“I’ll be right back,” Colonel Ilich said, touching her on the shoulder. “I just need to get one thing before we start.”
She nodded, dismissing him. Her attention was on Muriel Cowper. She was a year older than Teresa, with dusty brown hair, a chipped front tooth, and a talent for drawing that meant she did all the face painting at the large-group events. She approached Teresa now, and it looked like she was trembling. It reminded Teresa of Carrie Fisk.
“Teresa,” the other girl said. “Can I … could we talk for a minute?”
Teresa felt a little prick of dread, but she nodded. Muriel took a couple steps toward the door to the courtyard, then stopped and looked back the way Muskrat did sometimes, to be sure Teresa was following. In the courtyard, Muriel held her hands in front of her belly like a child being disciplined. Teresa wanted to take them, push them back down to her sides, make her act normal. Muriel’s anxiety was like heat from a fire, and it made Teresa feel anxious too.
“What’s going on?” Teresa asked.
Muriel licked her lips, took a deep breath, and looked up, her eyes locked on Teresa’s. “There was a camping trip with the school last week, and all of us went, and it was overnight so a bunch of us snuck out to the water when we were supposed to be asleep and Connor kissed me.”
Teresa felt something. She didn’t know what it was, but it lived in her abdomen, just below her navel, and in deep enough that she knew it couldn’t be muscular. The implications clicked over in her mind like dominoes. Connor had kissed Muriel. Not just that, but Connor had wanted to kiss Muriel. Not just that, but Muriel had known that Teresa would care. And so had everyone else.
Oh God, and so had Connor.
“I can break up with him,” Muriel said softly. “If you want me to.”
“I don’t care what either of you do,” Teresa said. “If you and Connor want to go into the woods and kiss, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Thank you,” Muriel said, and went back into the common room, almost skipping. Teresa followed her, trying not to let anything that was happening in her body show on her face. Colonel Ilich arrived as she did, smiling warmly. He had a round black-and-white ball the size of a decapitated head under his arm.
“Today,” he said to all of them, “we’re going to be learning some new football drills. The rain’s made the east lawn a little damp for the process, so if you fine ladies and gentlemen will please follow me to the gymnasium, you can change into more appropriate clothes …”
The middle of the day was filled with echoing shouts and the burn of her legs and back. She kicked too hard and missed more of the shots than she made, and through all of it, she felt the attention of the class on her. Of Muriel. Of Connor. Even Colonel Ilich noticed that she was off her game, but apart from a gentle question about how she was feeling, he didn’t follow up on it. When the time came to shower and change back into her regular clothes, she didn’t go to the locker rooms with the others. She had her own apartments. She didn’t need to be with them anymore. Not any of them.
As she left, she looked to see if Connor was with Muriel. If they were holding hands. If they were kissing. As it happened, they weren’t—Connor was at a brushed steel drinking fountain with Khalid Marks and Muriel was pretending that she’d died and had to be carried off the floor by Anneke Douby and Michael Li. Teresa thought it should make her feel better, but it didn’t.
In the privacy of her rooms, she let herself cry. She felt stupid for having to. Connor wasn’t anything to her but the boy she’d thought about more than other boys. She’d never kissed him or tried to hold his hand. Until today, she’d have said that he didn’t even know that she felt different about him. That no one knew. Except now he was sneaking out of his tent with Muriel fucking Cowper in the middle of the night. Who was even in charge of the camping trips that they let things like that happen? Someone could have been drowned or mistaken for prey by a local animal. They were incompetent. That was the problem. That—improbable as it was—was why she was sobbing.
Muskrat forced a thick, prickly nose under her arm, pushing up. The concern in the old dog’s eyes was unmistakable. Her thick tail wagged uncertainly.
“I’m stupid,” Teresa said, and her voice sounded exhausted even to her. “I’m just really stupid.”
Muskrat coughed out something less than a bark and hopped on her front legs. An unambiguous invitation. Let’s forget this and go play. Teresa threw herself down on her bed, hoping that sleep would come or that the bed would open up like in the movies and let her escape to a different dimension where no one had ever heard of her. Muskrat huffed again. Then barked.
“Fine,” Teresa said. “Just let me put some clothes on that don’t stink like sweat. Idiotic dog.”
Muskrat wagged harder. More sincerely.
The morning clouds had gone, but the landscape was still soaking from the rain. The water cycle was something that all the worlds in the empire shared. Any world with life had rainstorms and mud puddles. She walked down the colonnaded paths, tending away from the more inhabited parts of the State Building. She didn’t want to have any company but her dog and her self-pity.
She wondered what she could have done differently. If she’d told Muriel no, that she had to break things off with Connor. She could have done that. She still could, a little. If she went to Colonel Ilich and said she didn’t feel comfortable with Muriel anymore, she could have the girl kicked out of the peer interaction activities. Even request that Connor spend more time at the State Building if she wanted to, and it would just happen.
But everyone would know why she was doing it, and so she couldn’t. Instead, she walked across the gray-green of the back gardens, looked out at the low, green rise of the mountain beyond the State Building’s grounds, and wished she could leave or die or turn time backward.
Muskrat alerted, dark, floppy ears pointing forward with excitement. The dog barked once in what sounded like excitement and then bounded away faster than an animal on old worn-out hips should have been able to. Despite herself, Teresa laughed.
“Muskrat!” she shouted, but the dog was onto something and wouldn’t be turned away. The thick, wagging tail disappeared behind a hedge of lilacs imported from Earth, and Teresa trotted after.
She half expected to find Muskrat worrying a skitter or ash-cat or other local animal that had wandered onto the grounds. The dog did that sometimes, even though the local animals made her sick when she ate them. Teresa always worried that one of the larger native predators would sneak in someday. But when she made her way around the hedge, the only thing besides Muskrat was a human figure, sitting on the grass and looking out toward the horizon. Graying, close-cropped hair. Laconian uniform without an insignia of rank. An amiable, empty smile.
James Holden, and Muskrat sprawling on the grass beside him, wriggling to scratch her back. Teresa stopped short. Holden reached out idly and rubbed her dog’s belly. Muskrat hopped to her feet and barked to Teresa. Come on! Almost against her will, Teresa found herself walking toward the most famous prisoner in the empire.