Dangerous (4 page)

though we were the only two sane people amid this rabble.

He has intelligent eyes, I noticed.

And all afternoon I kept on noticing.

That night at lights out, I got my mini flashlight and read

through his folder again. When his fireteam entered that weird

room, would he discover the tiles were pieces of a puzzle? Would

he find it all as strange and alarming and exciting as I did?

I closed my eyes and saw his. Sleep felt like the loneliest

place in the world.

23

C h a p t e r 4

On day five, I woke up grateful that at last I’d have a free

hour. After morning scuba class, I hurried to the computer lab,

checked out a tablet, and curled up in a corner chair. A few

years before, Luther and I had discovered a Japanese website

that appeared to promote teeth whitening. It had a message

board no one ever used, because honestly, who sits around dis-

cussing white teeth? So we colonized it.

Luther was already logged in, his user name LEX blinking

green. Homesickness pulsed in my belly.

Luther wouldn’t tolerate any emoticons or messaging

shortcuts, but it didn’t slow me down much. I’d been typing

one-handed since I was four.

MAIZ: Greetings, friend of Wookies

everywhere. How’s the weather?

LEX: Cloudy with a chance of stupidity. My

cousins are staying over and they want

to play “war” every day. I’m thinking of

removing our “no kill” rule.

MAIZ: Enough with the quotation marks. I

can hear your sarcasm from four states

away.

LEX: Fine. How is “astronaut boot camp”?

I mean . . . ASTRONAUT BOOT CAMP.

MAIZ: You’d go crazy happy for all the

gadgets but throw up in the takeoff

simulator.

Dangerous

LEX: I would not.

MAIZ: Remember the tilt-a-whirl?

LEX: That was an aberration. I had

consumed a hot dog.

MAIZ: Anyway, nonhuman stuff is awesome.

Human stuff is to be expected.

LEX: What are the flatscans doing?

MAIZ: Freaking out about the arm.

LEX: Frakking flatscans.

MAIZ: I’ll weather it.

LEX: When will you be home?

MAIZ: The 20th.

LEX: In the morning, afternoon, or

evening?

MAIZ: I don’t know.

LEX: Find out.

MAIZ: Why?

LEX: I just want to know when Maisie

Brown is in her house again.

MAIZ: You miss me, don’t you?

LEX: Yes.

I’d expected a snide rebuttal, but I saw no sarcasm in his

yes. I thought of our accidental hug, the tick of his pulse against

my cheek.

LEX: Are you still there?

MAIZ: Yeah. Sorry.

LEX: The 20th?

MAIZ: I’ll probably be home after dinner

but not too late. I should go. I need to

call my parents still.

25

Shannon Hale

LEX: You wrote to me first?

MAIZ: You’re my best friend.

I waited. Luther didn’t respond. I suddenly felt shy.

MAIZ: Signing off . . .

LEX: Okay. Write again, okay?

MAIZ: Sure. Till Wedneday.

Just three more days felt like forever.

My parents were awaiting my call, my dad home from

work for the occasion. When my mom started to gush in Span-

ish, I felt a pricking in the corners of my eyes.

“
Te extraño, Mami
,” I said, telling her I missed her. “Three

weeks is a long time, isn’t it?”

Dad sighed agreement. I didn’t tell them about the teasing.

I suspected the reason they kept me isolated at home was to

protect me from people like Ruth and the running boys.

As I left the lab, I overheard two girls talking. “I sneaked

my cell phone in, but every time I turn it on, there are no bars.”

Weird. Were cell phone signals blocked entirely out here?

I shuffled toward my next class, watching my feet as I

walked. I noticed grooves in the floors where steel doors could

lock down, cutting off parts of the building. I didn’t notice that

Wilder was next to me.

“You’re curling into a question mark,” he said.

I snapped back upright. He was without his usual satellites

of blond girls and guys sporting last names.

“I just got off the phone with my parents,” I said by way of

explanation.

“And they’re all a bunch of eejits?”

“No . . . I miss them.”

He tilted his head, trying to figure out if I was serious.

26

Dangerous

“How was your call?” I asked. I had his schedule memorized.

“Brief to nonexistent.”

“But numbers were dialed?”

“And words were spoken, so thin and flimsy as to barely

count at all.”

“Words like, hello, how are you, I miss you, good-bye?”

“Like that, but mostly good-bye.” He sounded apathetic.

I held an invisible phone to my ear and made a ringing

noise. He blinked.

“Answer the phone,” I whispered helpfully.

His squint was suspicious, but he answered his own invisible

phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, honey bear! How are you?”

“Um . . . I guess I’m fine. And you?”

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. How’s that cute little space

camp of yours?”

“Campy, spacey, what you’d expect.”

“You have a good time now. Good-bye, sweetie pie!” I hung

up my pretend phone.

A faint smile was inching across his lips. “And that was

for . . . ?”

“On your call day, someone should speak those words

to you. You know—hello, how are you. The ones besides just

good-bye.”

“I think you skipped one.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, you’d promised an I-miss-you.”

“Right.” I dutifully returned my phone hand to my ear, and

I looked up to meet his eyes as I said, “I miss you.”

My heart revved like a lawn mower. It was supposed to be

27

Shannon Hale

a joke. But speaking those words made me feel them, believe

them. I missed him, as if he were Luther or my family, someone

I cared for who was far away.

He held my gaze, and his smile tipped up, full of sugges-

tion. He said quietly, “I miss you too.”

When faced with danger, our bodies experience the Pri-

mary Threat Response. Muscles contract, ready for flight or

fight. Blood drains from extremities, making feet and hands feel

cold, and from less-essential systems like the stomach, causing

that butterflies sensation. The blood swarms into the head and

organs, creating heat (and sweat). Heart pumps faster, blood

pressure rises, and breathing turns rapid. All this to prepare the

body for possible injury.

But there was no saber-toothed tiger, crouched and hissing.

Just Wilder, smiling. I tried to smile back as if my heart weren’t

thumping and my breaths weren’t shallow gasps.

Had he noticed that I watched him in the cafeteria? Had

he guessed that I reread his file? That some nights when I closed

my eyes, I saw his?

I’d thought I wanted to live free of my mundane little cage,

but the world outside was feeling more and more hazardous.

“Why did you keep my folder?” I asked.

“Because I noticed you,
Peligrosa
. And I liked it.”

Actually my nickname is la
Peligrosa
, or “Danger Girl.”

Peligrosa
just means “dangerous.” But I didn’t correct him.

I left Wilder to go kick some butt in our fireteam’s fourth

mission.

“Cry havoc!” Jacques shouted as we charged into a room

featuring a model spacecraft. I got to wear a harness that simu-

lated the weightlessness of space and pretend-fix a satellite.

28

Dangerous

After that was aerospace engineering and the day wrapped

up with medical exams. The doctors put us through the same

physicals and brain scans and so on that they did on actual as-

tronauts.

Only late that night in bed, when it was so quiet my

thoughts were louder than my breathing, did I allow my mind

to return to Wilder.

1. He kept my folder.

2. He remembered my nickname (more or less).

3. He noticed me.

I wanted to list these things, examine them under a mi-

croscope, order them into their proper family, genus, and spe-

cies. Understand them. Were Wilder and I friends? Did I have

a crush? Did he?

I rejected the temptation to daydream about Wilder, and

so I was completely unprepared.

29

C h a p t e r 5

The night before Howell would announce the winning

fireteam, I was lying in bed awake when our dorm door opened

and a paper airplane flew through the crack. “Maisie Dan-

ger Brown” was written across the top in thick black marker. I

picked it off of the floor and unfolded it.

Peligrosa,

I hear there’s a comet tonight. Come out and play?

W.

Curse the curiosity of the scientific mind, but I went out.

In the hall, Wilder was reading notices on a bulletin board,

his hands in his pockets. When I examined him objectively, he

didn’t have the kind of face you’d see on a magazine cover, yet

his confidence made him seem especially attractive. I told my-

self I was unaffected.

“You rang?” I said.

He turned, taking in my T-shirt and sweats. He’d changed

into jeans and a gray shirt. It was nice not to be glaring orange

at each other.

“What good is a comet overhead when no one admires it?”

He inclined his head upward toward the roof.

I’d been complaining about missing the comet earlier to

Mi-sun, but I shook my head. “If we’re caught, they might send

us home early.”

“They’re not going to kick out a sweepstakes winner. Bad

publicity. That’s why I want you with me, Danger Girl.”

Dangerous

“I don’t know if your logic is sound,” I said, though I took

two steps toward him.

When I was twelve, Dad had showed me scans and charts,

proof that a teenager’s brain is underdeveloped. We’re missing

connections and parts adults have that help them analyze situa-

tions and take appropriate caution. That’s why teens need rules

and guidance, he told me. We’re not biologically capable of be-

ing fully rational. I swore right then that I’d be a smart, cautious

teenager.

Now those underdeveloped parts of my brain were perking

up and looking around.

I kept my head down as we hurried through the corridor,

aware of the security camera’s gaze. We took a dark staircase

up, the butterflies awake in my belly. Wilder picked a lock and

opened a door.

The air on the roof was cool yet humid enough to feel cozy,

the stars splashed out and sizzling on a teflon sky. He’d already

spread a blanket on the roof’s gravel top, left a pair of binoculars

waiting.

I could see one of the guard turrets from here. Its windows

were black. I hoped no one was inside looking out.

Wilder and I sat about ten centimeters apart and took turns

gazing at the bright dot blazing through the constellation Cas-

siopeia. I loved comets, engines of nearly endless motion and

reminders that the sky wasn’t a flat, static surface but a window

into vastness.

Afraid of the silence, I blurted the first thing on my mind.

“You know, the Lyra comet was born beyond our solar system,

which makes it an alien here, the nearest exotic thing.”

“Besides the foxy Latina on my right,” Wilder said.

31

Shannon Hale

“Do girls usually respond to that kind of talk?” I asked.

He frowned. “You’d be easier to woo if you were dumb.”

“Then don’t woo me,” I said.

I didn’t mean it.

I sort of meant it.

I didn’t know what I meant.

We were quiet, two tiny specks glued down by gravity,

peering at a universe that didn’t notice us back. The quiet and

dark made me feel mysterious and stilled, a thing that glints in

the dark, an object that can only be understood by careful study.

Something like a poem.

I said, “‘All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a

dream.’”

I had a bunch of poems memorized, and whenever some-

thing reminded me of one, out it came. Spewing dead poets at

my parents was one thing, but I knew immediately I’d made a

mistake with Wilder.

Hide your geekiness, Maisie.

But Wilder asked, “What does that mean?”

If Luther didn’t know, he’d pretend he did.

“It’s Poe,” I said. “I think of it whenever the world seems

especially mysterious.”

“Memorizing poets doesn’t seem a practical hobby for the

first one-handed freak in space.”

I know it sounds odd, but from Wilder that seemed like a

compliment. I honestly considered blushing.

“Poets seem to know things that scientists don’t. And vice

versa. Maybe they balance each other out somehow. If I’m going

to get to space, I’ll need all the help I can get,” I said, lifting Ms.

Pincher. “Poe included.”

32

Dangerous

“What do you want up there anyway?”

“To learn things you can only study in a weightless environ-

ment. And besides that, space is the place. Nebulas and novas