Terra (17 page)

“You got me,” I say, shrugging. “Adam’s the one who… you know, come to think of it, I don’t even know what he did.”

“Yeah, so what’s the deal with you two anyway?”

“What do you mean?” I try to keep my response calm, but I know my cheeks are already flaring.

“Come on, Terra.”

“You come on. I’ve known him for, like, a day.”

“Uh huh. So?”

“So nothing. He helped me out, and now we’re helping him out. With his research or whatever. That’s all.”

“Right.”

“He’s a skyboy, Mica. There’s nothing to even talk about.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He grins at me and turns his focus back to the motorbike. I lean against the side of the building and contemplate sitting down, but my thighs scream in protest as soon as I begin to squat.

Damn stairs,
I think.

“Man, this thing is like, prehistoric. Except for this.” Mica points to a shiny lever that pokes out just below the ignition. “What is it?”

“How should I know?” I say, annoyed. “It’s probably whatever miraculous adjustment Adam made to get the transport to run.”

Mica flicks the lever up and twists one of the handles at the same time. The bike roars to life.

How does he do that?
I’ve always been jealous of Mica’s knack for technology. It took me an entire day just to learn how to use his computer.

He looks at me with wide, pleading eyes. As soon as I nod my permission, he takes off with a jolt, then stalls out just as quickly.

“Whoops.” He restarts the engine and takes off again, accelerating and braking with alarming frequency as he weaves back and forth.

“Be careful!” I shout. He lifts one hand to wave his acknowledgement and stalls out again. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

After a few minutes, he starts to get the hang of it. “Not too long,” I yell, waving to him as I turn to go back inside.

Adam is just walking out of the kitchen as I enter.

“I wasn’t sure where everything went,” he says. “I can move things around if it’s wrong.”

“You already put everything up?”

Adam shrugs—a gesture that feels familiar to me already.

“Well, thanks,” I say. I walk past Adam into the kitchen and open up a cabinet to inspect the goods. I instinctively start to organize the boxes of unfamiliar items. “Mica is having the time of his life on that thing,” I add, straightening a tall green box that has tipped onto its side.

“It’s fun for me, too,” Adam says. “Sorry if my organization skills aren’t the best.” He moves beside me and reaches into the cabinet to straighten another fallen box. His arm brushes against mine as the box settles into an upright position.

“So did you get all your notes down from today?” I say quickly.

“Huh?”

“I figured you’d be scribbling on that tablet of yours. For your research?”

“I, uh, I’ll get to it.” He turns a jar in the cabinet so that its label faces forward—
jellied blueberry concentrate
, it says.

“You might as well take whatever chance you can get while Mica’s preoccupied. I’m sure he’ll have a million more questions once he gets back up here.”

“I don’t mind,” Adam says. “It’s kind of nice. I have a brother too, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Older though. And he doesn’t have much of an interest in me,” he says.

“Well, careful what you wish for,” I say with a grin, running my finger over the embossed lettering on the blueberry jar, “or you’ll end up with mine attached to your hip.”

“Could be worse,” Adam says. “At least your brother had the courtesy not to punch me in the face when he met me.” I turn to make a face at him, but the small space between us feels suddenly charged. I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear self-consciously and we both pull away from the cabinet.

“Mica shouldn’t get so attached,” I say suddenly. “He’s had enough people duck out on him.”

He shuts the cabinet door. “
Mica
has, huh?” he says, stepping toward me.

“Yes.” It comes out like a whisper.

There is a sudden and noticeable silence. I barely have time to step away from Adam before Mica bursts through the front door.

“Holy crap,” Mica says, his face flushed with excitement. “That was awesome!”

“Before or after you stalled out?” I tease.

“Psh, as if you could do any better.”

“Now, now, children,” Adam scolds jokingly.

“So,” I say, glancing back at Adam, “who wants to see how good a ten-credit cracker tastes, hmm?”

Mica raises his hand tentatively and I laugh as I reopen a cabinet and pull out a box.

* * *

After we’ve eaten lunch, Adam immediately buries himself in his computer tablet. He perches himself on the couch and pokes around on the screen for hours, Mica glued to his side and watching TV. I’m just grateful he’s too consumed in his work to bother going back out again. Before I know it, the sun starts to sink into evening. When Mica gets hungry again, we repeat our lunchtime production, opting to fill up on samples of our grocery store haul instead of making a real dinner. Every package I open is as delicious as the last. Adam has to forcibly wrench a sleeve of tiny yellow cookies out of my hands.

“Okay, okay,” I say, throwing my hands up in surrender, “I’m done.” Adam eyes me skeptically. “No, really, I’m done!”

“I’m not going to lie, I could get used to living like the other half,” Mica says, patting his stomach. “Well, the other half of
our
half. I’m sure this is still ‘roughing it’ by skycity standards.” He pokes Adam in the shoulder and laughs.

“If this is roughing it, what does that say about the D-T-whatever you fed me last night?” Adam says.

“It says ‘shut up,’” I say, though I’m smiling as I close up the rest of the open packages and put them back in the pantry. “Anyway, if you thought this was good, just wait until tomorrow morning. I picked up a carton of synthetic eggs. Mic, remember eggs?”

“Not even a little,” he says, “but I’m excited anyway.”

“All right, I’m going to go for a walk,” I announce. After spending the entire day with both Adam and Mica around, I’m eager to have some time alone with my thoughts. Free from… distractions. “Hopefully work off some of this sugar buzz.”

“Actually, I think I’ll join you,” says Adam.

“Oh—uh, that’s okay, you don’t have to,” I say.

“I wasn’t asking for permission. Remember our deal? I show you out of the biodome, you show me around Sixteen.”

I sigh. “Hey Mica, want to come too?” I ask hopefully.

“Pass,” he says. “Homework.”

Sure, now he’s all responsible about his schoolwork,
I think.

“Shall we?” Adam says, already waiting at the front door.

The sun is just beginning to set as we step outside, tingeing the sky with soft swirls of pink and orange.

“So, what do you want to see first?” I say, annoyance lingering in my voice.

Adam shrugs. “How about we start with you showing me around this, what did you call it, quadrant?”

“Yeah, the West Quadrant,” I say as I start walking. “That’s where we are now. Two-point-two square miles of dust and gravel. Welcome.”

“So the North Quadrant has the shopping district and the main gate,” Adam says, falling into step with me. “What does this one have?”

“A little of everything and nothing,” I say. “Half the Marketplace is in this quadrant, we share it with the East Q. Other than that, it’s mostly housing developments. There’s Mica’s school, and I guess we have West Square, which is the closest thing Sixteen will ever have to a park.”

“Sounds lovely,” Adam says sardonically.

“Nobody says you have to stay,” I say defensively. It might not be much, but it’s still home.

“Oh, calm down,” Adam says. “What’s that?” He points to a squat square building with black-tinted windows. An obvious attempt to change the subject.

“It’s our mini library.”

“Mini library? As opposed to… a giant library?” He smirks at his bad joke.

“As opposed to the main library server housed over in town hall,” I explain flatly. I refuse to muster the chipper demeanor necessary to be an enthusiastic tour guide for Adam, especially considering he’s ruined my first chance to clear my head. “The mini branches allow us access to information without having to make the trek all the way up there. There’s one in each quadrant, and they have a bunch of computer stations set up inside. They’re almost like little study halls. This way every school-aged kid doesn’t flood town hall every time a paper’s due. We’re lucky, we have a computer at home, but not everyone does.”

I glance at Adam, who is observing the building speculatively. Eventually he pulls his eyes away and we forge onward, but he takes in our surroundings in silence. There are only a few other people out on the streets as we walk across the quadrant; after a few minutes, the quiet that settles over us starts to make me uneasy.

“So what kind of research are you here for, anyway? Is there something in particular I should be trying to show you?”
What can I do to make it go faster?

He takes a moment to answer. “It’s mostly observational. You know, seeing how things run down here, how you operate.”

“I didn’t think the Tribunal cared so much,” I say sarcastically.

“Believe me, it’s not my first-choice assignment either. All this waiting around, watching, note-taking… this is more my brother’s area.”

“He’s a researcher, too?”

“Sort of,” he says. “But it’s not really a job thing.”

“Then what kind of thing is it?”

Adam looks sideways at me. “He’s always been the patient one, the one who plans things out. Since we were kids, he was always on my case about needing to be more careful, more thoughtful. Less reckless. What I wouldn’t have given for him to just let me live a little.” Adam tenses up and I suddenly regret venturing down this line of conversation.

“I didn’t realize how late it had gotten,” I say, glancing toward the sinking sun and feeling pressure to change the subject. “My schedule is really messed up today.”

“That’s understandable, considering the day you had yesterday,” he says, relaxing his shoulders.

“I guess. But still. I can’t help but feel like it’s a whole day wasted.”

“That’s a pessimistic way to look at it. At least there was shopping, right? I thought girls were supposed to like shopping,” he says.

“Normal girls, maybe.”

“So that makes you, what, abnormal?” He grins his lopsided grin.

“There are numerous people who would attest to that,” I say.

“I’m sure they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Well, thank you. But considering the fact that we’ve known each other for, um, one day, your expertise is questionable.”

Adam laughs. “It’s been
at least
a day and a half.”

I crack a smile. “Oh, well, of course, then. You obviously know me better than I know myself.”

“Scoff all you like, but I think I know you better than you’d like to admit.”

“Oh?” I raise my eyebrows, feeling instinctively defensive.

He looks at me speculatively for a moment. “You’re not that hard for me to read. For other people, you probably are. I think they have a hard time seeing through you.”

I frown. “Is this some kind of extra ability your FX-thing gives you? I’m transparent to you?”

“It doesn’t take a special ability to see that you’re a smart girl, Terra. You know how you’re supposed to act. You pretend like you want to be normal, like being ostracized is something that saddens you, because you know that’s how you’re supposed to feel.”

“That
is
how I feel.”

“No, it isn’t. You like the solitude. That’s why you like being a scav. You like that there’s nobody out there depending on you, except Mica, and we both know that if push came to shove he could take care of himself. You want to prove to yourself that you don’t need anybody.”

“I
don’t
need anybody,” I say angrily. My emotions churn with every word Adam utters. I’m not some research specimen he can analyze and deduce in the span of a day. Even if he might be right.

“Cause if you don’t need anybody, it won’t hurt if they leave you, right? You were forced to grow up fast, in the wake of so much loss. It’s natural that you’d want to protect yourself from experiencing more of it, that you’d become so overly cautious.”

“So in addition to being a transparent loner, I’m overprotective and overly cautious now too? You don’t know anything about me. You think that dropping into my life for one day makes you some kind of expert? Who are you to judge me?” I walk faster, eager to distance myself from him.

“Oh, come on, Terra,” he calls after me, struggling to match my sudden change of pace.

I don’t slow down. We’ve walked as far as the West Square. I’ve almost made it to the Intheria Memorial statue in the center of the square, when I hear Adam running from behind.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he says, grabbing my arm as he catches up. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Sometimes I don’t think about my words before I say them, and things come out wrong. But I wasn’t trying to offend you.”

I spin around to face him, throwing his grip off my arm. “You don’t know me!” I say. I am alarmed at the prickle I feel in the back of my throat, a precursor to tears that I refuse to let him see. “You don’t
get
to know me. And you definitely don’t get to judge me.”

“I wasn’t, Terra.” He calmly steps toward me. “It’s not my place to judge, and even if it were, I would never judge you for being independent. You’re so defensive. I’m just saying that I admire your ability to take care of yourself. I should probably add it to my notes, to be honest.” He offers me a grin.

“You
admire
me?” I say skeptically. I want to step away from him, but the Intheria statue’s large stone base blocks my path.

“I think you are strong.” He reaches his hand to my face and, surprisingly softly, brushes a lock of hair behind my ear. His fingers linger as they reveal the bruise underneath my hairline. “And I’m sorry this happened to you.”

I don’t know if he’s talking about my bruise or something much greater than that. A lump rises in the back of my throat. The heel of my boot presses against the statue’s base and, before my mind can tell it not to, my body folds itself into Adam’s arms. He leans into my weight, surprised, but in an instant has wrapped his arms around me. I stand there, pressing my cheek against his chest. The steady rhythm of his heart pulses against my ear.