by Libba Bray
“As soon as the robots had gone past, Steam Girl whispered to her father: ‘Back in a minute.’ And before he could argue, she left their hiding place and ran across the open ground to the nearest building, where she crouched behind a low wall of crates and then slipped in through the door.
“It was a factory, all right. There were machines and conveyor belts and cables and tubes. There were workers, too—hundreds of robots, pulling levers and turning cranks and carrying wood to the giant furnace at one end of the room. She noticed more robots lying half-assembled on the conveyor belts, and guessed that’s what the factory was for. Robots building more robots.
“But that was only part of it. There were other production lines, too, making machines she’d never seen or even heard of. Heavy iron engines that smelled of fire and oil—some with wings and some with wheels. Ugly big guns and bombs with fins like sharks. There were boxes and tools made of a strange artificial material—unnaturally smooth, light, and dull. And flat glass screens like empty mirrors, and long snaking rubber-coated wires that hung around the room and over the floor.
“Steam Girl’s head was spinning, but she was determined to solve the mystery of this infernal factory. As quietly as she could, she made her way across the factory floor, ducking from wood-pile to conveyor belt, avoiding the robots and looking for clues.
“Near the middle of the room was a raised platform with a commanding view of the whole operation. There was no-one there—just a desk and two chairs, a vase of bright-pink flowers, and one of those curious machines with row upon row of buttons and a blank glass screen. And all over the desk, the chairs, the floor—stood piles of paper, covered with printed text and diagrams and handwritten notes. Quickly and carefully, Steam Girl crept to the edge of the platform and glanced around to see if she had been noticed. Then she reached up to the desk and snatched an armload of paper.
“A high-pitched scream filled the air, cutting through the constant roar of the factory. Robots looked up from their work and stared at the platform where Steam Girl crouched clutching her stolen papers.
“‘Shrieking Vines,’ she muttered, realizing too late that the vase on the desk wasn’t merely decorative.
“Then she jumped to her feet and ran as fast as she could—leaping over conveyor belts and darting between the quickly converging robots until finally she was out the door and sprinting for the cover of the jungle. Behind her shots rang out, louder and faster than any firearms she knew of. The ground around her feet spat up fistfuls of dirt. But somehow she made it to the trees unharmed.
“‘Run!’ she yelled, and her father and the Martians took off through the forest with bullets splintering trees and cutting leaves to ribbons all around them. But Steam Girl paused a moment to catch her breath, then reached down to her belt and pulled out a gadget she’d never tried before.”
“Ha! I know what’s coming next!” I cry, interrupting her story.
“Do you?” she says, looking at me sideways from behind her glasses.
“Sure,” I grin, slipping off the wall and crossing my arms. “It’s gadget time! So what is it today? A Steam-Driven Instantaneous Escape Facilitator? Oversize Extendible Robot-Neutralising Punching Arms? A Rocket-Powered Jet-Pack Flying Machine?”
She stares at me for a moment and then laughs so hard, she gets the hiccups. I can’t stop smiling, especially when she wipes her eyes and puts her hand on my shoulder.
“You’re OK,” she says. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”
I can feel my face blushing, but she’s already turned away to dig through her bag. When she straightens up, she’s holding what looks like a rusty tin can with a string at one end.
“Huh?” I say. “Is that it? Doesn’t look like much—”
Then she points one end of the can at me and pulls the string. There’s a loud COUGH! and the air fills with steam and something damp and heavy hits me full in the face. I yelp and trip over backward and then it’s like someone’s tossed a wet fishing net all over me. I wave my arms and legs around and just get more and more caught. I can hear her laughing again, even harder than before, but it doesn’t seem very funny to me.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “GOD DAMN IT! IT’S HORRIBLE!”
She eventually manages to stop laughing long enough to try to free me but without much success. The net’s so sticky, it gets all over her, too, and soon we’re both caught in a big gooey mess of strings and glue and soot and each other.
There’s a moment when I suddenly realise I’m lying on top of her, my face pressed against her neck. She has one arm around my back and a hand on my cheek. And at exactly the same time we both stop struggling and lie there in silence.
Her soft white skin is slowly turning pink.
At last we get ourselves out, and as we sit on the dusty concrete, picking bits of sticky web out of our hair and off our clothes, she tells me the rest of the story.
“The Web Weaving Tangle Trap caught the first wave of pursuing robots,” she says, “giving Steam Girl and her friends enough time to get back to the airship and safety. They rose up into the sky with gunfire rattling at them from below.
“The King was elated. ‘What an adventure!’ he said with a laugh.
“Princess Lusanna was so excited, she quite forgot herself, throwing her arms around Steam Girl’s father and giving him a big kiss. The King laughed even harder at that, until the Princess turned the brightest red anyone had ever seen and ran off to her cabin.”
I close my eyes then, picturing the scene. If I’d been there, I’d have kissed Steam Girl. She’d have laughed, with a low, throaty giggle. Perhaps her breath would quicken, and her throat would turn pink, and I’d have to swallow very hard before I could speak....
But when I open my eyes again, she isn’t smiling or blushing. She isn’t even looking at me, but at the thin brown grass that’s forced its way through the asphalt.
“And what about Steam Girl?” I ask. “What did she do?”
She glances up and our eyes meet. She looks so sad.
“She—well, after all that running, I guess she was tired.” She sighs. “So she went to take a rest in her hammock. But as she took off her jacket, something fell out of the pocket and spilled across the floor. The papers she’d snatched. What with getting shot at and everything, she’d completely forgotten about them till now.
“So she leaped up and spread the papers out across the floor. To her surprise, they were in English. There were maps of Venus, Mars, and Earth; lists of equipment; and plans of attack. With a rising sense of panic, Steam Girl realized they could mean only one thing: all those robots and weapons and fighting machines were being prepared as an army of conquest.
“Reading on, she found ominous references to some kind of super-bomb, able to destroy whole cities in a single awful flash; poisonous gas that could kill an army in minutes; and even man-made plagues for releasing into a population’s water supply or the air they breathed. It was unimaginable, inhuman, horrible....
“It was a plan for the end of the world.”
On the way back to class, she’s quiet. But I’m buzzing.
“So what happened?” I say, dancing around her as we walk. “Did Steam Girl show the papers to her father? And then did they—?”
“No,” she says quietly.
“What? She didn’t show him the papers? How come?”
She hesitates a moment, as if trying to decide whether to tell me what comes next.
“There was one more thing,” she says at last. “On one of the papers. On the back, written in pencil, over and over.”
I wait, but she seems to have stopped talking, and we’re almost at her classroom.
“What was it?” I stand in front of the door. “Come on, you have to tell me! Or I won’t let you go to Maths.”
She gives me a withering look. “Alright, I’ll tell you. But....”
“But what?!” I’m desperate. The second bell is about to ring.
&n
bsp; “Never mind,” she says. “It was a name. Her father’s name. His full name—Professor Archibald James Patterson Swift. Again and again.”
“Woooah!” I breathe. “So—what? Was he behind the factory? Did he have, like, a secret life where he slipped off to Venus and planned the destruction of Earth?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she hisses.
“It would be a good twist, though, wouldn’t it?” I say. “Y’know, the heroine’s father turns out to be the villain—”
“It wasn’t him,” she repeats, more firmly this time. “He’s a good man, who’d never do anything rotten like that. No matter what people say about him.”
“Why? What do people say about him?” Now I’m confused. Does the father have secrets, after all?
But the second bell rings and she pushes past me into the classroom and closes the door behind her.
She isn’t at school the next day, or the day after that. I look for her everywhere, but she isn’t in class, or by the incinerator or even in the library. By Thursday I’ve slipped back into my old routine, eating lunch by myself and catching up on homework.
Mrs Hendricks has given us a new assignment: write a short story in the first person, present tense. I sit in the classroom trying to ignore Michael Carmichael and come up with an idea, but all I can think of is Steam Girl, and that’s her story, not mine.
So I start writing about a boy who has his own adventures, travelling around the universe in a rocket ship called The Silver Arrow. In my story he flies to Saturn, which is like a huge ocean of poisonous gases, so the natives all live in cities they’ve built on the rings high above the planet’s surface. When Rocket Boy (that’s what I call him) lands on the first ring, he sees this huge hairy monster chasing a frightened girl. So he makes a really loud noise with his rocket’s engines and scares the monster away. The girl, who turns out to be the princess of Saturn, is so grateful, she throws her arms around him and kisses him on the lips, blushing pink on her cheeks and on her long pale neck, her heaving breasts pressed against his chest...
But then I stop, because I know what Mrs. Hendricks would say. She hates it if we write something like “heaving breasts.” She calls it a cliché and says we should write about things that are real. Which makes me want to say “I don’t like writing what’s real, because mostly what’s real is boring and sucks.” But I don’t say that, I just nod and say nothing.
Anyway, this time it is real, because that’s what this girl is like. I know, because I based her on Steam Girl, who definitely does have heaving breasts and long, lithe legs and all that stuff. Well, the Steam Girl in the notebook, at least. The real one has heaving breasts, too, come to think of it, but also heaving shoulders and a heaving stomach and heaving thighs and bum. She’s all about the heaving. And the weird thing is I don’t mind at all. I’m even starting to like it.
So when she finally reappears on Friday, I nervously show her Rocket Boy. I’ve even done some drawings of him and the princess, but they look pretty stupid compared to hers. I’m worried she’ll say it’s lousy, but instead she gives it back without saying much at all. “Great,” she says, sounding distracted. I don’t think she’s even read it.
“How come you weren’t at school?” I say, a little disappointed.
But she doesn’t answer my question. “Did I miss much?”
I tell her about the short story assignment, which is due in a week.
“You should do Steam Girl,” I say.
She looks at me like I’m stupid. “That’s not for teachers,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I ask. But I already kind of know.
“All they want to read about is miserable people living stupid boring lives. Unhappy families, unrequited love—all that crap.” She grimaces. “And the worst thing is... none of it’s real.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—it’s just—well, I think Steam Girl is great. Really totally awesome. I swear, if you typed it all up and got it published, you could be a millionaire.”
She stares at me for a long time. I can feel my cheeks starting to burn.
“Listen,” she says at last. “I don’t care about being a millionaire or Mrs Hendricks or English grades or school or any of that stuff. All of that means nothing.”
“OK,” I say.
“All I care about is this.” She brandishes her notebook like a weapon. “This is all that matters. All that’s real.”
This time I don’t say anything.
She hesitates for a moment, her eyes slipping away from mine and drifting across the concrete and the garbage and the thin sickly trees. Then she turns and walks away.
That afternoon in Biology, Amanda Anderson comes over and says “Hi.”
I almost choke. “Uh... hi,” I say.
“You’re pretty tight with the new girl, right?” she says. “That weird girl with the hat?”
“Flying helmet,” I say, and immediately regret it.
“What?” She looks at me like I’ve just started speaking Mongolian.
“It’s not a hat.” I’ve lost all control of my mouth. “It’s a flying helmet. Like pilots wear. Apparently...” I trail off lamely.
“Well, whatever,” she says. “So what’s her deal? Is she one of those creepy cosplayers or something?”
“I don’t know,” I say, which is true. “She’s good at drawing. And she tells amazing stories.”
“Huh.” Amanda frowns. “What kind of stories?”
“Um....”
I’m not sure how much to explain. I mean, Amanda is the Shrieking Vine of Venus, right? She’s already caused one black eye. What if she’s just pumping me for intel to pass on to Michael?
But I was friends with her once, and I want to believe she’s a decent person. It’s not her fault the whole Barbie thing got out of hand. Or that her boyfriend is a creep. Maybe she’s genuinely trying to understand. Maybe she wants to patch things up. Maybe I still have a chance.
“They’re about this character called Steam Girl,” I say at last.
“Steam Girl?” She screws up her face.
“Yeah. She has adventures... on Mars and stuff.”
“God, how lame,” Amanda says.
I feel bad that in my mouth it does sound lame. It’s like a betrayal.
“Does she ever take off that stupid hat?” Amanda says.
“I dunno,” I say. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“Well, anyway,” she says, getting to the point at last. “Tracey says she lives in a trailer home with her creepy drug dealer father. You should probably be careful. One day she’ll probably bring a gun to school and kill everyone she knows.”
I laugh.
“I’m just telling you for your own safety.” She actually seems concerned. “I know you always look for the best in people. But you saw what she did to me, right? That girl is dangerous. Seriously.”
She puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry Michael’s such a jerk,” she says. “I swear, I’m this close to ditching him....”
The warmth of her skin goes through my shirt and spreads across my body.
“Take care of yourself,” she says.
That night, I try to dream about Amanda Anderson. But all I can think of is that stupid hat.
And then it’s the weekend and I don’t have to think about Steam Girl or Amanda Anderson or Michael Carmichael or anything. I stay in my bedroom playing online games with loud music on the headphones. Once or twice, Mom comes in to try to get me outside or doing chores. But mostly I can just be alone.
I can’t get my head around anything. Steam Girl—the one in the notebook—is perfect: beautiful, smart, generous, and brave. Her long legs and heaving breasts haunt me in a way even Amanda Anderson never has. But the other one—the real girl who tells the stories and draws the pictures—well, her legs are short and kind of plump. Her skin is pasty and pale with freckles, and spots. She’s like a parody of Steam Girl, a fat nerdy girl playing dress ups.
But here’s the thing:
I just can’t stop thinking about her. When she smiles, I feel lighter than air. When she’s sad, I want to take her hand and tell her everything will be OK. I don’t, but I want to. I love seeing her neck go pink; in fact, I love everything about her neck. I keep imagining what it would be like to put my fingers on that soft white skin and feel the tiny muscles flutter as she speaks. Sometimes she closes her eyes as she talks about Steam Girl’s father and The Martian Rose and then her lips go soft and everything about her seems to glow.
She makes life special. And I find myself, by Saturday night, wanting to see her more than I’ve ever wanted anything before. I pull on some shoes and a hoodie and go out into the darkening streets. There’s no way of knowing where she is, of course. I have no idea where she lives or what she does on a Saturday. For all I know she could be flying over the Martian desert in an airship or fighting robots somewhere in the jungles of Venus. So I just walk, randomly, through the empty suburban streets as the sky goes from red to purple to black, like the bruise around her eye. And the electric lights come on, flickering over cracked pavements and filling windows with gold. Now and then a car rattles past, or some kid on a bike. But mostly I’m alone.
It’s after midnight when I get home. Dad lets me in without saying a word, makes me a hot chocolate and goes back to bed. It takes me hours to fall asleep.
On Monday morning, I’m at school early, waiting by the gate. But when the second bell rings, I give up and go to class.
At lunchtime, I go down to the incinerator and sit on the wall and try to eat my lunch. The concrete’s cold, and the smell of smoke is stale and heavy in the air. My stomach is churning. After ten minutes, I pick up my bag and turn to go.