Natural Selection

Ms. Lucas found me in a clearing off the trail. I was sitting on a rock, my head in my hands, thinking about the consequences of Zach’s actions. I was sweaty from the hike and from the knowledge that things were never going to be the same. Maybe it was a good thing I was leaving the planet in two weeks.

“You can’t run off like that,” Ms. Lucas said.

I glanced up at her. She actually looked worried. “Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t sorry.

She frowned and crouched down in front of me. She was wearing a green V-neck T-shirt, and the skin of her throat was flushed from hurrying after me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

She gave me a skeptical look. “Did you and your friends have a disagreement over the project?”

I almost laughed. “Not exactly.”

There was a silver necklace around her neck, and as she breathed, the amber-colored pendant shifted in the hollow of her throat. “Zach can be a handful,” she observed. “Did he say something to you?”

Yes, I thought. He called me a dyke, and it’s true, and now my best friend is going to find out and hate me. But I didn’t say a word out loud.

Ms. Lucas looked at me calmly. She had brown eyes flecked with green, and a faint dusting of freckles over her cheeks. At school she always wore skirts or dresses, but today she was in hiking shorts and boots. The outfit made her look a lot younger. She told me, “Whatever he said, it doesn’t matter.”

My face burned. Had she heard what Zach said? I dropped my gaze from hers and looked at the necklace she was wearing instead. The stone was teardrop-shaped, but there was something embedded within it. “What’s in that?” I asked, grappling for a change of subject. “In your necklace?”

To my surprise, she unfastened the chain and dropped it in the palm of my hand. The pendant and the chain were both warm from her skin, and when I looked closer, I saw that there was a tiny leaf within the pendant.

“It’s a piece of amber from Mexico,” Ms. Lucas said. “That’s a leaf from the extinct Hymenaea tree—the tree that produced the resin that formed this amber.”

I ran one finger over the smooth surface. It was a pretty color—like a dark orange flame. “It’s a fossil, right?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Fossils occur when the original organic structure has been entirely replaced with minerals, but amber is still organic. It’s basically unchanged from when it was first formed.”

“How old is it?”

“I’m not sure, but probably this piece is between twenty and thirty million years old.”

I held the piece of amber up to the sunlight and looked at the leaf embedded within. It glowed. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

Ms. Lucas sat down on the rock beside me. “It is. Did you know that in Greek mythology, amber is supposed to come from the tears of the Heliades? They were the nymph daughters of the sun god, Helios, and when their brother, Phaeton, was killed by Zeus, they were turned into poplar trees as they mourned him, and their tears became amber.”

I made a face. “That’s depressing.”

She grinned, and it lit up her entire face. “A little, yeah. Less depressingly, amber was also thought to have attractive, magnetic qualities, because when you rub it with a piece of cloth, it will create static electricity. In fact the Greek word for amber is elektron, and that’s where we get the word electricity.”

I handed the necklace back to Ms. Lucas. “Why are you telling me this? It’s not on the test, is it?”

She took the necklace and shook her head, laughing. “No, it’s not. I suppose I’m telling you because… well, things are complicated. This piece of amber is a lot more than just a pretty piece of jewelry.” She paused, and when she began speaking again her voice was low and earnest. “Whatever Zach said—and I’m not saying I heard it—but whatever he said, I want you to know that the world is complicated, and what some people think is bad, other people don’t.”

I broke into an involuntary smile at the seriousness of her tone. “It’s okay, Ms. Lucas. I’m fine.”

Her forehead was furrowed. “Are you sure?”

“I know it’s okay to be gay,” I told her. “Zach is… he’s a jerk.”

She smiled slightly. “Yes. Yes, he is.” And then we both broke into laughter. “Don’t you repeat that to anyone,” she warned me.

“I won’t,” I said.

She got to her feet. “Come on. You have to rejoin your group. If you want to switch to another one…”

“It’s fine,” I said, standing. “I can handle Zach.” It was Morgan who would be the problem.

9

Kurra

The resting spot is located about half an hour’s walk from the temple. It’s a building constructed in the side of the mountain, anchored to the bedrock by cables silvered by the moon. A lighted path branches off from the trail, and we follow it toward the structure.

As we enter, the building’s lights glow on, and I see that it’s a big space, large enough to accommodate at least a dozen people. The room is fitted around the mountain itself, so it’s irregularly shaped, with posts scattered across the floor. There are no solid walls, only a railing to separate us from the night. Hammocks hang from the posts, and in the rough center of the room there’s a circular heater for use in winter.

I walk over to the heater and drop my pack on the floor, holding my hands out to warm them. I’m not really cold, but the heat feels nice. Nasha selects a hammock facing the heater and climbs in. We probably have a few hours before dawn. The bells will ring about an hour before sunrise to wake us in time to finish the ascent to the temple. I should try to sleep, but I feel wide awake. I keep thinking about Nasha’s question. How did I feel on Earth, a lone Imrian among humans?

The more I think about it, the more I remember the way I felt silenced on Earth. There were so many things I couldn’t say. It went beyond not being able to have a susum’urda type of connection with someone. I wasn’t able to be myself—not even with Morgan. Especially not with her.

“It was hard,” I say out loud. My voice sounds tinny in the vaulted ceiling.

Nasha’s hammock sways. “What?”

I feel like I have to take her seriously because tonight is our kibila’sa, and that means I have to answer her question. “You asked me how I felt when I was on Earth, not being able to really connect with humans. It was hard. It didn’t feel right, but not only because humans can’t do susum’urda. Because I had to lie about who I was.”

Nasha regards me with pale gray eyes. “Did you like being there at all?”

“I did. It wasn’t all bad.” That’s what makes everything so bittersweet. My mixed feelings confuse me. Parts of it I hated, but parts of it I loved. “I miss it,” I finally say.

“Why?”

“I guess… I miss my friends.” I go to the hammock behind me and crawl in. It’s made of stretchy material that molds itself to my body, sort of like a cocoon.

“But if they couldn’t share your emotions, how could they be true friends?” Nasha asks.

“It’s not like that. I know some Imrians think that humans are less evolved than us, but they’re not. They’re just different. They make connections with each other too—just not through susum’urda. They… they talk. They share their emotions by speaking about them.”

I shift so that I can see Nasha’s face in the golden glow of the overheads. She’s attentive, curious. I find myself telling her about living in the dorm with the other girls at Hunter Glen. About how fast news can travel through texts and messages online and plain old gossip. Nasha seems fascinated by boarding school since Imrians almost always live with their parents until after kibila’sa. I talk about the dining hall and classes and cliques and even watching TV with my friends in the common room at night. Nasha is immediately interested in television, and I spend several minutes explaining what it is.

We have something like acting and theater on Kurra, but it’s very different from human performances. I’ve