“Can I help you?” Van asked. When I glanced over to Koen, he looked away, so I passed Van the list of books. My fingers trembled, but we both ignored it.
“I need these.”
“You can’t take the originals out of here.” Van spoke to me like we were strangers, like we’d never spoken before. Like this was only business. “You have to read them in the library.”
“I know!” I said, too loud, then scowled. I lowered my voice. “That’s fine.”
Van’s mouth tightened, little lines forming around his lips. Without another word he disappeared into the closed stacks behind him.
The silence was unbearable. It seemed to ring out, cutting right through my body. Koen’s long neck was turned away from me; his unruly bangs shadowed his face. I thought of all those suppers with my father—thought of the way his arms had felt around me only a few days before.
“Did I do something wrong?” Worry mounted in my voice. Koen winced, his features contorting as though in pain.
“I’m trying to help you,” he said. “I just wanted to take care of—”
He cut off midsentence, his head snapping up. Van had returned, a stack of books in his arms. I stared down at the counter as Van began to enter the call numbers into the computer terminal.
“My name is Terra Fineberg,” I said, my tone hazy. “And my cNumber is—”
“I know who you are,” Van said. His upper lip lifted like I was a piece of rancid meat. “You’re Terra Fineberg. The girl who can’t keep her mouth shut.”
It was like he’d found a seam in my skin and torn it open with his fingernails; all my breath came out in one long hiss.
But then Koen spoke up. “Van! You promised.”
Van glowered. But Koen wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at me.
“Don’t worry, Terra,” he murmured. His voice almost broke. I’m sure if I spoke, mine would have too. “Van promised me that he wouldn’t do anything. I told him you wouldn’t tell anyone else, that you can be trusted. Right?”
My cheeks burned. My mind was filled with a cacophony of questions and not a single answer.
“I don’t understand. Why can’t we tell someone?” I demanded. But when my gaze swept between the boys, I saw how closely both watched me. Van’s eyes smoldered, silently threatening. When I spoke again, my words came out high and weird. “I won’t tell anyone. There’s nothing to tell anyway, right?”
I saw Koen crack a thin smile.
“See, Van?” he said. “I told you we could trust her.”
The corner of Van’s mouth twitched up. He pushed the books toward me across the counter. I grabbed for them.
“If you say so,” he said. Then he turned away from me.
I gave Koen a small, brave smile. He solemnly looked back. Hefting the books in my arms, I started for the second floor, where the study desks waited. But their voices trailed after me as I made my way up the spiraling staircase.
“If she told you,” Van was saying, “there’s no telling who else knows.”
I felt my grip on the books tighten until my knuckles turned white. He didn’t trust me to keep a simple secret—and why should he? I was nothing but a weak little girl. A snitch.
Shaking my head at myself, I hurried up the stairs.
Over supper that night I watched as my father forked potatoes into his mouth and chewed slowly, the way that sheep in the atrium fields chewed the long grass. Pepper circled the legs of my chair, meowing incessantly, but we both ignored him. I waited for my father to speak. When he didn’t, I set my fork down at the edge of my plate and cleared my throat.
“I saw Koen today,” I said, desperate to find any words with which to plug up the silence. “In the library.”
He didn’t look up. “What were you doing in the library?”
“Mara sent me to do some research.”
My father took a long drink from one of the dented metal tumblers, set it down again, took another bite. I let out a sigh. Without Koen around, talking to Abba was like slogging through some sort of muddy field—I wanted to move forward, but the soles of my boots kept getting stuck.
My father finally paused in his chewing. “I gave him the day off. I suppose that Stone was trying to get you out of her hair as well? I saw her skulking around the captain’s stateroom.”
“That’s right. She said you were getting probe results in today. From Zehava.”
My father wiped the back of his broad hand against his lips. “That was the plan. Captain Wolff said that there’s been some sort of delay in the probe’s return. They’re sending out a second one.”
I stared at him, thinking about how Mara had said she’d been waiting for the results—waiting her whole career, from the sound of it. “That’s strange,” I said.
My father shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe there were storms on Zehava. Maybe the original coordinates were incorrect. There’s no telling.”
I nodded uncertainly. My father narrowed his eyes at me.
“The library. I hope he wasn’t schmoozing with that librarian again.”
“Van Hofstadter?” I said faintly, fixing my hands to the edge of the table. But their grip felt uncertain; my palms had begun to sweat. “Why, what’s wrong with him?”
My father didn’t answer. He only picked up his fork again, then rapped the tines against the table—one time, two, three. The gesture was made all the more nerve-racking by the way the vein on his forehead bulged.
“There have been rumors,” my father said. He spun his fork around, stabbing his overcooked potato with it.
“Rumors?” I asked. But my father only grunted through a mouthful of mushy tubers.
“I forget sometimes,” he said at last.
I almost didn’t dare to breathe. “Forget what?”
“That you’re not your mother.”
With that, my father put down his fork and rose on heavy feet. He crossed the galley and came to stand just behind me. Reaching down, he touched the blue cord on my uniform. His trembling hands moved slowly.
“If you’re a good girl, Terra,” he began. His voice sounded strained, pinched. “If you stay out of trouble and do your duty, and if you’re kind to Koen and treat him well, then I’m sure everything will be fine.”
There was a long silence. A lump was rising in my throat. I didn’t want to try to dislodge it. I thought doing that might break the spell.
“Koen’s my student,” my father went on. It was hard for me to hear his words over my thrumming heartbeat. “And you’re my daughter. I care about you both, very much.”
“I know,” I lied, my voice a hollow rattle in my chest.
“You need to be careful of who you get mixed up with. Both of you.”
“Okay.”
He lifted his hands off my shoulders. One of my own hands darted up, rubbing the warm, clammy spot where his fingers had been.
“Good,” my father said. Even though his plate was still half full, he started toward the stairwell. Then he paused at the bottom, grimacing. I couldn’t be sure if he was talking to me or to himself.
“I won’t lose you too,” he said.
“Lose me?” I asked. But by the time my words moved past my throat, my father had disappeared upstairs, Pepper padding up into the darkness behind him.
The next morning Mara was a whirlwind of fury. I watched from the doorway as she stomped from one end of the lab to the other, pulling books from their shelves, then tossing them over her shoulder. They spun, then landed on the ground, splayed open. Her heavy boots trampled right through a tray of seedlings, but she didn’t even seem to notice.
“Good morning?” I called as the door shivered shut behind me. Across the room the little woman let out a desperate laugh.