thing that you can cook, Emily.”
“That’s mean, Anastasia,” Emily complained, unwrapping the plastic around her sandwich. “I’m doing the best I can with what I have. We can’t all be child prodigies.”
“You are only one year older than me,” Anastasia protested, waving her carrot in outrage. “I am hardly a child. As for being a prodigy — well, it would be foolish to deny it.”
Alex decided to focus on the turkey sandwich Emily had given him, which turned out to be unreasonably delicious, despite the fact that he’d never like turkey much.
“I have to get going to the Science building,” Anastasia announced, standing up and gathering her things. “I have lab to finish. Are you coming, Vivik?”
Vivik nodded and stood up, collecting the trash from his lunch in a paper sack for disposal. He’d told Alex the night before that he was a Sikh, from someplace in India, where his parents owned land. Alex wasn’t sure exactly what a Sikh was, though he thought it was a religion, sort of. Vivik’s explanation had been unclear. But, it did explain the turban he wore all of the time.
“Yeah, I’ll walk with you.”
Vivik looked over at Alex, who realized he was staring openly, and found something else to do.
“You want me to help you go over the homeroom lecture, later on?”
“Maybe,” Alex shrugged, staring off into the woods that bordered the building, for lack of a better option. “I was thinking about talking a walk or something. I’ve been feeling really cooped up today.”
“That’s perfect,” Emily said, looking at Alex hopefully. “Do you feel like taking a trip into town with me? I have something I want to show you.”
“And what would that be?” Anastasia demanded, suddenly face-to-face with Emily, glaring up at her. Alex had to stifle a laugh — Anastasia never looked younger or shorter to him than when she was near Emily. “Don’t you ever have to go to class?”
Emily glared right back, tossing her head indignantly.
“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with. It’s none of your business what I do. You’re always going on about how clever you are, so figure it out for yourself.”
Emily turned to Alex, and put one hand lightly on his shoulder.
“Is it okay, Alex? I’d really like you to come, if you’re not too busy,” she said sincerely, her expression anxious.
Alex was stunned by the realization that she expected him to reject her. This girl, who was obviously nice, smart, and beautiful, had gotten so used to rejection that she anticipated it even from a brand new student. It must be a very bad thing, he thought solemnly, to be B-class.
“Sure,” he said, trying not to sound resigned. “I didn’t really have any specific plans, anyway.”
Anastasia shrugged, exasperated, and then stomped off down the stairs, followed by a smiling Renton and an expressionless Edward.
“Be careful, Alex,” Vivik whispered as he walked by. “Think about what you’re doing.”
Alex nodded amiably. But he didn’t really feel like it was any of Vivik or Anastasia’s business. Particularly since he wasn’t entirely sure what it was he was doing.
“Do you want me to — ”
“Hush,” Anastasia commanded, hustling down the stairs. “When I want you to do something, Renton, I will tell you as much.”
Ten steps. He was quiet for ten steps. She counted them. An old habit.
“But, don’t you think that Emily is going to try and, well… seduce him?”
Her laughter echoed back up the stairwell, no doubt confusing Vivik, somewhere above her. But, it wasn’t often she managed to make Renton feel uncomfortable.
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
She laughed again, quietly, this time. She couldn’t help it. The idea was just too funny. It was easy to forget that Renton was much older than he looked, most of the time. But it would occasionally shine through in his speech.
“I wish her the best of luck, then,” she said honestly. “And I do think that she will need it.”
She hurried ahead, so that Renton had to rush; and poor Edward, as well.
Anastasia liked to make them run after her, occasionally. It was a good reminder of place and role, she felt. For everyone involved.
It wasn’t far to the front gate, where Emily wanted to meet him, though Alex had never made the walk previously. She’d wanted to change out of her uniform, before they left for Central, so she’d given him directions to the front gate, and headed back to her room, telling him to meet her in about half an hour.
The Academy’s grounds were enormous, it was true, but most of the classrooms, faculty offices and student dorms were clustered near the front gate. It only took a few minutes for Alex to get there with the meticulous directions that Emily had given him, on a piece of off-white stationary, each step written out in lovely flowing cursive. It was so elegant that Alex found himself reluctant to fold it or throw it out, and he was still trying to figure out what to do with it when he rounded the last of the staff buildings and saw the Commons, and beyond that the front gate.
The Commons were like a bigger version of the quad between the student dorms; a large open space with carefully maintained green grass, a handful of stately old oaks and willows, a few strategically placed benches and tables, and a motley collection of students and faculty enjoying the weak afternoon sun. It was a nice scene, bordering on idyllic.
The gate behind it was impressive, an ornate piece of stonework that looked to Alex to be ancient, and though he wasn’t sure he could tell decades old from hundreds of years old. Like all of the major structures on the campus, it was made of tightly fit angular blocks with no obvious mortar, the same dull grey stone as the Academy walls, which stretched off in either direction for miles, perhaps twice as tall as Alex and thick, but in poor repair. In many places the wall had partially collapsed, and in numerous other places the wall was bowed and bent. The gate, however, had either aged more gracefully or seen more consistent maintenance. Some of the carvings appeared to have fallen off or been worn away, and a few of the capstones were gone, but as a whole the great stone arch was intact. Alex could not decide if the inscription on the gate arch was a language he didn’t recognize or simply a collection of abstract scribbles, but he found the whole thing a touch foreboding.
All of this paled in importance for Alex, next to seeing Emily in her street clothes for the first time.
Emily was pretty in the uniform, Alex wasn’t about to deny that. But in a simple white dress that looked a bit light for the weather she looked amazing, even with a sweater pulled over it, her blond hair curled and radiant in the late-afternoon sun. Then she smiled at him, maybe a little bit shyly, and he got very nervous indeed.
“Did you make it okay?”
She was anxious, leading him out of the gate and to the road outside, as if she wasn’t beautiful. As if she had anything to worry about.
“Were the directions alright?”
“They were very, um, accurate,” Alex said lamely, realizing he was still clutching the scrap of paper, and shoved it in his pocket. The dark grey hoodie he’d worn seemed a bit incongruous with Emily’s dress, but it wasn’t like he had any clothes that would have been appropriate.
The road itself appeared to be one uniform piece of worked stone, but when Alex got closer, he realized that it was made of the same tightly interlocking blocks as the walls of the Academy, worn smooth with age and traffic. In many places the stones had begun to buckle slightly, and the road’s surface was not nearly as even as it appeared to be from a distance.
“Who built all this?”
“No one knows,” Emily said, shrugging and leading him toward what appeared to be a totally conventional bus stop, with a colorful route sign, and a glass and metal enclosure complete with system map. Alex felt a profound sense of dislocation as they walked toward it. “Supposedly, it was all like this when the Founder discovered Central, empty and waiting. The road and the wall, the Academy Main Hall, Analysis and Operations, all the major structures, they were all here already. At least, that’s what they tell us in class.”
“There is a bus?”
