We Are Satellites

by Sarah Pinsker

  “How’d you do?” he asked as she caught up with him.

  “Good enough, I think,” she said. “How ’bout you?”

  The cadence of his speech was slow and measured, as always, like every word tested itself in his chest’s cavern before finding its way out into the world. “Okay. I haven’t started the book, so I guessed some answers. How did Johnny hurt his hand? I said he got bitten by a zombie.”

  “Um, yeah, I think you might not get full marks for that one.”

  Somebody shoved Sophie into Kevin. Hard. “Tugboat and Slow Boat! A perfect match!”

  “You can’t even tell them apart!” said someone else.

  Sophie whirled to face her attackers, who were already halfway down the hall. Their Pilots looked like they were twinkling, but that was just the effect of their bouncing hair as they laughed. She didn’t remember the name of the tall girl who had shoved her. She thought maybe they shared gym class, the only class she took with the Piloted kids; she was never good with names and faces of people who weren’t her friends. Whoever this girl was, they were definitely not friends.

  She dropped her bag at Kevin’s feet, hoping he would keep an eye on it. She caught up with the other girls before the end of the hall. They weren’t looking in her direction anymore, so when she stuck out a foot to trip the taller one, she managed to catch them by surprise. Tall Girl sprawled across the floor, spilling books in front of her.

  The friend shrieked and didn’t stop shrieking. Like a banshee, Sophie’s ma would say. Sophie tried to slip back down the hall unnoticed, but the screeching girl pointed at her. “Teacher! Teacher!”

  Mr. Kenworth poked his head out into the hallway, then ducked back into his classroom. The Code Orange alarm went off, telling the students to get themselves to the nearest classroom and close the door. Code Orange? Attacker-at-large? Sophie reached for the nearest classroom door, but Mr. Kenworth had appeared in the hall again.

  “Don’t move, Sophie.” He looked like he wanted to grab her by the scruff of the neck like the police in some old movie about juvenile delinquents. She didn’t move. The hall was empty now except for Mr. Kenworth and the two girls, the one screaming and the other silent. Kevin must have gone into a room like they were supposed to in a Code Orange. Her backpack sat abandoned by the English classroom; hopefully that wasn’t enough to merit a Code Green suspicious-package alarm.

  The bully sat where she had landed, a felled tree, clutching her right wrist in her left hand. Sophie knew she should ask the girl if she was okay, make some effort at reconciliation. Instead, she went for her backpack. She knew what came next: the office, her mothers, trouble, trouble, trouble.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sophie wasn’t sure which mother she hoped would come until she saw Julie pull into the parking lot. Mom would be quicker to defend Sophie instead of considering the teacher perspective. Maybe.

  “Seriously? She did what?” she asked, after hearing Mr. Kenworth’s take on what had happened. She turned to Sophie. “Did you push this Tonya girl?”

  “Sort of,” Sophie said, shrugging. “I tripped her, but she pushed me first.”

  “I didn’t see that,” said Mr. Kenworth.

  Sophie crossed her arms. “You didn’t see me trip her, either. You saw her on the floor and assumed I pushed her ’cause that other girl pointed at me.”

  “But you did push her?” asked Mrs. Moritz. She sat behind her desk like a presiding judge, with everyone else in chairs facing her. Sophie thought it made them all look equally guilty.

  “No. I tripped her. I told you, she pushed me first, into Kevin. She called me Slow Boat.”

  Mrs. Moritz smiled a concerned smile. “Did you have to react, Sophie? Could you have told a teacher?”

  Sophie shook her head and mustered patience. Adults were so dense about what went on. “There were no teachers. If I let her push me, she’d push me again harder next time.”

  “How is the other girl?” asked Julie. “You said on the phone she was taken to the hospital?”

  “Yes, for X-rays of her wrist,” said Mr. Kenworth. “It looked broken to me.”

  Julie’s smile was thin-lipped and insincere. “Well, hopefully it’s not broken. I assume you asked Sophie if she was okay, too?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I just don’t like getting shoved when I didn’t do anything.”

  “So, are we done here?” Julie sank back into the chair.

  Mrs. Moritz spread her hands. She looked like she had all the time in the world. “I’m afraid I can’t let it go that easily. A student was assaulted. That’s grounds for automatic suspension.”

  “Suspension? You’ve got to be kidding!” Julie gripped her chair’s arms and sat straighter. “She defended herself. It wouldn’t have happened if you had teachers in the hall monitoring the class transition, I’ll bet.”

  “Nevertheless, a student is in the hospital. I have a duty to protect everyone.”

  “Sophie is half the size of most kids in her class. You know she doesn’t have a behavior plan, and you know kids in her class get bullied for not having Pilots. Are you sure you don’t have this backward? Shouldn’t the other girl’s parents be called as well?”

  Mrs. Moritz put a hand to her Pilot without seeming to notice she was doing it. Kids with Pilots never did that, but all the adults who had them always touched the light when somebody mentioned it. “When I talk with her father, I’ll tell him I don’t think he needs to press charges.”

  “Press charges?” Julie was out of her chair now. “Don’t you dare put those words in his head. Do you really think Sophie is a threat?”

  “Cool,” said Sophie under her breath. Mom threw her a look and she shut her mouth again.

  “Sophie is not generally aggressive or a problem student. We’ll certainly take that into consideration. In the meantime, a two-day suspension should give her time to think about what she’s done and tell the other students this is not acceptable behavior.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Julie, pulling Sophie to her feet.

  Sophie didn’t think two days’ suspension sounded bad, but she figured she shouldn’t say so. She followed her mother from the office and out to the car. She was supposed to be in math, so as far as she was concerned, this was nothing but a victory. She knew better than to say that out loud, too.

  They drove away from the school in silence. At a red light a few blocks later, her mom turned to her. “If you ever get caught fighting in school again, you are grounded for life.”

  “But—”

  “If you ever get caught fighting in school again, you are grounded for life.” Julie stared at her, and Sophie got the picture. “I understand it’s hard not to react when somebody hurts you and calls you names, but next time, think about if it’s worth it, and if you’re going to get caught. And if you’re going to get us sued. We can’t afford to go around paying hospital bills for other people. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said Sophie. “Stay cool, don’t get caught.”

  Julie sighed. “Close enough. Ice cream?”

  “Yes, please.”

  They might be embarrassing sometimes, but Sophie’s moms were pretty cool when it came to it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  VAL

  The mall’s food court was crowded for a Monday night. Val beat a pack of teenagers to the lone empty table, dropping her gym bag in what turned out to be a lake of cola, which probably explained why the table had been unoccupied. She had to wait for Julie and Sophie to arrive before she could grab napkins to sop up the soda, lest she lose the table or the bag.

  “Hi, love,” Julie said, kissing Val on the cheek and tossing her jacket onto an empty chair. “How was your day?”

  “Uneventful. Yours? Hang on a sec.” She crossed the dining area to grab a stack of napkins.

  “Ask the ki
d,” said Julie when Val returned.

  Val turned to Sophie as she wiped the table. “Soph?”

  Sophie grinned. “I got suspended.”

  “What?” Val looked from Sophie to Julie and back. “What are you talking about? And why are you smiling?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Sophie, reaching up to physically turn the corners of her lips down. “I know I’m not supposed to smile about it. I got suspended for fighting, but I wasn’t fighting. I was protecting myself. Can I have a Shamburger?”

  “No,” said Val. “You know your seizures get triggered by some ingredient they use.”

  “She’s right,” said Julie as their daughter’s mouth opened in protest. “And no dessert. You already had ice cream.”

  Val wondered how ice cream had followed suspension. “In that case, how about brown rice and steamed veggies?”

  Sophie shot them a look so forlorn Val almost laughed out loud.

  “Sandwich or pizza. No pepperoni. And bring me back an Italian sub.” Julie reached into her purse and fished out a twenty. “What do you want, Val?”

  “Just water, thanks.” Her eyes followed Sophie across the food court. “What was that child saying about a fight?”

  “She tripped a girl who had shoved her. The school overreacted.”

  “Suspended for tripping? That’s a hell of an overreaction.”

  “The girl broke her wrist.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit,” Julie agreed.

  “Did the girl have a Pilot?” Val asked, shredding a wet napkin.

  “What does that have to do with anything? How would I know?”

  “Why’d she get shoved?”

  “Just a bully, I think.”

  Sophie stood in line at the sandwich shop. Val frowned. “There’s no such thing as ‘just a bully.’”

  “I know, I know. I didn’t mean it like that. Sophie made her point, though. I don’t think it’ll happen again.”

  “I guess we should be grateful we didn’t raise a pushover.”

  “She’s no pushover,” agreed Julie.

  Sophie returned to the table, balancing a tray with two sandwiches, a soda, and a water. Val reached across and snagged the cola, even though she didn’t like the stuff.

  “Hey!” said Sophie. “You wanted water.”

  “And you know you can’t have soda after ice cream.”

  “You didn’t say that. You said no burger and no pepperoni.”

  “And yet you could probably infer that for the same reasons you can’t have sulfites, you also can’t have caffeine.”

  “Seizures?”

  “Bingo.”

  “But I haven’t had a seizure in months.”

  “You haven’t had a bad seizure in months,” Val said. “We’d like to keep it that way, right?”

  Sophie sighed. “Right.” She lifted the water glass and eyed it with such a look of disgust that Val couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Why are we here again?” Val asked after they’d finished eating.

  “Sophie needs new shoes.”

  “And a new jacket,” Sophie added.

  “We couldn’t have gotten that someplace less chaotic?”

  “This way we get it all over with at once.”

  Malls had always made Val claustrophobic. Nobody had any concept of personal space, and everything was too loud and too bright and too commercial. She wondered, not for the first time, if this was anything like the noise David talked about when he talked about his Pilot. Oversaturation, overstimulation, a thousand things demanding her attention, none of which were of any actual importance except the two people beside her, whom she would rather be spending time with anywhere else.

  A gaggle of teenage girls pushed past, splitting her and Julie from Sophie, who was walking closer to the shop windows. “Watch it!” she said, though they were already past, giggling and absorbed, their Pilots glowing.

  “Sorry, Ms. B!” someone called after her.

  She glanced back to see who it was, though they were already too far past for her to tell. In the next moment, she realized Sophie was no longer beside them.

  “Where’s Sophie?” Julie asked at the same time. Guilt flooded Val. Distraction had taken her eyes off the girl.

  “Hey!” somebody shouted from behind them. Val whirled to follow the voice, which was followed by a crash. Sophie stood in front of a jewelry kiosk. Beaded necklaces had spilled from a tray onto the floor.

  “Kid, what are you doing?” asked the woman running the cart, shaking Sophie’s arm. “Security!”

  Sophie trailed her fingers through the tray, knocking more necklaces onto the ground.

  “She’s having a seizure,” Julie said. “Leave her alone a second, okay? Take your hand off her.”

  The vendor looked confused, but let go of Sophie, allowing Julie to put her body between the two of them. Forty slow seconds passed, according to Val’s watch, though it felt like an hour, as always, before Sophie returned to herself and let Julie guide her to a bench.

  Val knelt to gather the necklaces. One had broken, and she collected individual beads as she found them, dodging feet and stroller wheels. All they needed was for someone to slip on a bead and sue them. That would be the fitting end to this day.

  “We’ll pay for anything broken,” she said, holding up the pieces. The woman nodded.

  A security guard walked over. “Is there a problem?”

  The vendor looked at Val, who had pulled out her wallet, and shook her head. “No problem. Sorry. False alarm.”

  Val winced at the price named for the overpriced beads, which the vendor presented in a gift bag. She carried it over to the bench where Julie and Sophie sat.

  “New necklace for you.” Val held out the bag.

  Sophie opened it and frowned. “That’s just loose beads.”

  “It can be a necklace again. We’ll string it back together.”

  “That was the one I liked, actually.” Sophie sighed. “I guess I fished my wish.”

  Julie rubbed Sophie’s shoulders. “Next time, just ask, okay?”

  Sophie stuck out her tongue.

  “Do you still want to look for shoes and a jacket?” Val asked.

  Sophie considered, then shook her head. “I think this day needs to be over. Another time?”

  “We have to come back here again?”

  “Maybe you don’t have to come next time, Val. No reason this has to be a family field trip.”

  “We can decide later.” As always, Val felt torn between wanting to do what the family was doing, and not wanting to be in the mall even a little bit.

  * * *

  • • •

  That night, after Sophie was in bed, Val settled onto the couch to read. Julie appeared a minute later with her tablet and a cup of coffee. Her ability to drink caffeine at all hours was a constant source of amazement for Val.

  “Nice relaxing family evening, huh?” Julie asked.

  “Nothing like it,” Val responded with a wry smile.

  “There is nothing I hate more than that moment of wondering where she is.”

  “You spotted her before I did, though. I feel like I’m always a second behind you.”

  Julie lowered her cup and turned so her whole body faced Val. “Speaking of . . . I had something I’ve been wanting to ask you, but I wasn’t sure how to do it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What would you say if I said I wanted to get a Pilot?”

  Val saw concern in her wife’s eyes. Concern and . . . anticipation? Dread? Julie had no idea how long Val had been expecting this moment. “I would say do it if you need to do it. You know I don’t like the things, and I can’t understand why anyone would want one, but . . . I guess I can understand, kind of.”

  “I could watch Soph
ie better.”

  “That’s today’s reason. There are other reasons, too, right?”

  Julie sighed. “Yeah. I’d like to be able to get more done. I see how effective Piloted people are and I want to be like that. The new kids at work can do twice what I can. I’m afraid of being left behind.”

  “You won’t get left behind. You love your work, and Griffith loves you.”

  “Yeah, but he won’t keep me if I’m not performing, and we can’t live on one salary.”

  “Would you want one if you weren’t worried about work?”

  “Yeah, I would. I’ve wanted one since before we got David his. I’ve tried to be practical, but now I think I am being practical.”

  “Yeah. I understand,” said Val, though she didn’t, not really.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SOPHIE

  Sophie couldn’t get away with anything. She used to be able to sneak into David’s room when he had the door open. He’d be playing games and she’d curl up in his corner chair and wait for him to notice her. When he saw she was there he would be genuinely surprised, or at least he’d pretend to be. Sometimes he’d smile and let her play for a few minutes, or he’d pretend to be mad and toss her under his arm and drag her out, which was fun, too. She knew it was pretend because if he really didn’t want her in there, he’d have closed the door. She respected closed doors, mostly.

  Take today, for example. She’d been perfectly sneaky. She had dropped to her belly in the hallway outside his room, where he and Milo were playing some zombie-killing game. She made sure the moms weren’t watching so they didn’t assume she was having a seizure just because she was hanging out at floor level. That was the worst drag, beyond not being allowed to climb trees anymore: having people assume anything you did that was the least bit out of the ordinary must be a seizure. If she couldn’t climb, you’d think they wouldn’t have a problem with her crawling. That way she’d be on the ground already if the Big One hit. The Big One was a monster living in her head. It liked to sneak up on her the way she liked to sneak up on David.

  She rounded the corner in silence, a snake in the grass, but she’d barely slithered an inch into his room when he said, “Out, Soph.”