We gave Bethari a ride to school the next day.
“I was thinking,” she said, even before she scrambled into the car. “You should try out for stunt squad! I bet you’d make a great flyer.”
“For what?”
“The cheerleading team! I’m a flyer, too, but I’m a bit tall. You’d love it! It’s like your free running thing, only you do the tumbles in the air.”
I made a face. The tumbles she was talking about were the tricks everyone associated with parkour: big, flashy movements that I, unfortunately, didn’t have the strength or conditioning to pull off. I could fit through tiny gaps like no one’s business, but I wasn’t going to be doing spinning fan kicks anytime soon. “I’m a free runner mostly, not a tricker. Elisa M has cheerleading?”
“Elisa M has nearly everything,” Bethari said. “Except amazing boys and girls who want to experience all that I have to offer. For that, I go extracurricular.”
“Don’t screw the crew?” I asked.
“Good phrase! Yeah. You’re going to get lots of offers, you know. Have you seen the stuff about you on the tubes?”
Hurfest’s interview had turned me off tubecasts for a couple of days, but I’d peeked afterward. It had gone past politics now. There were people judging my fashion sense, rating my hotness level, and wondering if dating me would be necrophilia. “A little bit,” I admitted.
“Everyone loves you. Watch out for the famers.” She saw my expression and went on before I could ask. “People who sort of harvest celebrity by hanging out with people who are famous. Famous plus farmers, famers, see?”
“Got it. Not everyone loves me, though. There’s Australia for Australians, and—”
“Ugh, those drongles! Actually, that might be even a good thing, you know? Them ranting at someone coming back from the dead might just wake people up to how stupid the No Migrant policy is.”
She’d told me a little bit about the policy last night, among her other efforts to fill me in on some of today’s politics, but I hadn’t gotten it all straight in my head yet.
“So, it’s no migrants at all, right?”
“That’s right. Short-term visas only—study visas, or for, you know, holidays and stuff, if you’re rich enough to afford the air-fuel tax. No one gets residency, no one gets citizenship.”
“But people try to come anyway?” I asked. It seemed like in my time, every third story on the news was about the refugee crises and illegal immigration. Every second story had been about the climate. Bethari had shown me some of that stuff on the ’casts here, too, but it was quieter.
I’d assumed that was because the problems weren’t so bad.
“Oh, they try,” Bethari said. “Usually they get caught and stuck in one of the refugee camps in the North.”
“Like a detention center?”
“Like a camp,” Bethari said patiently. “Tents, shared toilet blocks, no unsupervised access to food or water. Surrounded by barbed wire and fully armed soldiers. They’re breaking Australian law by coming. So they end up in huge prisons.”
“I didn’t see anything about that on the tubes!”
Bethari shot a wary look at Zaneisha, who was impassively navigating behind a laden tram. “It’s on the media lockout list,” she said quietly. “A few years ago, a guard smuggled some footage out that showed the conditions in the camps, interviews with the residents, that kind of thing. Every ’caster who played it—and some of the ones who even linked to it—was subject to massive fines or voluntary shutdown for three months.” Her fingers made quote marks around voluntary.
It was hard to believe. “If it’s so bad, why do people still come?”
“Because Australia’s a land of opportunity,” she said flatly, and then sighed. “Because what they’re leaving is worse. The oceans are rising, and there’s less land to live on. Freshwater’s drying up, and people are fighting over it. It’s not great.”
“Oh,” I said. This wasn’t what I’d expected, not with the special toilets and timed showers. Surely people had done their best to prevent that kind of thing. I must have looked depressed, because Bethari nudged me.
“Don’t worry about that right now, though. Worry about the famers.”
“Gosh,” I said. “Thanks.”
Army secrecy must have worked, because no reporters were waiting for us outside Elisa M’s door. Elisa M’s honor code strictly prohibited recording or ’casting students without their permission, but it would be impossible to stop my fellow students from letting the world know that the Living Dead Girl was now one of their classmates, even if they couldn’t record me directly. Bethari had said the process would probably start about ten seconds after I walked in the door.
She was wrong. With Zaneisha in front of me, it took a whole twelve seconds after we entered the building before Bethari’s computer beeped at her.
“And we’re off,” she said, waving to a passing friend.
“I hate you,” I moaned, and tried not to notice the kids looking at me, looking away, and suddenly getting very interested in their computers.
It was stifling hot in the corridors, and Bethari had already warned me not to expect too much from the air-conditioning in the classrooms. Apparently schools statewide were held to a ninety-degree standard. By the time we hit the third floor, I was sweating in my white linen skirt and black tank top. Bethari had looped a patterned scarf around my hips to provide some color, but I really needed to go shopping.
Zaneisha indicated a seat in the back corner and stood directly behind me.
She wasn’t the only bodyguard in the room. The kids at this school were obviously rich, and some of them—or their parents—were important enough for around-the-clock security. Two men and someone whose gender I couldn’t pick traded glances and shallow nods with Zaneisha. Their charges ignored the byplay.
One of them, a tall boy in a red jumpsuit, detached from his group of friends and sauntered toward us. “Heeey. Tegan, right? What’s it like to be dead?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m alive.”
He smiled at me, perfect teeth flashing. Literally—they were inset with some sort of device that was blinking colored patterns at me.
“Go away, Soren,” Bethari said.
“I missed you last night, Bethi. The party wasn’t the same without you.” He turned to the group behind him. “It was no fun without Bethari, was it?”
They assured him that it wasn’t.
“It never is,” Bethari said. “But I don’t drink, and I don’t take breathers, and your bangers get a little rowdy for me.”
“Bangers?” I said.
“Parties,” she told me.
Soren turned his glittering smile back to me. “You should definitely come to the next one, Tegan. What’s your specialty?”
“Music.”
“Well, there you are,” Soren said triumphantly. “We always have music at my bangers.” He leaned in. “My specialty is journalism, like Bethi. You won’t mind if we ’cast our little occasion, will you, Tegan?”
“Is this a famer?” I asked Bethari, voice clear.
She grinned. “Soren is our best famer.”
Soren’s eyes went tight. “Maybe next time, then,” he said, and drifted back to his group. They giggled and whispered to one another.
I wondered what they could possibly say about me. I wasn’t rich. I had no famous relations. I was just some weird kid with awful hair and dull clothes, a celebrity for being dead.
I stared at my computer and tried not to mind.
Okay.
I know this is shallow, but in my time, I was really good-looking.
Not, like, model-hot, ’cause I’ve always been short, but I was noticeably pretty, and I knew it. Clear skin, high cheekbones, symmetrical features, and huge, dark eyes. I had—still have—big boobs for my size, which didn’t fit the ultraslender ideal, but sure attracted attention. Conditioning for free running kept me slim and muscled, and I had long, black hair, which was sort of my trademark. I could leave it loose or tie it up in one of those casual knots that usually took me ten minutes to get just right, or throw it into a fancy style for special occasions.
Boys like Soren used to like me because I was pretty, not because I’d been a corpse and was now a pseudocelebrity. It wasn’t until that first morning at Elisa M that I wondered if I just wasn’t attractive anymore.
And I was shocked by how uneasy that thought made me.
So, right then, when I was feeling ugly and insecure, he walked in, and the air emptied out of my lungs. My vision narrowed to that familiar form as he scanned the classroom and sat down at the front of the room, slouching a little in his seat.
Then I was standing in the aisle behind him with no memory of how I’d gotten there.
“Dalmar,” I whispered, and reached for his shoulder. My hand was shaking. “How did you get here? Dalmar?”
Zaneisha appeared at my side. “Tegan…”
“No!” I said, and ducked away from her, reaching for his arm. “Dalmar! Dalmar! Look at me!”
He did.
The face was so close: strong cheekbones and full lips with the exact curve of those that had kissed my bare skin. The perfect shape of his naked skull was the same, and the shade of his skin like rich earth. But this close I could see the differences—the three freckles Dalmar had had under his left eye were missing, and this boy had a wider, flatter nose. His eyelashes weren’t as long, and his eyes were a different shape and much lighter, golden-brown instead of a brown so dark it was nearly black.
And the contempt in those eyes was chilling. Dalmar had never looked at me like that.
“My name is Abdi,” he said in a lilting accent that was nothing like Dalmar’s Australian English. “I don’t know this Dalmar.”
“You look just like him,” I said, because my brain was still coming back from a century ago.
It was the worst thing I could have said. The contempt in his eyes deepened.
“I am Abdi,” he said definitively, and turned his face away.
That hurt so much that it shot through my haze. I looked up. The classroom was packed, thirty people at least, and every person in it was staring at me. Soren was gleefully typing something into his computer. Bethari was looking at me and wincing.
I’d just completely lost it in front of my new classmates.
And, oh god, worse—I was a white girl who’d called a black boy by the wrong name and insisted he looked just the same. Like he was interchangeable. Like he wasn’t a person in his own right.
“Bazza,” someone whispered.
Facebreaking, I thought, the word like little splinters of glass in my head. The school day hadn’t even started, and I had broken my face into bits.
“I’m sorry,” I told Abdi. “I’m really—oh, god.”
And then I ran away.
Even in the future you have to have a place to put your cleaning supplies.
My eyes were tearing up, but as I rushed out of the classroom and down the corridor, I could still make out the mop symbol on the little door. I yanked it open and ducked inside.
The air in that little room was even hotter than it was in the corridor, and it was dense with the scent of pine and lemon. I crouched on the floor, wrapped my arms around my shoulders, and tried to rock myself into something resembling calmness.
I had just done something awful and made a fool of myself in front of all my new classmates. I tried reminding myself that worse things could happen, and, in fact, several of them had happened to me, but it wasn’t that helpful.
I started going through the Blue Album in my head, my fail-safe, surefire calm-downer, but it all turned to mush, and the repetition of one name, over and over, to the beat of “Hey Jude.” Dal-mar. Dal-mar.
Dalmar, Dalmar, Dalmar, who’d been truly mine for only one day. Who’d married someone else, who’d forgotten all about me except as a tragedy in his youth. He’d gotten white-haired and fatter and happier over six decades.
But to me, he was the boy who two months ago had kissed my earlobes and whispered words of love into my palms, and ghosted his calloused fingers just above the surface of my arms, so that the hairs there had shivered and my skin tightened, trembling. I thought I’d seen him again. I’d been ready to accuse the government of lies, conspiracy, and deception. I’d been ready to march up to Dawson and slap the truth right out of him, to hold them all accountable for their horrible misdeeds.
But that boy wasn’t Dalmar. Dalmar was dead.
I remembered again the dislike in Abdi’s stare. I deserved it, but I was glad his eyes weren’t the same color as Dalmar’s. I couldn’t have borne it if Dalmar’s eyes had looked at me with that chilling contempt.
I could hardly bear it now.
“I really suck,” I muttered.
“Suck what?” a voice said from the darkness before me.
The only reason I didn’t scream was because the voice sounded genuinely puzzled and interested in my reply. Still, I jerked backward, nearly biting through my tongue.
“It’s an expression,” I said. “Uh, I thought I was alone in here.”
“Nope,” the voice said. “I’m here, too. Hi. Lights on.”
I had to blink hard in the sudden flare of brilliance. When I could see again, I was staring at a slim girl my own age, with shaggy, light brown hair and skin a few shades darker than mine. She was wearing a purple dress that reached to her knees and cuffed leggings under it that went halfway down her calves. She was sitting in the lotus position, bare feet resting casually on her thighs, and the light was coming from her computer, which was draped over her shoulders like a cloak. “I’m Joph,” she said. “What does ‘I suck’ mean?”
“I’m Tegan,” I said. “Teeg. It means that I’m a terrible person.”
Joph thought about that. “You don’t look terrible, Teeg.”
I began to laugh. I couldn’t help it. Of all the weird conversations I’d had over the previous weeks, including the one where Marie told me I’d been dead for a hundred years, this was a really strong contender for the weirdest.
“It’s okay,” Joph said. “You can stay here with me.” She gestured at her tiny domain as if it were a gift she was presenting.
“I’m not sure that would work,” I said. “But it’s tempting.” I was beginning to suspect that some of Joph’s serenity came from less-than-natural causes. I’d thought her eyes were black, but closer inspection showed a ring of light brown around the edge of the iris. Her pupils were really dilated.
There was a scratching noise outside. “Teeg?” Bethari called. “Can I come in?”
“Is that Bethi?” Joph asked. “Stellar.” She gave me another of those beatific smiles.
“Sure,” I called back, and wriggled a little closer to Joph to make room.
Bethari edged around the door, not opening it more than necessary, and then stopped when she saw I wasn’t alone.
“Ah,” she said. “I should have known.” She shook her head at Joph, who waved amiably back. “How do you feel, Teeg?”
“Stupid. Stressed. Embarrassed. Facebroken.”
“Well, you’re getting the vocabulary down.” She smiled at me.
“Yeah?” I said, unwilling to smile back. “What does bazza mean?”
Bethari hesitated.
“That’s a racist white Australian,” Joph said helpfully.
“Right,” I said, and slumped down again.
Bethari shot Joph a glare, then shrugged at me. “I could explain to people. About Dalmar. I mean, they might understand why you did it.”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of people pawing over my memories of him, the same way they’d pawed over my image in that interview, endlessly dissecting every word I’d said and gesture I’d made, making judgments about who I was and how I felt.
Ironic, right? Here I am, serving up all my memories on a platter, just begging you to listen, to discuss, to make your own judgments.
So ask yourself—if I wouldn’t do it then, why now?
Is it really so important that you understand where I’m coming from?
I think so. But you’ll have to decide for yourself.
Bethari wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “I know it probably doesn’t help,” she said, “but everyone says stupid things that hurt people.”
“As stupid as that? I thought things were better here, but it looks like I brought the bad with me.”
She didn’t say anything to that, just hugged me closer.
“How did you find me, anyway?”
“Zaneisha’s standing guard outside.”
Of course she was. I groaned. “Does she hate me?”
“Who can tell?” Bethari said. “Her face never moves.”
“You’re helpful,” I told her.
“Was I helpful?” Joph asked, my sarcasm apparently passing her by.
I laughed. “You were, actually.”
“Oh, good. I like you, Teeg. You want pop, scene, color, you come to me.”
Bethari’s face scrunched up.
“What’s pop, scene, color?” I asked, just to poke her. As if I couldn’t tell Joph was talking about drugs, even if I had no clue which ones she meant. In a century, they’d probably come up with dozens of new ways to fry your brain and a hundred new names for all of them.
“Let’s just say Joph’s specialty is chemistry,” Bethari said.
Joph’s smile was slow and sweet. “If you wanted one, Bethi, I’d give you a freebie, too. For old times’ sake.”
“The past should remain in the past,” Bethari told her, and then she clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said through her fingers.
“It’s okay,” I said.
She took her hand away. “Well, at least that’s proof that anyone can say something stupid.”
“If only you’d said it in front of your new classmates on your first day at school,” I said, but I did feel better. If even self-possessed Bethari could make careless mistakes without thinking, I could forgive myself for putting that look in someone’s eyes.
Maybe. In a while.
Whether Abdi could forgive me was another matter, but one I had to face. Besides, it was steaming hot in that janitor’s closet. My top was sticking to my skin, and I was pretty sure that Bethari had to be sweltering under her headscarf.
“Come and visit me anytime,” Joph said as we got up.
“You’re coming to class,” Bethari said firmly.
“I can learn in the closet,” she protested. “The school network works here.”
“Classroom,” Bethari said. “Socialize with your peers.”
“Aw,” Joph said, but she got up anyway. “I guess I’d better. When was the last time I was there?”
“Last Wednesday. You fell asleep.”
“Might do that some more,” she said thoughtfully. “Naps are nice.”
“Get,” Bethari said, and shooed her out the door. I had the satisfaction of seeing Zaneisha’s eyes widen a tiny bit at Joph’s unexpected appearance, before Bethari closed the door again and we were together in the hot dark.
“I have to tell you something about Abdi,” she said, her breath tickling my ear. I could hear her fidgeting beside me, the shushing sound of her light dress as it whispered over her body. “He’s not Australian.”
“Oh,” I said, meaning so?, and then caught up. “Wait, but the No Migrant thing—”
Bethari nodded. “He’s here because someone from this big tubecasting company saw him singing in Djibouti City, and they sponsored him on a Talented Alien visa. Talented Alien is weird—it’s all, ‘oh, look how nice and generous we are, training some of you people, but don’t forget, you can’t stay!’ As soon as he graduates, he’s gone. And people are nasty, you know? We’re mostly okay at Elisa M, but even some of the people here call him a thirdie, or talk about how No Migrant should mean no one should be coming in for any reason.”
I didn’t need to ask the meaning of thirdie; she’d explained that last night. It meant someone from the developing world. Someone from nations that didn’t pursue low-emissions energy, or restrict cattle-herding, or heavily tax large families who consumed more resources and pressed against the world’s already enormous population.
“So… oh crap. He thought me calling him Dalmar was part of that?”
“Maybe. I really think that if I explain—”
I shook my head. “He sings?”
Bethari snorted. “No. That’s the thing. He was sponsored because he sang, and he entered Elisa M with a music specialty. But he showed up the first day with a flute. He’s good with it, but it’s not what he’s famous for. I guess he didn’t want to be exploited.”
I could definitely empathize with that point of view. I wasn’t very keen on being used myself, and people like that Soren guy were obviously eager to use me.
“Okay,” I said. “Time to get this done. Let’s go.”
My second apology went like this.
Me, pretending not to notice half the class openly staring at me: “I’m really sorry about that. I made a stupid mistake.”
Abdi, barely looking up from his computer: “Okay.”
He didn’t look as if it was okay, though; he looked as if he was bored of the situation and wasn’t planning to be my bestie anytime soon.
I sat down and got on with my day. The right edge of Zaneisha’s lips creased slightly, which I interpreted as wild joy that her charge was finally in the place she was supposed to be.
I’d read about the school’s teaching methods in the infocasts, but it was different seeing them in action. Most of the actual teaching was done on the tubes, and students could access them whenever and wherever they chose. Assignments had to come in, and assessments had to be made. But other than that, students could do pretty much what they wanted, when they wanted.
Bethari was squashed into a beanbag in the corner, chatting with a red-haired boy as they went over a statistics assignment. Soren and his cronies were playing a game in the corner that had something to do with physics, and at least a quarter of the class was listening to music, either routed through their EarRings or under cover of sound shields. Joph wasn’t even the only one napping.
At my old high school, the teachers had ranged from angry-at-everything to nice-but-useless to occasionally-pretty-cool. None of them would let us eat in class, much less sleep or play. I liked learning, but I’d always found school to be a long grind, and some days it had been slow torture waiting for the minutes to tick over and for my real life to start again.
Maybe I could get used to Elisa M.
I wasn’t staring at him or anything, but I did notice that Abdi wasn’t listening to music, taking a break, or interacting with anyone. He was staring into his computer, working steadily.
The classroom facilitator, Just-Call-Me Eden, gave me the rundown on the school’s policies of everything, but before I could get any work done, I had to have access to the school network. She frowned at Koko and muttered for a while, then enlightenment struck. “Oh!”
“Oh?”
“This computer is in kinder-mode! No wonder I can’t get you in.”
My computer was set up for babies. My cheeks burned. A huge drawback of pale skin is that everyone can see you blush.
Eden leaned over and tried a few commands until she got the hang of my model. “All right, Tegan. Spread your fingers here, and repeat after me.”
I did. “I identify myself as Tegan Marie Oglietti, registered owner of this device, and I authorize adult mode interaction.”
My fingers buzzed. Koko’s screen went dark, then lit up again. Then six different kinds of music started playing, all at top volume. To make matters worse, Koko was blasting the noise through my EarRing. I clawed off the mobile phone and dropped it on my desk, but the sound continued.
I saw Eden’s lips form the word mute, but her voice was swallowed in the cacophony. I caught fragments of other voices as I frantically waved my hands in the go quiet gesture.
“—satisfying your partner? Try Dr. Tantric’s—”
“—memory fabric! Your cut, your way! Hafiza’s—”
“—Danish prince with access to ten billion kroner. Dear friend—”
Koko wasn’t paying attention to my gesturing. Her screen was shooting 3-D images at me, overlaying them in a complex collage of color and form, and when I lost my head and folded her over, trying to enclose the images inside, they just switched to her “back.” Even scrunched into a ball, the computer chattered and flashed.
“Quiet!” I yelled. “Oh my god, shut up.”
Most of the class was laughing or cringing. Eden was no help whatsoever, and Bethari was still struggling out of her beanbag.
It was Abdi who got there first, while I was squashing Koko against the desk in a futile attempt to stifle her shouting with my hands.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I assert my rights as outlined in the Advertising-Free Zones Act 2098,” he said clearly, right into my ear. “Repeat it.”
Voice shaking, I did.
There was stunning, miraculous silence, and the images winked out. Koko showed the cheerful glow of her start mode, peaceably awaiting instruction.
It had been to myself, but Abdi heard me. “Advertising,” he said quietly. “It can be a shock. If you’re not used to it.”
“Yes,” I said. My hands were trembling, too, and I sat down before my knees gave out. “Thank you.”
He examined my face. Those light brown eyes were expressionless, but his mouth was pursed. “You’re welcome,” he said finally. “I will see you in music.”
He returned to his seat at the front of the class and went back to ignoring me as steadily as he did everyone else in the room.
Joph lifted her head from her arms. “What happened?” she asked. “Did something just happen?”
I was wondering that myself.