“Felicia, I—” he began, hoping to ward off the brunt of her attack with some kind of excuse. But he didn’t really have one, and she didn’t give him a chance to get it out anyway.
“Be quiet, William Riker, and let me talk. I get the distinct impression that you’ve been avoiding me, ever since September. I also have the feeling that if I hadn’t made a point of ‘accidentally’ being outside your classroom today, I still wouldn’t have seen you. What I’d like to know is what terrible crime I committed to deserve this exclusion from your life, because I must have done something.”
“You ...” Will began, and then he stopped because he didn’t know where else to go. “It isn’t anything youdid, Felicia,” he said. As he spoke he watched a bird struggle to lift a crust of bread nearly as large as it was. He knew how the bird felt. “I ... I had a rough summer, I guess. And then that kind of led into a rough year. I’ve been busy, you know, trying to knuckle down and get my grades up.”
“Even so ...”
Will shrugged. “I guess I’m not always good at understanding women.”
Felicia stared at him, open-mouthed, as if he had just emerged from a particularly disgusting cocoon. “Understanding women? It isn’t like we’re a separate species, much less a non-humanoid alien life-form, Will. We’re just like you, only with some different parts.”
He felt duly chastised. “I guess it’s those different parts that throw me off.”
“You don’t have to let them. It’s those different parts that make things interesting. Anyway, how would you feel if you knew I had avoided you for the last six months?”
“I didn’t realize you hadn’t been,” Will offered. “I mean, I wasn’t so much avoiding you as just not seeking you out. And I thought ...” He stopped, once again not quite sure how much he wanted to say, or in what direction he really wanted to take the conversation. “I think I thought you weren’t interested in me. In being friends with me.”
“Well, you were wrong. And I have looked for you, a few times. But after you didn’t answer my messages during the summer, and then during the school year you never seemed to be where I could find you. I got the feeling you just didn’t want to be bothered. At least, not by me.”
Will found that he was smiling for the first time since they’d taken their seats on the bench. “So I’m not the only one who doesn’t always understand other people.”
“People are hard to understand if they don’t communicate,” she said. “But yes, apparently I misjudged you as well. Will you forgive me?”
“I think there’s going to have to be some mutual forgiving,” Will suggested.
“Maybe we should just start over from the beginning,” Felicia said. She offered her hand. “Hello, Cadet. I’m Felicia Mendoza, from El Salvador, Earth.”
“William T. Riker,” he said with a smile. “Valdez, Alaska, Earth.”
“Can we be friends, Cadet Riker?”
“I think I’d like that, Cadet Mendoza.” He felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders that had been there since the end of school last year. The awfulness of the summer had been compounded, he knew, by his confusion over Felicia’s feelings—or, as he understood now, his misjudgment of Felicia’s feelings. He still didn’t quite know what had happened, but he thought that it might be better just to let the details slip away, rather than dredging them up and having to undergo the discomfort of facing them specifically. For now, the softness of her hand in his, her warm smile and the light that danced in her brown eyes and the way a strand of her dark hair rested against her olive cheek, where it had escaped her ponytail, all conspired to make him believe that he had come out of a long tunnel into a glorious day.
When Felicia had dismissed him—and he’d been a little hurt by then, because, after all, who wouldn’t want to be the otherperson in that triangle, the one that Felicia sent somebody away in favor of?—Dennis had taken the opportunity to go back to his room and start searching for a soldier he could research. But his eyes kept glazing over as he tried to focus on his computer screen, his attention kept being drawn to the city beyond the window. The occasional shuttlecraft flashed by, lights blinking in the darkness, and the nighttime illumination of the city spoke of thousands of lives being lived out there.
Felicia was a beauty, there was no doubt of that. But it was to Will, not Felicia, that his thoughts kept wandering. William Riker had something, some quality, that Dennis couldn’t put his finger on.
It wasn’t just that Felicia obviously preferred Will to him, though they’d both known her for about the same length of time. Certainly Will was a handsome guy, and Dennis was a little surprised he didn’t have girlfriends all over the place. But what got to Dennis was that, although Will struggled, he always seemed to come out fine in the end. He had turned his grades around, and now seemed to be on course to finish this year near the top of their class. His other, nonacademic pursuits—athletics and extracurricular activities—were career builders that could take Will far in Starfleet. He was popular, and had made contacts among faculty, staff, and fellow students that would help him immensely in the years to come. He had never made it look effortless, but he made it look possible.
Dennis, on the other hand, felt as if he were drowning, like the water got deeper every day and he could barely see the sky above its surface anymore.
He had just turned back to the computer screen, intent now on finding someone he could study up on, of turning at least this one assignment into a success instead of adding it to the pile of work not-quite-done that threatened to swamp him and drown his career before it started, when there was a knock on his door. “Come in,” he called.
Estresor Fil opened his door and walked in. He waved her toward his couch, and she sat down, her feet no longer touching the floor when she eased her bottom all the way back into it. “Hello, Dennis,” she said as she made herself comfortable.
“Hi, Estresor Fil. What are you up to?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “Visiting,” she pointed out.
“Of course,” he said. “I meant ... never mind.” He was, in fact, a little surprised by her appearance. They were friends, certainly, but rarely saw one another outside their group.
“Am I disturbing your work?”
He sighed. “If I had been actually working, you might be. But so far, not.”
“You would let me know if I were, right?” she asked.
“Yes, Estresor Fil. Don’t worry about that. Is there some particular reason for your visit, or is it just a social call?”
She considered the question for a moment, causing Dennis to believe there was something more to it than a simple drop-in. Maybe she was uncomfortable talking about it, though. Which, given her ordinarily blunt nature, probably narrowed down the likely topics considerably.
“Social call,” she finally said. “Or possibly not ... I do, in fact, find myself in need of some assistance. Dennis, how much do you know about love and romance? Earth-style, I mean.”
Dennis had had a few casual girlfriends over the years, but hardly considered himself an expert on such things. And then there was the question of why she had come to himwith such a thing. Did Estresor Fil have a crush on him? He wasn’t quite sure how he would feel about that. Complimented, certainly, but she looked just a bit too much like a praying mantis for him to be able to return the compliment. “Not really that much, I guess. I mean, I know the basics, in principle, but when it comes to putting them into practice I’m as useless as the next guy. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just all so confusing to me. I try to figure these things out by myself when I can. And there’s an episode of Squirrely Squidthat is really quite helpful, I think.” Dennis wasn’t sure what a primitive holotoon series for children would really have to say about adult love and romance, but he knew Estresor Fil too well to point that out and he kept his doubts to himself. “But even with that, there are some things I just don’t understand.”