“Come on,” Tori pressed. “We’ll say you’re staying with me, and we’ll crash in Jared’s basement. That way nobody has to drive.”
In other words, they could get wasted. The prospect of chugging warm, watered-down beer to the point of sloppy-drunken oblivion had never appealed to Cara. What was the point? To feel buzzed for a few hours until the hangover set in? “I’ll pass. It would be a security nightmare, anyway.”
“Talk to me.” Tori delivered a light nudge. “You sounded like death when you called, and now you’re saying no to a party. What’s wrong?”
Cara blew out a breath and hoped she could hold the tears inside. She didn’t even know if Tori would understand.
“It’s the A-licker, right?” Tori pointed at Cara’s sweatpants and ratty garden clogs. “This has ‘broken heart’ written all over it.”
“We had a fight.”
“Everyone fights. It’s a good thing. It means you’ve got fire.”
Cara shook her head. “Not that kind of fight. I don’t think we can come back from this. It’s too—” Her throat swelled with grief until it choked her next words. All she could manage was a whisper. “It’s over.”
She expected Tori to say “good riddance” in her own colorful way, but that’s not what happened. Instead, Tori took one hand off the wheel to clasp Cara’s palm. She gave it a tight squeeze and promised, “You’ll feel better after a new pair of jeans and a triple fudge meltdown. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll watch Magic Mike.”
Cara laughed as tears welled in her eyes. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“How about some trashy gossip?” Tori said. “You’ll feel like a million bucks compared to the train wrecks at Midtown High.”
As they made their way onto the interstate, Tori filled in Cara on what she’d missed since last winter: Brandi Greene got caught drinking Boone’s Farm at a school dance and was thus banned from prom. Murphy Finn was banging four freshmen, but none of the girls knew about one another because they attended different schools. Principal Ferguson busted the band teacher smoking weed in the back of a school bus. The stories kept coming, but Cara didn’t feel like five bucks, let alone a million. If anything, the gossip added to the heaviness inside her, though she couldn’t figure out why.
They pulled into the mall parking lot, and Troy explained how the security detail would operate. He’d stay by Cara’s side at all times, except in the dressing rooms, and the plain-clothes soldiers would scout each store before she was allowed to enter. If anyone recognized her, the group would have to leave right away because the unit wasn’t large enough to handle a mob. Fortunately, Cara had kept her arrival date vague, so nobody knew she was here.
“Let’s start at Neiman’s,” Tori said, her high heels clicking against the asphalt. “So you can help me pick a prom dress.”
Cara pressed a hand to her heart. “I forgot all about prom.” The image of frilly dresses brought a smile to her lips. Maybe she’d try one on, just for fun. An eager bounce lightened her steps as she tugged open the door to her old stomping grounds, but the vibrating wall of noise that greeted her on the other side had her twitching to run back to the car.
Holy sensation overload.
An indistinct pop tune blared through the ceiling speakers, competing with the throbbing bass of club music that wafted from the entrance to Hot Topic. With spring break in full swing, every teen in the county was here, each one laughing and shouting over the din while their fingers flew across their cell phone screens. The cloying scent of perfume leaked from the doors of Hollister in clouds so thick it forced Cara to cover her nose, and when she breathed through her mouth, the residue seeped inside to coat her tongue. How could anyone stand to go in there? Or any other store, for that matter? The shops were teeming with people rudely nudging one another aside as if their lives depended on scoring this season’s trendiest belt.
The scene inside Neiman Marcus was marginally calmer, but Cara had to keep reminding herself to unclench her jaw. So much for a leisurely day of shopping. Leaning toward her brother, she said, “Can you have someone bring me a bunch of jeans while Tori’s trying on prom dresses? We’ll finish quicker if we multitask.”
Troy didn’t need further convincing. “What size?”
“Somewhere between a four and a six, I guess.”
He used his phone to tap a text message. “I told him to grab a few shirts, too.”
“Good thinking.”
She scurried to keep pace with Tori, whose mahogany eyes locked on to the formal wear department with the single-minded determination of a girl with a raging case of Prom Fever.
“Puta madre,” Tori breathed, gravitating as if entranced toward a backless ivory gown with a side slit cut clear to the hip. With its satiny fabric and barely there straps, it looked more like lingerie than a dress. Tori reached out with reverent fingers and held the gown in front of her. “What do you think?”
Honestly? Cara thought her friend would be very cold in that dress. “Um, the color looks great with your skin.” And given how easily it’d slip off at the end of the night, Eric would love it.
“I’m gonna try it on.”
Cara followed to the dressing rooms, where a young soldier balanced a stack of folded jeans on one arm. He made an apologetic face. “I did the best I could, but it’s redonk over there. I didn’t know if you wanted cropped, boot-cut, straight-leg, skinny, flared, low-rise, high-waist, or jegging.” He leaned in, shell-shocked. “And that’s just the cut. Then there’s dark wash, medium vintage—”
“That’s okay,” Cara interrupted. “I’m sure one of these will work.” She took the pile of denim into the fitting room and emerged ten minutes later with three pair of jeans that fit and one pair she could actually afford. Suddenly the L’eihr uniform didn’t seem so bad.
“Ta-da!” Tori sang, opening her dressing room door. She hitched up her gown and strode to the three-way mirror, then began checking out her butt from different angles. “Nice, huh?”
She really did look nice. Overly exposed, yes, but tame compared to what some girls would be wearing. Cara gave a teasing wolf whistle and checked the price tag. Her mouth dropped open. “Did you see this, Tor?”
Satisfied with her reflection, Tori turned from the mirror and strutted back to her dressing room. “Yep.”
“You’re gonna drop this much on a gown you’ll wear once?”
“I’ll put it on my card,” Tori said, as if she weren’t spending real money that way. “I need shoes and a bag, too. What do you think about strappy nude heels?”
By the time they reached the shoe department, Cara thought strappy nude heels were as unnecessary and overpriced as the plastic-wrapped gown draped over Tori’s shoulder. Cara lifted a butt-fugly leopard-print platform pump and gasped at the price sticker affixed to the sole. Maybe if humans didn’t spend so much time and money on useless crap, they wouldn’t need the L’eihrs to save the world for them.
“Cute,” Tori said, nodding at the monstrosity in Cara’s hand. “You should try ’em on.”
“Yeah. Or not.”
Tori wrinkled her brow and studied Cara over a display of sandals. “Retail therapy isn’t working, is it?” She set down a glittery clutch and nodded toward the exit. “Let’s go. Time for that triple chocolate meltdown.”
“Dig in.” From the other side of the table, Tori pointed her spoon at the plate between them. “If you let me finish this by myself, I’ll never fit into that kick-ass dress I just bought.”
The mere sight of hot fudge pooling out from the center of a gooey chocolate cake was enough to turn Cara’s stomach, but she took one for the team and shoveled in a bite. She swallowed as quickly as possible before washing out the taste with unsweetened iced tea.
“What the hell?” Tori asked. “It looked like you were chewing razor blades.”
“Sweets make me kind of sick now.”
Tori’s black brows shot up. “You’re not preggers, are you?”
&
nbsp; “No,” Cara said with a humorless laugh. “Zero chance of that, trust me.”
“Huh.” Tori chewed the inside of her cheek and stared at their dessert. “The mall was a bust, and chocolate isn’t working. This leaves us with only one option…”
“Oh, no. Not Magic Mike.”
“Then give me an alternative. Tell me what’s going to make you smile.”
That was a good question, but Cara didn’t know the answer. She thought back to the last experiences that had brought her joy—snuggling with Vero, mastering the intermediate track, glimpsing the colony for the first time, placing her hand in Aelyx’s strong grasp.
Cara sighed and poked at the cake. “Nothing on Earth.”
They fell silent for a while, fidgeting with bendy straws and silverware, until Tori said what they were both thinking. “You’re different now.”
“Yeah, I am,” Cara said. And she had a feeling things would never be the same as before the exchange. She peeked up from beneath her lashes. “But I still love you.”
Tori’s face broke into a bittersweet grin. She reached across the table and took Cara’s hand, her touch somehow both familiar and foreign. “Right back at’cha. That’ll never change.”
Cara flipped open the AP physics textbook she’d found in the bottom of her closet. If she wanted to apply to Dartmouth, she’d first have to make up the work she’d missed, and what better opportunity to catch up than during spring break? As she pulled her Einstein packet from her backpack, it occurred to her that she’d probably lost her valedictorian rank when she’d fled Earth.
She supposed that douche canoe, Marcus Johnson, would graduate at the top of the class. The old Cara would have devised a plot to reclaim her title, but the new Cara couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Valedictorian,” she muttered to herself. “Whoop-de-friggin-do. I’m the Chief Human Consultant to the most powerful woman in the universe.”
Or rather, she was.
She turned to the chapter on Einstein’s theory of relativity and began skimming the text, but then she realized that the advanced physics she’d learned on L’eihr transcended her AP science class. Cara closed her textbook. It had nothing to teach her.
Her internal clock was still on Aegis time, and it seemed too early for bed. She stepped into the hall, finding no signs of life other than the subdued glow of the oven exhaust hood, which Mom had always used as a night-light. Cara recognized the sound of a kitchen chair scraping the linoleum floor and decided to see who was awake.
“Hey,” she said to Troy, who sat at the table with a box of Cheerios and a bottle of Sam Adams lager to keep him company. He tossed back a handful of O’s and used his bare foot to push out a chair for her. Accepting his invitation, she took a seat and grabbed the cereal box.
After munching his snack and washing it down with a swig of beer, Troy asked, “Change your mind about the party?”
“Nah.” Cara shook out a pile of Cheerios even though she wasn’t hungry. “Just bored. What about you? I figured you’d be hanging with your friends.” She nodded toward the backyard, where soldiers stood guard around the house.
He shrugged and leaned an elbow on the table, propping his chin in one hand. “They invited me to a poker game later. I dunno. I used to like that stuff, but now it seems so…” He appeared to struggle with the right word, eventually settling on, “Pointless.”
Cara’s eyes flew wide. “I know exactly what you mean! I thought it was just me.”
“Trust me, it’s not.” Troy smirked, more at himself than at her, then glanced through the kitchen entry and into the living room as if to make sure they were alone. “Can you keep a secret?”
Cara hesitated a beat before nodding, not because she couldn’t keep her lips zipped, but because Troy had never confided in her.
“I haven’t been the same since I got back from L’eihr,” he said. “My CO sent me to the head shrinker, and she said I’ve got an adjustment disorder.”
Cara tipped her head. “What’s that?”
“Failure to adapt.” Clearly uncomfortable, Troy dropped eye contact and began stacking his Cheerios atop one another in a crooked pyramid. “You usually see it with special forces guys—the ones who go out on big missions. They get hooked on the adrenaline and can’t cope when they come home.” Troy raised his gaze to hers. “How’re they supposed to go from live combat and jumping out of helicopters to grocery shopping and driving their kids to school, you know?”
“Real life is dull by comparison,” Cara said.
“Exactly.”
“I get that.” As much as she wanted to feel like a “normal teenager” again, her time on L’eihr had ruined her for dances and shopping and all the things she used to love. “But for me, it’s more than that. I’m starting to see our way of life differently.”
“Like…” Troy prompted, seeming to perk up a little.
“Remember the gas station where we stopped on the way home from the mall?” When he nodded, she said, “They had TVs built right into the pumps.” The old Cara would have thought that was cool, but the new-and-ruined Cara didn’t see it that way. “Are we so overstimulated that we can’t spend five minutes pumping gas without a TV or a cell phone to distract us?”
“Guess so.”
“And when I went inside to buy a magazine,” Cara went on, “that’s when it really hit me. I stood there looking at the racks, and all the headlines seemed so trivial. I’ve always wanted to be a journalist, but what am I going to do? Write articles about which movie star had the fat sucked from her ass and injected into her face? Which professional athlete just confessed to shooting steroids? The latest celebrity baby names?” Cara lowered both brows in frustration. “Who cares? It’s like our whole culture is built on frivolity, and I never noticed before.”
Troy flicked an O into the pyramid he’d built, toppling it over. “It’s the noise that gets to me. Everything sounds amplified now.”
“Yeah, me too,” Cara agreed before continuing her rant. “And we squander our money on the most ridiculous things. You know how much Americans spent on Halloween candy last year?” Without giving him a chance to guess, she cried, “Two billion dollars. That’s billion, with a B.” She fell silent, struck by the absurdity of it all. “We’re dropping piles of cash on candy while disease research and scientific advancement go unfunded. It makes my head explode.”
Troy snickered and held both palms forward. “Chill, Pepper. I believe you.”
“The worst of it is I don’t know where I belong.” She wasn’t wholly human anymore, but she didn’t feel like a L’eihr. She swept aside her Cheerios, too upset to taste anything. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Probably,” her brother said.
She told him about her decision to remain on Earth after the alliance ceremony, including her residual breakup with Aelyx, whom Troy had never liked. But by the time she finished explaining her reasoning, Troy seemed more conflicted than relieved.
“What?” she asked. “I thought you’d be happy.”
He picked at the label on his beer bottle, avoiding her eyes. “I am, if it’s what you really want…” Then he trailed off, warning her a but was coming.
“But?” she asked.
“If you were going to the colony,” he said, peeking up at her, then back to his bottle, “I was thinking of coming, too, when my enlistment’s over.”
Cara drew a breath. “Are you serious?”
“Uh-huh,” he said with a slow I know it sounds crazy, but I really mean it nod. “I’ve been thinking about it since I got back.”
“But you hated L’eihr,” Cara reminded him. “You kept saying we didn’t belong there.”
“Yeah, and that’s still kind of true,” Troy said, locking his blue eyes with hers. “But we also don’t belong here.”
He was right—Cara knew it all the way down to the marrow in her bones. But that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t be happy on the colony, not without the kinds of concessions
The Way would never make. It was an impossible situation. She felt like a square peg that had been shaved into an octagon, so now she didn’t fit into any hole, round or otherwise. But somehow in the next forty-eight hours, Cara would have to decide once and for all where her future lay.
No pressure or anything.
Chapter Twenty
The official first day of spring was hopelessly bleak, which matched Aelyx’s mood. He shifted in bed and stared out the window, where freezing rain pelted the glass. This afternoon he would have to stand by Cara’s side at the alliance ceremony and pretend he didn’t feel gutted—scooped out of any happiness he’d once known. At least tomorrow he’d leave this godsforsaken planet and return home, where ice never rained from the sky. If nothing else, he had that to look forward to.
With heavy limbs, he shuffled into the kitchen, hoping Syrine had made her customary pot of tea. Aelyx didn’t want to foster a caffeine dependency, but lately he’d moved as if underwater. He’d take any boost he could get. After pouring himself a steaming mug of minty-scented brew, he dragged into the living room and lowered onto the ambassador’s favorite chair, simply because it was closest. Gods, he was tired. He’d just awoken and already he wanted to go back to bed.
David and Syrine were situated near him on the sofa, but instead of saying hello, they stared at each other in what appeared to be a standoff. Syrine’s hands clenched into fists while David’s chin tipped up in determination. Several seconds of charged silence ticked by before Aelyx asked what was wrong.
When David spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on Syrine. “I just told your friend I’m in love with her.”
“Oh,” Aelyx said, wishing he’d taken his tea back to his bedroom. Awkward.
“And,” David continued, “that I won’t ever stop. That I’m not like the other guys she’s known, and if she’ll trust me for once, I can make her happy.”
Aelyx wasn’t sure how to reply. Obviously David wasn’t talking to him anymore. “What did she say?”
“Nothing yet.” David held up his deck of cards. “But I was just about to propose another wager.”