The Summer Prince (14 page)

I’ve stashed my bag in one of the older practice rooms in the bottom of the school building. I figured that no one would be there to notice the slight odor even three layers of airtight bags can’t hide.

But as soon as I open the door, her voice drowns me. God, I hate Bebel’s voice. It’s so broad and smooth and weirdly innocent even as it dominates a room. She’s the only singer in our generation who will attempt “Zumbi Rei.” Somehow, even though she is the ten thousandth vocalist to sing the part, she makes it new.

Did I say I hate her voice? I do. It’s not my fault the she-devil can sing like an angel.

Right now she’s singing “Roda Viva,” because she wouldn’t be Bebel without a nauseating command of the classical repertoire. She’s accompanied by another waka on guitar while she makes a simple beat with a pandeiro. The guitarist turns his head and I realize it’s Pasqual. I spent months staring at him for the summer king contest, but in real life he seems almost unassuming. Pasqual and Octavio are both finalists for the Queen’s Award. Apparently it’s a customary honor in a
moon year, but I haven’t met either of them in person yet. The top ten are supposed to meet Oreste herself soon, and I’ve been curious to see the rest of my competition.

Bebel
beams
at me when I walk in, while she and Pasqual finish their song. I meant to grab my bag and walk away, but my feet don’t want to move. I said that art should be transgressive, and it should, but listening to two of the most gifted musicians of our generation, I realize that there can be transgression in beauty. Papai would love this.

For the first time, I start to seriously question whether I’ll win the Queen’s Award.

“June!” Bebel flutes as soon as she’s done. “What are you doing here? What did you think? It’s still a little rough.”

Rough
? I cough. “Beautiful, Bebel. Really.”

She pauses, then smiles. “That means a lot from you, June. Thank you.”

Pasqual puts down the guitar. “You’re one of the other finalists, right? A visual artist?”

Four months ago, meeting Pasqual would have rendered me speechless. But I’ve spent the night crawling through the verde with the summer king, and very little fazes me these days.

“That’s what I started in,” I say. “But I’m branching out.”

Even Bebel looks curious. That’s my Bebel — deep down, she’s just as competitive as I am, she just hides it better.

“Really?” Pasqual says. “Have I missed one of your projects?”

“No,” I say, smiling. “When I have one, you won’t miss it.”

Bebel, of course, breaks through the tension like a battering ram. “That’s very mysterious, June. And I
told
Ieyascu you must be plotting something.”

“You did?”

“Sure. She was asking me if I thought you’d drop out. And I said she didn’t know June if she thought that for a second.”

“I’m …”
Appalled? Confused?
“… surprised.”

“Don’t be. A good rival is almost like a friend, isn’t she? You make me try harder.”

Something like a smile lifts the corners of her mouth, but her eyes stay serious.

Perhaps Bebel’s always seen me far more clearly than I see her. All those times I thought she was faking or playing nice for the grandes or just trying to get under my skin, could she actually have been
supporting
me? Because she liked the competition?

“I have to go,” I say. “See you around, Bebel. Pasqual.”

I stumble backward, grab my bag from under the bench, and open the door. I can’t have much time left. Enki is depending on me.

And Bebel needs a good rival.

Every five years, the summer king chairs special sessions of parliament and is meant to lead discussions of major reforms or new legislation. But in moon years, this position tends to be reduced to an opening convocation and listening to long, boring debates about transport-pod modification. The summer king is free to offer his opinion, and the Aunties are free to ignore him. All government sessions are publicly broadcast — since Enki became summer king, more wakas than usual have started watching parliament, hoping for a glimpse of him. That means everyone will see it. And another reason we know the gossip casters will be over it like stink on fish?

You can’t ignore your nose.

Six minutes before parliament begins its afternoon session, I deposit the first canister in an empty public train waiting on the Sé line. It says “Not in Service” but the doors close as soon as I open my first little piece of the verde inside. Enki told me it would be waiting here. I asked how he knew, and he said the city told him. The stink is instant and overpowering. The car stops at the Gria transfer station just long enough to let me out. A few of the people on the platform stare at me with bored curiosity, but my hunting outfit looks a lot like
the uniform of an engineer and they don’t make much of it. If they catch a whiff of catinga, they don’t take it as anything out of the ordinary. I gauge my time from the public holo in the center of the platform. Five minutes to go. Someone has switched one of the four feeds to the parliamentary session. I smile. I sprint.

Next is the Amarela line. At the end of the platform, my Not in Service train awaits. I get in, the doors shut, and it rockets forward, so quickly that I nearly fall on top of the canister. Close call. I don’t think I’d ever get clean again if I got the stink on my skin. I stash it under a row of seats and wait for the car to stop. It does at Royal Plaza. This is the trickiest part of the plan: With parliament in session, Auntie Maria, our head of security, has officers all over the platform. The cars that take the Aunties to the parliament building aren’t even open to normal citizens like me. But they do break down, and I walk as calmly as you please into the one that even I didn’t believe would be waiting. I don’t ride this one — it would be too dangerous — I just pretend to check something on the array by the door while I roll the canister ever so gently inside. I step back and the door closes just as the loosened lid slides off, releasing its odor.

I wait a few seconds to make sure that nothing’s gone wrong. But though a few of the grandes on the platform give me hard looks, I can tell by now it’s just general distaste at having a waka near their distinguished government proceedings. Sun goggles cover half my face and I’ve bound my hair in a scarf, but if someone gets a good look they’ll probably still be able to identify me. I walk right past one of Auntie Maria’s security agents, a woman with a white pyramid pinned to her lapel and a dazzle in her irises that indicates a certain kind of biomod.

“I hope you’re not missing school, filha,” she says.

I smile at her and pray I don’t look memorable. “Just wanted to sit in the park for my lunch break.”

She nods and turns away. A moment later, she frowns as though someone is speaking to her, and her mod-eyes glint. I hurry toward
the park. It’s small, but since the Aunties use it, there’s a large holo right by the water lily pond.

I sit on a bench a few feet away, take a deep breath, and count to five.

“Summer King,” says Auntie Isa from her place beside Oreste’s empty chair. “Will you convene the session?”

Enki rises, nods graciously, and walks to the center podium.

The summer king customarily delivers a brief poem or statement before he convenes the special sessions. Enki gives them quite a bit more than that.

“In the verde,” says Enki, as serious as I’ve ever seen him, “we love the storms. Sometimes, when we see one come in, the blocos will set up in the terraces and play until the rain drives us inside.”

He pauses here, as though considering his next words, though I can tell he’s just savoring the moment. My last present from the verde must have gone through. Everyone in the audience shuffles uncomfortably. Nostrils flair, discreet coughs echo through the chamber. Some look at Enki, others at one another or the doorways.

Enki takes a deep breath, as though he doesn’t notice a thing. “We have a saying,” he says as murmurs from his audience rise to a wave, “you can’t smell the catinga until it comes back home.”

In the background, I can just make out several guards hurrying through the doors. Enki surveys his work and smiles, a sun breaking through clouds.

“I hereby convene parliament.”

As he saunters back to his seat, Auntie Isa rushes the podium with a handkerchief covering her nose and murder in her eyes. People stand up and hurry to the doors. They don’t know the smell will be even worse in the hallway. Our transport pods are all connected to the ventilation system. It’s meant to help refresh the air supply in the tunnels, but it can go the other direction. It can carry the fetid stink of the verde straight to the noses of people who pretend it doesn’t exist.

In the park, the first of the escapees from parliament gather before the holo. The other feeds have all switched to the news: Gria Plaza in a panic, the shawls of well-to-do women fluttering as they race to open air. Office workers in Tier Eight crowd the walkways — the smell ought to have reached school, by now. When Auntie Yaha and Mother complain about the stink tonight, they’ll have me to thank, though they won’t know it.

Back in Parliament, Auntie Isa declares an emergency end to the session, due to “an unexpected problem with our air-filtration system.”

The parliamentary feed cuts black, and we’re left with the breathless casters, speculating about everything from a broken vat in the verde to a system-wide collapse of Palmares Três. I leave them to it.

It’s a curious thing, this art that I don’t sign my name to. I like anonymity more than I thought I would. For once, I don’t consider how this will play with the Aunties or how it increases my chances of winning the Queen’s Award. In this moment, I’m just June, the best artist in Palmares Três.

You always did love lights. You glowed on that dance floor when Gil held you in the air. I said I didn’t notice, but I did. Your tree has grown since then. Once I said I could read your mind, but I can tell your mood without even glancing at your face. Anger, that’s the easiest of all — a pulse and a flash, like a cracking whip. When you’re excited, you show your brightest colors. There’s a way the branches along your arm seem to sway in a lazy breeze when you’ve just had an idea for an art project.

When you saw the ocean for the first time, I thought I could see them flower.

To love light, you have to love dark. I’m not trying to be profound, I know you’ll understand. I don’t mean that you have to hate to love, or that you have to die to live.

I mean that sometimes, you turn out the lights just to turn them back on.

Bebel and Pasqual are very drunk, which perhaps explains why she hooks her arm on mine and says, none too quietly, “Do you think we’d get much attention for a threesome?” in the middle of our finalists’ dinner. With camera bots buzzing everywhere, this particular tidbit will be all over the bottom feeds in, oh,
now
, along with my blush.

“Uh, Bebel, people are watching —”

She giggles. “The point, my June. Aren’t you the one all about Spectacle and Art?”

She has me there. Across the room, Enki pretends he can’t see me while Gil so casually fondles the back of his neck. Octavio sits in a corner, looking morose, and rebuffing any attempt by one of us to converse. A few Aunties mill about, but our Queen has yet to make an appearance. I’ve spent all day working on my light-tree — two nights ago, a cleaning bot climbed through our garden and handed me a bag filled with light implants. I don’t know where Enki found them — they’re naturalist-grade programmable, and they adjust their light to the hue of my skin. I couldn’t thank him, but I gave the little bot a few flowers from our garden, in case she found her way back.