by Pixie James
My brow furrows and I stare at her a second. “Your mom killed someone?” I blurt out.
“No! Nothing like that. My mother was Princess Ri’Tani’s handmaiden—her best friend, really. So, when the princess ran away, everyone blamed my mom. She refused to disclose where she went and still hasn’t to this day.
“They even arrested her and threw her in jail but when they tried to extract her memories, her mind was blank. There were no memories of the night Ri’Tani left. So, rather than keep her locked up without proof, they sent her here and stripped her of her title. I was just under four years old.”
“So, people treated you like crap because of something your mom might have done?”
Tia picks at her ends again, then smooths a hand over her flawless curls. “Yeah. It wasn’t until five years ago that they stopped looking and there was a royal proclamation absolving my mother and father of any wrongdoing.”
“Are you allowed to go back now? I mean, if you wanted to?”
Tia meets my gaze. “My parents are never allowed back. I can go, if I want. And I will, just like we talked about, but not until I’m ready. It took me a long time to get over how people treated us when I was young.”
“That’s such BS.”
“Yeah. But it’s also why I volunteer like I do. The more credits, the faster I can get out into the real world and prove myself. Make my parents proud… I would have been a Ty. Like she was before everything happened. Sometimes, I wonder where I’d be if I still was.”
“Well, I don’t know where you’d be but I’m glad you’re a So. Because I’d never have met you, and I wouldn’t have a bombass roommate or such an awesome friend. You’re literally the only reason I’ve survived this long and not turned into a blubbering mess.” Huey pops his head up over the edge of my bed and whines. “You too, bud.”
Her lavender complexion brightens, tiny tears welling in her eyes. “Really?”
“Really. Now, get your butt over here and teach me this touch nonsense so we can watch Kung Fu Hustle and eat the Twizzlers I snagged from the dining hall this afternoon.”
“You had me at Twizzlers.” Pulling up her sleeves, Tia sits down on my bed facing me. “All right, has Nix showed you anything useful yet?” I cock a brow and purse my lips. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. You should tell Te’Lara. Learning this is really important. I’m good, but no one’s as skilled as he is. Not in our year anyway.”
“I think we finally came to a bit of an understanding once the kids left.”
“Kids? Do I want to know?”
I shake my head and smile. “Nope, because if I told you, you might go nuclear like I almost did.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say if there hadn’t been witnesses, I’d probably be expelled.”
She gives me a high five. “Good for you! I’m so glad you’re not taking his crap. He’s gotten away with his golden boy routine for too long now. All right, let’s get down to business.”
Tia rubs her hands together, warming them. “Normally, we’d use a Neuris glove, but I haven’t had time to get approval from Headmaster Ha’Jahn and they’re already being programmed for the games at the end of the year. So, we’ll just use me. Be careful though, like you already found out, it can be pretty distressing if it’s not done correctly.”
“All right. Just tell me what to do.”
She takes my finger and touches it to the tip of hers. “Okay, notice anything?”
A very light tingling sensation warms the pad of my finger the longer she leaves them together. “That’s our touch sensors trying to sync. Now, you’ve never been instructed, and advanced communication classes are next year, but I’m doing this so you can get the idea. Our chemistry reacts to each other, recognizes another Xebulin and tries to connect.”
“Does it ever hurt? Like static shock?” I ask, thinking about the weird reaction that happened when I touched Ty’Nix.
Tia tilts her head. “Why do you ask?”
“Nothing, just wondering. Keep going.”
Guiding my hand over with her finger, she turns it palm up. “Okay, now think of your favorite memory. I’m going to touch your wrist and read you. This is how it’s supposed to feel.”
The room gets a little hotter and my heart speeds up thinking about what happened when Ki’Lin touched me. Do I trust Tia not to go deeper than she should? What if she sees all the things I hate about myself? What my mom did and how bad it was for me before?
Could I really handle that?
“Wait,” I blurt out. “Before I came here…things were…”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to look further than the surface, and if one day you want to share, cool. If not? That’s all right, too.”
I close my eyes for a second and sit there with her hand wrapped around my wrist, waiting for the gut-wrenching feeling from before and there’s nothing. When I open them, Tia’s staring at me with a cheesy grin. “Well, are you going to do it or what?”
“A cupcake with a sparkle candle in it at some hole in the wall diner with your mom? That’s all I got; I was afraid to go too deep.”
My mouth drops open. “Are you serious right now? That’s amazing. I didn’t feel a thing.”
“Was it your birthday or something?”
An overwhelming sense of sadness creeps in. “Yeah, it was the last one before my mom—” Got hooked on drugs and stopped caring about me. ”Before she got sick.”
“You miss her, huh?”
I wipe an errant tear I didn’t even know had started to fall. “Yeah, but she’s been that way for a long time. I hardly remember her healthy.”
“It’s going to be all right. We’ll get you caught up, and you’ll graduate and get your pick of jobs. Then you can live your life the way you want to… Well, within the parameters of the Universal Treaty, but you know what I mean. Things can only get better from here. And if you let me, I’ll be there with you, kicking your butt every step of the way.”
I give her a blurry smile. “All right, it’s a deal. Now my turn. Tell me what to do.”
“First thing you have to do is open your mind. Keep it a blank slate. You don’t want your memories or thoughts interfering or warping what you get from me because it makes them a jumbled mess and pretty much useless.
“Then you let the energy you feel take you where it wants to go. That’s the hardest part, tricking your mind into losing its own control. The harder you fight to get where you think you want to go, the more pain and discomfort the person you’re trying to read feels. That’s why it felt so gross when Ki’Lin barged into yours. Because she sucks at life and is craptastic at memory extraction.”
“So then how do I find the memories I want to find? Like, if I’m supposed to figure out what someone’s done wrong for the government or whatever.”
“That’s the best part. A true master of touch memory has such a strong sense of self, the energy knows what you want and takes you there. At first it will be like a slideshow. It will take you on a ride through everything, important or not, and you have to do your best to catalogue what’s needed and weed out the things that stand out before you let go. Most of the time you don’t get anywhere remotely near to the important stuff until the second half of year twelve. But once you get good? Like really good? It’s almost instant. Amazing, right?”
“Amazing. Scary. You know, same diff.”
“You ready? I have something right on the edge of my mind I’m thinking about. If you can clear yours, it should flash at you right as you give in. Just press your fingers against my wrist.”
“Here goes nothing…”
A light buzz vibrates beneath my fingers as I wrap them around her wrist, and at first, I have the urge to jerk away. It’s almost like a benign version of what I felt with Ty’Nix, like an energy impulse you shouldn’t feel. Ignoring it, I try to let my mind go blank, but it’s hard because all the water I drank earlier hits and I really need to pee.
Shaking my head,
I try to wipe away my thoughts and focus on the slight tug I feel. It pulls at me, and like an animal on a leash, I let it take the lead…into a big gray nothingness. What the heck?
My eyes fly open. “Eh, I think I’m doing it wrong. I thought I felt something but then all I saw was a bunch of gray.” Completely ignoring me, Tia pushes on her bladder with a confused look on her face. “Tia?”
Her eyes connect with mine. “Do you have to pee?”
“Huh?”
She swallows hard. “Cherise, this is important. Do you need to pee?”
How does she know that? Her features are tight, like she’s super worried about something, and the thought of losing the only friend I’ve managed me make because I’m some kind of major freak scares me.
“No, why?” The lie slips out before I can stop it, and I instantly feel like crap.
“Oh, thank God. We were about to have a serious conversation if you did.” She shakes her head like she’s trying to clear it. “No big deal on the gray. That’s normal. You’re on the cusp of a memory, just not quite there yet. I’ll be right back, though. Not sure why, but all of a sudden I have to pee like a racehorse.” She hops up and runs out of the room.
Why was it a big deal? Surely, I didn’t put that idea in her head, right?
Right as the bathroom door closes, I sprint for the community one a few feet down the hall and try to ninja pee before she gets back. No less than two seconds after I sink back into my spot, she skips into view.
“Okay, back. Sorry. That was super weird. Anyway, you want to try again, or focus on all the tests you have to pass to get out of this place?”
“Eh, let’s just move on for now. I’m running on fumes.” And I have no clue what I just did.
“All right. I’ll just go over the basics to get you started.” She hands me a stack of notes. “Here are the highlights of the major job areas that we’re allowed to enter after we reach adulthood. You have to score a ninety or above in whatever area you choose. If you can’t, then they choose for you. And those jobs…well, they aren’t the kind you would want. So, we’re going to avoid that all together.
“Go over the notes and decide which areas you think you might like to go into and we’ll focus on those. Remember, we not only have paper tests, but skills tests we have to pass before graduating. It stinks we have to work so much harder than the humans our age, but what can we do? We’re here borrowing their planet. We have to play by their rules.”
I stare at her blank faced trying to absorb what she’s telling me. Tia rubs her temples, and bites her lip.
“Okay, I’m doing a terrible job explaining this. At the end of this year, it’s regular school stuff. Final exams for all the classes we take each year. Yours will be more complicated because you have to test over like sixteen years’ worth of stuff, but it’s things you can read in a book. As for next year’s tests, you need to focus on what kind of job you want, now.
“In order to be placed, you have to prove you have in-depth knowledge of your chosen job field and demonstrate why they should let you work in it. The smarter you are, the better you can spy undetected.
“The humans aren’t going to throw you out in the world if you can’t be of use to them, which is why you need to master the basics of the big touch skills—memory extraction, truth differentiation, and siphoning—now, because it usually takes years and you only have one and a half.”
“So, I basically have to choose what I do for the rest of my life before I graduate my senior year of high school, then learn how to suck information out of the people I work with undetected?”
“Ideally, you’d have had your whole life up until this point to decide like the rest of us, but yeah. Since it’s already winter semester and more than halfway into the school year, you have five more months to prepare before this year’s school finals in May, and then all of next year to prepare for the skills and job entrance exams the government makes us take.”
Suddenly overwhelmed by the amount of crap I’m supposed to do, my anxiety spikes and I’m on the verge of angry tears. “So, let me get this straight… This year I have to pass the regular finals, but next year I have to pass finals, some sort of job entrance test and prove I can extract memories and do all the other touch skills?”
Tia tries to answer, but I keep blabbering out questions in a full on panic.
“When exactly am I supposed to find time in there to learn how to protect myself from people like Ki’Lin and who’s supposed to teach me? And when are these stupid touch games you guys keep talking about?
“How in the heck am I supposed to catch up with all of you guys if I’m also doing the same course load as you on top of everything else?”
By the end of my rant, I’m panting and so exhausted I plop back on my bed Gone With the Wind style.
Tia laughs and launches herself on the bed beside me. “Breathe, girl. We will get you through this. The games are something the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth year students get to compete in. It’s a series of riddles, clues, and physical agility obstacles you have to complete to get to the next step.
“Each one has a right and a wrong clue embedded in the Neuris glove each teacher is wearing after you complete the step, and depending on what you choose and what you see, it leads you down the wrong or the right path.
“You either make it to the finish line or get thrown into a giant muddy pit and paraded around like a loser. The reason everyone gets excited is that all of the Xebulin Assembly members attend and they keep score. Those scores get added to your government file so when you test out your final year, you have even more of a chance to secure your desired job at a higher pay rate because you have a little clout to throw around. Plus, you know…if you win, you get to brag.”
“Who won last year?”
Tia rolls her eyes. “Who do you think? They select the top boy and girl with the quickest times. I was top fifteen. Ki’Lin and Ty’Nix both won. Oh, and by the way, Ty’Nix should be teaching you touch defense, but since he’s slacking in a major way, you should ask Te’Lara for another tutor.”
“Ugh. He’s such a jerk.”
“But he’s cute, right?”
I grab my pillow and smack Tia with it. “Like I need a reminder.”
“Look, I know it sucks right now. But I swear you’ll figure it out. I can’t fix what happened before, but I can help you now.”
I toss the inhumanely huge stack of papers on my bed beside me and rifle in my bag for the Twizzlers. “All right. I’ve been poked, humiliated, and lectured enough for one week. Time to eat my feelings.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been lusting after those since you mentioned them.”
Chapter Ten
The next few days pass in a blur of diagrams and job descriptions. I should have rested or tried to take nap but I couldn’t relax long enough to actually sleep. My anxiety has doubled, tripled even, and all I can think about is that if I can’t catch up and do all the things required of me, I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone and locked up somewhere for being something I didn’t even choose to be.
Everyone here is so nonchalant about next year’s tests. Like yeah, it’s a big deal, but whatever, we’ll be fine.
Well…what if you’re not?
Can anyone even tell me what happens if I fail and bomb those tests? What if I never master memory extraction or the rest of my skills?
Ugh, I need to talk myself off this cliff.
Huey stirs at my side, anxious to help, but there’s only so much he can do. He’d literally have to stay attached to me twenty-four-seven and that’s not realistic. I mean, I know he would. The way he stares at me, he’d probably let me ride around on his back for the rest of my life but that’s not fair to him. And I guess this is one of those things I need to feel. Use it as fuel to drive me, or whatever.
The last few days weren’t all that bad. I did get a ton of studying done. I completely caught up with my math and Xebulin history studies. It’s hilarious, real
ly. I was barely passing my human history class because nothing could hold my attention. But Xebulin history? It’s pretty freaking interesting.
Dueling royalty, a centuries-long blood feud with the bald aliens of a neighboring planet and more wars than I can count. They even had all female assassination squads during the reign of a Xebulin queen who refused to abdicate after her mate was killed. She survived four assassination attempts herself—all by males, so she surrounded herself with a group of female warriors who protected her fiercely. Talk about girl power.
I even learned a little about the silver alien in Ha’Jahn’s study. Apparently, her species were driven to protect those decidedly pure of heart and were known to cut down anyone who threatened them.
It didn’t mention much about their origins, just that they kept popping up in stories all over the universe. Different alien races, different galaxies, it was all the same. People use to line up to share a consciousness with them—offering their bodies to allow them to take form when they’d show up, then they’d disappear when not needed.
I tried memory extraction with Tia again. but after what happened the first time, I can’t really throw myself into it like I know I should. I’m terrified I’m going to accidentally put something else in her head. So, until she wrangles a pair of those practice gloves, I’m going to stick with my lessons with Ty’Nix.
Today is going to be an insane day. Six classes and one test to get me in the advanced Xebulin History class with the rest of the eleventh years, and another tutoring session with His Majesty, Lord Ty’Nix. Luckily, Headmaster Ha’Jahn isn’t requiring me to learn thousands and thousands of years of history, just the most important stuff.
Starving and anxious to get the day started, I head off to the dining hall to eat. I will say that’s one nice thing about this place—someone cooks my food for me. It might sounds weird, but when your mom regularly disappears for weeks at a time, a home cooked meal is hard to find.
A dull ache stirs to life in my chest and I shove it down. No way I’m going to spend my day sulking over stuff I can’t change. Keeping my head down, I do my best to slink into the dining hall unnoticed. The tall cathedral walls and massive benches make the place look like something out of an architecture book rather than a school for extraterrestrial kids.