It had come via a dummy email account the day after Eerie had arrived. The sender claimed to be Emily Muir, a Hegemony girl from the Academy that he didn’t know. Apparently, she was Eerie and Alex Warner’s classmate, and seemed as upset at their relationship as he was. Adel had no idea how she had found him. It would have taken a powerful empath to recognize the crush he had nurtured for the Changeling. The email was concise, detailed, and made a number of intriguing and lurid offers in return for one very simple thing. A false forward, an email purporting to come from the school account of one Alexander Warner. Emily Muir had already helpfully provided the text, and he had done the necessary work two days before. The email had been sitting in his outbox ever since, waiting for him to click a single button.
He wasn’t sure what would happen to Eerie if he sent it, but he was certain it wouldn’t be good. On the other hand, the email he had received promised him some very good things. Moreover, Adel was lonely, and resentful of Alex Warner.
Adel sulked in the dark of his office for an hour, before clicking the ‘Send’ button in a gesture so impulsive that he could only stare at his hand afterward, wondering how it had done such a thing without consulting him. He reread Emily Muir’s email until he didn’t feel anything other than barely suppressed excitement.
Eventually he returned to his assignment, a new head’s-up display for a ballistics protocol that Auditor Aoki used frequently. He spent about twenty minutes conceptually attacking it from different angles, before he decided that he was wasting his time. He reached for the forgotten soda blindly, and his questing fingers managed to knock it over, covering the papers on his desk with neon-green foam and causing Adel to curse to the greatest extent a secular Moroccan upbringing allowed.
“Adel?” Eerie asked, only her head peeking around his doorframe. “Are you okay?”
“Fine!” Adel shouted without meaning to. “Just fine. I just spilled this; ah… what can I do for you, Eerie?”
He made an utterly pointless attempt to make a neat pile of the print outs and documents that he had soaked with bright green soda while Eerie wandered into the darkened office, taking a seat on the only chair that wasn’t covered with a pile of folder-bound technical manuals. Her face was blank, but that told him nothing — from experience, he knew that was the way she usually looked.
“I need to go back to the Academy,” Eerie said seriously, “tonight.”
“Ah… yes?”
“Yes,” Eerie agreed solemnly.
Adel felt the time stretching out disastrously, his smile growing terser as he panicked behind it. He felt a perverse urge to turn his monitor so that Eerie could see what he had done, to show her how false her expectations were. Then he caught the look in her eyes, the obvious eagerness, and he had to choke back his resentment.
Adel put his hands down firmly on the desk, resolved himself, and did his best to look solicitous.
“Eerie,” he said carefully, “is this something I can help you with? Maybe something you would like to talk about?”
Eerie shook her head.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” He felt as if he were running a fever, sweat dripping down his brow and the small of his back. “Because if I could help you, Eerie, then I would like to.”
“Why?” Eerie asked, sounding more curious than usual, leaning forward so she could see him clearly in the dark room. Adel fought the urge to twitch and fidget.
“Because I like you, Eerie,” he admitted, amazed at his own forwardness, and a little afraid, too. “Because, after last time you interned here, I had hoped we might have a chance to get to know each other better…”
“I’m sorry,” Eerie said gently. “I would like to be friends with you, Adel. But I got a very important email. From an important friend. And I have to go now. Maybe we could talk later?”
“I see,” Adel said, stiffly. “Can I ask who you need to see?”
“Alex,” Eerie said softly. “He was supposed to be gone all break, but he came back early. I want to go see him, Adel. Please.”
“Well, if you really think that you must,” Adel said reluctantly, wondering again with a slightly uneasy twinge what exactly it was he was involving himself in. “The Administration won’t be happy, of course, since you are supposed to be with us until the end of break…”
“That can wait,” Eerie said, shaking her head. “I can be in trouble later.”
“Okay,” Adel said, mentally washing his hands of the matter. “Then go, if you think you have to. I won’t tell anyone, so they probably won’t notice until sometime tomorrow.”
If Eerie hadn’t leapt to her feet, right then, so excited that she barely managed to remember to thank him, he might have warned her. At least that is what he told himself. Instead, he felt a perverse satisfaction in hustling her out the door, as she was so eager to see her boyfriend.
“The bus should be by in twenty minutes,” Adel advised her helpfully. “Oh, and Eerie? Have a good time.”
“Whoa, Alex,” Renton said, blocking him with his arm. “Charm offensive.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked, struggling to peer past Renton and over the brush that separated him from whatever he was looking at.
“Must be,” Timor agreed solemnly.
Alex finally wriggled around Renton to get to the edge of the bluff. The sea stretched out below them, dotted with islands no bigger than their own and a clutch of small, wooden fishing boats, separated by waters that were a color of blue Alex had never seen before. The hillside below them was green with low brush and scrub, and a narrow dirt path wound down through it, to a small, white sand beach at the base, gently lapped at by rolling blue waves. It was one of three beaches on the island; the smallest and least accessible, but apparently it was also Anastasia’s favorite. Svetlana had taken the girls half an hour ago, while Renton had suggested they walk.
Anastasia was sitting on a towel, securely beneath a massive beach umbrella, no part of her white skin exposed to the late afternoon sun. She wore a black sundress that left her skinny legs bare, but covered whatever bathing suit she had chosen to wear. Nearby, but in the sun, Svetlana lay on her side on a towel, wearing sunglasses and a mundane burgundy one piece. Therese sat by herself on the sand, wearing a long t-shirt over her suit and reading a paperback in the sun. Katya was out where the waves broke, swimming a vigorous freestyle. And then there was Emily.
She must have seen them; she had to have known they were watching. She walked along the edge of the beach, her feet in the surf, profile against the sun reflecting brilliantly from the water. Her bikini was blue, and not overly revealing, but as with everything else, Emily knew how to wear it. She never looked at them, not once. She just strolled along, pausing to adjust her sandals, to dip her hands in the water. Nobody said anything for a little while.
“For the first time,” Renton said softly, “I am actually a little bit jealous of you, Alex.”
Alex nodded in agreement. What could he say?
“Can we go down to the beach now?” Timor asked, shifting impatiently.
“Yeah, yeah,” Renton muttered, starting down the path.
Alex was in the back of the group the whole way down, wrestling with himself, his eyes on the ground. He was past the point of making another decision, he knew that, but he was no closer to committing himself to anything. He was just letting things happen to him again, like his life was a movie, something to be observed and perhaps enjoyed, but not directly controlled. He cursed himself for the hundredth time since arriving; for saying those things to Eerie before he left (and probably, he feared, burning that bridge), for agreeing to come here in the first place, for coming here and failing to enjoy it because he was too busy beating himself up for making the decision in the first place.