Shadus clears his throat.
“She returned to the cities. And she waged war. She cut down thousands, and persuaded thousands more. Asara repelled her, but the damage had been done. Gutters joined Umala’s side. And so began the Grand War.”
“And Latori and Shototh were –”
“Asara and Umala’s lieutenants, respectively. They didn’t have zol, but they were clever, strong warriors, and well-trusted.”
“And who won?”
“Shototh eventually betrayed Umala. Umala was arrested by the Adjudicators, killed by the Executioners, and her body kept for research by the Illuminators. And the story was immortalized over the years, first as myths, then as Ki’eth. It’s a miracle we still know the real story at all. But Latori’s painstakingly recorded scrolls were discovered in 665, and we’ve known since then. Even in the face of the true history, Ki’eth’s only grown stronger as the dominant religion.”
We’re quiet. The golden sun filters through our window. I pull my hoodie over my head. Shadus doesn’t seemed bothered by the light - running his hands through his hair when it gets in his eyes. I scribble a hole in my worksheet.
“You probably shouldn’t have told me all that. I doubt the Gutters will be happy if a human knows this much.”
“Like I said, no one would believe you.”
“What about what I told you? About Raine and Yulan’s talk?”
Shadus nods. “I’ve thought it over. I understand as much as you. Jerai is Raine’s father, and head of the Illuminators. Tall, skinny, constantly looks sick. He and his scientists are always tinkling with some new and horrible contraption.”
“Tinkering. Tinkling means peeing,” I interject.
“Regardless,” Shadus coughs. “He and his team invented the EVE organs by melding Gutter arterial glands, lemak marrow, and human liver DNA. He is smart, possibly the smartest Gutter we have. If Jerai was ‘planning’ something, he’s already gotten away with it. He’s sneaky and quick and never gets caught. It’s already too late to stop him. Raine’s attempt is foolish.”
“But –”
“My guess is she’s trying to overthrow him in a bid for his title. She’s next in line, but she’s never had much patience for waiting. If this thing Jerai has done is something illegal and she’s found proof of it, she’ll keep it for herself and then hand it over to Taj.”
“No – she’ll come to you first and try to get your support before she goes to the Adjudicators,” I correct.
Shadus smirks at me. “You’ve been hanging around me too much. Don’t you have a nice human male friend who, I don’t know, isn’t involved in a delicate game of extraterrestrial politics?”
“Yeah, but they all know what tinkling means. I can’t correct them and feel instantly superior.”
“Ah, so that’s why you hang around.”
He reads his book with a smirk that lessens into his usual frown. I stare at him. Even with the Gutter’s technology, forcing hundreds of Gutters into human shapes must have been painful. Messy. He still looks a little alien; they all do. His face is so sharp at every angle, nothing soft or round. Those red eyes are deep-set under thick, hawk-like brows. He’s not ruggedly handsome like Taj, but there’s something that makes people do a double take.
“Don’t glare so much.” I point to his eyes. “Those things are scary enough without you glaring. Humans can see a lot in a person’s eyes. They won’t run off so fast if you keep a neutral face, at least. Smiling’s even better.”
Shadus snorts. “I don’t smile very well.”
“The trick to it is thinking about something nice. Do you have like, nice memories?”
“A few. Most from our time on the ship.”
I pull a bottle of water from my bag and sneak sips when the librarian isn’t looking. “What about some Gutter expressions? Tell me about those.”
“Like what?”
“Anger. Happiness. How would your body react to that?”
“Happiness is a tail wag, I suppose. If it’s anger, the spines on our backs would stand up. We might snarl to show our teeth. Much of our emotional changes were relayed through pheromones. For humans it’s more in the eyebrows. Those were very hard to learn to control. The hardest concept to wrap our heads around was kissing. We watched human movies, of course, and practiced with each other, but it still felt awkward. I don’t know why your race is so entranced with it.”
I nearly the gulp from my water bottle across the desk.
“There are so many things wrong with that. I don’t even know where to start,” I rub my forehead. He keeps going, unaware of my discomfort.
“Procreation, we can understand. Those basic mechanics are the same in our species as well. But why the mouth? Is it because so many of your nerve clusters reside in the lips?”
“I, uh, I guess?”
“So it’s less a show of affection and more a pursuit of physical pleasure.”
“No!” I shake my head. “I mean, it can be both, depending on who - why are we even talking about this? You think it’s so gross, but I bet your Gutter version is way weirder.”
“It involves much less unsanitary saliva, that is for certain.”
I sigh and hide my face in my hands. An EVE walks up to our table and clears her throat.
“Here’s the attendance sign-in sheet.” She holds out a notebook. I look up from my hands, and before Shadus can glower I pull on his sleeve.
“Take the sheet and smile,” I murmur. He curls his lip.
“Why?”
“Just try it.”
He turns back to the EVE and takes the book, grinning in that disarming way I’d only seen at the bonfire. “Thank you.”
The EVE blushes. Shadus watches her go with surprise.
“That was a different reaction.”
“You think? Smile more and I promise people will like you.”
“If all I need to do is smile, your culture is highly dependent on the shallowness of outer appearances.”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “We know. A million dead philosophers have told us before.”
The bell rings. The setting sun paints the sky in fire outside the windows. The smell of something stew-y wafts down the hall and makes my stomach gurgle. I don’t even notice Shadus and I are walking to the cafeteria together, until I do, and I start back to put space between us, but he just keeps walking.
So I keep walking, too.
***
Raine finishes toweling off her hair after her shower and admires her figure in the long mirror on our dorm’s door.
“Do you ever comb your hair?” She asks. “It always looks so tangled. It’s hard to see your face.”
“That’s why I keep it long.” I look up from my math notebook and scoff. “So nobody has to see the horror of my face.”
“You are not so ugly as to require a hair veil.” Raine walks over, and experimentally takes a strand of my hair in her palm, brushing it gently. “You’re much like the Ukrainian models I know.”
“You can say it. I look like a skeleton. It’s been said before.”
“No,” Raine says patiently. “You’re just...artistic-looking.”
“Like Picasso’s cube people,” I offer.
“Like a stylized Renaissance girl,” She corrects.
I laugh, the sound acid even to my own ears. “Why does that matter? I don’t have curves, I’ll never get boobs, I don’t have big pretty eyes like yours, or big lips. My hair’s thin. Everything about me is thin and sharp and mean-looking and I hate it.”
Raine’s silent. I fume, breaking my pencil lead and sharpening it again.
“Whoever said you look like a skeleton was jealous,” She says.
“It was a boy,” I snap.
“He was not worthy of your attention,” Raine says without missing a beat.
“What would you know about attention? You guys are just all paired up, mated like two halves of a sandwich. You don’t get to choose.”
“And because I don’t ge
t to choose, I don’t know anything about love?” Raine’s voice drops to a subzero level. I flinch.
“No, that’s not what I –”
“Then what did you mean?”
I look up at her. Her blue eyes are ice, sharp and impervious. She grabs my hands, never before daring to touch me or get too close.
“Listen to me carefully, Victoria,” She says. “I am an alien. We are different species, from different planets. But we feel the same things. We feel anger, and joy, and love, just as you do. We feel the same. And that is how I know peace between us is possible. Not the half-peace we have now. But true, lasting peace.”
I swallow, hard, and her eyes soften.
“I am an alien. We have different ideas of beauty. We chose these symmetric bodies for their appeal to humans, not ourselves. But to us, sharpness is beautiful. Strength is beautiful. A strong emotional scent is beautiful. And you have those in abundance.”
She motions out the window to the humans walking on the lawn.
“They judge with their eyes alone. There is nothing wrong with you. There is something very wrong with them.”
I feel something hot and prickly in the corner of my eye. Raine lets go of my hands, and picks the hairbrush back up, running it through my ends.
And I let her.
7. The Hanged Man
Shadus gets the hang of smiling real quick. In classes we have together, he’s suddenly surrounded by a tableful of overeager humans - guys and girls his own age. The humans don’t treat him like a pawn, something to be friends with for his power. They even sometimes make him laugh. Laugh. Shadus, laughing. It’s almost disturbing, but at the same time hearing him laugh and seeing his face so happy makes something warm in the pit of my stomach flare up. The humans start eating lunch with him. He’s been adopted into a little clique all his own.
And he hasn’t so much as looked at me in two weeks.
Not like I care. I’m his culture partner, but that doesn’t mean we have to hang out at all times. But, you know. A simple ‘hi’ would be nice. Wouldn’t kill him to say two measly letters. Maybe this is for the best. I can distance myself. No more weird talks in which I explain to him the purpose of butter, or why the middle finger is an offensive thing. No more strange moments of quiet between us, or sideways glances. We were getting too close, anyway. And that would be both dangerous and against our mutual agreement of staying cordial.
I scrub the shampoo into my hair harder. The showers are quiet at night. It’s easier to wash when a dozen pairs of eyes aren’t scrutinizing my every rib and joint. I walk out from the showers, my slippers squeaking in the hall and my bathrobe half-done. Girls squeeze past me, laughing. I close the door and throw my dirty clothes towards the laundry basket without looking.
“Ow.”
The muffled voice isn’t Raine. I turn. Someone wearing jeans is sitting on Raine’s computer chair, arms over his chest. My clothes hang off his head. I run over and fling them away.
“You!”
“You spilled tomato soup on that shirt,” Shadus coughs, his nose twitching.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” I hiss and pull my robe over my exposed clavicle.
“Raine pulled me in and then left. Told me to make you less ‘mop-ey’, whatever that entails. You have been avoiding me.”
“Me?” I splutter. “Avoiding you? You’re the one who -”
“With your advice, started to make some actual friends?” He quirks a brow.
“Yes! No!” I inhale. “Look, just get out before someone catches you. We can talk some other time.”
“I want to talk now.” He spins slowly in the chair.
“About what?”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” He repeats. “Why?”
“I haven’t.”
He stops spinning, eyes dead on me. “Are you really going to pretend you haven’t?”
I expel a frustrated breath. “I just thought – I just thought it would be easier for you to make friends if I wasn’t around. I’m not the best at getting along with people, okay? I scare them off, or I get mean, and I just mess things up. So. So I didn’t want to mess up what you had – have - going on.”
“You haven’t scared me off. Or Taj. Or Raine.”
“That’s because you’re Gutters and you’re weird,” I hiss. “Good weird. Uh. Not bad weird. You just have different standards. I’m not so popular with the humans, okay? Never have been. I’m the weird emo goth girl who’s too tall and wears too much black.”
“Why would being tall matter? Or wearing black?” He cocks his head. “Dakota likes you well enough.”
“Dakota is a loner,” I say. “She and I aren’t the kind of people who do well with big groups, okay? And I didn’t want to mess your big group thing up. And I still don’t want to. So it’s better if we just stick to doing the bare minimum, okay? I’ll show up at study hall, we’ll be culture partners there, and that’s it. No more lunches, no more bonfire talks, and certainly no more breaking-into-my-room incidents.”
“I didn’t break in, Raine brought me here,” He sniffs with great dignity.
“You let her bring you here.”
“Yes, because I wanted to talk to you. Because you are a friend.”
Panic grips my insides. Friends? With a Gutter? Mom would hate it. My heart inflates, but my words sink. “I’m not.”
A shard of pain flickers through Shadus’ expression, but it disappears quickly.
“I was unaware you disagreed. This changes things. However, it doesn’t change the fact I am grateful to you for all you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t be modest. You showed me the door. I stepped through it. Humans are much more agreeable than Gutters. It took several months of you showing me that until I actually opened my eyes to the truth of it. So, I am in your debt.”
“But –”
“I would like,” He speaks over me. “To offer you an invitation to Owakess. It’s not much in the way of repayment, but the faculty has promised there will be food, human food. Of the ‘junk’ kind.”
“I wasn’t planning on going,” I say carefully. “Not a lot of humans are.”
“I know,” Shadus says. “But I was hoping you would.”
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“Anything red will do.”
“Why red? Is it for the Executioners or something?”
He nods. “It symbolizes them, yes.”
“And what would I do there?”
“Watch the ceremonial dance with me. Eat. Perhaps break a glass or two.”
I smirk, then sigh. “Okay. It sounds fine.”
“Good,” Shadus stands from the chair. “I’ll pick you up here on Thursday, at eight.”
I watch him go with something like regret festering in my stomach. I’d said we weren’t friends, but that was reflex. That was Mom’s hate for Gutters leaking through me. I want to be friends. I want friends, period.
I want Shadus to smile at me like he does his other human friends.
But that’s stupid, and selfish.
***
My phone buzzes at two in the morning. I groggily reach for it, but sit bolt upright when I see the name. My nerves start to burn.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
“Vic, honey -” He sounds breathless, as though he’d been running. “I didn’t want to wake you up, sorry. Alisa, she -”
My heart drops into my stomach. “Is it bad?”
“Worse than the last.”
“Worse than the one in April?”
“No, thankfully. I don’t want to worry you, kiddo. Just needed to let you know we’ll be in the hospital for a few days while they monitor her. They’ve got her on some kind of experimental vapor that’s come in from Sweden. It’s supposed to work better than the beta stuff did.”
“I’ll come in,” I start. “I can get an off-campus pass and take the bus -”
“No, Vic, listen. I don’t want you j
umping over here every time. Alisa wouldn’t want it either.”
“She needs me, Dad.”
“She has me. If it gets worse, I’ll call you and you can come then. Sleep, baby. Sleep and study hard.”
“Tell her to -”
“Call you when she can talk again.” I can hear him smiling. “I know.”
I hear the familiar chime of the ER doors opening on his end. I’d memorized that sound. I’d fallen asleep to that sound countless times. I can hear the reception nurse Gladys yelling at Dad, asking how he’s been. I can almost smell the weak coffee they serve, taste the staleness that had been my only comfort some days. I clung to that scent so many times, trying to drown out the reality that Alisa was convulsing in the next room.
“Love you, kiddo.”
“Love you more,” I mumble. The phone goes dark.
“Is your sister all right, Victoria?” Raine’s sleepy voice resounds as she sits up. I want to say yes and brush it off, but the regret gnaws at me. This is the first time I won’t be there for Alisa. Another hospital visit means another huge medical bill Dad can’t afford. More shifts and more sleepless nights for him. I grit my teeth and hug my knees to my chest.
“I want it to stop.”
I hear Raine shift off the bed.
“I don’t want her to hurt, anymore. I don’t want Dad to worry, anymore.” My fingers claw at my shoulders.
Raine just stands there. I feel hands ghost over my head, my back, shades of unformed comfort. She doesn’t know what to do, but she’s still trying. I wipe the tears away and sniff.
“I’m fine. You can go back to sleep.”
I expect her to argue, to chime something happy and insist on staying up with me. She drops her hand and glides back to her bed without another word. It’s better than comfort. It’s respect - for my words, for my need to cry in peace, alone and in the dark.
In the morning Raine asks if I’m going to eat four cinnamon rolls like last Friday. Tells me I’ll bloat if I keep going, won’t fit in my ripped skinny jeans anymore. My eyes are puffy and red and she tells me makeup can fix it all, and when I reach for a foundation stick she slaps my hand away and tells me to let her do it. The bustle in the hall is normal - shrieking, laughing, tripping. I’m grateful. When I reach the edge, fall over the ledge, break down with shame and tears, it’s good to know the world has the courtesy to keep moving like it had seen nothing.