Excerpt: Salt (YA Edition)
An excerpt from the Young Adult edition of Salt by Liz Shipton
(Thalassic Series Book One)
Chapter One
“Watch it, Howsley!”
I look up.
A small white sailboat is tearing through steel-blue water toward me, less than ten feet away, and closing the gap fast.
“Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.”
Grabbing the tiller, I bank hard to starboard. The boat skates by, missing me by inches, whips around, and comes right back at me. Through flecks of spray and shards of sunlight, I see Electra Nation—aka Miss Perfect, aka My Worst Nightmare—hanging backward over the high side of the boat like a windsurfer, perfectly balanced, and glowering at me.
“Get it together, Howsley!”
She ducks under her mainsail and tacks away from me, ponytail swinging like a gold medal as she carves a graceful arc toward the north end of the bay.
My biochip crackles to life and the sailing teacher’s voice buzzes through the radio in my head. “What’s going on out there, Howsley?”
I press a finger to the skin behind my left ear. “Nothing, Sargo, everything’s fine.”
“Excuse me?!” Electra’s outraged voice sizzles through static and I flinch and drag my finger down my neck to lower the volume. “Howsley almost hit me! She wasn’t even looking where she was going!”
“You almost hit me!”
“I had the right of way!”
“No, I—”
Wait. Did she have the right of way?
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to picture what was going on before it happened. But it’s like someone edited out that part of my memory. A gap in the tape. Must have spaced out for a second; didn’t see Electra coming.
Which is nothing new. When I was a kid my moms had a name for that: a blip. Electra’s probably right; she probably had the right of way. And even if she didn’t, I can’t pretend I was paying attention.
“Bird, watch out!”
I snap my head around in time to see another boat charging toward me, Polo Parker’s chubby, red, bespectacled face squinting at me from the stern. Jesus flogging Christ these assholes are really up my ass today. I snatch up the tiller again and veer out of the way.
“Okay, class.” Sargo’s voice is weary in my ear. “I think that’s enough for today. Everyone back to the dock please.”
“Oh come on!”
“Are you serious?!”
“Way to go, Howsley!”
“We’ve only been out here thirty minutes!”
Stabbing a finger behind my ear to shut out the assholes, I rip off my beanie and shake out my itchy hair. My heart is going super fast, although whether that’s because I almost just caused a shipwreck, or because of my fury at Electra and her stupid, perfect ponytail, I don’t know.
Deep breaths.
My counselor, Ms. Parley, told me to take deep breaths in moments like this. “Your breath is your anchor, Howsley.” Like I spent seventeen-and-a-half years on this flog-forsaken planet without learning how to breathe. Like oh, shit, is that what I’ve been doing wrong all these years? What do you call it again? Breathing? Never heard of it.
I do it anyway. As my lungs fill and the smell of salt and sailcloth pours into me, the hard edge of something in the inside pocket of my hoodie pokes me in the rib. I jolt and let out the air in a rush.
Grog flask.
Whoops. Definitely didn’t mean to bring that to class. Must have left it in there after last night.
I look around. The rest of the class is already turning downwind and heading back to the dock. I pull out the flask and give it a shake. Still something left in there. I tug my beanie back on and chew the inside of my cheek.
“What do we think about this, Bird?” I say to myself.
We think that would be a really bad idea, Howsley, my self replies.
Ignoring her, I flip open the cap and take a sip. The stuff is astringent; medicinal. It stings my eyes. But the hole it burns in the middle of my chest feels good. Familiar. I wipe the smell of spice and citrus onto the back of my hand.
Someone will smell it, says self.
So what? Everything else in my life is on fire, at this point I don’t really care if I light another one. Put it in the corner with the rest of the fire, thanks.
You do care. You care what Sargo thinks.
I sigh. God dammit. I do care what Sargo thinks. If he finds out I was drinking in his class, he’ll be pissed.
No, not pissed: concerned. Which is worse. Plus, I'd never forgive myself if he got in trouble because of me. He’s just a student teacher; he only graduated last year. It’s not like he’s got job security.
I flip the cap closed and tuck the flask back into my hoodie. I reach over the side to scoop salt water into my mouth. The sting of salt is like a razor under my fingernails, I hold my hand in front of my face, crooking my knuckles to examine them while I swish the water around in my mouth.
Chewed to oblivion. Ragged edges. Ugly little bloated corpses at the ends of my fingers. I don’t remember when I started chewing them off again. They were starting to grow.
Spitting out the water, I breathe into my palm and sniff—smells…fine—then push the tiller of the boat away from me and turn back toward the harbor.
The wind cooperates, for once. It’s a perfect day out on the bay—brisk, sunny, the cobalt water of the Salt just starting to whitecap and the sun burning white in the cerulean sky. Sporty, as Sargo would say. I’m sure my classmates were dying to get out here and show off for each other; it’s the first sunny day we’ve had in months. That's the downside of living in the only place on the New California Coast with water: that water is fog, and it's always in the air.
I make it back to the harbor and pull up next to the dock, misjudging the distance and slamming the hull of my boat hard against the wood.
“Easy, Howsley!”
Sargo rolls up the sleeves of his blue, school-issued button-down and braces both hands on the side of my boat to shove me off the dock. He admonishes my carelessness with a stern lift of a single, dark eyebrow, then holds out an olive-brown hand for a dock line.
Other students are shooting scathing looks like arrows in my direction as they tie up their own boats. Studiously ignoring them, I toss Sargo a line and jump onto the dock with a second line in my hand.
“Bird Howsley!”
I turn my gaze over my shoulder as I kneel to tie it off. Electra is striding past Sargo, her eyes flashing, her ponytail bouncing, the fiber of her expensive waterproof sailing pants swish-swishing with every pompous step. Shaking the dock below my knee. Around her neck, an enormous silver-white pendant flashes in the late afternoon sun.
I turn my attention back to the knot I’m trying to tie. Wonderful.
She draws level and stands over me with her hands on her hips, casting me in shadow. Kneeling on the dock in my leggings, ratty gray beanie, too-short shirt, and the hoodie I’ve worn so much it has holes in the elbows, I try not to feel like the jester prostrated in front of the queen. I forgot my sailing uniform. Again.
“What is your problem?” she demands.
I ignore her and focus on the knot. Is it right over left or left over right? My nails are so chewed down it hurts to use my fingers.
“You’re doing that wrong,” she says. “Is that supposed to be a cleat hitch?”
Gritting my teeth, I haphazardly sling the line around the cleat, then stand to meet her glare. “What’s your problem?”
“My problem is that you still don’t understand the basic rules of sailing! And on top of that, you weren’t even paying attention!”
“I understand the rules! You could have turned. You were coming right at me on purpose!”
“I promise you, I was not.”
“Ladies.” Sargo steps between us. The movement brings the crisp scent of fogwood trees, sand, and the Salt. In the pit of my stomach, something flickers around the edges of my anger. Nerves, I think. Definitely shouldn’t have been drinking in class. That was dumb.
“Can we take a breath?” he says. “Please?”
Electra tosses her brassy mane and redirects her glare out over the water. A metallic glimmer betrays the augmentation in her pin-straight hair, which is actually black, not blonde. No one’s really sure why she started augmenting it, but it suits her. Of course it does; everything does. Juxtaposed against the hooded eyes, eggshell skin, and delicate features of a person from Zhīliú, blonde hair makes Electra Nation the kind of unexpected beautiful that makes most people do a double take.
“Bird—” Sargo turns to me. “I was watching you out there, and Electra’s right. In this case, she did have the right of way.”
Electra shoots me a triumphant look and turns her million-watt smile toward Sargo. The ponytail bounces. The pendant flashes. My teeth clench.
“But—”
“Electra,” Sargo turns to her, “perhaps it would be a good idea to allow Bird a little more room for error out there.”
“I’m sorry—” Electra scoffs. “You want me to leave her more room for error? How about I stop leaving her room for error? Maybe then she’ll stop making errors.”
“How about we stop leaving you room to act like a bitch?” I mutter. “Maybe then you’ll stop acting like a bitch.”
She rounds on me. “What did you say?”
I force myself not to step backward. “I said, How about you listen to Sargo, since he’s the teacher? Or is it hard for you to hear him over the sound of your own ego?”
“Bird, I don’t need—”
“Ego?” Electra’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline. “I’m not the one so far up her own ass that she can’t see a flogging boat coming at her.”
“Well maybe if someone wasn’t pointing a flogging boat at me—”
“I was not pointing my boat at you!”
A crowd has formed around us as students stop to eavesdrop. Sargo moves to shoo them away.
Electra, apparently seeing her window, swiftly closes the gap between us. She’s in my face so suddenly I have to fight the impulse to step backward again. She lowers her voice to a flinty growl.
“Listen, Howsely. You might have Sargo wrapped around your disgusting chewed-up finger somehow, but I’m not going to make exceptions for you anymore. You need to start taking responsibility for your shit, or—”
A sudden frown clouds her face. She leans closer to me and sniffs.
“Have you been drinking?”
The last word rings into the still air, and in the corner of my eye, I see Sargo turn. I send up a half-hearted prayer to whatever alleged gods might still be floating around up there that he didn’t actually hear that word, but as his eyes meet mine, his face crumples with disappointment, and I know he did.
Electra’s eyes gleam. “Are you kidding me, Howsley? You’re drunk? In class? You’re seventeen! That’s not even close to legal on so many levels.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Whatever you say.” She folds her arms. “Wow, you really are just like your brother.”
Anger flares like a struck match in the middle of my chest, and I shove her hard by the shoulders. Her face twists into a very satisfying Oh! of surprise, and a spike of pure, malevolent glee goes through me as she stumbles backward toward the tied-up boats.
But she’s graceful. She regains her balance quickly and lunges back at me, ripping the beanie from my head and fisting a chunk of my hair. Her grip is like iron. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how strong she is. She’s got a year on me and her arms are ripped with muscle from afternoons spent raising sails and pulling lines out on the Salt. The stinging in my scalp makes my eyes water. I can hear hairs tearing out of my head.
As she wrenches my head sideways, I glimpse the pendant swinging around her neck, flashing in the sun, and with my free hand, I grab for it. Electra utters a sharp cry as the chain breaks, scattering fine silver links all over the dock. I make a fist around the stone and prepare to swing.
“Bird! Electra! That is enough!”
Someone’s hands are around my shoulders. Electra releases her grip and we stumble away from each other. The sudden scent of salt and fogwood tells me it must be Sargo’s hands pinning my arms to my sides. Polo Parker has Electra by the arm.
“El, it’s not worth it. This bitch is so stray, just let it go.”
Electra bats her away her and clutches at her throat for the pendant. Pinpricks of blood bead along the side of her neck where the chain serrated her skin before it broke.
She glares at me. “Give me my necklace.”
The sudden urge to fling the necklace off the dock and into the water seizes me, but Sargo's hands are too tight around my biceps.
I twist, furious. “Or what?”
Sargo’s grip around my arms tightens. “Keep. Still. Howsley,” he growls in my ear. When I stop struggling, he says, “Electra, come and get your necklace.”
A look of hesitation crosses Electra’s face. It’s out of place on her; a crack in the visage betraying a chasm of vulnerabilities that might, in fact, comprise a person. But it’s a momentary slip; she exhales sharply through her nose and the look vanishes, replaced by her usual carefully-composed smugness.
She tosses her ponytail, marches over in three quick strides, and wrangles the stone from my fist. With one final glare, she snatches up her pack and stomps off down the dock, Polo trotting after her like an obedient little puppy.
Sargo’s hands loosen and I pull free, wheeling around to lay into him with all the angry words I didn’t get to yell at Electra. But my vitriol evaporates at the look on his face: fury, obviously, disbelief, disappointment, but also…yep. Concern.
That look gets right inside me; I drop my eyes and study my nails.
He sighs. “Shall we take a walk?”
Chapter Two
Sargo’s only two years older than me, but I feel so small walking next to him, waiting to be reprimanded like a child.
He walks with his hands behind his back and his tawny face drawn as we round the corner from the Azimuth school dock and step onto Pier Two. His little thirty-five-foot sailboat is tied up at the end, corn-yellow fiberglass hull cheerfully juxtaposed against the dark blue water. Her mainsail is neatly flaked along a sea-green aluminum boom and on the side of the hull, toward the stern, green letters spell the name Panga.
We stop on the dock beside the boat, and Sargo turns to me as though expecting me to talk first. I impulsively tuck a rogue clump of mousy frizz up inside my beanie.
He clears his throat. “Coming to class intoxicated? Nearly causing a wreck? Picking a fight with Electra? That’s beyond reckless, even for you.”
“I didn’t come to class intoxicated,” I mumble.
“Oh, so you were drinking in my class.” His voice is so sharp I flinch like it actually cut me. “Did you think being drunk would make you less likely to wreck two other boats?”
“I didn’t almost wreck those boats because I was drunk. I almost wrecked them because I wasn’t paying attention.”
Perhaps a bit of a fine hair to split. But I feel it should be on the record.
He stares at me as though he can’t quite believe a person as dumb as I am made it this far without dying in a horrible accident. “Do you understand the danger you put your classmates in today? Do you understand the seriousness of this situation? As your instructor, I have to report this to the school officials.” He pauses. “But frankly, as your friend…I’m—”
“Concerned?”
His jaw ticks. “Yes. Concerned.”
I shift, picking at my thumbnail. “Sorry. It was just a blip. It won’t happen again.”
“A blip? This is not a joke, Bird! I’m aware that you had a fight with your folks, but this is not a good way of dealing with that. Have you spoken to your moms yet?”
The ember of anger lights in my chest again. It glows with a dull heat. “No.”
“Okay.” He observes me quietly. “Will you be staying at our place again tonight?”
“Is…that alright?” I peek into his face to see if I can discern what he’s thinking, but he’s recovered some of his usual composure and become inscrutable.
“Of course,” he sighs, and shrugs his wide shoulders. “Blenny says you can stay as long as you want.”
I haven’t told Sargo why I’m fighting with my moms. Why I’ve been crashing at his uncle Blenny’s house for the last three days. And he hasn’t asked. That’s why I like Sargo: he doesn’t pry. You could call us friends, but at the end of the day, he’s more like a counselor. A concerned counselor, but not a prying one.
A gust of wind rips through the harbor, setting carelessly untied lines clanging against their masts. Sargo looks up instinctively to check the lines running up Panga’s mast, but of course, they’re all neatly secured and make no sound at all. That’s the kind of sailor Sargo is: tidy. Methodical. Everything in its place.
His gaze sticks on the mast and he contemplates it for a long moment as though lost in thought.
“Something on your mind?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He stands for a while with his thoughtful gaze still skyward. “Today is the anniversary of the day my folks died.”
My gut twists. Right. I follow his gaze to Panga’s mast. She was their boat. I’m sure everything about her reminds him of them.
“I forgot.”
“It’s okay. It’s not your job to remember.”
“Yeah, but we’ve just been going on about me—”
“Truly, Bird. It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
I sigh, feeling small and selfish and stupid. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.” He touches his palm to Panga’s hull. “You’re salty. But I do think you should talk to your folks. You may regret it if you don’t.”
A flicker of irritation. Is he really using his dead moms to guilt-trip me? “Yeah. Maybe.”
“And I think you should give Electra a break.”
“Give her a break? How about she gives me a break?”
Sargo eyes me silently.
I fold my arms. “Not gonna happen. She’s intolerable.”
“Intolerable?” He lifts an eyebrow. “If by that you mean she’s headstrong and intelligent, then yes, I suppose she is intolerable. Like you.”
“I’m not like her.”
“Actually, you’re right.” He smirks. “She knows how to sail.”
I curl my lip. “Very funny. She’s also entitled and rude.”
“You’re rude.”
“Yeah—wait, no…” I scowl. “I’m not rude. I’m salty, remember?”
“Mm.”
“Anyway, she is entitled. Did you see the size of the stone in that necklace?”
He sighs. “She’s not entitled. Her family has coin. Those are different things.”
I roll my eyes. “Has coin is a massive understatement.”
“Well they’ve worked hard for it. Her parents built that company up from nothing.”
“Yeah, and used it to take over the world.”
“Zenith brought us back from the brink of collapse when they ended the last pandemic. You should be grateful they took over the world. And you have them to thank for that chip in your head, without which, Howsley, I’m pretty sure you’d be completely unable to function.”
I glare. “That’s not true.”
“Oh yeah? When was the last time you went somewhere in the city without relying on your biochip for a map?”
“I come here every day.”
“Uh-huh.” He folds his arms, eyeing me. “Axioma Nation is a genius and a hero, and Electra is probably going to take over the company from her some day, so you may want to stay on her good side if you ever want to get a job in this town.”
I scowl at him. “I just don’t know how you can be friends with her.”
He shrugs. “Our families go back a long way. My family owes Axioma a lot. And Electra and I have a lot in common. Brume is in our blood.”
“Then I don’t know how you can be friends with me.”
“Brume is in your blood too,” he sighs, pulling the key to Panga’s main hatch from his pocket.
“Sure as Salt doesn’t feel like it.” I stoop to pick up my pack. “Hey—why did you trap me on the dock and make Electra take the necklace out of my hand? Why didn’t you just let me give it back to her?”
“Because I was pretty sure that if I let go of you, you were going to throw it into the Salt.”
I grin. “You got me.”
He shakes his head again. “You see? Reckless. So after you threw it in the Salt, then what would you have done? Bought Electra another one? With all that coin you have?”
I sigh and turn my gaze out over the water.
“I have to write you up,” he says. “I don’t know what the school will do. Hopefully, it will just be a suspension. Principal Yip has a soft spot for you, so maybe you’ll get off easy. Please, just…don’t do it again. Not in my class, at least. I know you think this class is a joke, but you need to take sailing seriously. It’s the law.”
“It’s a dumb law.”
He sets his jaw. “You need to know how to sail. You need to be prepared to quarantine out there in the event of another pandemic, and you need to be able to survive as the Salt keeps rising. You’ll be evaluated when you turn eighteen and if your skills aren’t up to Zenith’s standards, you won’t be allowed to graduate. The community is only as strong as its weakest link. We’re all in this, right? Brume pride?”
“Yup,” I mumble. “Brume pride.”
Brume pride.
As if we made Brume what it is. We didn’t make Brume. Or at least, I didn’t. I was just lucky enough to be born here. In a bubble that wasn’t totally devastated by climate disasters. In a bubble that survived the pandemic, when billions of others did not. To me, that just feels like dumb luck, not something to be proud of.
“Look,” says Sargo, “I don’t want to go on at you about this. Can you please just make an effort not to derail my class in the future?”
I nod, my eyes still on the dock.
“Are you sticking around to help me out today?”
I shrug. “I guess.”
“Great.” His tone brightens. “Do you want to see what I did yesterday?”
I follow him over the rail onto Panga’s deck. He’s torn up the rotten old wood that used to be there, and in place of the splintered, graying planks he’s laid beautiful, honey-colored teak. The neatly-interlocking pattern reminds me of a woven basket.
I stare around with my mouth open. “Did you do all this yourself?”
“I did,” he says, and though he tries to temper it, I sense his pride. “I finished it last night.”
“You should have waited for me! I would have helped.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” He ducks into the boat’s cockpit, returning moments later with a jar of teak varnish, two brushes, and a sly smile. “There’s still plenty to do.”
I sigh and take a brush. “Am I gonna be able to invoice you for all this manual labor I’ve done at some point, or…?”
He snorts. “Sure, Howsley. Bill my secretary.”
I watch him twist the lid off the jar and set it on the deck. “Sometimes I don’t know if we’re friends, or if you just keep me around for the free labor.”
He sits beside the jar with his legs hanging over the side. “It’s mostly the free labor. But I don’t think you hate it.”
“Oh is that so? How do you figure that?”
“You’ve been doing it for almost a year.”
I sit on the other side of the deck and reach across to dip my brush into the varnish. “A year? No. No way.”
He taps his temple and reads words I can’t see out of the air in front of him. “April third, twenty-one ninety-two. Detention with Howsley.”
“You have a log of that?”
“I have logs of everything.”
“Jesus.”
He flinches. “Don’t say Jesus, Howsley.”
“Alright, fine.” I set my brush against the deck and drag a thick, black line of oily pitch onto the wood. “So it’s been a year.”
He dips his brush into the pot. “Which is interesting, because Fen told me your detention was only supposed to be a week. So I’m not really sure what you’re still doing here.”
“You seemed like you needed help. This boat was a piece of junk when I started.”
“Oh, is that what it is? I thought you just didn’t have anything else going on.”
My face heats. He’s right: I didn’t have anything else going on. When Mr. Fen, the old sailing teacher, gave me a week of detention helping Sargo, his star student, fix up Panga, I didn’t have any other friends. Sargo and I connected because we both have two moms—well, I have two moms. Sargo had two moms. A week turned into a month, and a month turned into six, and six months turned into a year. Sargo the patient sailor and his rotten little sloop became like a life raft in a school where I was drowning, and I’ve clung to them ever since.
Not that I would ever admit that.
I push itchy hair out of my sticky face with the back of my arm, sink my brush back into the thick, black varnish and pull it out, dripping.
“I had plenty going on. You’re the loser who’d rather spend a year fixing his boat than going to parties or getting laid like a normal dude.”
He looks at me sharply. “That’s not true.”
“I’ve never even seen you with a girl.”
“I’ve been with plenty of girls, Howsley. I could easily be sitting here right now, surrounded by naked girls, watching them paint this boat for me.”
“That’s what you’d do with a bunch of naked girls? Watch them paint a boat?”
He flashes a small smile. “To start.”
“Spare me.”
We paint in silence until the deck gleams dark and sticky and the air is damp and cold. Sargo ducks down the three companionway steps to wash up the brushes in the galley below deck.
I peek down after him. Beyond the sink, where he stands with his back to me, two faded, threadbare sofas run along either side of the narrow cabin with a small table set between them. Just beyond that is a door leading to the head, and another to the bunk in the bow where Sargo sometimes sleeps if he’s here working late.
The work that Sargo has done on the boat shines through here too—the patch jobs he’s done on the sofas and the floorboards he’s replaced. Everything worn but clean, the wood old but polished, the space small but tidy. Methodical. Everything in its place.
I swear Sargo could find something to fix on a perfect circle. He never seems to run out of projects. Sometimes I wonder if he even would sail out of Brume if it wasn’t illegal. Or if he would just sit here forever, finding stuff to fix.
He sets the brushes to dry and looks up the steps at me as he wipes his hands on a towel. “Tea? And then we’ll head to Blenny’s?”
I turn my gaze out to the horizon, where the last fiery sliver of sun is extinguishing itself in a bank of silver fog. “I don’t know, I thought maybe I would go find a bunch of naked dudes to surround myself with. Maybe watch them paint a boat for me.”
“Great, send them here when you’re done.” He sets the towel aside. “I have a ton of work for them.”
“Naked?”
“Very funny.”
I fold my arms. “A ton of work? You’ve been fixing up Panga since before I met you. What else is left to do?”
I don’t mean for the question to sound sarcastic, but I guess it comes out that way. Sargo looks annoyed.
“This stuff takes time,” he says impatiently, “if you want to do it right.”
“Okay. What stuff?”
He doesn’t answer right away, picking up the key to Panga’s main hatch and climbing back up the companionway. At the top of the steps, he says, “I suppose the biggest thing is the sail.”
“The mainsail?”
He nods. “It’s old. In bad shape. I can sail under it for a while, but eventually, it will fail.”
“Fail how?”
“Tear. Sag. Just generally fall apart.”
“How long will that take you to fix?”
He climbs out of the hatch, slides it shut behind him, and locks it. “That’s not something you fix. It needs to be replaced. And that takes coin. A lot of coin.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know—twenty thousand Ubicoin? Thirty thousand? Maybe more? Where are you going with this?”
“Just curious I guess. Wondered if you had plans to go somewhere.”
“Obviously not.”
“Right.” I watch him fiddling with the lock. “Where would you go, though? If you could.”
“That’s a pointless question, Howsley.”
“Indulge me.”
He sighs and squints at the horizon. “I don’t know. Pocosín, maybe.”
“Really?” My eyebrows lift. “Why?”
He shrugs. “Find my roots. People who look like me.” He finishes locking up and straightens.
I give him what I hope is an encouraging smile, because he doesn’t talk about that part of his heritage very often and I know he doesn’t like to bring it up. “Maybe one day you will.”
He tilts his eyebrow. “Don’t be obtuse, Howsley. Nobody leaves Brume.”
Chapter Three
Sargo gets up early the next morning to teach a class and I pretend to sleep while he creeps around, making quiet sounds with the kettle and filling the house with the bitter-orange smell of black tea.
An hour later I sit in the back of history class at Azimuth, staring into space.
“…was outlawed by Zenith,” someone is saying. “Can you tell me what year that was?”
Something pointy digs into my shoulder. I blink and turn around. The girl who sits behind me raises her eyebrows over my shoulder, to where Ms. Dawley, the history teacher, is peering at me expectantly over the top of her wire-rimmed spex.
“Oh…uh, what?”
Ms. Dawley sighs. “Please try to pay attention, Miss Howsley. I’ll ask again: in what year did Zenith make it a crime to leave Harbor Cities?”
“Uh…” I dig through my mind and find nothing. “Twenty-one-eighty?”
She sighs through her nose. “Try again. This test review is meant to benefit you, not me.”
“Twenty…one…” I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Twenty-one-seventy-three. Can you tell me why they made it a crime?”
“Uh…the pandemic.”
“Yes,” she sighs, “but I’m looking for specifics.”
“They did it to prevent transmission of disease between cities,” says the girl behind me.
“Correct, Raven,” says Ms. Dawley. “Can you elaborate?”
“Before the pandemic, Harbor Cities like Brume were overcrowded with refugees fleeing natural disasters. That’s why the virus was so devastating. When the governments collapsed during the pandemic and the Big Four rose to power, Zenith made it illegal for any citizen to leave a Harbor City so that disease could never spread like that again. The only ships transiting the Salt now are automated freighters carrying parts for Big Four companies.”
“What about Reckoners?” says someone behind me. “Aren’t they still out on the Salt?”
“The Dead Reckoners were lawless pirates and most of them are presumed dead,” says Ms. Dawley briskly. “The few that remain operate outside the law and do not adhere to Zenith’s policies. We won’t spend much time on them in this class.”
She taps her temple and swipes through the air to pull up the next page of notes on her biochip.
“Can anyone tell me what year the citizens of this city returned from their offshore quarantine and moved back onto land? Miss Howsley? Want to give it another shot?”
I restrain a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know…twenty-one-sixty-nine?”
“Incorrect. Miss Tarbuckle?”
“Twenty-one-seventy-four,” says Raven promptly, “right after the pandemic. The citizens of Brume survived the pandemic by fleeing into the bay on their sailboats and anchoring just offshore for two years.”
“Correct. And can anyone tell me in what year the Gas Wars started?”
“Twenty-one-thirty-nine,” says Raven. “The same year the first Reckoners fled to the island of Île Tor to dodge the draft.”
“Correct again, Raven,” says Miss Dawley. “Everyone please take out your slates and pull up the map of the New Pacific.”
I reach into my pack and find the canvas cloth that wraps my slate buried in the bottom. Unwrapping the slender stone rectangle, I lay it on my desk and tap my right brow to pull up the course materials on the Net.
“Incidentally,” Miss Dawley says as I swipe through the air to find the map, “can anyone tell me why the Net was one of the few systems not affected by the collapse?”
“Satellites,” says someone behind me. “It runs on satellites and the satellites never came down.”
“Correct,” says Miss Dawley. “Miss Howsley, are you taking notes? The test is in two days.”
I scowl at my slate, aiming the projection of the map at the dark stone and adjusting the size by dragging my finger across my brow.
Brume is tucked like a green jewel into the New California coast. I zoom the map out to look at the rest of the Harbor Cities. Alluvium and Pocosín in Nuevo CentroAmérica, Grike in New Australia, Zhīliú in New East Asia, Krepost’ in новая россия and Qanat on the Arabian side of the Med. There are only seven cities left in the world, plus the island of Île Tor, so you’d think I’d be able to remember where all of them are, but sometimes I still struggle with the geography.
I’m stepping out of the classroom an hour later, into the cool, foggy forest of Azimuth’s outdoor campus, when a ding fires off inside my head and a new message alert slides in front of my eyes. I swipe through the air to open it.
>>> Bird Howsley. Report to Principal Yip no later than 0945.
I close the message and tap my left temple to check the time.
>>> 0930
Better get going, Howsley.
The walk to the office seems longer than usual today. Of all the times I’ve been here—which is many—I’ve never been in for such a serious infraction before. If I get suspended, will it be my third this year, or fourth? I forget what’s supposed to happen after three suspensions. Something bad, I suspect.
I pick my way over the broken concrete and exposed roots of the abandoned quad. Everything slowly being reclaimed by trees and heaps of crawling vines. Past the buildings that stood empty for years after the pandemic before they were taken over by Zenith and turned into their headquarters. I don’t see a single other person. The benefit of living in a post-apocalyptic world where ninety-nine percent of humanity was wiped out by a virus: it’s quiet.
A poster on the door to Yip’s office instructs me to Put on your own mask first. A Zenith slogan drilled into my generation since the day we were born. Personally, I think it’s safe to assume that anyone who was carrying the virus is long dead, since the pandemic was almost twenty years ago, but what do I know? I tug my bandana up from its near-permanent position around my neck and pull it over my nose.
Put on your own mask first. It sounds sensible, but it’s really depressing if you think about what it actually means. It goes hand in hand with Brume pride. Brume first. Me first. That’s what it actually means.
With my bandana on, I steel myself and knock.
“Enter.”
Calypso Yip’s crisp soprano rings through the door. I push it open to reveal a small, neat office, filled with light, glass, and green plants. Yip sits behind an oak desk, her steely hair wound tightly into a little pile on top of her head. She acknowledges me with a bony finger while she sips from a cup of brew, then pulls a silk handkerchief up over her nose.
Yip has coin. You can tell by the fineness of that handkerchief. Her family owns a massive estate out by the wind farm. They’ve been there for generations. They’re the only family that survived the pandemic without fleeing into the bay. Holed up on their property and put up an electric fence. Killed all the horses for food and set the dogs on anyone who tried to come in.
Yip sets down her slate and taps a finger to her temple, then turns her tired eyes to me. “Bird.”
“Ms. Yip.”
We sit in silence while she observes me through her tiny spex then arches a questioning eyebrow. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
I shrug, picking at my nails. “Sorry, I guess.”
“Intoxicated on school property. In a school boat. Nearly caused the wrecks of two other vessels and then,” her already sharp voice pitches up a few steps, “starting a physical altercation with another student!”
“I didn’t start it! She provoked me!”
Yip tuts. “Yes, well I have spoken to Miss Nation about her involvement in the incident, and rest assured, she will be reprimanded as well. But regardless of who said what, I have several witnesses who all attest that it was you who threw the first punch.”
She leans back in her chair, pushing her spex to the top of her head and rubbing her eyes.
“How many times have we been here, Bird?”
“This year?” I want to say. “Three or four.” But I sense the question is rhetorical and hold my tongue.
She puts the spex back on and looks at me. “Ms. Parley says you haven’t been showing up for counseling.”
I exhale sharply and glare at my feet. “I don’t like talking to her.”
“We can’t help you if you won’t help yourself, Bird.”
Silence settles.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, not sure what else to say. “It won’t happen again.”
Yip sighs. “No,” she says heavily, picking up the slate. “Indeed it won’t. Because I’m afraid, Bird, that you’re being expelled.”
My stomach drops. Expelled?
Looks like you figured out what happens after three suspensions.
Yip touches two fingers to her left brow and then swipes them through the air toward me. A file transfer pops up on my chip. She turns the slate around and holds it out to me. I take it, my chest hollow, my arms oddly weightless, and focus the bright text of the file against the stone’s smooth, dark surface.
Tues. April 4
To Ms. Jade Shorbe and Ms. Kestrel Howsley,
This letter serves to inform you of the expulsion of your daughter, Bird Howsley, from Azimuth All-Levels School, effective immediately. Bird seems resistant to the help she has been offered by the school’s counselor, and appears to be making no effort to change. Her behavior has escalated to the point that the staff believe she poses a legitimate threat to her fellow students. In the interest of their safety, we must recommend her immediate removal from the school.
In accordance with Zenith policies, it is Azimuth’s duty to do ‘the most good for the most people.’ As I’m sure you are aware, resources are scarce. We are obligated to funnel those resources toward the well-being of our student majority, not toward a single special case.
Please do not hesitate to contact the school administrator should you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Harding Shores
Head Director, Azimuth EDU
I stare at the words for a long time. The most good for the most people. There’s another one of those delightful Zenith aphorisms. Legitimate threat. Who is this person they’re talking about? That can’t be me.
Through the buzzing in my ears, I become aware that Yip is speaking. “…has already been sent to your mothers. I’ve been instructed to escort you from the premises. Do you have any possessions in your locker?”
I blink and look up, the text of the file still glowing before my eyes—too small to read. The clutter in my vision only increases my wooziness.
“Uh—no.” I touch my fingers to my brow and the letters disappear.
“Okay.”
Yip holds out her hand for the slate and numbly, I hand it over. She sets it in a drawer and stands, bracing her fingers on the desk, her tiny frame and thin skirt like another neatly-trimmed plant in this room full of green.
“If you don’t have any questions for me then I’ll walk you to the gate.”
She pauses, and a sad look passes behind her eyes. Disappointment? Pity? Concern?
“I’m sorry, Bird,” she says quietly. “If it were up to me, it wouldn’t be happening this way. But the director,” she sighs, “was adamant, and I can’t go against Zenith’s dictums. I was at least able to get Shores to drop formal charges against you. You’ll be expelled, but you’re not facing proper authorities.”
“You already sent this to my moms?” is all I can think to say. She nods.
Great.
I stand and turn to leave. My legs feel like water. The bandana around my face is stifling. Now, on top of everything else that’s happened in the last three days, my moms are also going to murder me for this.
Yip hurries around her desk to open the door for me and I bristle at the exaggerated show of cordiality.
“I got it, thanks.”
“I have to escort you from the premises,” she reminds me quietly, standing aside and holding the door open.
“Oh. Right.”
____________________
That night, after Blenny and Sargo go to bed, I swipe a bottle of grog from Blenny’s booze cabinet and take it down to the harbor to drink it. As long as everything in my life is going down in flames, I may as well send it off right.
The moon is hazy behind the fog—blood red, like a perverted sun in the black sky. Even in Brume, where the air is relatively clear, the moon is never white. I take a long swig and toast it.
To failure!
Setting the bottle down, I tap my right temple to pull up Shale’s message on my biochip. I haven’t looked at it in three days. I’ve been doing a really good job of distracting myself from it.
>>> Birb! It’s me. Come to Alluvium. I have a jib for you.
>>> *job
Birb. The word that blew my life apart. Ten years of silence, and then Birb. Ten years of silence and then Birb, and then three days of me spiraling and setting everything on fire. Beneath his message, my reply glows, unanswered.
>>> Shale?
Why hasn’t he replied? I swipe through the air to pull up the message’s metadata, even though I looked at it a thousand times the day he sent it.
>>> Time sent: 1700. Sat Apr 1. 2192
>>> Sent from: Alluvium, New Central America
>>> Name of sender: undefined.
Sender undefined. But I don’t need metadata to tell me it’s Shale. No one else ever called me Birb.
I should be happy to hear from him. I should be sobbing with joy and celebrating with my moms. Instead I just feel pissed.
I take another long swig.
Where has he been? Why didn't he try to contact me before? What is he doing in Alluvium? How did he even get all the way to New Central America?
Another swig. I put the bottle down. Think better of it and pick it up again.
And what the hell does he mean a job? He wants me to come to Alluvium for a job? As if I could just up and leave?
A few more long drinks, and the knot of relentless questions untangles a little. The great thing about grog is that it works quickly. Like, really quickly. Especially if you’re a seventeen-year-old girl who weighs a hundred and ten pounds. It’s not like we have companies distributing carefully-regulated substances in this post-apocalyptic nightmare of a world. People basically make it in their bathtubs. The only reason I know it’s not actually rocket fuel is because there isn’t any rocket fuel left in the world anymore.
I don’t remember getting up from the breakwater, but I guess I must have, because I’m stumbling through the harbor. I sip from the bottle again. Half empty. Did I drink all that? What time is it?
You know what we should do? Steal that stupid necklace from Electra.
I stop at the edge of the street. How did I get here? I was in the harbor. Must have walked. Duh. Durp-dee-duh. Walking. What a concept. Like breathing.
Did you hear my idea about stealing Electra’s necklace?
Yes, I heard it. I heard the stupid idea sloshing around in my brain. That is a terrible idea. First of all, how am I even going to get into the Nations’ house? It’s like an impenetrable rich-person fortress on the top of the cliffs. Second of all, why would I do that?
Because she’s a stray bitch who insulted your brother.
I stop on the corner near Sargo’s house. Again, I don’t remember walking here. I drunk I might be thinker than I drunk I think. Just kidding. I think I might be drunk, though.
Like blackout drunk. Like that one time at Sargo’s party.
Look left. Look right. Street is clear. Step off the curb.
A blinding flash of white as two EV headlights blaze out of the darkness right on top of me. I throw up my hands, the empty bottle in one. Yeah, definitely drunk if I drank all that.
The vehicle’s tires screech. A horn blares. Everything goes black.