Regenerate

by Emily Goldthwaite

  “Well, at least I could still dance in mine,” says Kachina. “Raxtin, you remember Averi’s thirteenth year dress, don’t you?”

  Instantly the joy of the memory crumbles and settles in my stomach like a rock. No. Don’t. Kachina, don’t involve him.

  Raxtin doesn’t turn around. He cocks his head to the side and scratches his neck, stuttering awkwardly. “Not really?”

  Did he say that as a question or an answer? Wow, it’s awesome how he suddenly “forgets” every significant event we’ve had together. Jerk.

  “Are you serious?” Kachina presses her palms to her cheeks and hunches forwards. “How could you forget?”

  Does she really not see that he’s lying? Hello, Zeph is right next to him.

  “It was so puffy you two could barely touch each other’s fingers!” She’s almost belly laughing, and Jett is chuckling along with her.

  Rax and Zeph are dead quiet.

  Why is my chest tight? There’s no reason to feel like this right now. We’re all friends, and it was legitimately funny when it happened. The Organizers even passed dress regulations after that. We should all be laughing. But no, we’re not. My left arm is starting to ache from my elbow to my wrist, and I clutch at it.

  A warm hand slides across my back, from shoulder to shoulder, wrapping tightly around me. Some of the aching and tension instantly eases. I’d think having Lander this close would make me more uncomfortable, but it doesn’t.

  I draw a long, deep breath.

  “You all right?” he asks so only I can hear.

  How does he always know? I nod. Am I really that pathetic and predictable?

  “Good,” he says. “Just thought maybe you were a little cold.” He smiles and winks at me then drops his arm, falling a few steps behind once more. He clears his throat and this time when he speaks, it’s much louder. “Guess you’ll have to fill me in here. What party are you guys talking about? Is this an exclusive deal or what?”

  Zeph turns to look at him over her shoulder, her eyes narrow. “Don’t tell me they didn’t have village birthday parties where you came from?”

  Lander’s expression is unreadable. “I guess not.”

  Zeph twists one of her black curls around her finger as she talks. “Every month, the village throws a big party to honor all of the GAPs born that month. Everyone else shows up too, and the older ones usually come with dates.” She loops her hands possessively around Rax’s arm. “There’s a dinner, a dance, and speeches and—hey, wait a minute,” she cuts herself off. Zeph stops walking and turns to Lander.

  I don’t know why, but a sense of dread trickles down my neck and spine.

  Lander stops too and the corner of his eyes wince slightly. “Yes?” His jaw barely moves when he says it, as if it’s as locked up as my shoulders feel.

  Zeph has a self-satisfied, stupid-looking smile on her face. You’d think she just solved a baffling riddle. “Averi is the only person in our group besides you without an escort for that night. Maybe you could take her!”

  Friend. Fail.

  My fingers tighten around my shears through the fabric of my purse. It’s a good thing I’m not standing next to her, or I might whack Zeph over the head with them.

  Lander’s brow puckers in the middle and he squints at her. He pushes his tongue into the bottom of his lip, tying up his mouth from having to respond to her tactless suggestion right away.

  Even though there’s an autumn breeze, it feels like the UV rays suddenly decided to scorch me in my shoes. Each second Lander delays responding feels like an hour. I think I last three of them. “No. Zeph, that’s an awful idea. I’m fine going stag. Lander probably has lots of girls, you know, that he’s going with, and wanting to and stuff. So just, don’t, and yeah,” I say.

  Lander crosses his arms and looks at me with a crooked smile on his lips. “Lots of girls, eh? I didn’t even know that was legal, let alone an option. But since you brought it up, I actually don’t have a date that night—or plans, for that matter.”

  “Perfect!” cheers Kachina with a small hop of enthusiasm.

  Lander holds a hand up to stop her, but keeps his focus entirely on me. “Hold on. Clearly, if Averi wanted a date, she would have one already. I’m betting she’s fought off multiple would-be escorts. In light of that, I wouldn’t dream of ruining her hard-earned freedom for the evening.”

  Saved. . . . Or is it rejected? What the heck just happened?

  With firm, stomping steps I force myself through the doors of school. I still can’t get over Lander’s astounding ability to avoid getting saddled with me, while appearing really charming to everyone else. Granted, it even took me a second to realize he wasn’t being complimentary, just diplomatically evasive.

  I’m halfway to my first unit of A day when an alert on my Pocket Palm vibrates to life. Ivi’s voice picks up in my ear piece. “Schedule alert. Be advised, due to new arrivals and subsequent seating shortages, your unit schedule has been rearranged. You will be notified of your schedule as needed. Have a nice day.”

  Not again. This kind of thing never used to happen. You got your assignment for the year and that was that. Ugh! Now I have to make that awkward “first day of the unit seated next to you” chat. I guess I should just be glad the units are the same and only the time and order I have them are shifting. Hopefully the new seat assignments place me firmly in the back. Who knows, maybe they put me with more of my friends.

  As I walk into astronomy unit, my heart both jumps and sinks. That’s it. The Organizers are trying to kill me with asthma attacks. There is one empty seat left in the room, smack dab between a hunched-over, frowning Raxtin and a stretched-out, grinning Lander.

  I’m pretty much frozen facing forward in my seat. I don’t really want to talk to Lander since he totally rejected me a few hours ago, and because talking to him would alienate Raxtin. But if I talk to Raxtin, it will probably make Lander become competitive. Even if Lander doesn’t actually like me, it would be the tincture war from Jo’s all over again. I don’t want that awkwardness spilling out in front of the whole unit.

  Ugh. This is stupid.

  I try to focus on the subject we are discussing, which is the nature and effects of solar flares, but my brain is not cooperating.

  “Why are solar flares dangerous?” asks the teacher.

  I hit the Live Comment button immediately, hoping answering out loud will distract me from the radiating weirdness around me. “They’re dangerous because they’re like an EMP, but for the whole planet. So if one hits earth, like you were saying it did back in the eighteen hundreds, all our tech and basically our entire society would be wiped out overnight.”

  Lander’s Live Comment pings in the message box almost before I get my words out. The teacher calls on him. Lander leans back in his seat and spreads his arm across my chair. “Miss Gouch’s response described it brilliantly, but I was distracting her when you mentioned the time frame. It actually wouldn’t be overnight, but in three nights, give or take the cloud of solar particles’ speed of travel.”

  How dare he! If I’m wrong, fine, correct me, but don’t praise my brilliance in the same breath. It’s patronizing. And he was not distracting me . . . ok, actually he was, just not in the way he implied. I scowl and will my eyes to slide towards him.

  He winks, his arm still around my back, then leans in close to whisper, “I think we make a great team. Don’t you?”

  I cross my arms and deepen my frown. “Maybe if we were a team. You do realize you just corrected me in front of the whole nation of our peers, right?”

  He looks up towards the ceiling and strokes his chin with two fingers. “I choose to see it as keeping you from having that smarty-pants brat Phrank from Oregon jump in to assert that he knows everything.”

  I blink. He’s right; Phrank totally would’ve done that.

  Just as the words leave Lander’s mouth, Phrank from Oregon’s voice picks up from the Live Comment box and a Face Chat window pops up with his face. �
�Both my peers have foolishly failed to mention the greatest threat of these said flares—that being the static electrical discharge from all tech, resulting in fires, severe burns, and even death.”

  Lander’s box pops up again and he sits up so straight and confident I’d think he was a newscaster or something. “Of course, Phrank. My unit-mate and I simply thought that mentioning the electrical sparks and structural fires was the most simple, obvious answer to give and therefore hardly worth bringing up.”

  Around us, our whole unit snickers, and I even catch a few commiserative head nods in Lander’s direction. I can only imagine Phrank’s outrage at Lander’s comment, especially since the teacher is moving on before Phrank can offer a rebuttal.

  I can’t help staring at Lander as he settles a little deeper into his chair with a very smug smile. Was Lander’s real motive in correcting me only to save me? He certainly wasn’t trying to save Phrank by schooling him just now. I blink several times. “Thanks for having my back. I guess.”

  Lander leans over. “Anytime.” He winks at me again.

  To my other side, Raxtin releases a loud sigh and puts his head down on his arms, sprawling forward on his desk.

  Oops. So much for keeping my eyes straight ahead the whole time. Dang Lander, he’s always able to suck me into things. I stink at this.

  The rest of A day is a blur of units with Lander. My computer literacy unit is with Jett and Lander but isn’t at all awkward like astronomy was. Go figure. They’ve moved my social studies unit to the last period of the day, but the seating for Lander and me is the same.

  The last ten minutes of our unit, the instructor opens up for project partner discussion. I keep my eyes trained ahead on the air where the projection was, determined not to be the first to strike up a conversation.

  Lander slides his arm across the back of my chair, moves over into my seat with me, and puts his face right next to mine. Holy crap! What is he doing? We’re nearly cheek to cheek. He cranes his neck as if to see what I see.

  “Is a blank wall really that fascinating?” he asks.

  A jittery feeling dances in my chest and under the surface of my skin. He’s so close I can feel the warmth of his cheek on mine. “No, I was actually concentrating on something else.” Busted.

  He pulls back far enough to turn and look at me, but keeps his arm around my chair. “Have you looked into any more about your birth vid since last week?”

  I glance his way, but he’s still so close I can’t fully face him. “No. Have you tried to locate anything from your childhood yet?”

  He swallows and his arm drops to his side, then he moves back to his own seat. “No,” he says.

  I chuckle. “Wow. We are probably the worst project partnership ever. Could they have put together any worse dead ends?”

  His brow furrows and he draws imaginary patterns on his desktop with his finger. “Don’t talk like that, Averi. You’re a GAP. Every GAP means the assurance of both a past and future.”

  Did I offend him? What did I say? “Well, you’ve got one too, then.”

  He looks up at me and smiles, but it looks fake and drops almost instantly. His eyes pinch at the corners. “I’m not the one calling myself a dead end.”

  Lander takes a deep breath, then releases a loud sigh. He eases back in his seat and locks his hands behind his head. “I sure do LOVE my A days lately.” He glances sideways at me.

  I tilt and inspect him a little closer. Did he somehow pull this schedule together? “It definitely took an unexpected turn,” I say, crossing my arms. “Almost like it was orchestrated that way.”

  Lander shrugs and holds out his hands. “We do call them Organizers. What does everyone think they organize?”

  I blink. I suppose I’ve never thought about it before. “The community,” I blurt out.

  He twitches a brow up at me and a smile plays at the corner of his lips. “The community as in a physical place? Or as in a cohesive people?”

  My scalp prickles and I feel kind of nauseous. “Don’t say weird things like that.” I turn back to the e-paper in front of me and flip through the pages of the textbook to see what we’ll be studying next.

  Lander clears his throat. “Speaking of weird things to say . . .” He sits up straighter and swings his legs over the side of his chair so that he faces me.

  I look at him again and scoot a little further away in my seat. “Yeah?”

  He rests his elbow on my desktop and drapes the other around the back of me. “Would it be weird if I asked to escort you to your own party this weekend?”

  Chapter Twelve

  My voice pitches. “What?” Is he joking or serious?

  “Three more minutes,” announces the teacher.

  Lander combs his fingers across the top of his wavy blond hair. “Look, I know you really wanted to rock it going stag, but you’d be doing me a huge favor. I’m new, so ditching would be rude, and stag just isn’t my thing.”

  Did he ask other girls and I’m all that’s left? Although I know he didn’t ask anyone today; I was with him the whole time.

  I swallow but my throat feels dry. Do I want to go with him?

  His knee is bobbing like a hummingbird’s wingbeat and his eyes are intently trained on mine. I’d say his expression was serene if not for him gnawing on the inner side of his cheek. I think he’s nervous.

  Wow. I didn’t know that was possible.

  Maybe it would be fun going with him. It’s better than going alone. Especially since these parties are all about couples.

  “Yeah. I think I’d like that,” I finally say.

  His tight eyes relax and seem to smile, even though his mouth hasn’t moved. He sits up. “Fantastic. I’ll pick you up Saturday night at six, then.

  The unit bell rings. I’m up and out the door before I can say or do anything to embarrass myself in front of him.

  I have a date for the party. And he’s a handsome date too.

  I take it back. The Organizers aren’t trying to kill me; they’re just trying to mess with my head.

  My new B day schedule paired every unit but one with Raxtin. Why? Are they still trying to pair us up? He has a girlfriend! Someone at the center of operations has a sick sense of humor.

  Zephani, Kachina, and Jett all share chem with us, but other than that, it’s just Rax and me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s kind of nice. Ok, really nice. But still, I feel like an awful person for being so glad about it.

  I should probably get Worst Friend of the Year award. I’ll put it right up there with my Loser award.

  “Where are you, Ave?”

  Raxtin’s voice startles me back to our present biology unit. “What do you mean?” I hedge, rather poorly.

  I’ve rolled my e-paper up into a strange funnel shape. When I release it, the paper instantly flattens.

  He smirks, showing off his deep-set dimples, and quirks his eyebrow up at me . . . then waits.

  Have I always noticed how handsome this look of his is? I’m thinking no.

  “Fine. You win. Don’t you find it weird, them switching the units up like this? They never used to. Now they’ve done it twice in one year. It seems strange.”

  He gives a slow nod and his jaw works like he’s chewing on something. He focuses his gaze down on his desk. “I don’t think it’s all that odd. Maybe there are relationships that aren’t going too smoothly, so they have to shuffle people around.”

  What does he mean by that?

  Before I can ask, he clears his throat with a small jerk of his head and says, “I mean, with all the new transfers, it’s bound to have stirred things up. Not to mention personalities may not be meshing well.”

  He remains scowling downward even once he’s done talking. He turns a page in our textbook even though I don’t think we’ve finished with the last.

  I open my mouth to point out that Lander has fallen in with our group pretty seamlessly, but something in Raxtin’s hunched posture makes me think better of it. Instead a different quest
ion pops out. “Are you and Zeph still paired up?”

  His head snaps towards me, his brow scrunched and his eyes wide. You’d think I just said I like to wear my pants backwards. “You know, for your social studies assignment. You two are still together, right?”

  He shuts his eyes in an extended blink and stammers. “Uh, yeah. Yes. We are still together. That’s still the same.”

  “Rax, are you all right?” I ask. “You seem like you’re on a different planet.”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I just got confused at what you meant for a second. Honestly, I don’t know why they moved us around, Averi. But I will say, where my B days are concerned, I am very glad they did.”

  I take a deep breath and just embrace the warmth from those words. “Me too.”

  Raxtin, Lander, Kachina, and I crunch our way down the path leading to Jo’s. It’s probably silly, but I didn’t want to come here alone yet. It’s at least a mile and a half from the tram station.

  Besides, there’s something nice about having people I know with me. Zephani and Jettro had after-school projects, so their activities request got denied, but thankfully some of my friends were able to come.

  The warm sunlight hits our shoulders and reflects off my pale nose. I love the way it makes my clothes feel like a heated blanket.

  Jo’s cottage comes into view, and the sharp green vines covering her walls pop with vibrancy.

  Jo is outside. She’s stooped over and working vigorously with her hands, but a thatch-work fence blocks the view of what she’s doing.

  She sees us coming and straightens, waving her hand in greeting, and walks to meet us at the gate. She leans her elbows over the posts that serve as a threshold for the fence and smiles at us. “Good to see you kids again.” Then she dusts her hands together.

  Kachina jumps back in surprise with a yelp. “Your hands! Are you all right? Are they… molding?”