ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN: The Chainer, VIII (Patreon)

[A/N: The contents of The Chainer has been such a brain feast for me. Lute and the other Velras have been in my head since the funeral chapters at the beginning of the story. I'm excited so many of you are enjoying seeing the world from this angle. To those of you who are hungry to return to Alden's PoV, we've got one more chapter to go. Really that one should be broken into quite a few more for the sake of my backlog, but I'll be presenting the end of this section on Wednesday, with The Chainer, coda.

I've considered writing (and have written some) a bit farther than that, talking about Lute's first assignment on the Triplanets, how Mass Bestowal works, and meeting Parethat-uur. It's going to be hilarious. But that's probably two-three more chapters worth. Lute fans, those will come at a later date, whenever the story gives me the opportunity again. Next week's release will put us at what I feel is a very good closure point for Lute and the other Velras.

Some people have suggested breaking this up for Royal Road. I won't be doing that because interspersing this with the upcoming chapters really would not work. Also, as a large chunk, people can get over the initial shock of entering another character's point of view, then fall into it and enjoy it. If it comes as a series of alternating chapters, I feel like it's jarring. (My own taste as a reader there.)

I will be giving the Royal Roaders a heads-up and a note about how to enjoy these chapters. I might do something different with the presentation...given the timing I could take a two week break on posting there for the holidays and then release the all of the Lute-centric chapters in a single week as a kind of special event. It would make it more obvious that this is its own unique moment in Super Supportive and would keep people from being antsy about it.

FAQ: Will you do a lot more alternate character PoV's in the future?

No large ones like this are planned at this point. Single chapters here and there for a few characters with particularly succulent stories or insights to share.

Speaking of such stories, I'll stop author noting at you all and let you enjoy Lute. Sink in. And thanks for waiting while I edited this one. Wednesday's will probably be an evening/night time post, too.

Now, if you are someone who likes your chapters delivered in size large, I'm very happy to present you with this and the next. They are truly enormous. Have fun reading!]



*********

“Lute? Lute, are you all right? LUTE VELRA.”

Lute realized he was in class. He was standing up at his desk. His pen was clenched in his hand.

He was breathing hard.

Every face was looking at him in confusion. The chemistry teacher, Mrs. Sharma, had a frown line between her brows as she examined him.

“I…” said Lute.

“Are you all right?” she asked again.

“I feel sick,” he blurted. “I need to leave. My head hurts. And my stomach.”

Should he say that more things hurt? He really needed to…to do something. Move. Get out of here. Think. Something wasn’t right.

Maybe I really am sick? Maybe I’ve gone crazy?

Mrs. Sharma’s first name was Saanvi. It was floating on a lighted name tag over her shoulder.

“Okay,” said the teacher, her voice businesslike now that the problem had been identified. “Tuyet, walk with Lute to the nurse’s office. I’ll let them know you’re coming. Lute, go ahead and take your backpack in case they send you home.”

Lute’s selection notice was still floating in front of his eyes. His hand moved toward it then stopped. If I…if I swipe something out of the air in front of them, they’ll all know what that means. Adults do that. Avowed adults.

He pretended like he was sweeping his hair away from his forehead instead.

He was sure he walked to the nurse’s office beside Tuyet after that, but it was a blank. He might as well have been teleported there for all he could remember of the trip.

“You do look like you’re not feeling too well.” The nurse was pointing a thermometer at his head. “But you haven’t got a fever. You say it’s a head, stomach, and backache?”

Did I add backache in there too?

“I feel sick,” Lute repeated. “I think I need to lie down.”

“If you really think you might be sick, we’ll take you to a Healer and have them use Diagnosis on you. Just to be on the safe side. How does that sound?”

Lute was gradually regaining his senses at that point. His primary concern now was time. Everything was blowing up inside him. He didn’t know anything about anything anymore. If he ran through the school screaming, “I’m either Avowed or insane!” things would start blowing up outside him, too.

He had to figure out the internal explosions before setting off the external ones because…a thousand reasons.

They were all crowding together in his head so that he couldn’t quite make out any of them, but he knew they were there and they were massive. He needed time. What he would like was to ride the train or the bus around and around for the next year, never stopping, until he’d finally calmed down.

That wasn’t going to happen.

He couldn’t even leave campus until the end of the day. This was a family neighborhood. One of the watchers on duty would pick up the wandering student and put it back in the school where it belonged.

The nurse leaned toward him. “Lute,” she said in an even voice, “are you really sick? Or are you having trouble with your classmates again?”

Lute’s troubles with his classmates were so irrelevant at that moment that he didn’t even edit his answer.

“Most of them think they never did anything to hurt me all these years, and then I repaid them by making fun of Avowed being killed. So now they’re consciously shunning me instead of accidentally doing it. But the bullies have switched to shunning, too, so that they fit in with the crowd. It’s much better.”

“Fine,” said the nurse. “You can do your homework in here for the afternoon. I’m only letting you because you’ve never done this before. Don’t make a habit of it.”

If Lute had known the nurse had a soft spot like this, he would absolutely have made a habit of feigning illness last year. He sat quietly in a chair, pretending to read on his tablet.

Instead, he was staring at his interface. It took almost an hour before he really started to accept the fact that this was not some trick or mental break. Nobody had managed to stick a pair of high tech contact lenses in his eyes.

This was the System interface.

And it was his. Whether he wanted it or not.

What has happened? thought Lute. I’m Quadruple Decimal. I’m not one of them. I don’t get magic.

This text floating in front of him—that he still wasn’t swiping away because touching the interface felt like too much of a commitment—said he did. It said he was ninety days, or one button press, away from being a Wright.

A Wright? I mean…Wrights exist. They have Wright jobs making Wrightwork here on Anesidora. Magic stuff. Fireworks, guns, equipment, infrastructure, toys, bombs.

Lots of people really want to be Wrights.

He could call to mind the names and faces of every person he knew who’d ever gone through a Wright phase and all those who were currently close to deciding on the class for real.

This is kinda weird.

Like someone had just walked up to him in the street and said, “Will you come over to my house in a few months to fix the dishwasher?”

“Oh no, you must have mistaken me for someone else. I’m not a dishwasher repairman.”

“You will be then. And every day after that. See you in September.”

He kept working on the word ‘Wright’ like it needed deciphering.

It didn’t belong to him. He was not a Wright. He was practicing and preparing for the day when he became a professional harpist. That was what was keeping him sane while he waited to get away from the Avowed.

Get away from the Avowed? I’m going to be an Avowed.

The thought kept hitting him like a blow to the gut and then fading. Lute wondered if the substance of his being was just too stubborn to let something so antithetical stick for more than a few seconds.

I’ve got to try to let it in. Get a grip on it. I can’t just wander around with these words in front of my eyes for three months until the big thing happens to me. I’ve…I’ve had the lessons with everyone else. I’ve watched them plan for selection for years.

This was supposed to be go-time. Right?

You get picked. You trade for the class you’ve been planning on. Go to meetings with grown-ups who have it before you finalize everything. Professional career coaches. Make sure you’re not screwing yourself up forever.

Applications. Affixation. Acceptance letters come. High school.

Wait, thought Lute. Waitwaitwait.

No.

I don’t want to do any of those things.

Could he hide it? Globies hid it sometimes. Unregistereds. Criminals.

He could do that! And then it would be like it hadn’t happened.

You idiot, Lute. You’re Anesidoran. There’s no benefit at all in your case.

For a human born here, getting your citizenship transferred to another country was so easy. It was one of the things he’d been looking forward to ever since the class trips. At twenty-one, you just filled out some forms and had an interview with a Sway verifier, who would confirm for everyone that even though you’d been born in superhuman territory you weren’t one yourself. And then you could make your home anywhere on Earth.

Lute wouldn’t be able to pass that exit interview anymore. He was stuck here.

That hit him and faded as well.

He was still absorbing facts, still so busy trying to understand what was going on that he wasn’t feeling a lot other than shock and confusion. And then one of his thoughts came through a little louder than all the others.

So it’s Wright. And it’s an S. That’s good. All Avowed want to be S-ranks because that’s the best…one…

An S-rank?

Lute stared so hard at his new rank that it actually expanded. He’d somehow enlarged the image mentally by overfocusing. Now there was a giant semi-transparent, golden letter S blotting out most of the nurse’s office.

“I’m fourteen years old.”

The nurse looked over from her desk. “What’s that?”

“Sorry!” Lute shook his head. “Just thinking out loud.”

He clamped his mouth shut. The thought in his head was loud enough that it might as well have been echoing through the room anyway.

I’m fourteen. He made sure the nurse had her back turned, then he hastily swiped the giant S away so that he could see clearly. He pulled up a calendar on his tablet. I am fourteen years, one hundred forty-nine days old.

I’m a pre-fifteen S-rank.

Very pre-fifteen. Not even fourteen and a half.

The System didn’t tell people why it chose them when it did. It didn’t explain its outliers. “It has plans within plans,” some wannabe sages said. “And we can only glimpse a few of them.”

But if you shoved the small number of Uniques into a box and tucked them off to the side to be all batty, secretive, and potentially hyperbolic away from the ordinary Avowed…one of the System’s more obvious plans or directives was to pick powerful people younger.

If you looked at the birthdays of every registered Avowed, it was all perfectly clear. The S’s and A’s at fifteen with a few B’s for good measure. Then a giant pile of mid-ranks with some highs and lows mixed in at sixteen. Then the D’s and F’s with some mid-rank stragglers along for the ride at seventeen.

It was almost as bizarre for an S to be picked at seventeen as it was for an F to be chosen at fifteen.

And far more bizarre than either of those…

Unless this is one of those plans within plans, thought Lute, it implies I’m likely to be powerful.

Not everyone started out exactly the same, even if the System slapped them with the same letter. If he remembered correctly, that fourteen-year-old S who’d gone to school here a couple of years ago was supposed to have gotten more foundation points than normal for a beginner S of her class.

A few less stats, a few more, an additional spell impression or two, a special offer when you started to affix—the System seemed to play around with those things.

So Lute, at fourteen, might not be just an S. He might be an S that got something extra on top of it.

None of the faculty are S ranks, thought Lute, still gazing at the calendar on his tablet. There’s one in ninth grade right now, about to graduate. Three more in tenth.

If Lute Velra agreed to the Contract right this second, took Wright, and affixed…he thought he might walk out of the nurses’s office as the most powerful person in the entire school.

******

“Why are you sitting on your hands?” asked the nurse. “You’re supposed to be doing schoolwork.”

‘They were cold,” said Lute.

More like they were three seconds away from pushing buttons just to see how much crazier the day could get.

I do not want to be a Wright. I don’t think. They’re definitely in the middle of the pack for me, not at the top, right? As far as Avowed classes I like go.

He hadn’t had a favorite class since he was on the playground playing superheroes. It would have been like having a favorite sports car out of a lineup of them covered in plates that said NOT4LUTE.

I’m not sure I like any of them.

His mind went straight to the instrument Meisters then ditched them. They weren’t really subclasses for high ranks. More C’s and sub-C’s. The couple of S-rank ones he’d heard of had instruments that doubled as sonic weapons. Even if one of those rarities cropped up, that wasn’t what he wanted.

Musical instruments were for creation. Not destruction.

Shaper.

Shapers were extremely useful, and they could be artists. Shaping performances set to song were popular and exciting. All the elements were good.

But Water’s the prettiest.

He almost groaned out loud at himself. His taste in magic hadn’t changed since he was four. Maybe because that was when he’d last truly thought he could have it.

It’s not my fault I haven’t prepared at all! I wasn’t supposed to have magic. Lute’s brow furrowed. Uh…so why do I?

This question was urgent enough to temporarily knock the ten thousand others he had away from the single braincell that was still capable of normal function.

I’m the kid of two regular people. I’m supposed to be a regular person, too.

There wasn’t a lot of data on children with two sets of superhuman grandparents and a pair of plain human parents, but it wasn’t like he was the one and only. There were others. And there were those who had gotten the heck off of Anesidora, like Lute had planned to, and married regular people.

All evidence pointed to whiffs being garden variety human beings that the System had no interest in playing with.

Garden variety human beings didn’t make superhumans very often. Every globie was a little statistical miracle.

I could be a miracle.

But before he started introducing himself as Lute Velra— first ever fourteen-year-old S-rank born of non-Avowed parents on Anesidora, he had to consider the much more likely reason.

If I’m not the biggest miracle ever, then at least one of my parents…isn’t.

He realized his lip was trembling and he bit it, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. That’s not…don’t be a baby about it, all right? It’s not a big deal.

It was a huge deal.

Your parents are even divorced. Like a lot of peoples’. You didn’t think they had some beautiful connection. Dad was probably into Mom because he’s insecure about his own height and not being Avowed and the family’s rich. And Mom liked Dad for…

Actually, his mother had never admitted to liking anything specific about Cyril. But Lute assumed it might have been an insecurity thing with her, too. She’d never dated someone else since the divorce.

If I’m being less of a doubter, they might’ve just had the one huge thing in common and thought it would keep them loving each other forever.

It was hard being the only non-Avowed in every room. Lute knew. If another kid like him had walked into the school, he would have been completely fascinated by them even if everyone else thought they were the most blah person on the planet.

I’m pitiful. And whether they loved each other or not…

There was a lie somewhere. He was either a miracle or a lie, and he just couldn’t bring himself to seriously believe the first one.

They’re my parents.

Mundane Explanation: Jessica had cheated on Cyril with an Avowed and never told.

How could she? Was it a horrible mistake? Is she too embarrassed to admit to it even though it’s really important information for me to have?

Anesidoran Soap Opera Explanation: They had been in a polyamorous relationship, Artonan style, with a powerful S-rank who had betrayed them. They’d hated the asshole so much, they’d agreed never to mention him to Lute.

That would require them to be way different people than I think they are, but since something way different is going on anyway, can I really rule it out?

He probably could, but he liked this scenario. It would mean his parents were both in on it together and they both knew Lute might have been fathered by the S-rank betrayer, and when his selection came out his Dad wouldn’t…

He won’t stop being my Dad. He wouldn’t. Right?

Superhuman Breeding Explanation 1: One or both of his parents were like Hazel’s. They had wanted a baby stronger than they could make themselves and they’d…done something to make that happen. With or without the other person’s knowledge.

Superhuman Breeding Explanation 2: Lute could be—

I don’t care! He shook his head again. Most of these are horrible. They’re not horrible people! They’re not perfect, but they’re my parents. I don’t want other ones!

Jessica, even when she was busy, was Lute’s best friend in the entire world. They were a team in a family full of crazy Avowed. They took care of each other.

Cyril, even though he was kind of bitter and a bum, was Lute’s second best friend. They still saw each other every other weekend. Sometimes more if there was a heavy cousin population wherever Lute was living. They played video games together, badmouthed Cyril’s awful parents and most of the Velra family members, and went for walks around the neighborhood where he lived in the evenings.

These were the people who loved Lute. And whom he loved.

These two.

If he lost them, he would be alone.

So I won’t lose them. Hugh and Cady are Hazel’s parents. Mom and Dad are mine. And screw everyone who’s going to say otherwise!

There. That was better. Now he could pay attention to the really important stuff, which was literally everything that was happening right now.

Okay. One good thing. If I can’t leave Anesidora without smuggling myself away on a boat, then I just…oh god I’m trapped here!…no. Focus, Lute.

If I can’t leave Anesidora then I won’t have to convince Mom and Dad to come with me. We’ll all be together for sure.

What’s another good thing?

He was an S. He was having some trouble wrapping his mind around it, but if it was going in a column it had to be the “pro” one, didn’t it?

Another good thing?

There was something he had known he couldn’t have. And now he probably could.

I might not have to die.

No matter how logical and mature he had tried to be about it since Hazel had dropped the bomb on him, the normal human lifespan had been a horribly painful pill to force down after a childhood spent in an environment that had made him assume it would be otherwise. The fact that he and his mother weren’t on the family’s re-youthening plan had put him into something like a fugue state at twelve, and he’d wandered through F-city with sticky toffee puddings for who knew how long before he came out of it.

He was fourteen now. Death was still a long way off, so he didn’t have too much trouble shoving it down. Only it came back sometimes, and when it did, it came back with a vengeance.

It was there whenever some relative pranced through the house ten years younger than they had been the month before. And he ground his teeth against it whenever he noticed that his mom, always by Aulia’s side, was starting to look more and more like she could be Aulia’s mother instead of her daughter.

He’d told himself it was all right. He was extraordinarily privileged in so many other ways. It was true, he’d reminded himself, that Avowed got magic and they got things regular people didn’t. But they also paid a price for it other people didn’t have to.

Lute could remember the sound of dice rattling against each other as he stuffed them one by one into the bags.

I might not have to die…of old age, he corrected himself.

He spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about his parents, the Velras, the dice, the cost of things. Leaving the nurse’s office that day, he was exhausted, as if he’d run for hours instead of sitting on his hands having thoughts.

At the bottom of the building steps, he spotted Haoyu. He had one foot on a skateboard and was putting on his helmet.

Haoyu didn’t want to be chosen this year, thought Lute. He said he wasn’t ready. And he’s had ages to get ready.

I’m doomed.

“Do you feel better, Lute?”

Lute had stared for too long, and now Haoyu was looking at him.

“I feel completely normal,” said Lute quickly. “Totally like myself. The same as every day. Why wouldn’t I?”

Haoyu blinked. “Because I heard you got sick in class?”

“I’m better now,” Lute said. “It was a very short virus. See you tomorrow!”

He hustled away.

What’s with all this eyeball clutter?!

Some people had name tags floating beside them. Buildings had labels. Since when had the Nilama neighborhood had so much signage?

There’s some way to turn most of it off right?

He had recollections of adults idly mentioning that they were adjusting things like that, but for him to adjust things like that, he’d have to wave his arms around and he didn’t want anyone to know yet.

When he got back to the yacht, it was a relief to have everything looking normal again. He could pretend it was an ordinary afternoon for a while. Maybe that would reset his head.

On an ordinary afternoon on Libra, he went to see what the baked good of the day was in the galley. Then he took it to his cabin and ate it while he hid from Hazel and did his homework.

“Chicken à la King for dinner,” Chef Kabir said while Lute stole a piece of coffee cake from under a glass dome.

Aulia’s stressed, thought Lute.

Chicken à la King on toast was one of her not-so-secret comfort food dishes. He wondered if she’d tried to make up with Roman again.

Ha! That’s not happening anytime this year.

He hoped Roman had more self-respect than that at least.

He might not. The brainwashing in this family seems to be really potent. When I finally get out of here—

The thought hit him like a punch once again. And this time…this time, he thought it might be sticking. The bite of cake he’d just taken sat in his mouth, unchewed, getting soggy on his tongue.

I don’t get out of here. I’m Anesidoran forever now. Even if I try to get a job off the island in the future, this is where they’ll make me come back to. Always.

Lute swallowed the cake. He was sure it didn’t really taste like dust. Kabir was a great cook.

“…do you like being a Brute?” Lute asked.

Kabir was pulling a bottle of cream out of the fridge.

“I’ve been one for more than twenty years,” he said lightly. “I hardly ever think about it to tell you the truth. It’s just who I am.”

Kabir was a C-rank Longsight Brute. He wasn’t much of a leveler. He was fast with a kitchen knife, and he liked it when Aulia wanted to do a chef’s table for special guests, so he could show some flare while he worked. He had a spell that would let him set up a viewpoint somewhere, but it didn’t last very long. He occasionally used it to monitor pots and pans when he was busy with something else.

“Would you rather be something other than a Brute? If you could change classes right now, would you?”

“We all find ways to be happy with the road we’re on, don’t we?” Kabir said. “Asking ‘What if I had a different life?’ just distracts from the one you’re living.”

Okay, that’s nice and all, thought Lute as he left the galley. But what if the System is currently asking you, “Which life?”

When he went back to get a second piece of cake, he heard Kabir murmuring with one of the crew members.

<<Some longing was inevitable at his age.>>

<<I know, and his mother’s sending him to what’s basically prep school for becoming a high-rank. It can’t help. But it was sad to hear him ask about being Avowed. He never does.>>

<<I feel sorry for him. Did you hear Orpheus got caught trying to break into the engine room yesterday?>>

<<To steal equipment? Or did he think it was the bathroom again?>>

<<Who knows with that one? Can I have this piece of toast you burned?>>

<<That’s not burned. And get away from that cake! I need enough to go with after-dinner coffee service.>>

Lute’s first thought was, Wow! Translations!

His second was, I wonder how often adults I know have talked about me in languages I couldn’t understand?

His third was an indignant, I’m not longing to be an Avowed! And now look what I’ve got. It’s the opposite of longing. I’m a fourteen-year-old S who wants to be a member of the Vienna Philharmonic! Does everyone think I’ve been kidding about that my whole life?! I have anti-longing!

He had half a mind to march in there with a name tag turned on for himself: Lute Velra— not jealous you’re Avowed!

As he was heading back to his cabin, without any cake, another question knocked insistently on his crowded mind.

Why did Mom send me to Paragon?

In primary school, it had made more sense. He’d been happy. In sixth and seventh grade? This year?

Why did she keep sending me there after I told her how much I hated it?

It was one of the only real fights they’d ever had, that evening when he’d told her he’d cleaned out his locker and wanted private tutoring instead of school.

She said it was important for me to learn to face difficulties instead of running away from them.

It sounded like a thing a grown-up would say, but not a thing his mother would say to him, and it still felt like a burning criticism he hadn’t deserved.

There was no reward for facing the difficulties at Paragon, no better destination at the end of the journey. Just day after day of being treated like an empty spot in the room, if he was lucky, or like the pitiable butt of a joke, if he wasn’t, all resulting in an education that didn’t apply to him as well as a more personalized one could have.

Lute had long since forgiven her for it and gotten on with his life as an unwilling student. And yet…

It’s basically a prep school for becoming a high-rank, but it’s not like I actually prepped for it well. They were even giving me alternative assignments for tons of things. She knew that.

He didn’t think it really meant anything. Jessica must have wanted him in school so that he wouldn’t be a recluse. Or so that he wouldn’t grow up to be someone like Hazel, who probably thought the whole world worked like the Velra web. And Paragon was an expensive school where he could get to know future “somebodies,” as Aulia had put it before she sent him off on his very first day.

If you wanted someone to prepare for Avowed life, you wouldn’t tell them so clearly and completely that it was impossible would you?

Lute flopped onto his bed in his cabin and clutched a pillow shaped like a fried egg to his face.

When you got selected, you either ran to tell your parents or your best friends. Lucky him, his parents were his best friends! No choice to be made.

Less lucky…

Though he loved them more than anyone else, he didn’t quite trust them right now.

And this was the rest of his life.

He couldn’t mess it up.

******

First, Lute thought, staring at his notebook, you pick the class you want. Come on. You know them all. This should be easy. There aren’t that many.

The laptop on the desk in front of him and the two tablets beside it all showed notes. Avowed careers—he wanted none of them. Summoning likelihoods, talents, satisfaction surveys, all those ugly statistics he’d found for his classmates last year…

It was midnight. He’d been at this for seven hours. Libra creaked and rolled in the waves because Aulia said she slept better when the yacht wasn’t so stabilized that it felt like just another house. Lute liked it when the boat felt like a boat as well, though he wouldn’t admit it.

Somewhere in the galley fridge, his serving of the Chicken à la King was probably beautifully plated and waiting for him. But he couldn’t pull himself away from this task.

Time wasn’t on his side. One little mistake, one slip, and his family would involve themselves.

I can’t believe it took me so long to realize that.

Lute was so used to being beneath everyone’s notice, the truth had taken its sweet time to land. Being an S-rank at fourteen meant he would suddenly become interesting to his own relatives.

Will they want me for…?

He didn’t know. He just didn’t know about the S-rank Chainer slot. They’d kicked Roman, a good and loyal Velra scion, off a cliff because of Hazel’s psychic quirk.

I’m a lot younger than Roman. I’m the first Velra ever to be selected before fifteen.

And coming right on the heels of Aulia rejecting Roman?

Grandma might think it’s some kind of sign, and then who knows what she’ll do?

The thing was, it didn’t matter if they wanted him for Chainer or not. Even if he was out of the running for that, they’d still want something from him. Chainer was the Velra signature class, but it wasn’t like Aulia was going to ignore all the other high ranks.

Roman had taken a Rabbit skill that allowed him to locate lost objects, and Lute had already heard his grandmother brainstorming different helpful things he could do with it for the family—when we aren’t having a little spat anymore!

Lute had to figure out what he could live with, and then do everything in his power to position himself for it before they started to get ideas and cut him off. They could really help him or really hurt him.

S was too freaking rare.

Welcome to the one percent! Good luck clawing the class you want away from the other members of your tiny trading pool without a seven digit argold balance and a lot of handshakes being exchanged by everybody’s extended families.

How do globies do this?! Do they just take random stuff and think ‘Guess that’ll do?’”

He could sympathize. His family could buy him almost anything, but they wouldn’t do it if they got it into their heads that he needed to be something else. And if they were really serious about forcing him into some random class, they could even go so far as to pay other teenagers to take the classes he’d prefer off the trading table. The only security net he could be sure of having was whatever class was in his possession on the day his grandmother found out.

Let’s not panic yet. Let’s make a list.

By three in the morning, he’d sort of done it. He’d ranked all the classes in order, from top to bottom, only leaving off the very rare ones. Except for the obvious…

1. Healer
2. Rabbit
3. Adjuster (spell paths tbd before affixation—not combat ones)
4. Shaper (preference: water, object, life, ground, sky…rares?)
5. Wright
6. Meister (non-combat tool)
7. Chainer (what exactly does my family do with the aliens?)
8. Brute (vocal, sensory, maybe morph?)
9. Meister (ranged weapon)
10. Brute (the other ones)
11. Meister (close weapon)
12.  Sway (should this be higher? i wouldn’t mind a next gen one. but i don’t want everyone to think i’m a creep. if i’m going to high school with people who don’t know me yet it would be better not to start out as a perceived creep.)

This looks wrong, thought Lute, staring at his notebook. None of this looks like me.

He was trying to make it work, but something was flawed with all of them for him. Even Healer at the top—he’d picked it because of the lifespan and because it was easy to get work off the island. Everyone loved a Healer. And, most importantly, he could take care of his parents with it.

The family had just spent three months trying to get S-Healer for Roman and failed, so it was a very distant possibility. If they were supportive, though, they could give it a try again.

It’s not like Grandma would object to having another one on-call.

But even if he got it, Healer was such a life-consuming class. You couldn’t take Healer and not expect to spend pretty much your entire working life healing. Unless you were really amazing at telling sick and injured people “no,” and Lute didn’t think he was.

I just want it because I’m scared of dying and I’m scared of my mom and dad dying. I think I’m more scared of that than I ever realized.

Maybe it wasn’t just about his youthful looking relatives. Maybe it came from always knowing in the back of his mind that the kids he’d grown up with would be able to kill him with a slap, a word, or a gesture when they were older.

Not even a lot older. Starting next year.

It wasn’t like Lute was afraid of it happening in a realistic way; it was more like an under-the-bed monster. You knew it was stupid, but the idea still made you feel like you had to be careful not to let your feet dangle over the edge of the bed.

Or maybe me being so hung up on death after finding out I’m going to be one of them is just karma.

For the dice.

He rubbed his eyes.

Rabbit—they didn’t get called to do dangerous stuff like fight. They made lots of money, so Lute could be independent. And the kind of Rabbit Roman had picked was actually pretty neat. Lute’s cousin may have been furious, but it seemed like he’d chosen a nice situation for himself. The finder skill he’d selected wasn’t the kind of thing that would keep him on alien worlds for most of his life, like a lot of the high-rank Rabbit skills. Supposedly, he would get tons of summonses, but those summonses would almost all be very short.

From what Lute understood, Roman would roll out of bed in the middle of the night when he got called, appear somewhere where some wizard—in a fit of frustration—had decided to pay out the nose for an Avowed to find the thing they’d lost. And Roman would activate his skill and say, “Oh, yeah. Your grandma’s favorite drinking bowl is by your cauldron. You filled it with something that looks putrid. Good luck with that.”

Job done. Pay given. The wizard would be relieved to have their lost item located and Roman would be back in his own bed before the sheets got cold.

I can only get Rabbit if the family helps me like they did him.

He could ask. Maybe they would do it.

As for Adjuster, it had some spell paths that seemed both safe and lucrative. It would also be hard to trade for on his own unless he was lucky.

Shapers…were so very useful. The Artonans summoned them for all kinds of things. It could be a landscaping project or, at the high ranks, it could be a real corruption field assignment.

Those are so rare. I really shouldn’t be scared of getting one.

He was. That was why his list had the safest things above the one class on he actually liked to imagine himself playing with.

Liking the idea of artistic telekinesis isn’t a good enough reason, Lute, he told himself. But pride wouldn’t let him put the thing he admired below the other items, either.

You could be totally safe as a Wright, but you could also end up as a really highly paid drudge. Oh look, you took all the talents necessary to make a very valuable kind of bomb! Guess what the Triplanets would like twenty thousand of? Have a great decade building nothing else!

The tool Meister was similarly suspect. The System offering a specific non-combat tool at S-rank implied that someone had a use for that tool already in mind, didn’t it? You could certainly expect jobs being the best magic pipe wrench wielder in the world. But how many jobs? Who could say! What if they needed you to spend a single month doing an incredibly important thing that would enrich thousands of lives, but then your magic pipe wrench was purposeless thereafter…and you just kept getting better at using it for no reason and having nothing to do with it ever again?

Or it could be more like, We’re gonna need you and that pipe wrench until the end of time, buddy! Settle in!

Risky.

Chainer was sitting at number seven, instead of dead last, because although Lute was sure he would loathe having a perpetual connection to and attention from most of his relatives…he had noted some very valuable features. His Chainer relatives almost all worked on schedules, which was an uncommon set-up for Avowed. They mostly seemed to know what days they would be away from home months or even years in advance.

And it wasn’t a ton of days, even for the S-ranks. Aulia and Hazel were off all the time, but Lute had the impression that Aulia instigated a lot of those trips. They weren’t all summonings.

For the other family members, it seemed more like they had appointments they went to two or three times a month. He didn’t know what they did, but it couldn’t be anything too hard. None of them ever seemed stressed or unhappy about going. They rarely seemed super excited about it either, so Lute was thinking their tasks on the Triplanets, whatever they were, were probably kind of neutral.

Grandma always has a stylist come in to do her hair right before she leaves…

Lute couldn’t glean anything from that other than the fact that the aliens didn’t have her enhancing herself with chains so that she could face danger or do heavy lifting.

Honestly, I think all the S’s just go, use Mass Bestowal a few times to spread around whatever chains the Artonans want wherever they want, and then they come back home a little richer. I don’t see how it could be anything else.

They all acted like they were very grand and mysterious. Aulia’s supporters thought she knew hidden truths about magic and had two hundred wizards on speed dial to solve her every problem. Her enemies thought she went to the Triplanets to eat puppies and gain dark powers that would help her steal luck from her political opponents.

But Lute had grown up around them. Aunt Hikari was an S-rank Chainer, and she wouldn’t let any kid in the family ride the rooftop-to-rooftop rollercoaster that had opened last year until she’d interviewed the Wright who’d designed it.

She wouldn’t be trying to make sure all her children got the class if it involved anything too crazy.

So he was sure the job was safe, easy, not too weird, and it involved casting lots of wordchains and using the skill Mass Bestowal around. I guess I could choose another skill when I actually saw my options. The S’s probably all took that one because Aulia did and they knew it was good, but I could pick something of my own.

And you get to learn special chains the Artonans don’t share with everyone else. And your own unwanted debt is reduced. Chainers get more than they pay for. Everyone knows that.

Plus, the versatility was pretty good. Wordchains were like spells you had to pay for, right? Chainer made it easier to do them, so you could learn more of them and you could learn them faster. So an advanced Chainer had access to lots of magical effects instead of just a few spell impressions.

As for Mass Bestowal, it wasn’t the most interesting magic. It was boring, actually, now that Lute was seriously considering it. The premium Chainer skill was just passing something over to other people as far as he could tell.

Valuable. Other Avowed definitely wanted access to enhancements they couldn’t get themselves. It just wasn’t exciting.

Having a decent summoning schedule and a safe job sounded positive, though. And Lute was pretty sure his relatives all worked for the same group of wizards most of the time, so he presumably would, too.

It seems to me like Chainers have a long-term assignment with none of the drawbacks of a long-term assignment.

If not for his family, it would be higher on the list. If not for his family, it would also be completely impossible to get.

He dropped his pen and stared at his work.

Everything below Chainer on the list was going to be too useful for combat at S-rank. Lute thought of those members of his class at school who were aiming for the superhero life. He couldn’t imagine doing what they wanted to do.

And if you didn’t want to be a combatant or a celebrity version of a combatant, what were you supposed to do with a lot of the Avowed talents? Like ranged weapon Meister—so popular because they looked so cool.

But if you had a bow and arrow, what did you have besides a bow and arrow? How often did you really want to shoot something?

I know you also have good vision and stuff with classes like that. But why do the Artonans give us so much fighting magic?

He knew the answer.

It’s a Contract saying Avowed can be used as a fighting force. We’re all used to thinking of it as just “the System” and we’re all used to the Artonans not asking many of us for too much.

But they can.

What if, one day, they do?

******

******

“You do know Shaper’s perfect for combat, right?” Alden asked. “At S-rank, it’s even pretty amazing at level one once they’ve put in the practice to figure it out. Their talents aren’t so straightforward that they can master them the day they get them like some classes, but the Shapers in the hero program are getting better really fast.”

Lute was lying on the sofa. Alden was sitting on the rug in front of the infrared fireplace, doing stretches because he figured he might as well be productive if they were staying up late to talk Velras. He got the impression Lute was telling him so much about himself partially so that he didn’t have to go to his room and be alone to think about the fact that his mother was helping Aulia do something with Manon.

It would be like if I found out Aunt Connie was involved. We don’t understand what it is they’re up to, but we know it’s not wholesome.

Alden would be upset to think someone he cared about was using people to that extent for profit. Hurting them. Probably doing something illegal or at least being aware that Manon was doing something illegal to get the job done.

Yeah, he doesn’t want to close his eyes on it and dwell, Alden decided.

“Shaper’s just awesome.” Lute tossed one of his crumpled foil flan lids from earlier into the air over his head and caught it. “It can’t help that it’s good for beauty, utility, and murder all at the same time.”

“I haven’t seen all that much artistic Shaping in person,” said Alden. “There were some people making rangoli patterns in the air on Diwali.”

“We should go to a performance sometime,” said Lute. “They have this event every year called Theater of the Sea. The audience sits on a platform out on the ocean, and some of the best Shapers on the island build the show all around you and above you. They use all the elements. It’s so cool. It only runs for a couple of weeks, but Mom took me almost every day when I was four because I got obsessed with it.”

He caught the foil ball again and then held it to his chest.

“Some of the Shapers are assigned to play with the young children in the audience. They teach you gestures, and if you do them during the show, they’ll make it look like you’re controlling the element yourself. So you wave your hand a certain way, and streams of water flow around you.”

“Yeah. That would probably have given anyone an interest in it.”

“Not to brag, but I was adorable as a kid. And I was sitting in the premium seats,” said Lute. “One of the Shapers humored me for the entire show no matter how many times I made my little hand gestures.”

“I’m glad I didn’t grow up here,” Alden said. “Even if I wasn’t in your situation. Everyone wants magic when they’re little. Most of us still want magic when we’re pretty big. Having it in your face all the time, wanting it and not knowing what type or how much of it you were going to get…even if you take out considerations about being summoned, it would be hard.”

The fireplace emitted fake crackling sounds while Alden reached for his toes. The color of the glowing logs was set to shift, and they gradually went from green to a more normal shade of orange.

“I wanted it,” said Lute quietly.

“Magic? Or Chainer?”

“Shaper.”

Alden stared at his socked foot. “Oh.”

“At the time, I did and I didn’t. My head said it wasn’t the most sensible for me. If my family had been willing to give me anything I asked for, I might have ended up with Rabbit like Roman did. I might have taken the same skill even. Because I could see a lot of practicality in it. I was in damage mitigation mode, you know?

“Selection took my whole vision for my future and my self-image from me in a second. And it felt like everything else would be lost if I wasn’t careful. I thought all of my time would vanish if I picked something like Healer or Natalie’s Cook of the Moment. I thought my life might end if I picked a combat-oriented subclass. My privacy would go if I chose something that would put me in the public eye. I assumed I would never have the chance to make friends again if I became a Sway. Shit, I thought my Mom and Dad would disappear if I dared to question how I’d come to exist.”

He heaved a sigh.

“And I didn’t realize I was that scared of me and my parents being more mortal than my other relatives. Until all of that other stuff piled on me, and I suddenly couldn’t let it go. I had this recurring nightmare the week I was chosen, where I was in the mansion and the whole family was there around the dining room table, looking just like they do now, and I was trying to find my mom, and then I had this thought… ‘Oh, that’s right. She’s been gone for a hundred years. It’s just me and the rest of them now.’”

That’s a bad one, thought Alden.

“It was a short dream. Nothing else happened in it. But I kept having it over and over…” Lute trailed off. “They tell you to be sure to take a class you’ll enjoy for the rest of your life. When they’re talking about career planning with future Avowed. We had guest speakers, and peoples’ parents came in to tell us about what they did for a living…I can remember a few of them being clear about how you need to focus on what positive things you’ll be able to do with your new powers and then make your choice.”

“Neha talked about choosing things for a lifetime, too,” said Alden. “Talents that make you proud and bring you joy.”

“You know one of the first Rabbits already?”

“She was my intake councilor.”

“Sweet. I think I heard about her doing that on occasion. Anyway, I had heard adults say that. Pick powers you can be proud of…only I felt like I’d taken damage by being chosen. Dreams over. Trapped. Banished from the rest of the world. I was so worried about preventing more losses, I couldn’t weigh my decisions properly.” He swallowed. “I swapped Wright for Shaper of Water—”

“Without your family knowing?”

Lute nodded. “I wanted to get something as high up on my list of classes as possible before the news came out, so that my family wouldn’t have as much leverage to make me do things. I thought if I could get something I didn’t hate the idea of, then I’d be able to say no to any unreasonable requests on their part. Do you have any idea how hard it is to secretly trade a class here?”

“No privacy options?”

“Officially, the trading posts where you go sit at the cool tables and swap with Avowed all over the world are confidential institutions. But even if the guards and authorized witnesses aren’t allowed to tell others what you did there, the buildings aren’t in secluded locations. Any kid of high-ranks heading to the trading post for the first time gets noticed, and it’s not just my family who collect that kind of information.”

So something like Skiff spying on the consulate is just normal behavior here. Although it wasn’t like the Anesidoran teens had the same risks. Or the same options. Being unregistered didn’t really come into play for them unless they did something extreme to get off the island.

Lute sat up and faced him.

“It was so odd to suddenly be personally invested in the trading process. I got the Meister trade info for Lexi from Uncle Corin, and I kept buttering him up until I learned a few more things. Then I stalked the ninth and tenth graders in my school for the rest of the week, listening to them.” He frowned. “I heard someone call me Lute the Lurker at one point, so I wasn’t as subtle as I thought I was being. But you know…they never suspected. Not even when I worked myself up to ask questions about it. Nobody ever thought, ‘Lute Velra is surprisingly interested in matters like this all of a sudden. Maybe he’s been chosen, too.’”

******

******

It was Thursday. Lute had known he would become an Avowed since Monday. He had gotten about twelve whole hours of sleep since then, most of them in class.

It was break. He stood in the hall outside the tenth grade rooms, sharpening a third colored pencil with a hand sharpener into a trashcan between two blocks of lockers. As if that was a good way to go about sharpening an entire pack of pencils and a normal way for him to spend his breaks.

Look at me. Not lurking. Just sharpening. I have never heard of electric sharpeners, and I have business with this waste receptacle.

A group of ninth and tenth graders were standing around a couple with pins, and they were all talking about how hard it was to swap the more common Brute types for anything else.

Listen, Lute, he told himself, you’ve just got to insert yourself into the conversation. It will be fine. Just walk up to that giant of a tenth grader—what have his parents been feeding him?—and ask. You heard what he just said. Go do it.

He still didn’t think he really wanted any of the classes. But he was sure he didn’t want Wright now. Shaper sounded better. Shaper sounded good enough that he could withstand his family trying to pressure him into who knew what if he had it in his hand.

He could manage this selection stuff. His classmates were going to have to manage it one day. So what if they’d had fifteen years advanced notice? What was a lifetime of preparation in comparison to a can-do attitude?

I shouldn’t have gone to stare at the Departures sign in the TC yesterday. I don’t think that was as good a way of solidifying my resolve as I planned.

He’d had to blow his nose in the bathroom afterward, and when he’d stepped out, he could have sworn he’d heard someone else dramatically blowing their own nose right beside him even though there was nothing but a PostDrop around.

I need more sleep.

His pencil had gone past the point of getting sharper. Now it was just getting shorter. He gripped it tightly and headed toward the group of upperclassmen.

“Excuse me?” he said.

Nobody turned around. The older students weren’t engaged in shunning him. It was just that he’d spoken in a whisper accidentally.

“Excuse me!”

Too loud this time. A girl with her hair in small braids whirled to face him. The group fell silent.

“I heard you say you know somebody trying to free trade an S Shaper.” He addressed the boy who’d said it. “One of my cousins has a friend who just got Wright and wants to trade for any Shaper.”

This sounded like a glaring lie to Lute. Part of him was sure they were about to point at him and say, “Aha! You’re the ‘friend’ yourself aren’t you?!”

But after a couple of blinks during which they were all apparently absorbing the new input, the guy said, “Oh really? My friend wants Adjuster though. That’s why I was saying he’s hopeless. Trading up from Shaper to Adjuster at S, with only a month to go and no bonus to add? He’s going to have to hope some globie jumps on it.”

“Okay,” said Lute. “Just…checking for my cousin’s friend. Because they can’t add much of a bonus either.”

“Wright to Shaper should be easy,” said the girl he’d scared. “Shaper’s more popular, but Wright’s rarer. Someone’ll want it soon enough if they just post it to the exchange.”

Can’t post it to the exchange. Corin’s got people watching. Lute gave them all a pained smile. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s true. They’re just worried about it because they don’t know if their family will be fans of the trade.”

“I hate parents like that,” she said. “As if it’s not hard enough to make up your mind! Then you finally do, and suddenly they start saying things like, ‘The Enviro Brutes? When we said would support you no matter where you wanted to go in life, Miranda, we meant on this planet! Glacial Brute is just a gateway to some icy wasteland on the backside of the universe.”

Her friends were all nodding. Lute wasn’t sure if they were agreeing with Miranda or her parents.

Break ended a few minutes later, and he thought the whole conversation was a dead end. But the next morning, when he was stepping out of the Language Exchange room with a group of his classmates, there were some tenth graders waiting their turn to enter.

“Hey! Hey, Velra boy!”

Lute saw the big guy from yesterday stepping away from his own peers and waving.

“My friend doesn’t want Wright, but he said he heard about another Shaper who did. A girl at Nilama Middle.”

Lute’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s just a few blocks away from here.”

“Haha,” said the guy. “Well most of the schools are in family neighborhoods, right? I didn’t get a name, but it probably won’t be hard to find her. The NilMid people will know who it is.”

Lute wanted to run over there immediately. He would have, if he’d been one hundred percent sure about the tip. But he didn’t want to blow his cover by tearing off in the middle of the school day only to find the Shaper didn’t exist or had already traded.

The other eighth graders were giving him odd looks.

“Why are you talking with them about trades?” someone asked.

“Probably running errands for his family or something,” Carlotta answered before Lute could. “Do you know how much they pay their friends’ kids to hold those S and A Chainers without taking them? My mom says pausing an ultrarare like that costs them millions every year.”

She brushed past Lute with that same nose-in-the-air look she’d worn around him since fifth grade.

Her dad is a B. Her mom is a C. Her sister is a D.

Lute knew everyone’s parents and siblings’ ranks off the top of his head. Every other person in the grade was the same. It was just the thing you knew about people.

Carlotta would probably be a mid-rank. B or C like her parents. To feel like she belonged up in the sky with the people she wanted to be friends with, she looked down at Lute and the few other low guessranks.

Declan’s reasons were similar. Lute had always known it.

He had also always known their reasons were no excuse and they were slimy creatures who should be tied to rocks and sunk.

So why, all of a sudden, did he pity her? Just a little.

Fine. I’ll give her one chance.

“I’ve been asking my uncle about the trading business lately. He gave me some info on Meister. If you’re curious…”

It was info about the interesting Meisters currently changing hands among the high ranks that he’d gotten for Lexi, not useful at all for Carlotta. But she still loved Meister. This was as much of a peace offering as Lute was willing to extend to satisfy this unwelcome emotion.

She would be excited if someone else told her this.

A couple of other people were interested. A few paces ahead of them, Lute saw Tuyet actually turning around to walk backward and hear the conversation. She must have still been thinking about weapon Meisters. Lute didn’t know what she planned to do with one of those.

Not superhero school, surely? She hates public speaking. I can’t imagine she’d love doing hero PR.

“Why would I want to talk about Avowed jobs with you?”

“I see,” said Lute. They were almost at their classroom. “Just thought I’d offer.”

It was so satisfying to open his notebook when he got back to his desk and scratch Carlotta’s name off the list he’d made inside it.

He would be leaving this school. He wasn’t quite sure when yet, but even if he stayed through the end of the year for some reason, he wouldn’t be able to return for ninth grade. So he was taking one last look at them all this week. Like a private goodbye ritual.

If they treated him like a person in even a small way, they got underlined. If they were jerks after he tried to be nice…

He enthusiastically scribbled out “Carlotta Sullivan” some more.

Now I never have to think about her again. Even though we’ll both be stuck on this island for life. Bye, Carlotta. You don’t exist for me anymore.

At the end of the school day, he ran as fast as he could to Nilama Middle School. It was freezing, and students in heavy winter clothes were pouring out the doors. He looked around for interface name tags. Almost every selectee seemed eager to give themselves one right away, unlike him. Most of them were flashing their current classes, too, so that people would know.

Shaper, Shaper, where’s the Shaper? He could only see two people with the tags right now, and both were holding Brutes. Nothing for it. Got to ask.

Lute wove through a throng of younger students then headed toward one of the Brutes over by the bike racks.

“Hi,” he said.

The other boy looked around. He took in Lute’s uniform curiously.

“I’m looking for someone at this school,” said Lute. “A girl who just got Shaper?”

The possible-Brute brightened. “For trades?”

“I’m helping a friend track her down,” Lute said. “He heard she might want Wright.”

“Aw, man. I was hoping you might be a trader with Morph. I’m trying to find one right now. Anyway, yeah! That’s Isabel. She was going to grab snacks before she headed over to the trading post.” He shook his head. “…new selectees. So unprepared.”

He gestured at the huge duffel bag on his back. “I’m packed and ready to spend the weekend at the post. I’ve got enough caffeine in here to stop a speedster’s heart!”

“Good luck?”

“Thanks! Isabel’s probably at the convenience store on the corner. A lot of people go there after classes let out. You want me to call her for you?” He grinned. “I can do it through the System now!”

Ten minutes later, Lute was standing in front of a convenience store’s hot food case, waiting for a brown-skinned girl with big glasses and a mechanical pencil stuck through her bun to finish selecting her favorite from an assortment of pizza slices.

“Let me get this right,” said Isabel, squinting at a bell pepper-covered option. “You’ve got a cousin who’s got an S-rank friend who wants to trade Wright for any Shaper. Without their family knowing they’ve been selected. And you heard about me from a tenth grader at your school, and you’re trying to schedule an appointment for me to meet your nameless cousin’s nameless friend so we can swap in the presence of an authorized witness without going to the trading post. Why can’t your cousin’s friend arrange this themselves?”

“They’re under a lot of pressure. And…my school is really close to yours. So I knew I could get here first.”

“This sounds like one of those suspicious situations they warn you about,” said Isabel. “‘Don’t go off with strangers. They’ll have someone Sway you, and a bad witness will authorize a trade that ruins your life.’”

“There is nothing suspicious! You can even pick the witness! And the location as long as it’s not too public!”

“Uh huh…” She turned to peer down at him. “Are you the friend?”

Lute’s breath caught.

“Wow. You look really young for someone our age,” said Isabel.

“I will buy you a thousand argold worth of anything,” Lute hissed. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

“That makes you sound more suspicious, rich boy,” she said. She stood up. “But I was expecting a free swap or for the money to go the other way, so this will work. My parents haven’t saved up enough for S trading. Let’s go to a Wright shop. An Apex one. I already know what I want. And then we can do it. You provide the witness.”

She pointed at the case. “And buy me this piece of pizza.”

******

I am pretty sure I am a sucker, thought Lute, his arms shaking from the weight of Isabel’s shopping bags as they walked toward a seaside tower full of luxury apartments.

They had somehow agreed that Lute owed her three thousand more argold, for refusing to share his name. And another six, for depriving her of the joys of the trading post experience. And another one, for the risks she was taking with her future by consenting to go to a private location with him for the trade.

They were only handshake agreements, but she’d recorded video of them making the handshake agreements so that he could be “shamed by all the S’s of our generation if you go back on your word.”

“This is the place,” he said, nodding toward the magic doors at the building’s base.

“You live here?” Isabel asked as they walked through the entrance and the ‘glass’ pane shattered and disappeared around them only to reappear as soon as they were inside. “Fancy.”

“No. The witness who’s going to help us lives here.”

I hope.

He tried to adjust the bags again so that they weren’t cutting off circulation to his fingers. “Let me talk to her for a few minutes before we do it, okay?”

Isabel shrugged. “If it takes more than an hour, you owe me five hundred more argold.”

“For what?!”

“Depriving me of homework time.”

******

Lute dropped the bags onto the white tile floor the second the two of them entered Aimi Velra’s apartment. After saying hello and giving Aimi a wave, Isabel started rummaging through them.

“I’m just going to get to know my new equipment,” she said. “While you talk to this nameless lady, nameless rich boy.”

Aimi’s eyebrows lifted, and she looked at Lute with interest. He grabbed her by the hand and dragged her toward the balcony. She slapped the controls for the wind shielding as they passed.

“Lute!” she said. “Are you hitting on a girl!? You’re old enough for that? I’m so imp—”

“I’m not hitting on her! I think she’s robbing me.”

“Are you sure?” Aimi asked. “Because your text messages were very suspicious. ‘I need your help. I need your support. Don’t call Mom.’ Then you brought a girl to my apartment, and you’re carrying shopping bags for her and—”

“They’re full of weird screwdrivers, and there’s a dead alien rat in a vacuum-sealed pouch.”

“Don’t be bound by tradition. It’s important to give a girl what she really wants!” Aimi said. “If my ex had understood that…”

“Aimi,” Lute interrupted, “are the Artonans okay?”

He stood looking over the balcony railing. The waves were high today.

“They control the known universe,” said Aimi in a perplexed voice. “Last I checked they were doing fine.”

She was wearing a short, spangled gold dress. Her hair looked half brushed. Probably she’d been getting ready to go out for a fun Friday night before he started texting her.

“No,” he said. “I needed…I wanted to know if they were friendly? The people you work for. I’ve only ever seen Artonans here and there. We’ve had several come visit us at school. Grandma invited that one to dinner. It’s not like I’ve ever thought about what it would be like to deal with them much.”

Because I wasn’t supposed to have to.

“What’s this about?” Aimi asked.

Lute wanted to hear her answer before he told her. So he just shrugged in reply.

“Welll,” said Aimi. “I like them fine. They’re weird. Just between you and me, the ones we Chainers usually work for are kind of nonstandard. When I was sixteen, I thought they might be more representative of the species, and then I realized…no, noooo…they’re really peculiar. So I guess I might not know that much about how things work for other Avowed. But my job’s fine. I go for a day or so, do my thing, meet some people who want to…uh…cheer me on and provide me with moral support?”

She touched her hip when she said that. So it’s one of those things Aulia locks behind the tattoo?

Lute took a deep breath.

His cousin wasn’t telling him anything very new. He was just delaying.

“Aimi, you’re an authorized witness, aren’t you?”

Hazel had become one recently, so it would be odd if Aimi, who’d been working as a Chainer for years, wasn’t.

“Yes!” said Aimi. “But I will not witness some kind of Artonan-law union with the dead rat girl. Sorry. I’m all for it, but not until you’ve graduated from high school.”

“Our family’s insane,” said Lute. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Is Grandma bothering that cab driver again?”

“Probably. That’s not…I want you to help me keep a secret from them. For just a little while.”

“Sure!”

Lute narrowed his eyes at her. “Really?”

Aimi shrugged. “As long as it’s not the mangled body of one of the good relatives…. It’s my cousinly duty not to betray you to the old people! Those are the Velra survival rules.”

Aimi refused to acknowledge that there was a generation of cousins younger than her who saw her as one of the old people.

Lute trusted her. Mostly. She wasn’t the most responsible adult he knew, but she seemed to drift along under everyone else’s radar. She could spring up at gatherings and be included or disappear and not be missed. Flighty B-rank Aimi—one of the family, easy to get along with, not important enough to worry over.

For the first time, Lute wondered if Aimi wasn’t something of a genius.

It took him a minute more to get the words out of his mouth. Once he said it, there was no going back.

There’s no going back anyway. This is happening to you. You just have to respond to it.

“I want you to witness a class trade,” said Lute.

Aimi turned to look back through the sliding doors at Isabel, who had helped herself to one of the kitchen knives so that she could open the packaging on a multicolored flashlight that she’d told Lute wouldn’t burn out even if she used it every day for the next twenty years.

“The cute nerd needs help with one?”

“We both do.”

Aimi faced him with a look of dawning comprehension.

“I got selected as an S-rank on Monday,” Lute said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his blazer. “So…you know. Hi?”

He waited.

And waited.

“Oh shit,” Aimi whispered. “How old are you again?”

“You were invited to my birthday a few months ago,” said Lute. “You got me a trampoline because you wanted to jump on one yourself.”

“But maybe I remember your age wrong…”

“You don’t. I’m fourteen.”

Aimi grinned, and then started snorting with laughter.

“Don’t laugh! This is serious!”

“I know! It’s so bad!” said Aimi, laughing even harder. “It’s so, so bad!”

“Aimi!”

“Everyone just got tired of fighting over Roman! His dad kept calling him a ‘young titan’ every chance he got. He’s a normal age for an S, but the way they were talking about him! It was like he’d just emerged from the crib. And now you! You…”

Aimi was doubled over.

“You’ll help, won’t you?” Lute asked frantically. “I want Shaper before anyone in the family finds out. I kind of like it? I’m not sure, but I want to have something other than Wright. Even their stores are intimidating.”

She flapped an arm at him. “Yes! Yes. I want to be a part of this historic moment. Go get your girlfriend!”

“Trading partner,” said Lute, stepping quickly over to the door. “Isabel! Let’s do this!”

******

******

“She insisted on doing it with wedding lingo,” said Lute, shaking his head at the memory. “‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to behold a miracle in the form of my Cousin Lute!’ Isabel thought we were nuts. Then she saw my last name on the trading notification, and she was like, ‘I should have demanded more money.’”

“She totally should have,” Alden agreed from his spot on the rug. “But not demanding enough money from Velras is an honest mistake. Anyone could make it. It’s not a sign of foolishness. Nobody should be judged.”

“I know you’re talking about yourself right now. Don’t worry about Isabel. She was confident about Wright. She affixed standing right there on the balcony, and Aimi transferred a ‘celebratory’ amount to her in honor of the special occasion.”

“What—?”

Their apartment doorknob made a lot more noise than it usually did when it was being opened, and they both sat up in surprise as Haoyu stepped in.

He was wearing his windbreaker and an odd smile.

“I thought you were staying at home tonight?” Lute said.

“No, I was just having supper out with Mom until late.” Haoyu wasn’t quite meeting his eye. “All my comfy pillows are here. What are you guys doing?”

“Just talking,” said Lute.

Haoyu nodded. He was still smiling weird.

Guilty weird, thought Alden. He studied their roommate.

“Were you listening at the door?” he guessed.

“No! I heard Lexi’s name, and I wondered…are they talking about him? What are they saying?”

“So you were listening at the door. The act you’re describing is eavesdropping.”

“No! Because it’s my door, too. You can’t eavesdrop on your own door can you?”

“That depends,” Lute said. “How long were you standing there?”

“Not long!” Haoyu said. “Just ten or fifteen minutes or so.”

Lute looked startled

Alden stared.

“What?” Haoyu’s tone was defensive.

“That’s not how you confess to eavesdropping, man,” said Alden. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Not long. I was only there a second.’ Even if you were there for way longer than that.”

“Yeah. Standing out there for fifteen minutes with your ear pressed to the door is spy territory. Not friendly eavesdropping,” said Lute. “I haven’t been sharing state secrets. Why didn’t you just come inside?”

Haoyu’s nervous smile grew more nervous. “I thought…”

They both waited silently for his answer.

“I just thought you might mention me?”

“Why?” Lute asked. “I mean…I can mention you if you want. Alden, Haoyu tried to grow his hair out long when we were in fifth grade. It made him look like a completely different person. It wasn’t bad, but he cut it all off after one of our tour guides on the trip to the Grand Canyon thought he was a girl from behind. I bet Kon has pictures of the look.”

“Don’t mention me like that!” Haoyu said in horror. “I was just waiting to hear where I was on the list!”

“What list?” Lute asked.

Alden laughed. “He means your ‘People I Hate Forever’ list. The one you made with all your classmates’ names on it.”

Alden had wondered where everyone he was familiar with had ended up, too.

“You were naming people who’d been crossed off for life!” Haoyu said. “And you were naming people who’d been underlined for being nice to you. And I needed to know if you crossed me off. I don’t want to be crossed off.”

“You weren’t crossed off.”

“Well, did I get underlined?”

“It doesn’t matter if you got underlined or not,” Lute said. “I was telling Alden about the list to explain my mood at the time. Not because the list is actually important now.”

“I didn’t get underlined!”

“You were underlined.”

Haoyu groaned. “I should have kept eavesdropping. Now I’ll never know if you’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“You were underlined. If the list still existed, I might have to erase your underlining. Since you’re a spy.”

“But he’s a really honest one,” said Alden. “That counts in his favor.”

“Does it? Honesty is a bad quality for a spy.”

Haoyu unzipped his jacket and sat down in one of the chairs. “Can I listen?”

“You just were.”

“You’re telling selection stories! They’re always so much fun. And I haven’t heard yours.”

Lute fluffed a cushion and laid back down. “Well…mine is actually my entire life story, delivered to Alden because we saw my mom earlier this evening. And he didn’t know she was non-Avowed. So he’s getting a download from me before anyone else can poison his mind.”

Haoyu looked down at Alden. “You thought his parents were high ranks?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. It was just an assumption.”

“I was telling him about school,” Lute explained.

“Tell him about the talent show,” Haoyu said immediately.

Lute rolled to look at him. “I told him about that.”

“He played for ages!” Haoyu reported. “And when they went up to drag him offstage, he gave Mr. Fretch such a scary look that he took a step back.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I’m sure not. I was very composed.”

“Lute looked out over the whole audience,” said Haoyu, “and I could feel him staring right at me—”

“I wasn’t staring at you! I don’t even know where you were sitting.”

“Everyone could feel him staring,” Haoyu continued, pointing at his eyes for emphasis. “And then he said, ‘I’m five times more talented than all of them.’”

“Don’t repeat it. It sounds worse when other people say it.”

“You said it so loud! It echoed through the whole room.” He paused. “People made fun of you for weeks.”

“Refusing to get off stage was a weird thing to do. And then I backed it up by saying something like that. I didn’t expect anyone to like it, so I couldn’t really blame them for that one.” Lute glanced away, then added, “I told Alden about the dice, too.”

“The die dice,” Haoyu said mildly. “Yeah that was another memorable day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’ve already tried a couple of times.”

Alden had nothing to add to that minefield, so he stayed quiet.

Haoyu threw his legs over an armrest and sat in his chair sideways.

“I think you think it was some big shock to me,” said Haoyu. “I’ve been looking up that kind of statistic ever since I got my first tablet. Every time my mom gets summoned, I go look again. Even though it’s stupid. She’s not a statistic. She’s usually working with and for people she knows. She seems to feel like it’s important. I’m sure she’s smart and careful. Or when my dad gets a sudden call to supplement a team in a new city…I run to check and see if any heroes have died there. That’s stupid, too. Some other hero having an accident five years ago doesn’t mean he will today.”

“Still,” said Lute, “I shouldn’t have just thrown it at you all like that.”

“It was kind of mean,” said Haoyu. “Everyone else thought it was really mean. I just figured most of them didn’t have parents who talked with them about serious stuff like that a lot, and they felt like it was harsher. Or like you didn’t have the right to point it out because of who you were.”

“They think I was a crazy, jealous whiff who couldn’t take a condom joke, and I laughed when Avowed died.”

Haoyu didn’t answer.

Awkward, thought Alden, wondering if he should try to cut the tension. So awkward.

“I’m not that,” Lute muttered.

“It hurt your feelings,” Haoyu said, watching him. “When everyone expected you to give up the dice bag. You usually acted like you didn’t care at all about that kind of thing. But you were so upset that day. Then Vandy made it worse by telling you it would only be okay for you to keep the dice if you actually wanted to be Avowed. You looked like you were about to…you looked miserable.”

Lute swallowed. “I didn’t realize you noticed.”

“I noticed. I just didn’t know what to say. Then Declan was disgusting, and everybody focused on him. I helped Kon yell at him.”

“Thanks.”

“It was easy to yell at Declan,” said Haoyu. “But the second I saw the death dice, I remembered how bad your face looked. And I felt like I should say something to you, but I still didn’t know what. So I didn’t say anything at all. I never said much to you, and I always made excuses like that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. But I’m really not that hard to talk to,” said Lute. “Ask Alden.”

Alden cleared his throat. “Lute’s great. The second time I met him, he forced me to guess what happened to his eye over and over again, and I wasn’t even sure it was really missing at the time because his sense of humor was so weird.”

“Hey!”

“He tried to make me wear a ski mask against my will earlier today. He called me Cottontail.”

“That’s terrible, Lute,” said Haoyu. “Don’t be mean to Rabbits. They’re the sweetest class.”

“Alden’s a confused Rabbit. He’s in school with all you fighty people.” Lute yanked off his eyepatch and tossed it at the foot of the couch. “I was supposed to weather the bad luck half of the Gloss in a safe location. As safe as anywhere can be when Aulia’s fate boomerang is coming in for a landing, anyway. It landed too soon. Or I made it to the safe place too late. I was standing right outside it, and a drone crashed into the car I’d just arrived in. One of the propellers flew off.”

He touched his cheek below the prosthetic eye. “It was fast. I just thought, ‘Shit. I’m hurt.’ It was a minute before I understood I was really hurt. Afterward, my family acted like it was going to be no big deal for me to get a new eye.”

He swallowed. “I found out they were lying about that. No surprise there. Healing it was going to be…expensive and complicated. And not for them. I decided I couldn’t afford binocular vision after all.”

There was a long silence.

“Eyepatches are badass,” said Alden.

“They are,” Haoyu agreed quickly. “And most people can’t get away with wearing them if it’s not Halloween.”

“I like the one with the big red X on it.”

“The leather one is my favorite.”

Lute smiled. “I’m making one that says, ‘Look away, Lexi.’ We can put it on the polar bear after I’ve worn it a few times.”

******

******

Lute had Shaper. It was there below his name on his selection notice now.

And not just any Shaper—Isabel had been in possession of Shaper of Water.

He was at his Dad’s place this weekend, and he stared at it through dinner. In the bath. In bed.

This, he thought, this doesn’t feel like Wright did.

His brain was full of all the reasons it was wrong for him. On paper, other things were still better. But this class felt like it had a bit of a shine to it, didn’t it?

It makes all of this feel a little less like a disaster.

Most importantly, it made him feel like he could move forward with everything else that needed to happen. At some point, he had to tell everyone instead of just Aimi and a newly minted Wright.

I need advice from some people who know more than me about the classes that I don’t hate. Career counselors?

Isabel had been rattling off a twenty-point plan for the next three months of her life when they parted. It had made Lute feel his lack of preparation more acutely than ever.

If I do want something like Rabbit or Adjuster, I’ll need help to get them. Mom could probably pay for it if Aulia wouldn’t…but negotiating for a popular or rare S class takes time no matter who’s after it.

He had more than eighty days still. He would be able to calm down, figure out whether his family was going to help him or not, and make rational choices before the timer ran out.

How to kick over the first domino?

Lute stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars he’d stuck on the ceiling in this bedroom when he was nine. He made his decision.

Monday, he thought. It happens on Monday.

He’d need to stop by the mansion first and get something he’d left in his closet.

What will it feel like to be one of them? I can’t imagine it at all.

Guess I’ll find out.

******

Lute arrived at Narcissus House when the morning was so early it still felt like night. A car put him out at the front gate, and his cellphone and handprint gave him access.

That’s something that will change, he thought as he walked down the drive with the cold air stinging his cheeks.

Anesidora was the only place on Earth where the System had agreed to make itself useful for even some of the tiny details of daily life. The gate would open with an interface command for Avowed family members, and that would include him once Aulia knew about him.

Since the last time Lute had been here, the landscapers had come. The planters by the front door were bursting with pale hellebore flowers and those dark red plants with the tendrils that luminesced every time the wind stirred them.

I wonder if I’ll ever end up on the world where those things come from.

Inside, he found signs that his grandmother had unexpectedly chosen this weekend to make her return from life at sea. One of Hazel’s favorite scarves was in the coat closet. A pile of miscellaneous cases and bags waited by the door for daylight, when someone would unpack them.

He headed upstairs. His room was exactly as he’d left it. He had school uniforms here, just like he did in all his other residences, and he grabbed the one that looked like it had never been worn. He put it on with an unusual amount of care, then chose a black cashmere topcoat to go with it. Climbing onto a step ladder, he reached for one of the highest shelves.

A small wooden case with his name carved into it was there.

Was it this heavy the last time I held it? he wondered, looking down at it. He distinctly remembered thinking it was worthless to him. He remembered rolling his eyes as he stuffed it away to wait for its one and only appearance on sugar cookie day.

His fingers hovered over the lid.

Not yet.

He slipped it into his blazer pocket and threw his coat over his arm.

When he made it back downstairs, he heard murmuring in the kitchen. He’d been hoping to grab something from the fridge, but never mind. He would just go. Quiet. No confrontations. One day, he would leave Anesidora forever, and he could be as loud as he wanted then.

Lute froze in the foyer, just a few steps from the front door.

How long will it be before I stop having thoughts like this?

How many times have I skipped meals or left rooms, just so that I wouldn’t feel like the adults were erasing me with their inattention and the cousins were watching me for vulnerabilities.

I wonder how they’ll all look at me today, how they’ll look to me today. On this morning right before everything changes.

For better or worse.

He turned back to see which Velras were up so early in the morning, talking quietly and filling the house with the smell of coffee.

Aulia, Corin, Cady, Hugh, Hazel—the usual suspects, all in their robes or pajamas except for Corin, who had probably been born in that boring three-piece suit. Then there was Aunt Diana, her husband, and their two adult children—unusual additions, but predictable in this case. They liked to inhabit the mansion whenever it was mostly empty and pretend that it was theirs. They must have been caught here unawares last night and now they were breakfasting with everyone else to make it seem like they were guests instead of serial house thieves.

The Diana family was smiling and nodding mechanically while the others all talked.

When Lute stepped into the room, absolutely nothing changed at all.

Aulia continued stirring brown sugar into her coffee with a tiny silver spoon. Hugh and Corin kept leaning toward her, peppering her with words delivered in tones that implied the conversation was very serious, though it probably wasn’t. They both talked to her like that no matter how trivial the subject, as if they could force their opinion to mean more than everyone else’s just by vocal inflection.

“I want a new stylist,” Hazel was saying to her mother. “The way the last one braided my hair before I left was ridiculous.”

Oh. Hazel must be heading off to do whatever it is she spends her time doing with the Artonans. And Aulia would naturally be going with her.

In that case, it wasn’t strange for them all to be up this early. Time differences between planets meant Avowed, and Hazel, could be found prepping to travel at all hours.

Lute studied all the faces. None of them studied him back.

“Good morning,” said Lute.

There were nine people in the room besides him. Cousin Becky, with Aunt Diana’s group, made a grunting sound over her coffee mug that could have been taken as a miserable sort of “good morning” in reply.

Hazel glanced at him then away, not stopping her conversation with her mother.

Nobody else responded at all.

Lute went to one of the two steel refrigerators in the huge kitchen and searched it for breakfast. He was reaching for a yogurt when he thought better of it.

No. Something more conspicuous than that.

He opened the freezer and found a pint of black cherry ice cream. He spooned it all out into a bowl. Then he covered it in cornflakes, chocolate chips, and walnuts and sat cross-legged on top of the kitchen island to eat it with a serving spoon. He made sure to crunch aggressively and occasionally bang his spoon into the side of his bowl.

This is actually better than I realized it would be. Ice cream and cereal really works.

Not a word from any of his relatives as he worked his way through the strange breakfast.

Hazel was aware of him, though. He could tell she was because of the occasional annoyed looks. But she was in I’m-too-important-for-you mode, and all she did was increase her volume as she talked about appropriate footwear for a long day spent on her feet with the aliens.

Lute ate as much ice cream as seemed reasonable given the time of day then set his bowl on the white marble beside him.

“Roman,” he said.

At the sound of the name, conversation stopped. Heads turned.

“How’s he doing?” Lute asked. “Is he feeling better?”

“Like you care,” Hazel scoffed.

People shifted. Chairs scraped lightly against the floor. Aulia was looking at him with a neutral expression on her face—not upset, not happy, just a look that said, “Yes, there’s the child who has lived with me his whole life.”

“I was just wondering,” said Lute. “He was so excited on the day he got selected. I do feel bad for him.”

Hazel opened her mouth.

“We all feel bad for him, dear,” said Aulia. Her smile was faint but not particularly annoyed. “I would have Chainer waiting for every member of this family if I could. Maybe one day.”

“Roman’s fine,” said Corin. His eyes swept the table. He was directing his words to the rest of them instead of Lute. “He’s better off even. Rabbit suits his personality much more than Chainer, if you think about it. He’ll settle in and be happy as a clam!”

Cady and Hugh were both nodding. Nobody else agreed. Not even Aulia.

“I guess he was only eight months younger than Hazel,” said Lute. “Eight months isn’t a lot really.”

It was absolutely a lot, when one of the people involved was sixteen and the other was fifteen. And everyone in the room knew it.

Lute slid off the island and reached for his coat. “It was so nice to have breakfast with you all. Good luck on your travels, Grandma. Hazel. I’ve got to go.”

Hazel’s eyes were narrowed.

Aulia’s smile now warmed the room, as if to banish any remaining mentions of poor Roman. “Thank you, Lute! Have a wonderful day at school!”

“It’s going to be interesting,” said Lute as he left the kitchen behind. “I’ll tell you all about it when you get back home.”

******

He opened the box for the first time on a bus as it drove the length of the Span. The sun still hadn’t risen, and to his left and right, the dark ocean might as well have been endless. The graduation pin was right there, nestled on a bed of blue satin.

The titanium symbol glimmered as it caught the light of streetlamps. The bus was full of adults conversing at early-morning volume. Lute heard bits and pieces while he stared at the pin.

<<I hear they’re finally making plans to connect the crescent to F-city by rail. Took them long enough.>>

“I’m heading to Milwaukee for the 4th of July. My old man cooks a beer can chicken every year.”

<<They summoned me for moving their expedition’s supplies up and down a mountain in the middle of nowhere. It was more interesting than it sounds.>>

“I’ve always liked that symbol.” It was the middle-aged looking woman in the seat beside him. She was looking at the pin. “A beginning and an end at the same time.”

“It’s a pin they give to students at my school,” said Lute. “The principal gave a speech about it.”

The woman smiled. Her eyes were such a perfect shade of aquamarine there was probably some magical assistance involved, and she was wearing a shirt for a Brute diving club under her jacket.

“Did they tell you it’s sometimes used to remind a person to move forward? It can be a way of saying that no matter how beautiful or painful a moment in your life is, it’s still just a waypoint. You can’t hold onto it, but you can have the next moment.”

“She didn’t put it like that.”

“Well that’s my favorite thing about it,” said the woman. “So now you know.”

Lute touched the titanium logogram with a finger, just like he’d seen so many of his classmates doing a few months ago.

Later, in the bathroom of a shop near his school that sold otherworldly imports, he finally put the pin on. Then he played with his System name tag.

Lute Velra.

Lute Stellan Velra- S rank.

Lute Velra - Harpist.

Lute Velra - Pre-affixed Shaper of Water.

Stellan Velra - No, not that one.

Enjoy Eleventh Grade, Carlotta and Declan.

It really will let me put anything I want.

He tried the “harpist” tag on several times. He liked it best. It was the one he thought he would wear most of the time. But for today…something a little different.

Mind made up, he hid the tag and left the bathroom with his coat on over his blazer.

Walking the final block to school was surreal. The sun still hadn’t risen. He felt like the journey took a long time. People he saw every day passed him on bicycles or on foot. Their breath made puffs of fog around their faces. Chattering groups of friends, older students, younger ones. Primary schoolers in their winter sweaters, holding onto the hands of parents or arriving in cars.

He spotted Tuyet grabbing the back of her little brother’s coat. And there was Vandy, chasing a windblown chip bag down the sidewalk. She leaped and smashed it under a loafer, then picked it up. Lute stopped to watch her.

If I was going to say something to her, what would I say?

An apology would go a long way with Vandy, but he wasn’t going to give her one. Not her. Not until she gave him one, and he didn’t see that happening. She was very stubborn. Even if he wrote a ten-page essay baring his soul, she wouldn’t think she’d done anything wrong.

From her point of view, she hadn’t.

From everyone’s point of view, maybe. Except for mine.

Was it really so hard to make out the ground from your place in the sky?

Well, it went both ways. He hadn’t felt very sorry for the people who’d cried at the end of the class trips, had he? Everly had been particularly devastated on the last day.

Salar de Uyuni, right after a fortuitous rain.

Lute sat down on a bench and called his father on his cell phone before entering the middle school building. Cyril was still asleep. He had to place the call twice before he answered.

“Hey, Lutey,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You okay at school?”

Lute pressed the phone to his ear. “Yeah, I’m good. Sorry for waking you up.”

“It’s fine.” Cyril yawned.

“Dad, I wanted to tell you…good morning and have a nice day and…um…love you.”

That wasn’t what he’d called to say. But the other words wouldn’t come. They exchanged pleasantries, and then he hung up.

Lute tucked his phone away and climbed the stairs up to the building. He stopped at the doors. People were still arriving, but not as many. It was almost time for the first bell.

The halls would be full of students lingering to talk to friends before heading into their classrooms. There would be some ninth and tenth graders keeping an eye on the entryway, eager to be the first to report a new graduation pin sighting to the rest of the school.

Now? wondered Lute, holding his hand over the place where the pin was hidden beneath his coat. Here? Or later in the classroom?

Rapid footsteps behind him, shoes bounding up cement steps. Then Konstantin was passing him like a whirlwind, yanking open the door, insanely eager for a Monday morning as usual.

He took three steps inside then stopped and spun back to grab the door before it could shut in Lute’s face.

He’d been holding doors and saying unusually loud good mornings all week. Lute was pretty sure he was upset that he’d been deemed less socially observant than Lexi.

I didn’t mean it like this, thought Lute while Kon waited with the door. He doesn’t understand at all.

Though his misguided efforts had earned himself the highest number of underlines on the list this week.

I know how I want to do it.

“Good morning, Lute,” said Kon as Lute walked through the door.

“Morning, Kon.”

They walked into the building side-by-side. Lute strolled through the entryway at a leisurely speed.

Kon, no-doubt vibrating with the need to go talk to twenty people before the bell rang, slowed down to match his pace.

“How was your weekend?” he asked politely.

Lute was going to have to underline him again. He kept missing the point, but a wrong-minded effort was still an effort, Lute supposed.

“It was okay. I’ve had a really stressful few days, but I ate ice cream for breakfast this morning with my cereal. I recommend that.”

They had passed through the entryway, and as they entered the hall that held their classroom and their lockers, Lute stopped walking. It was crowded. People were milling around. Locker doors banged, and voices filled the air.

No new selectees today, thought Lute.

You could always tell by the atmosphere. It didn’t matter which grade they were in, there would be an additional buzz in the air about whoever it was. People would be talking about the class the latest lucky person had been assigned and snapping photos with them.

Kon stopped beside him. When Lute didn’t move for several seconds, he asked, “Did you leave something behind?”

So many things. I don’t even know what’s going to be left after this.

“I’m just going to take off my coat.”

Lute’s fingers touched soft cashmere. He shrugged his shoulders free of the coat. Then he reached up to activate the name tag, so that people with the necessary apps, or interfaces of their own, would be able to see it:

Lute

Nothing else. He had decided to let the very existence of the name tag speak for itself.

He turned to face Kon.

He watched brown eyes fix themselves on his lapel. The graduation pin shone there. Kon’s brow furrowed. He opened his mouth, probably to ask Lute what exactly it meant, and Lute said, “I got my S-rank selection on Monday.”

The silence between them stood in stark contrast to the bustle of the other students in the hall. Nobody else had noticed yet. Lute knew it would only be moments.

“You’ve never seen me before,” he said, staring into Kon’s eyes. “Maybe you’ll be able to now.”


**********
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