The march out of the barracks took place between two walls of mannequins. Molly had no idea what prevented them from celebrating her departure. It was as if they were scared of something. Or someone. She didn’t care. She suddenly felt older than they were. Her delusions and naiveté had been forged into something sharp and dangerous. Something the military wouldn’t get to use in a career of killing. It was a deadly thing she would smuggle out of their blasted Academy and use for her own protection, like armor. Never hurting again.
It was a good idea. While it lasted.
Rounding the corner to the administrative hallway, Molly ran right into Cole. Literally. Her face crashed into his chest, her bag sliding across the hall. Both of Cole’s hands went to her shoulders, steadying her.
“Whoa, tiger.”
She looked up at him to say something rude, something that would let him know he was no better than the rest of them—she was gone and didn’t care if they ever talked again.
And then she saw his face.
One eye was completely swollen shut—a black slit between two purple bulges. A bandage crossed his nose, his nostrils chapped with blood. The top lip of his perfect mouth had been split wide open, black stitches tied off in a rough knot, their ends cut too long. His left cheek was a band of hues Molly had never seen before; the colors rose up to mix with the blackness below his eye. And he was standing there, smiling at her, trying to wash her worries away.
She touched her own upper lip, speechless.
Cole jabbed one of his thumbs over his shoulder, pointing back the way he’d come. “Heh. You should see the other guys. Infirmary.” His voice sounded funny, his nose stuffed and his lips avoiding each other.
Molly couldn’t speak. She threw both of her arms under his and locked them behind his back. She wasn’t sure how it was possible, but she started crying again, pressing her cheek into Cole’s unwashed flight suit. It had the same musky smell of a simulator after a battle—and something else. The smell of a real fight.
“I’m gone…” she croaked.
“I know,” he said softly. “Those bastards.”
There was so much more to say, but for now, this was enough. Molly held Cole for as long as she could stand it, until his arms reciprocated just a little, and then she pulled herself free. She ducked around him without making eye contact, grabbed her forlorn black duffel, and disappeared around the corner.
Cole called something to her as she ran away, but she could hardly hear anything over her own sobs.
5
Molly leaned back in her desk, reading Jim Eats Corn. With five years in the Navy reading nothing but technical manuals and tactical treatises, the fiction offered a blessed change of pace. Not as good as the romantic space operas she’d read in Junior Academy, but a lot better than she thought it would be.
For as long as Molly could remember, she’d been an avid reader. Her father had taught her at an early age. On Lok, he’d collected ancient children’s books for her, antiques with board backs and individual pages. She couldn’t recall their titles, but she remembered the bright colors and the odd words. She’d been reading ever since, another hobby that made her different.
Since transferring to Avalon High, she’d started working her way through the recommended reading list, the “boring” books that were supposed to teach life-lessons. Surprisingly, she found herself enjoying them, and they helped kill the excess time the other kids needed for the tests.
The pace of her new school had been a major transition. Everything was dreadfully slow; the other students got distracted by anything and everything. No one seemed to be here to actually learn—it was more like a daily prison sentence kids endured before they got to do the stuff they wanted to do.
The first week had been particularly torturous. Molly came into the school with the high expectations instilled by the Navy. It was a philosophy that clashed at Avalon, where tardiness and procrastination were the norm. Here, kids celebrated whoever got away with the worst behavior while shunning anyone attempting to do the right thing.
It was an attractive scheme, easy to be lured into if one was soft. Molly decided early on that she would not become like them. At the same time, she didn’t want to ruffle feathers or hurt feelings, so she decided to view Avalon High as just another tactical dilemma. She saw herself surrounded by aliens, and she could either let them defeat her the way the last bunch had, or make the best of it.
She chose the latter, using the slow time to educate herself in the things the Navy had neglected to teach. Once her teachers saw the quality of her work, they stopped asking her to put away the pleasure reading, which is why she could read while her classmates bent over a math test. She watched them scribble furiously, testing the multiple-choice offerings to see which ones created the least ridiculous results. Five months ago, she had been solving integrals in her head while worrying a wrong answer might get her and Cole killed.
Cole.
The smallest things reminded her of him. She found herself constantly wondering what he was doing at that very moment. Last semester it had been an easy game to play, what with the rigidity of the Academy. She could look at the time and know he was sitting in the simulator, or working out in the gym, or falling asleep during Space Strategics 202.
After winter break, she had no sense of what his schedule might be. He was everywhere and nowhere, so the game wasn’t as enjoyable anymore. Eventually Molly realized: she wasn’t having fun with wondering where Cole was, she was just fantasizing about where she should be. As hard as she struggled to accept this new life, some part of her still longed to be back at the Academy. Even as a navigator and Saunders’s “whipping boy,” she still had those hours of performing well in the simulator. And Cole.
“Time’s up, class.” Mrs. Stintson rapped her desk with her moon-rock paperweight, creating a beat for the chorus of groans. Pencils slapped desktops in frustration. Somebody continued to scratch away.
“TIME, Jordan.” One more pencil smacked down.
When the bell rang, everyone filed up to the teacher’s desk with their tests, transforming glum into good cheer. The weekend. And Spring Break was just a week away.
Molly programmed a bookmark in Jim Eats Corn and shoved the reader and her computer into her bag. As she stood and stretched, Mrs. Stintson caught her eye and waved her over.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Someone here to see you. Check in with the office on your way out.”
“Yes, ma’am. Have a nice weekend.”
A visitor? Molly couldn’t think of anyone who knew her outside of the school and the Academy. And nobody from the latter would be caught dead here. Vaguely intrigued, she ambled toward the door thinking of Jim’s problems with the corn harvest, unaware of how profoundly her life was about to change.
Mrs. Stintson watched her prized student file out before sliding Molly’s test out from the bottom of the pile, placing it on top.
As soon as Molly opened the door to the school office, she knew who her visitor was. She knew it before she even saw him. It was in the way that all of the women were holding themselves. Even the Vice Principal was attempting to stand at attention.