that off as long as possible, brushing my teeth at one of the sinks and staring resolutely at the faucet.

Nobody else was shy. Nobody. Claire fit in perfectly, but, of course, she could stand around and chatter with the others in absolute confidence that she was the prettiest girl in the room.

I caught, “Are all Earth underclothes so small?” and ran for the showers. If I had to stand in a line with a bunch of other showering girls, at least I could turn up the spray so I couldn’t hear them, and focus on the shampoo and soap.

Turning off the water, I wrung my hair out and looked over at the laundry hamper―empty. Folded into the wall, in fact. Fine. I wrapped myself in the biggest towel they had, and beat feet for my bedroom.

Toweling myself dry gave me time to reflect on one thing I’d noticed. I’d always thought my hair was long, past my shoulders so I could put it in braids. There was hardly a girl here whose hair hadn’t reached her waist. Remmy’s actually reached her thighs, if barely. They’d all worn it tied up last night, and I hadn’t noticed.

Dresses filled my wardrobe. Voluminous Jupiter underwear filled my dresser. A set of both lay on top of the chest, with a corset and tiny button boots. My goggles, the only untouched item of my own, sat primly on top. No, wait. When I pulled up the underwear, I found my belt pouches underneath. Considering what they carried, that was a good thing.

The underwear felt bulky to wear, but also perfectly decent. That was a good thing, because I’d hardly begun braiding my hair when Claire bounced into my room, carrying her own clothes.

Other girls thundered past behind her into their own rooms, all laughing and talking.

Slipping into her own pajama-like underclothes, Claire said, “This is shy even for you, Penny.” The girl whose father’s identity was completely up for grabs sounded casual and comfortable about the whole thing.

Okay, that was just plain catty. Taking a deep breath, I blew it out slowly and let the tension drain along with it.

That done, I gave Claire half a smile. “Maybe it’s that the boys are right there.”

On cue, my bedroom door swung shut. A click announced the lock setting itself. Barely audible footsteps outside hinted that it was the boys’ turn at the showers.

Claire slipped on her petticoat, and then the dress over it. She made it look easy. I had to fumble with the sleeves. As she fastened up buttons, she asked, “Help me with the corset?”

Lifting one eyebrow and squinting the other eye, I peered at our corsets in disdain. “You really want to wear that?”

“When in Rome. The dorm mother will pitch a fit if we don’t.”

I had to bow to that logic. I wasn’t even sure how to wear a corset, but Claire unfastened hooks I hadn’t seen, wrapped it around her waist, and then turned her back. “Tie me up?”

I tugged the laces until they didn’t hang, and had just started a bow knot when Claire instructed, “Tighter.”

Oookay. I gave the laces a good pull all the way down the row, and was starting to tie when she interrupted me again. “Tighter, please?”

My mouth hung open. “Seriously?”

“As tight as you can.”

“
Seriously
?”

Claire laughed, and you know what? I did too. It was great having friends more adventurous than me. Claire wasn’t even using her power. Her hair remained pale, not yellow. She explained it all in a downright eager tone. “My mother wore these for years. They’re common among supervillains. I want to try it. Don’t you?”

“Well…”

“You don’t have to tight-lace,” she promised, “But don’t hold back on mine.”

I shrugged, and gave the top row of laces a hard yank, and then another. Claire didn’t protest, so I kept going. At the end, I had to add a granny knot to the bow to keep up the tension.

Claire swished around. With her blond hair, the bright yellow dress made her look like a daffodil. The tiny waist tried hard to make her look like a wasp, instead.

I hooked my own corset around my waist, and the pressure felt weird even without the laces tied. I gave Claire the skeptical tilted eyebrows. “Can you even breathe in that?”

“Easily.” I had to admit, she didn’t sound wheezy. “The back support is kind of nice. What I don’t get is how Mom did acrobatics wearing one of these.”

The funny thought forced a giggle out of me. “Practice?”

Claire tied up my corset. I’d lucked out with a dull, respectable grey. Sitting down on the bed together, we were buttoning up our shoes when a click and my door sliding a few inches open signaled that the boys’ showers had finished.

I took a few wobbly steps. I am not a heels girl, and these weren’t even high. The corset had already stopped feeling weird, but then I wasn’t wearing mine tighter than a normal belt. What surprised me was that I had no trouble walking in this narrow skirt. The loose pleats gave me more room to move than had been visible from the outside, and around my knees they flared out anyway. What I couldn’t do was run, and as a supervillain, that did not please me.

Boy, did the familiar feel of buckling my goggles up on my forehead help. Claire and I trotted out to meet the other girls, and I immediately grabbed Remmy by the shoulder.

“First, we are getting our clothes back, even if Vera has to melt down the laundry room door. Second, how did you get pants?!”

Seriously, how did she get pants? Other than losing all the grease except a few stains in her hair, Remmy’s outfit hadn’t changed. Oh, the new shirt didn’t have sleeves torn to shreds, but she wore the same pants with pouches full of tools. Like me, she wore her corset tight enough not to hang, and that was about it.

Remmy patted my wrist. “It’s cool. The automatons aren’t as smart as they pretend. They’ll bring your laundry back as soon as it’s clean, because that’s what they do with laundry. Until they see you wearing it, all clothing is clothing.”

I pointed down the hall at Miss Brassfarthing stationed in front of the exit doors with her hands folded over her hips. “She can see you. What gives?”

Now Remmy grinned, big and toothy. “I hid a bunch of spares last time I was here. Nobody found them. She’ll complain after lunch if I don’t have repairs to make, but mechanics get a lot of extra privileges. If you stayed here, you’d get to ask for different clothes.” The grin turned into a smirk. “Nothing ‘scandalous’ or ‘improper’, of course.”

This dress felt like wearing a parka and a circus tent at the same time. My only relief was that the outfit didn’t include a bustle. And I could seriously do with another hour’s sleep. “No way. This place is a control freak’s dream.” Looking back over my shoulder, I gave Claire a smirk. “If I’d been born here, I wouldn’t even have tried being a hero.”

She laughed, and stepped up so close, her arm pressed to mine. Leaning her head towards my shoulder and lowering her voice, she said, “Which reminds me. You didn’t get to talk to Calvin and Juno like I did. If we refuse to help their revolution, I don’t think they’ll take it well.”

Discretion didn’t mean Remmy couldn’t hear us. She gave a sarcastic snort. “You haven’t even begun to see ‘control freak.’ You’ll admit my brother is right before the day is over.”

Doors clicked and opened on the boys’ side of the hall. The male half of Callisto’s tween population hurried out to join us. With no further signal, everyone solidified into lines, girls on the left, boys on the right, facing Miss Brassfarthing at the head of the hall.

“Breakfast time!” Remmy told me and Claire over her shoulder as the lines started to move.

The kids in Dorm M were more or less our age. None of them looked younger than Remmy. Of course, thanks to the hopefully soon forgotten shower incident, I now knew that Remmy was so short and coat hanger thin, she needed a baggy shirt and two inch boot soles just to look eleven.

The kids in the cafeteria ranged from kindergarteners to pushing college age, all packed into one giant dining hall. I was back in school all over again. At least this cafeteria was much better decorated than the one back home. Hardwood chairs beat hard plastic chairs, and the brass-edged wooden tables were downright lovely―and hardly vandalized at all! The table Ray, Remmy, Claire, and I sat down at only had one deeply scratched ‘M+G’, proving that the habits of love were universal, or at least interplanetary.

Automatons rolled up and down the aisles with carts. We collected brass trays with brass tableware. The dishes were merely heavy china, but boy, did the Jupiter colonists like brass and wood. I liked brass and wood, which made me much happier about the whole back-to-school atmosphere.

Then I made a mistake. I looked at my plate.

The farms on the top level must have been productive, because half our meal was a pile of chopped up fresh fruit. The bread looked stale, and crunched when I gripped it, but smelled rich, with more than a hint of corn. Both of those were acceptable. The meat lay in its bowl like a lump of congealed glue, off-white and shiny-crusted. It smelled like fish and plastic, not two flavors I wanted combined.