Stars, he sucked. Everything sucked.
He saw Ras approach out of the corner of his eye. He had a spring in his step, a look that said I’ve got an idea. Kip took a long sip of his choko and sighed. He was still kind of pissed at Ras, but at the same time, there was nobody else coming over to sit with him.
‘Tek tem, man.’ Ras took his place on the bench and reached for Kip’s drink. ‘You look like shit.’
Kip let the bottle go without a fight. ‘Yeah, well, I spent my night boxing up all the food compost in the whole fucking hex, so . . .’ He let a shrug serve as the end of the sentence.
Ras winced. ‘They are really on your ass about this, huh?’
‘Are yours not?’
Ras shook his head as he drank. ‘They keep giving me shit, but I’m not in trouble-trouble.’ He handed the bottle back over. ‘Tika lu, man. I feel kinda responsible.’
Kip looked at his friend and felt some irritation slip away. Ras cared, and that . . . that felt pretty good. ‘Nah,’ Kip said. ‘It’s cool. Semsem.’
The smile returned to Ras’ face. ‘To make sure that it is, I wanna make it up to you. You think they’ll let you come out soon?’
Kip considered. It had been a tenday since it had all gone down, and Mom was being more reasonable. ‘Maybe. I got a job trial—’
‘Where at?’
‘Tailor shop. Y’know, stitching socks, whatever.’
Ras rocked his head, trying to look positive but undoubtedly unimpressed. ‘Cool.’
Kip gave a short laugh. ‘It’s not.’ He took another sip.
‘Well, here,’ Ras said, handing over his satchel. ‘You’ll feel even better about this, then.’
Kip looked at the bag, then looked at Ras.
‘Open it, dumbass.’ Ras turned his head toward another group from school. ‘Hey, Mago!’ he called cheerfully. ‘Porsho sem!’ Nice ink.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ came the inevitable reply. Mago had gotten a cheap bot tattoo on vacation and it looked straight up dumb. Like, the lines didn’t even move at the same time.
Kip unclasped Ras’ satchel as the sparring continued. Just school stuff, it looked like. Scrib, stylus, some pixel pens, a bag of candy, a lunch tin, an info chip, a— wait. He rifled back to the bag of candy. He wasn’t sure that it was candy.
‘Dude,’ Kip said, starting to lift the bag out of the satchel. ‘Is this—’
Ras pushed Kip’s hand down into the satchel without looking. ‘Stay stylish, man,’ he called after Mago’s back. Ras snapped to Kip. ‘What the hell,’ he whispered, more amused than mad. ‘Don’t let people see.’
That clinched it. This was not candy. Kip dropped his voice to match Ras’, his heartbeat kicking up several notches. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Toby’s sister, remember? I told you.’
Kip looked at the clear pack, full of non-threatening bundles, each wrapped in a colourful bit of throw-cloth. He’d never smoked smash before, but he knew what it looked like. He’d played sims. Smash wasn’t illegal or anything – not in the Fleet, anyway – but you could only get it and use it in special cafes with bouncers at the door and patrol always hanging around outside. It was also yet another one of those things locked away behind the When You Turn Twenty seal, and he didn’t know any adults who were into it. His mom definitely wasn’t. She said it was ‘a waste of time, trade, and self-respect.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Ras gave him a reassuring look. ‘It only lasts a few hours, and it’s not like we’ll be sitting around your kitchen. We’ll go park ourselves in a garden somewhere after lights out, and it’ll be a real good time. And besides, Una makes solid stuff.’
‘Have you tried it?’
‘Well . . . no, but everybody says. You should’ve heard her explaining it to me as she packed it up. It’s some serious science. Look, if you don’t want to, it’s cool—’
‘Nah,’ Kip said. He closed the satchel definitively. ‘Let’s do it.’
Ras blinked, then laughed. ‘All right, man!’ He clapped Kip on the shoulder. ‘I thought you were gonna take more convincing than that.’
Kip swallowed the last of his choko, heart still quick but head as steady as could be. He shrugged again, as if he did this every day. ‘Something to do, right?’
Tessa
Somewhere in her head, she knew that she’d left the cargo bay, that she’d found someone to cover for her, that she’d taken a transport pod, that she’d walked (and run, in spurts) through the crowded plaza and into the entry doors of the primary school. She’d felt nearly none of it. Nothing but a furious blur existed between getting a vox call at work and her bursting into the admin office, where Aya sat sobbing on the couch, untouched tea and cookies on the table in front of her, a pair of concerned adults on either side.
‘Tessa, I am so sorry,’ one of them said, standing to make way for her. M Ulven, Aya’s teacher. ‘I don’t know how they got away from the group, it happened so fast—’
In the same distant part of her head that held the memory of getting from there to here, Tessa knew that the teacher wasn’t to blame, that field trips were frantic and kids were unpredictable, that her daughter would be okay. But all of that was shadowed behind a raw animal fury, something that wanted to roar at everyone who’d let this happen.
She took her place beside Aya and pulled her close. Aya trembled, her face burning red and her nose pouring down her lip. There was a throw-cloth clutched in her hand, unused. Some part of her head was distant, too.
Tessa glared at the people who were supposed to keep her kid safe. ‘Give us a moment,’ she said from behind her teeth.
M Ulven started to say something, but the head teacher laid her hand on his arm. He nodded guiltily – good – and they exited the office. Aya clutched Tessa’s shirt as the door slid shut, sobbing all the harder.
‘It’s all right, honey,’ Tessa said, hugging, rocking. The girl in her arms was so big, and yet still so small. ‘Here, blow your nose.’ A sizable portion of Tessa’s shirt was already soaked with snot. No matter. Ky had done the same to another corner that morning. Her definition of clean hadn’t been the same since the moment a night-shift doctor had placed a blood-smeared newborn in her arms.
Tessa took the throw-cloth from Aya’s hand and pressed it to the kid’s face. ‘Blow.’
Aya did as told, and continued to sob. ‘I was so scared.’
‘I would’ve been, too.’ Tessa rubbed her daughter’s back with the palm of her hand for a few minutes, waiting for Aya to quiet a bit. The sobs slowed, hiccuping out weakly every few seconds. ‘M Ulven told me what happened, but I want to hear it from you. Tell me how it went.’
Aya sniffed. ‘Am I in trouble?’
‘No.’ Under different circumstances, she would have been, but that was a bridge too far right then.
Aya swallowed hard and began to speak. ‘Everybody age nine went on a field trip to water reclamation today.’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ Tessa said, handing her the wet cloth. That part she hadn’t needed a recap of, but okay.
‘And Jaime, he – he said – it wasn’t my idea, Mom—’
‘You guys snuck off on your own,’ Tessa said. A pack of four or five of them, was what she’d gotten over the vox.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ Tessa echoed. She was sure that her daughter had leapt at the chance to abandon a dull field trip for a de facto obstacle course. That was a talk for another day. ‘And then what?’