Magisterium

“What test?”

A scream, made all the worse by the idiotic grin rising on Kevin Kapoor’s face, roared inside Glenn. She shut her eyes so tight her lids nearly cramped, and counted to ten. Why did I agree to this? What was I thinking?

When she opened her eyes, Kevin was still grinning, but now that wasn’t the worst of it. The sun was a dim orange circle dropping between two white towers in the distance. It was forty degrees at most, but since Glenn’s clothes were impregnated with a solution that either generated heat or drew it away from the body, depending on how she

manipulated an app on her tablet, she wasn’t cold. It was a miracle of science and especially handy now, Glenn thought, as the last train home glided into view over Kevin’s shoulder. It pulled into the station, pausing only briefly since there were no passengers waiting, and moved silently down the line.

“Last train just pulled out, didn’t it?” Kevin asked.

Glenn glared at him.

“Did I mention the dragons? Bunches of people have seen

dragons.”

“I hate you, Kevin Kapoor.”

Kevin took her by the arm and nodded gravely. “I know.”

“You should really thank me,” Kevin called out, struggling to keep up as Glenn tore across the soccer field. “Brisk walk on a beautiful night with a good friend? You can’t buy that kind of peace and contentment! It’s what memories are made of!”

The school’s perimeter fence clicked open as they approached.

Glenn stepped from the soccer field’s artificial grass to the road that led through Berringford Homes, a housing project that covered the two miles between school and home. Since people weren’t generally eager to buy land near the border, it wasn’t the greatest neighborhood, consisting of little more than a grid of black asphalt roads lined with fifteen-to twenty-floor apartment stacks. The stacks were pressed so close together, there was hardly a breath between them, making the street seem lined with one continuous home snaking along through the dark. Its sides were lit by fluorescent streetlights and the bluish glow of holographic games and films playing inside.

Kevin caught up and was loping along at Glenn’s side, his leather jacket creaking as he pumped his arms. “Look, Morgan …”

“Kevin, please.”

“I mean, there’s going to be a test. Eventually, at some undetermined point in the future, there will be a test. Tests are inevitable. And I’ll need to be ready for it, whenever it comes. I was being proactive!”

“Forget it. It’s fine.”

Kevin bumbled over a crack in the pavement as he tried to keep up with her. “Where, uh, where ya hurrying to, Morgan?”

“Home.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’? Why am I going home?”

“What are you going to do there?”

“At home? Things.”

“Academy things?”

Glenn stopped in the middle of the street. Someone was playing a holo game on the ground floor of the stack across from them. It filled the street with the sound of shattering glass and sirens.

“I mean, you have to get your application ready, right?”

Glenn’s eyes went sharp on Kevin. “Third-years don’t put in applications to the Academy, Kevin.”

“No,” he said quickly. “Fourth-years do. Ones that are

graduating.”

“How did you — ?” Glenn started, but then it hit her. “You

spliced into the school’s network again.”

“Again? Ha! I haven’t been out since I spliced in two years ago.”

Glenn opened her mouth to tell him that her plans weren’t any of his business and he had no right to look at her records, but it was a waste of breath. She turned away from him abruptly and continued on down the street.

“You applied to skip fourth year yesterday morning,” Kevin said as he followed along beside her. “First thing yesterday morning.”

“So?” Glenn kept her eyes fixed on the dark end of the street and picked up her pace.

“So I was with you until after midnight the night before and you said nothing about it.”

“I don’t tell you everything, Kevin.”

“You do too!” Kevin said. “I’m the only one you tell anything.

So, since I’m not a moron, I can only conclude that you made this decision immediately after you left me at the train station. Is my deduction correct?”

Glenn stopped walking, cursing herself for being stupid enough to meet him.

“Kevin …”

“I didn’t think — ” Kevin turned away. There was a security cairn next to him, a waist-high tower of white plastic and touch areas to report emergencies. Kevin kicked at it with the toe of his boot. “It was dumb, okay? A mistake. Whatever. I didn’t mean it to — ” He kicked the tower again, hard this time. “I mean … was it really that horrible?”

Glenn tried to speak, but she had no breath. The walls of the surrounding stacks seemed to be pressing in on either side of her. She wished she could look up and calm herself with the points of her beloved stars, but the lights of the city washed them out of the sky, leaving nothing but a gray void.

“I have to stay focused,” Glenn said as precisely as she could.

“You know that.”

Kevin stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and looked aimlessly around at the tightness of the neighborhood and the looming stacks. An Authority skiff glided overhead, its red lights pulsing. It rounded a corner and disappeared.

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Yeah, okay. I was just … you know. I was drunk.”

“You don’t drink, Kevin. You did once and it made you sick.”

“Yeah. Right.” Kevin shook his head and then he started off down the dark street. “Sure felt like I was, though.”

Glenn watched as the neighborhood enveloped him. He had

almost disappeared when he stopped and turned back to her.

“Come on,” he said, urging her along with a toss of his head and a reluctant smile. “Crappy neighborhood. Gotta get you home safe, Morgan.”

Down the hill, blue generator lights poured out from the open door of Dad’s workshop. She could hear the sounds of him working from where she stood. He probably hadn’t moved all day.

The front door of the house unlocked as Glenn approached it, and she let herself inside. Gerard Manley Hopkins yowled from the dark underneath the stairs. Glenn fed him, and when he was done eating, he trotted along ahead of her to her room.

As soon as Glenn made it through the door to her bedroom she collapsed onto the bed. Kevin hadn’t said another word their entire walk home. When they’d reached the turnoff to his house, he’d quietly wished her good night and disappeared.

Glenn grabbed her tablet and switched it on. She hoped she’d find the signed form back from Dad, but there was nothing in her messages. She bent over her calculus and tried to focus, but it was no use. Her thoughts kept coming unstuck, slipping back to Kevin and the snow and the train station, no matter how hard she tried to keep them locked down.

Glenn switched on her star field, stroking Hopkins’s coat