The Summer Prince

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Gil’s shoulders sag in relief. “You’re right, I saw her on Ricarda yesterday. What’s her name?”

  “Lucia,” Enki says. He’s perfectly still; even his mouth barely moves. Some sort of mod effect, I’ve learned, and when it starts, he often loses touch with reality for hours at a time.

  “Do you know her?” I ask. Now that technology is suddenly the most important issue in the city, Lucia’s projects have reached municipal prominence overnight.

  He moves his head very slowly toward me, like he’s pulling it away from a wall coated in sticky glue. Sweat beads on his forehead. Gil frowns and takes his hand.

  “Heard of her,” Enki says. “She was getting to be the biggest tech-head in the verde. She could jack all sorts of things to do what they weren’t supposed to. Fonos that could pick up banned feeds from Salvador, Lisbon, even a few of the Tokyos.” His shoulders jerk and his movements regain their normal grace, the spell over with an abruptness I’ve grown used to. Gil moves away from him to turn down the heat on the stove. I start to get up, but the hammock seems to encase my limbs; it’s too awkward to move, and I give up too easily.

  “Tech-head?” Gil says.

  Enki laughs and plants a kiss at the base of Gil’s neck. “How many times have you been to the verde, menino? You never saw the bootleggers in Carioca Plaza?”

  Gil freezes, then relaxes into Enki’s arms. He’s taller than Enki, and more obviously muscular, and yet Enki dominates him so carelessly. Enki is trying to apologize in his own emotionally blunt way; he’s trying to say that it doesn’t matter what he does with other people, as long as he and Gil are together.

  Maybe that will persuade Gil eventually. Now, Gil just closes his eyes. “The ones selling those cobbled-together fonos?”

  “The best in the city,” Enki says. “Tech-heads rewire the basic models.”

  Now this makes me sit up in my hammock, nearly tumble to Enki’s bamboo floor. “I thought they did that because they couldn’t afford real ones.”

  Enki snorts and looks at me over his shoulder. “What we can’t afford, June, is to accept the little they give us. Standard-issue fonos? We have just as much of a right to speak to the city as any Tier Eight brat.”

  This stings, though I wonder if Enki meant it to. I walk over. Enki watches me carefully. “So what do the jacked fonos do?” I ask him.

  “Show nearby security bots so the grafiteiros can avoid them. Access the up-tier city voice.”

  “The city’s voice is different in the verde?” This shocks me. I’ve heard her all my life, answering simple questions and directing me when I’m lost.

  Enki shrugs; he can’t even bother to respond to such privileged ignorance.

  I try again. These days, I feel as if I’m nothing but one prolonged attempt. “They jack the fonos to speak to the city?”

  For a moment, Enki’s eyes turn as reflective as a cat’s. “They try,” he says.

  On the night of his eighteenth birthday, Enki sits on a throne of shells and shale and fallen blooms; Gil and I sprawl at his feet. The rock of A Quarentena pulses like a beast beneath us — the insistent boom of bloco amarelo blasting up through the island itself — and dancing on it are the hundred luckiest wakas in the city. Enki is on a trip, riding some wave of his mods. Occasionally, he reaches down to touch Gil, who is too still beneath him. City lights bathe us. Near the pylons, a muddy rainbow shoots from the colored array grafiteiros have hacked onto the fallen body of the spider that nearly hit the city.

  Camera bots flit everywhere, but none get too close to us. We invited Sebastião and a few other casters to the birthday party, since these days there’s no avoiding them, and there’s something flash about letting them bask in the glow of our fame.

  I finished my tree last night, and I take a hollow delight in the knowledge of what Mother will think when she sees the dress I’m wearing to show it off. Gil’s mamãe helped me make it, though she made me swear not to tell. She worries about Gil, his mamãe, and she’s not the only one. His introspective, quiet listlessness hasn’t improved in the week since our dinner at Enki’s house. In the two weeks since I outed myself in the throne room, I don’t think I’ve seen him dance once. I want to hate Enki for him, but I think Enki might have infected me with his biomods, because these days I find it harder and harder to hate anyone.

  Especially the ones I love.

  “Gil,” I say, rolling closer to him on our pile of beautiful detritus (because Enki and I haven’t given up on art, how could we, though I hope the Aunties won’t have enough imagination to notice). “Could I wear your coat?”

  Gil opens his eyes. He seems confused for a moment; his pupils are dilated a near-black that perhaps the low light could excuse, but I suspect shouldn’t.

  “Your tree,” he says, so softly I know his words by the shape of his lips.

  “It’s cold,” I say, though it isn’t, not really.

  He puts it around my shoulders; I’m glad, because it means that whatever he took, it wasn’t enough for a trip.

  “Dance with me?” I say.

  Gil closes his eyes as if he wants to say no, but he nods.

  For the first time all night, I feel something like happiness. It’s been a hard few weeks for all of us — even Enki, though the way mods grip him sometimes, it can be hard to credit him with any human emotion.

  I slide off the throne, Gil’s long spangled coat flapping behind me. Gil even smiles when he helps me up. As soon as we step outside the invisible bubble surrounding Enki’s makeshift throne, the cameras swarm close. I swat a few away and they back off. The same can’t be said of the wakas, unfortunately.

  Two weeks ago, no one had heard of June Costa, but now I’m as regular an item on caster feeds as Gil. Plenty of wakas hate me, but the ones we invited to this party don’t — or at least they’d never admit it.

  “June!” a girl calls, so young I wonder how she snagged an invite. She points to her arms, where she’s implanted a crude version of my skin lights. The design is pretty, though, and I smile at her.

  It isn’t as grand as shutting down the city with a light and sound installation, but there are worse things than being admired and influential. I wonder if the Aunties are watching me; I wonder if Mother is. What would she think of my light-tree if Papai were still alive? I imagine her commenting on the richness of the colors, or the intricacy of the leaves. If I had the Queen’s Award, could she finally see me again? Could she forgive every poisoned thing between us?

  Gil just stands in the gyrating crowd as though he’s heard of dancing but can’t quite remember what it is. I take his hand and hold it over my heart.

  “You’re warm,” he says.

  I shake my hips in answer and tip back my head, so Palmares Três hangs upside down from a purple sky. A moment later, Gil pulls me closer. He laughs. It’s harsh and sharp, but it’s laughter and it’s dancing, and I hope that maybe Gil has gotten over the worst of his sadness.

  The moon sets, and we’re still dancing, wet with sweat and drunk on movement. A few cameras still hover nearby, but not so many as before. Even the gossip casters get tired eventually, and it’s Enki they’re really after, not Gil or me.

  I wrap my arms around Gil’s slick neck and rest my head against his collarbone. “He’s sorry, you know.”

  “I know. But he’d do it again.”

  “That’s Enki, isn’t it? The other side of what we love.”

  “That he doesn’t care how he hurts other people?”

  “No, no,” I say, aching and wondering how Gil can’t see what’s so clear to me. “That he knows exactly how he hurts people, and he cares, and he does it anyway.”

  Gil stops dancing with the abruptness of a slap. He starts to walk — away from Enki, away from the dancers and the cameras, though a few try to follow us. I glance at Enki and they drop, lifeless, to the rock. My sandals slip as I chase after him. I balance myself with out-flung arms and keep running.

  Gil finally stops close to the
edge. He stares at the waves crashing against the worn rock. He won’t look at me even when I touch his hip.

  “Why Ueda?” he says. “He’s a king, there’s no guarantees of anything, I understand that, June, I swear I do, but why some grande he cares nothing for? Why whore himself like he doesn’t even matter?”

  “But,” I say, “he whored himself for the most important thing in the world.”

  Now Gil turns to me; I almost wish he hadn’t. He’s screaming and furious. “For mind-twisting biomods he can hardly control?”

  “Art.”

  Gil wipes his eyes and laughs. “You two are insane, you know that? The way you privilege art —”

  “We kissed.”

  I say it fast, so I don’t lose my nerve. Gil stares at me. This is it. This is how I’ll lose my best friend in the whole world. If he was upset about Ueda …

  “When?”

  A sob catches in my throat, but I answer him. “Right before our show. On the water. Gil, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

  “So he hasn’t forgotten how.”

  I’m braced for a storm of betrayed fury. Not his gentle, relieved smile or the softness in his eyes. “Gil?”

  He takes my hands. “I told you before, you know, that I wouldn’t mind. I don’t. If he has to be with someone else … oh, June, as long as he isn’t destroying himself with people like Ueda-sama …”

  He’s relieved. He hugs me, so fiercely that for a moment I can’t breathe.

  “I love you both more than anyone but my mamãe,” he whispers. “I think you can reach that part of him … the one that scares me. You can keep him safe.”

  I don’t think anyone can keep our summer king safe, but I don’t say so. Gil has offered me absolution, however undeserved. I am greedy enough to take it.

  “He asked for her to come,” Auntie Yaha says.

  She and Mother sit beside each other at the table, though they don’t touch. Across from them, I pick at an acarajé patty that has gone cold while they argue.

  “I don’t see why June should meet with some disgraced foreign dignitary. What if he tries to get her to trade sex for city secrets?”

  “I don’t have any city secrets, Mother. And I promise, I’m in no danger of sleeping with him.”

  Mother rolls her eyes. “It’s all you wakas do these days, isn’t it? I watch the holos, since you won’t tell me anything anymore. I see how you are around that negro prince —”

  “You mean the summer king —”

  “I mean the one who has turned himself into an international incident! Gil is one thing, that waka mother of his couldn’t raise a cat, but you, June —”

  “Valencia! June!” Auntie Yaha reaches across the table, touching my hand and quieting me before I start to scream something Mother really won’t forgive.

  “Enki is the summer king, like him or not,” she says. “But, June, it would be nice if you could tell your mother and me more about what you do, so we don’t have to worry so much.”

  I roll my eyes. “If by ‘worry’ you mean ‘scream at me,’ then no thanks.”

  “Maybe we wouldn’t have to scream if you weren’t neglecting any hope of your future to participate in this waka orgy.”

  “Who I have sex with is none of your business, Mother.”

  “So you are sleeping with him!”

  “What were you, a nun at seventeen?”

  “I wasn’t an attention whore, throwing myself at celebrities every night.”

  “You’re jealous that I’m famous.”

  “I’m embarrassed that my daughter doesn’t know how to comport herself in public.”

  I’m suddenly so tired of this. I don’t even know how to speak to her without yelling anymore. So I stand. “I’ll be happy to go to dinner with you, Auntie Yaha,” I say.

  “June,” she says, a note in her voice closer to pleading than I’ve ever heard. “Sit down. You and your mother —”

  “Are never going to work it out. You should really stop trying.”

  I leave, and Auntie Yaha doesn’t call me back. Mother doesn’t even look at me.

  She is my mother and I hate her. But I wish that I didn’t.

  I want to go to the park, or my grotto in the walkway, or even school to talk to Bebel, but I just can’t bear the feeling of a city’s eyes on me right now, so I hide in my room.

  I ping Gil a few times, but he doesn’t respond. I flip on my holo and see why: at least four feeds of him and Enki sharing an afternoon picnic in Royal Park. Sebastião has a clip on repeat of Enki reaching into the white pulpy flesh of a durian fruit and Gil licking it off his fingers. My heart starts to race just looking, so I shut everything off and wonder if I might scream. I dreamed of fame, back when Gil and I were just two anonymous wakas. I imagined caster interviews and winning the Queen’s Award, choking up when I thanked my papai during the acceptance speech. And though this reality feels stickier than my daydreams, I can’t bring myself to regret it.

  Enki says that Oreste hates me now, but she gave Auntie Yaha the chair of an important committee. I still might win the Queen’s Award if I play this properly. I’m certainly the most notorious of the finalists. The number of technophiles grows by the day, and they all appreciate what I did to save the city. It’s like with Enki: Love is its own kind of power.

  That’s what sticks in my thoughts when I take out my long-buried sheets of drawing paper and start to sketch. I’ve spent so much time constructing high-concept art that I’d nearly forgotten the simpler sensation of a pencil scratch on wood-pulp paper. It’s all obscenely expensive, but Mother insisted I learn proper art, and she’s made sure I’ve had a steady supply all my life.

  Even the last two years.

  I sketch my tree and then I put Gil and Enki in its branches. The image makes me feel warm. My tension holds in my fingers, but it leaves that space behind my eyes. Soon enough, that one is as finished as I can make it. Instead of taking a breath, stretching my cramping hand, admiring my work, I reach for another sheet of paper and start again. This time I’m surprised to find myself sketching Auntie Yaha at the wedding, in her simple turban of patterned linen and a wide blue skirt. She smiles off frame, a new bride. As I sketch, I realize that I found her beautiful. Was it possible that for a moment I hoped my mother could find some happiness with her new wife? That maybe this would ease the distance between us? I must have, because that hope permeates the sketch itself, a message across time.

  “Oh.”

  I drop the paper, whirl around. Auntie Yaha is standing in the open door. Her turban is red, her clothes far from plain, and she’s still beautiful, though I have hardly seen her genuine smile in a year.

  “I … do you want it?” I ask.

  She stares at me for a long time without answering. I wonder if something in the sketch offends her, but it isn’t that kind of stillness. Finally, she just shakes her head and looks away. Yaha is an Auntie, no matter how much she looks like a waka in my drawing, and so I stay quiet while she composes herself.

  “We should leave soon,” she says, clipped and brusque. “The reservation is at seven.”

  “We’re doing this in public?”

  “Best for the city to see our good relations. You’re not bad at politics for a waka, June, but you should leave this to me.”

  I want to snap that she has my political skills to thank for her new committee chair. But instead I say, “I’ll be ready in five minutes.” I’m tired of hurting people just because I can. I don’t know why I ever enjoyed it.

  I wear pants and a simple high-neck tunic — the lines are nice and a bit of webbing at the neck lets my lights peek through, but it’s surprisingly conservative given my outfits of late. Auntie Yaha nods in satisfaction when I step into the hall. Mother peers at me from her chair by the garden, but she doesn’t say anything and I pretend I don’t see her.

  Auntie Yaha has a government pod take us directly to Xique, the node on Tier Six known for its chic restaurants and wild clubs. Gil an
d I don’t bother with it much, since the music’s better in Founders Park or the verde, and there are too many grandes around for our tastes. Still, it feels very sophisticated to alight from the sliding pod door with Auntie Yaha. Heads swivel as we step out, at first because anyone who can get permission for private transport into Xique in the evening has to be important, and then because they recognize me. Cameras swarm, but I barely notice them. You can get used to almost anything.

  Ueda-sama steps from his own personal transport a moment later. “June,” he says, and bends slightly at the hips. After a moment, I return the greeting. Auntie Yaha touches us both on our shoulders, exuding the professional friendliness that I’m sure is the real reason for her new promotion.

  “I’m so glad that we can finally talk,” the ambassador of Tokyo 10 says.

  I smile, emulating Auntie Yaha for the sake of the cameras. “These are certainly better circumstances,” I say, and he shakes his head, a single rueful gesture that surprises me because it feels honest.

  “Shall we?” Auntie Yaha says, indicating the crowded walkway that leads into the heart of the node. Lucky for us, the restaurant is close to the platform. Any longer of a walk, and we would have needed a few of Auntie Maria’s security bots just to push through the crowd. Auntie Yaha and Ueda-sama make small talk while I try to seem serene and unruffled. Mostly I agreed to this because I knew it would help Enki. He might not care what Oreste thinks of him, but she is Queen, and she’s spent the past month stymieing him at every opportunity.

  But I’m curious too. Ueda-sama is a grande’s grande — a hundred if he’s a day. He and Enki don’t seem to even be from the same planet, but they had an affair for months. Ueda-sama is smooth and pleasant like a still pool: so reflective it’s impossible to see beneath his surface. Did Enki see? Did he even bother to try? Maybe he kept their relations strictly transactional, like the whore Gil accused him of being.

  I don’t wonder what Ueda-sama saw in Enki. He’s the summer king, and even outside Palmares Três, he can have almost anyone he wants.