Dark Energy (8 page)

We didn't take long—Brynne was a seasoned professional, and Coya was a good canvas to work on. After Brynne dyed the streak into Coya's long hair and wrapped it in tinfoil, I set to work on Coya's makeup. She freaked out at the eyeliner pencil, but everyone does that at first and I couldn't blame her. After twenty minutes we moved her in front of the mirror, and she smiled uncertainly. To finish off the look, we gave her a warm winter sweater and a pair of Brynne's designer jeans. We couldn't talk her into better shoes, not even when we told her how cold it was outside, but overall the look still worked. I felt a little bit like a mother watching her little girl getting her first haircut. Everything was new and scary to Coya—especially when Brynne opened the foil and rinsed and rinsed, and rinsed some more, and then began to towel it dry with a thick old red tattered thing.

“I thought you weren't supposed to dye blond hair?” Rachel said. “I think I read that in one of your magazines.”

“There's nothing wrong with it,” Brynne answered, “it's just that you can't dye it out. You can't bleach it. You get weird blue and green.”

“I love my hair,” Coya said, beaming. “I love blue.”

“So what do we do now?” Rachel asked.

“I think we go back to the cafeteria and get something to eat. Show her off.” I looked at Coya. “Suski is going to be there.”

Coya's hand gripped the edge of her desk, staring through the small window at the end of the room. “What is that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just the back of the school. You can see the track—for running.”

“What is falling?”

“Oh,” Rachel answered excitedly. “That's snow. It's frozen water.”

“I love it,” Coya said, with wonder in her voice.

To be honest, I was almost in as much awe as she was. The only place I ever saw snow was at my
Shimasani
's home in New Mexico, but that snow always melted quickly. My grandma and grandpa Goodwin got a lot of snow, but we usually visited them in the summer.

“We can go the back way to the cafeteria,” Rachel said.

“What back way?” Brynne asked.

“C'mon,” Rachel said with a smile as she led the way into
the hall. “There's a door out here that I use to avoid, well, people.”

She led us twenty feet out of our room to a steel door marked “Electrical Room.” I would have assumed it was locked, but Rachel turned the knob and we entered a small, dark room. I lost her in the darkness for an instant and then saw her outline and felt a rush of cold air.

“This goes outside?”

“Yep,” she said, pushing the door open against the slushy snow on the patio. “This goes all the way around past the gym and the cafeteria and to the parking lot.”

“I do not like this place's feeling on my skin,” Coya said.

It took us a minute to get it, but Brynne was the first to figure it out. “The cold, you mean? I guess you guys never had changing weather.”

A shock of ice hit my neck and zapped down my spine. I spun to see Brynne and Rachel both laughing.

“Which one of you did it?” I said, trying to get the clump of snow out of my shirt. “Rachel, I know it was you. You're dead.”

“It wasn't me,” she said, holding up her hands in an
I'm as innocent as Mother Teresa
look. Brynne gave me the same look.

“You're both dead, then,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Coya asked. “They are not dead.”

I laughed, still unable to get the snow out from under my coat. It was soaking into my waistband. “It's just a saying,” I
told her. “It means they're in trouble.”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly serious. “I understand dead. They are not dead.”

“No,” I said. “And they're not even in trouble. It's a joke.”

“It seems a strange thing to joke about,” she said, and then drew her fingers through her hair again. “I love this blue.”

We walked around the back of the school in mostly silence. Coya asked a few questions about the snow—how much would fall, how soon it would melt—which Rachel answered. I kept thinking about what Coya had said about death. She understood death.

When we got to the common room door, it was locked. Rachel looked heartbroken, like the one thing she was good at had gone wrong. I pulled out my phone and called Kurt.

“Hey, want to rescue four freezing girls?”

He laughed. “Where are you?”

“At the common room's outside door.”

“I swear, Goodwin, you'll owe me for this one.”

“Because it's really hard to open a door.”

“Is there a good reason for you to be out there?”

“Just open the door.”

“I can see you from here,” he said, and hung up.

As he walked toward us, a few glances came in our direction, and when he opened the door, at least a dozen people were looking at us.

“I don't think we've achieved much avoiding the crowd, Rachel,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” Brynne said. “I just learned how to get out of the building without even sneaking past the RA. That's gold.”

Coya stopped, shivering. “Does this snow come often?”

“Half the year,” Rachel said. “So, yeah. A lot.”

“I think . . . ,” Coya said. “I think I will wear shoes.”

T
he FBI must have placed alarms on all the doors, because one of the agents appeared almost immediately in the common room, talking into his radio. Soon we were sitting in the headmistress's office getting a lecture on safety and responsibility.

“I entrusted you girls with the care of this young woman,” she said, in that voice that adults use when they want to show how disappointed they are with your behavior. “This isn't a game. Life and death are on the line. You've seen the protestors.”

“She looks human. And we were outside for maybe five minutes, not to mention we were nowhere near the front gates,” I said.

“It was still irresponsible,” she said, which I think was her
way of saying I'd won but she didn't care. “Your parents will be notified. Coya will be assigned to a different room—to girls who are more trustworthy.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but Coya spoke.

“I want to stay with Alice and Rachel and Brynne.”

The headmistress smiled at her—she didn't want to make the guest unhappy, but she wanted to punish us all just the same. “I'm sure we can find another situation that is a better fit.”

“This is a good fit,” Coya said with newfound fierceness. “I like these three girls. They protect me.”

The headmistress sighed and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes met mine, and then she glanced at Rachel and Brynne. “You realize that this kind of misbehavior could hurt your chances of becoming Bruner Scholars. Part of the scholarship is based on leadership and citizenship.”

“Yes, ma'am,” they chorused, more cowed than me. I didn't have as much to lose.

“I'll be watching you more closely,” the headmistress finally said. “And, Coya, you have my apologies. This should never have happened.”

“This was a good thing,” Coya said. “I liked it.”

She gave us all one last disapproving look. “You're dismissed.”

We stood up from the plush leather chairs opposite her desk. Coya's face broke into a big smile. “Headmistress, do
you like my hair? It's blue, like Alice's.”

She nearly choked on her sigh. “Yes. Very nice.”

We managed to get outside and wait for her office door to shut before we started laughing.

Coya wanted to find Suski to show him her hair, so we headed back to the cafeteria. Suski was still sitting at the same table. It didn't look like he'd moved an inch. The tray of lunch he hadn't eaten had been replaced with a tray of dinner he wasn't eating. When he saw Coya, he stood up, obviously upset.

They spoke together in their own language, not waiting for their translators, and it was hard to follow the conversation as the machines struggled to keep up.

“Where have you been?”

“—getting blue in my—”

“—just do this without—”

“—safe and with my—”

“—not safe. You don't know what this place is like. You don't know who these people are. You don't—”

“—not Father. I was—”

“—dangerous. I demand that you obey.”

She stared back at him, and then made a gesture with both fists knocking together. She spun and looked back at me. “Let's go to the room.”

I nodded and gave Suski a hard look, which he returned. Rachel took Coya by the hand, which seemed to surprise her
at first, but then she smiled weakly.

I turned to Kurt. “I'll catch up with you later, okay?”

“Sure. I'm not going anywhere.”

I headed after Rachel, Brynne, and Coya, who were already out of the cafeteria and down the hallway. We entered the dorm and passed the RA's room, but she didn't glance up.

“Is he always like that?” I asked Coya. “So serious?”

“Yes,” she said. “Suski is always serious.”

“Why?” Rachel asked.

“He's had a hard life,” Coya said. “He doesn't trust you aliens—humans.”

I laughed. “I've never thought about that. We're aliens to you.”

We opened the door to our room, and Brynne flopped down on a couch, picking up a magazine. Of course, it wasn't
Cosmo
or something fun like that. It was
The Journal of Human Genetics
.

“You are such a nerd,” I said.

“Such a frustrated nerd,” she said, looking again at Coya's hair. “I love it. It should be a succubus thing. We should all do it. What do you think, Rach?”

“Alas,” Rachel said, “I think we'd better toe the line after the
You're not going to win the Bruner if you act like this
talk from the headmistress.”

“Ugh.”

I turned to Brynne. “You could probably dye your whole
head a rainbow and still get the Bruner. There's no one in biology that comes close to you.”

“You only say that because you haven't been here very long,” Rachel said. “What the headmistress said was true—a lot of the scholarship is about being a good citizen, which means following the rules. They want geniuses, but they want geniuses who will give the school a good name.”

Coya spoke. “I don't understand. The blue is a bad thing?”

“Not for you,” I said. “And not for me. Do you know the term
double standard
?”

“No.”

Brynne answered. “It means that Rachel and I are trying to win an award, and we won't win it if we have blue in our hair.”

“I don't understand ‘award,'” Coya said.

We spent the rest of the evening explaining words to Coya, trying to teach her our culture. It was amazing the things that she didn't have any concept of: awards, winning, competition, prizes. For her, life was about work, and everyone worked and everyone got the same reward for their work, and the only surprises were unpleasant—accidents, death. Crashing into Iowa.

She didn't have much of a story to explain how they crashed. She had never even been to the control room of the ship—the bridge, or the cockpit, or whatever they called it. All our attempts at explaining that word didn't register
with her. She had spent her life in the outer rings of the ship, working. We asked her what kind of working, and other than a vague description of cleaning, she didn't really have an answer.

Coya was not a good storyteller.

“Everyone just lived together?” Rachel asked. “No separate rooms, like our room here?”

“No,” she said. “My people live together. All together. No, I am wrong. There are many rooms like this room—many rooms for people to sleep in. But never a room with just two people. Never.”

“What about Mai?” Brynne asked, a little suspicion in her voice. We were all getting the impression that Mai lived in some kind of luxury with a harem of women. But Coya denied it.

“Mai lived in my room,” she said. “With all my brothers and sisters.”

“What does this mean?” I asked, typing a few keystrokes into Google and turning my laptop screen for her to see. It was the door they'd all come out through—I pointed to the alien language written above the opening.

“I don't understand.”

“Is this writing?”

“I don't know,” she said, and pointed to the image. “Not that. Not those pictures.”

“What are the pictures, then?”

Coya got that uncomfortable look again. She could be the Bruner Scholar for Discomfort. “I don't know. They are just pictures. They are pretty.”

I looked back at the laptop. The symbols were blocky, with sharp angles and small twists. They didn't look pretty to me at all. And they didn't look like art.

“They have to be letters,” I said, and tapped on the screen. “Look, this one is the same as this other one. They are some kind of writing.”

“Or a repeating design,” Brynne said, with a sigh that made it sound like she didn't believe that herself. She turned back to Coya. “Do you know anyone who can read?”

“I don't understand ‘reading,'” Coya said.

“Reading,” Brynne said, and held up her magazine and made a box with her fingers around the letter
T
. “This is a
T
. It sounds like this:
t-t-t-t
. Then this is an
H
. It sounds like
h-h-h-h
. So together—wait, why did I choose
the
?”

Coya shook her head. “I don't understand.”

“What about math?” Rachel said, grabbing four pens from her desk. She laid them on the bed. “One, two, three, four.”

Coya took the four remaining pens and continued, and I listened to her language:
“Taam'a, sh'isa, maityana, kukyum'ishi.”
The translator followed with “five, six, seven, eight.”

There was something familiar about the words. I only knew English and a little bit of Navajo, and this definitely wasn't either, but it sounded like something I'd heard before.

Rachel laid out two pens and then two more. “Two pens and two pens is . . .”

Coya paused for a moment.
“Dyaana.”
And her translator said, “Four.”

Rachel took a deep, calming breath, as though everything was going to be okay now because Coya could do arithmetic. But I was hatching a plan. I was going to find Suski and show him the letters from the picture. See if he could read them. I wanted to see just what kind of patriarchy we were dealing with where barefoot girls didn't have mothers and weren't even able to read. And then, depending on how it went, maybe I'd show him some of the self-defense moves Dad insisted I master before I could date. Mostly jujitsu.

Then again, it wasn't just barefoot girls. It was barefoot everybody. But still.

Sometimes I think I hatch too many plans.

So, instead of going on a mission, I pulled out my copy of
Cosmo
and we took the first quiz: “What Kind of Female Are You?” Despite the stilted name—and having to explain to Coya what the point of a
Cosmo
quiz is—we began.
How do you feel about your job?
None of us had jobs, so we used school as a stand-in. Rachel chose
Love it, seriously
. Brynne did, too, and I couldn't believe I was rooming with such losers. I picked
It's fine, but I don't work more than I have to
. And Coya finally picked
It's a job, it's necessary
.

I won't bore you with the rest of the details, but Brynne
got
Experience First
and Rachel got
Love First
and I got
Figuring It Out
. That stung a little bit, but I guess it's true. Coya got
Career First
, which we all laughed at since she didn't even know what
career
meant.

Then, lest it turn into too much of a slumber party, I told them I needed to sleep. The day had been a whirlwind, and I was ready for peace and quiet. I think I was asleep before I even pulled the covers over me.

The next evening I found Suski at his usual table, picking a little at his steamed broccoli. The way he always sat there made me wonder if he was used to sitting in one place, like a king holding court or something like that.

“A lot of people don't like broccoli,” I said, inviting myself to sit.

“It looks the most like the food we ate at our home. What did you call it? Broccaa?”

“Broccoli,” I said, and I pointed to an empty spot on his plate, where the remnants of some dark sauce remained. “What was that?”

“Very good, just like a food we have. Fungus.”

I was repulsed for a moment and then laughed. “Mushrooms! You like mushrooms. I bet they would grow well in a giant dark ship.”

“We never put this liquid on them.”

“You can go back and get more.”

“I don't want to take more than my share.”

“We never run out of mushrooms,” I said. “Hang on.”

I set all my stuff on the table—my laptop and my backpack—and I grabbed a plate and jogged to the long buffet. There were people getting food, but not enough that it looked like I was cutting in line. The dish I was looking for was marked with a card: “Wild Mushrooms in Red Wine Sauce.” It was supposed to be a sauce for the steak nearby, but if Suski just wanted to eat gravy, at least he was eating something. I filled up the dish with it and carried it back to him.

“For you,” I said.

For the first time he looked at me with a smile that felt real, but it quickly faded.

“Coya says you have been rude to her.”

“About what?”

“About the way we live on the ship. About not knowing who gave us birth.”

“You know who your fathers are.”

He stabbed a mushroom with his fork and ate it, chewing with his mouth slightly open. “Our people are different than your people.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, stopping that line of questioning—for now, at least. “Can I show you a picture?”

“Fine,” he said.

I opened my laptop and quickly found the photos with the lettering. I turned the computer toward him.

“Do you know what this means?”

He looked for a long time. “I don't understand your question.”

“Do you know how to read?”

He turned and reached into his bag. I started to get excited, wondering what amazing thing could possibly be in there. Maybe a reading translator, like his speech translator?

He pulled out a thin graphic novel, with a spaceship on the cover.
Schlock Mercenary
by Howard Tayler. “The English teacher is trying to teach me how to read English. She thinks this spaceship funny book will be easier for me, but it is not.”

I tapped the screen at the writing above the door the guides had cut their way through. “So you don't think these designs here mean anything.”

“Are they for reading?”

I put my forehead in my hands. “Yes.” Why did he—the son of Mai, the leader—not recognize the language on the ship?

“Coya said you guys never left the ship, right?”

He nodded, chewing on another mushroom.

“Then maybe that writing is not for you, but for someone else?”