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“How was your day?” As always, the question was edged with anxiety, an anxiety that was never there when she asked the same question of Elissa’s father, or when Bruce called home.

“It was fine.”

“No . . . ?”

“No hallucinations. No anything.” Elissa touched the button of the drinks dispenser and watched as sparkling herb tea poured, fizzing, into the waiting frosted glass. When the pains had begun, her doctor had recommended she cut out caffeine, and although it hadn’t seemed to do much—
anything
—she’d gotten into the habit of avoiding it and had somehow never gone back.

Mrs. Ivory shut the salad maker. The water sprays switched
on, hissing against the inside of the transparent lid. “We’re eating early this evening. Did you remember Bruce is coming home for dinner?”

Elissa took a gulp of ice-cold tea and shook her head. “What time is he coming?”

“Six. If he can get away in time. He said they had flight maneuvers all day . . .” She sounded a little distracted, stepping back from the oven so she could see in through its door, but her tone still changed when she said the words.

Bruce had been in the Space Flight Initiative training program for four years now, and whenever his mother referred to him, especially when she used one of the terms he’d only started using once he’d joined—“flight maneuvers,” “sim exercises,” “firepower”—pride colored her voice.

Generations back, when the first settlers had come to Sekoia, the planet had seemed to be pure potential. Mineral-rich, it had promised a lucrative export industry. The terraforming process to transform the deserts at the center of each continent into habitable environments was already taking place. With the prospect of fast progression to first-grade-planet status in mind, the government at the time had thrown the process into high gear. And the population—as the populations of recently settled planets always did—had expanded quickly, willing to put up with a few years’ overcrowding in return for their eventual Eden.

Except the terraforming process had gone wrong. The high-speed techniques—which, shortly afterward, were banned—had backfired. The deserts had become not just uninhabitable but toxic, even to the native species. Animals and plants had died, leaving Sekoia hovering on the brink of complete environmental crisis.

The government—a new, hastily voted-in government—had had no choice other than to direct every available resource into stabilizing the planet. They’d instituted food and energy rationing and strict population-control laws, and had to fall and fall and fall . . .

They’d managed to halt, although not reverse, the faulty terraforming. They’d gotten the population under control before it had reached starvation levels. They’d saved Sekoia.

But when it was done, they were left a long way from Eden: heavily in debt to the consortium, and with an outdated spaceflight industry the rest of the star system had left behind years before. With no way to match the high speeds of the new generation of spacecraft, Sekoia’s hoped-for export industry had been left dependent on hired transport. Which meant that any profit they made from exporting their native—and valuable—minerals was more or less swallowed up by the costs of exporting them in the first place.

Amid controversy and the resignation of several senior ministers, which Elissa had learned all about in history classes, the government had taken the dangerous step of borrowing
again
—and at a terrifying rate of interest—from the consortium. They’d gathered further funds from the emergency “Recovery Tax” they’d imposed on a furious and panicking population.

And the government had poured every scrap of that money into setting up the Space Flight Initiative, recruiting people willing to work in it, and developing their own spaceflight technology.

Thirty years ago SFI-sponsored scientists had broken through, perfecting the top secret superfuel that powered their ships into hyperspeed. Now Sekoia was out of debt, and
finally competing on an interplanetary scale, running their thriving export industry and providing high-speed transport for goods and people across the star system. Working for SFI in any capacity—cleaner, food tech, anything—was pretty prestigious. But the most prestigious career path on the whole planet was to be an SFI pilot—or to be in training as one.

Like Bruce.

I don’t care. It doesn’t matter that I can’t be high-flying, test-acing Bruce. I don’t want to be, not anymore. If I can just be
ordinary . . .

As Elissa’s mother picked up the box of pie mix, shaking it to settle the contents away from the top, her voice changed again, to something more conscious. “Did you see Marissa at school today?”

Elissa stopped in the act of lifting her glass for a second gulp of tea. The memory of that half minute in the changing room was a sore place in her mind, something she wasn’t ready to look at again.

She shrugged. “I saw her.”

“Did she talk to you?”

“A bit.”

Mrs. Ivory’s lips tightened. “Lissa, please. Don’t make me keep asking. What did she say?”

Elissa put the glass down on the countertop and crossed her arms over her abdomen, her shoulders hunching. “She asked me if I was okay.”

“And?”

“I didn’t want to
talk
to her. Mother, we’re not friends anymore.”

Mrs. Ivory tore open the box with a sharp movement. “The way that girl’s treated you is a disgrace. I said to her
mother, as if this hasn’t been hard enough for you—” both of you, ”rt

“Oh God,
Mother.
”

“She should
know
, Lissa! When I think of how long you were friends, all the times we had her at the house, took her out with us . . .”

“Mother, it’s no good. We’re just not friends anymore. We haven’t been friends for ages.”

“And is that
your
fault? All this time her mother hasn’t paid any attention to the whole situation—it’s just simply not good enough. Now you’re going to be better again—”

Elissa stared at her mother, feeling sick. “Mother, we’re not going to be friends when I’m better. We’re not going to be friends. Ever.
Ever
.”

“Look, Lissa . . .” Mrs. Ivory’s brief flash of irritation seemed to have died. She poured the pie mix into the multimixer, added three cups of water, and shut the lid. “Yes, she’s treated you badly. I’m never going to
like
the girl. But you’ve got another year at school—you’re going to need to pick up a social life again. Once you’re better, things can go back to normal.”

It was exactly what Elissa had been thinking earlier.
Normal. Ordinary
. But she hadn’t even begun to get as far as thinking about picking up the threads of her old life again. And now, visualizing trying to do that, letting down any of the barriers she’d built over the last three years . . .

She crossed her arms more tightly over her body. “No. I’m never being friends with her. Not with any of them. Even if the surgery works—”

“When.
When
the surgery works.”

“
When
it works. I’m still not being friends with them.”

The salad maker beeped and its lid flipped open. Mrs. Ivory
took a quick look at the crisp, frilly edges of the lettuce, the cucumber and onion that had been turned into green-edged ribbons and purple-edged rings, paper thin and translucent, then pushed the lid shut and touched the chill button. “Lissa, there are some things you have to be proactive about. You don’t have to love the girl. Her or Carline. But you need a route back into a social life. You can’t afford to be stubborn about it. If they already feel bad about the way they behaved . . .” She lifted a shoulder before going across to the oven and hitting the switch to unseal its door.

The hot, greasy smell of the roast chicken swept out into the room. When Elissa had come in, she’d been hungry. She wasn’t anymore.

“Is that why you talked to her mother? Told her”—she stumbled on the words, could only make herself say them by making them a quote—“ ‘as if this hasn’t been hard enough’ on me? To get her to feel guilty?”

Her mother gave her a tight smile. “Just paving the way a little.” She set the chicken on the countertop. Its skin was crisp and shiny with oil. “People will do what you want, Lissa. You just have to find the right way to get them to.”

“But I don’t
want
 . . .” ;
text-indent: 0em;
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But I don’t want them to know I care. Don’t want to let them in. Not now. Not anymore.

It was no good saying so. Her mother had never had to go from being the girl who was picked, if not first, at least second, to being the one who—every time, every single time— knew she was going to be picked last. She didn’t know what it was like to sit alone at lunchtime, holding a book, not looking at anyone, pretending she didn’t care, when once she’d been on the inside of a whole group of friends. She didn’t know what it was like to avoid going to the washroom in case
she ended up trapped in a stall listening to the people outside talk about her, not wanting to come out till they’d gone, not wanting them to see her face and know she’d heard what they’d said. Not wanting them to know she cared.

Mrs. Ivory dropped the empty pie-mix box into the recycler next to the sink. “Lissa, are you listening to me? You need to remember that, all right?”

Elissa let out a quick breath. “Yes. Okay.”

The look her mother gave her was intent. “I’m right, you know. You’ll find out.”

Elissa picked her glass back up, raising it to her lips to avoid meeting her mother’s eyes. “Yes.” The bubbles fizzed against the roof of her mouth, and the prickles rose into the back of her nose. Sharp and ice cold, a feeling like needles. Or like tears.

Bruce arrived just after six.

From her bedroom Elissa heard the door chime as it let him in, then her mother’s voice coming through the wall speaker. “Lissa, come on down. Bruce is here.”

And of course Bruce mustn’t be made to wait
.

“Coming.” Elissa stood and told her computer to go to sleep. Her homework faded out and her own face appeared, staring at her from the suddenly mirrored screen above where she’d been sitting. The keyboard folded itself away into the cream surface of her desk, leaving it marked by no more than the faintest hairline crack.

Sometimes she wondered if her parents wished they’d stopped with one child, wished they’d never applied for the license to have another. Or maybe—the thought came, stinging—that they hadn’t used up that precious second license on
her
. If
they’d had another Bruce—all-star, high-flying Bruce . . .

As she came down the central staircase, set to stationary to encourage healthy exercise, he was still standing in the entrance hall, tall and clean in his dark blue SFI uniform, dark hair clipped close to his head, talking to their father. Who had obviously managed to get home early too, although normally he worked late.

“Hey, Lis, how you doing there?” Bruce’s voice was cheerful, his smile wide, lingering a little longer than usual.

So, he knew about the operation. Her mother must have spoken to him earlier. Was that why he’d come?

She shouldn’t resent it. It wasn’t Bruce’s fault that his last four years had been a glittering trajectory of high-scoring exams and flawless test flights, that he’d jumped from standard SFI training to the fast-track pilot program and would be flying his own ship before the end of the year. Nor was it his faul first sole-charge flight clhit that for her the last few years had been such a very different story.

She shouldn’t resent it. But . . .

“I’m fine,” she said, and slid past him to ask her mother if she needed help in the kitchen.

They ate in the dining room, amber afternoon sun falling in blobs of light and shade across the table, leaf-dappled both from the potted vines near the windows inside and from the cliff plants outside.

Elissa’s mother served the chicken shredded into salad and mixed with garlic dressing and wafers of shaved parmesan. There was a basket of rolls, fresh from the breadmaker, and butter that melted into golden oil on the warm bread.

Neither Elissa’s father nor Bruce asked how her early morning appointment had gone. Her mother must have spoken to
both of them—and Elissa supposed there wasn’t any point talking about it now, any more than there’d been any point talking about the attacks of pain that had sent her rushing from other dinnertimes. There’d never been anything any of them could do; there wasn’t anything they could do now. She just had to go through with the operation like she’d gone through the pain. Either it would work or it wouldn’t.

Please, God, let it work
 . . .

“So Cadan and I are in the simulator . . .”

Elissa’s attention came back to what Bruce was saying. His face was alight with interest, a mouthful of chicken and salad waiting, forgotten, on his fork. “And it went perfectly, the whole thing. Evade, escape—we’ve done it hundreds of times, we ought to be able to do it in our sleep by now. So they sent us out to do it for real, told us we’d be graded on this one.”

He gestured with the fork. “They’ve been using the robo-wings with us now—tiny, unmanned ships, just built to fly attack patterns. They’re armed with blanks, obviously, and so are we. If we get in one good hit, it’s supposed to flip them into retreat mode. We win, job done.”