Starcrossed (13 page)

My head was starting to spin but I tried to get back to the original point of this conversation. “Okay, I get now why you—and Sean, and Allister—find it so hard to believe Rigel and I can possibly be
graell
bonded. But I haven’t told you all the reasons I think we are.”

Molly picked up another cookie, took a bite of it, then a sip of milk. “So tell me.” I could see she didn’t expect to be convinced—at all. So much for any special Royal power of persuasion.

I took a deep breath. “Rigel and I can sense each other’s emotions, especially if we’re touching.” I decided not to mention the telepathy thing, since we hadn’t told
anybody
about that yet. “And on three different occasions, we’ve generated electricity, like . . . bolts of lightning. Two of those times, it saved our lives.”

Now Molly was staring at me, mouth slightly open, cookie forgotten. “Seriously?” It came out in a whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me
that
before?”
 

“I didn’t have time, remember? I take it those supposedly common teenage resonances don’t include that?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “The lightning thing, especially . . . that’s straight from the fairy tales. The kind of
graell
that should be
completely
impossible for you two.”

“Hey, it’s not like I ever read any of those fairy tales, so there’s no way I got the idea there. Besides, there were lots of witnesses the last time we did it—it’s how we disabled that Ossian Sphere.” I paused, then said, “Does this mean you finally believe me?” It was surprising how much I needed her to.

She held my gaze for a long, probing moment, then nodded, still wide-eyed. “I . . . guess I have to. I’m
so
sorry I—”

The back door slammed. “Marsha, are you home?” Aunt Theresa’s voice preceded her into the kitchen. “Oh, hello, Molly. It’s nice to see you again. I hope Marsha has been helpful with your school work.”

“Um, yes, she has, Mrs. Truitt, thank you.” Molly looked slightly alarmed, like she was worried we might have been overheard. “I, um, guess I should get home.”

“Marsha why don’t you see her to the door, then get back here and rinse off these dishes.” My aunt dropped a stack of papers on the end of the table.

“Oh, I’ll do that,” Molly exclaimed, jumping up.

“Don’t be silly,” Aunt Theresa said. “You’re a guest.”

Molly sat back down with obvious reluctance while I put our plates and glasses in the sink and turned on the water.

“I’ll walk Molly home, if that’s okay, Aunt Theresa,” I said over my shoulder.

She pursed her lips but nodded. “Mind you come straight back. I want the beds stripped so there’ll be time to wash, dry and replace the sheets before bedtime. Oh, and since the lawn won’t need mowing again this year, you can take over the weekly bathroom cleaning—though that can wait till morning.”

Molly was staring at her with something like outrage, so I quickly nudged her toward the front door. “Let’s go. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I called back to my aunt.

As soon as we reached the sidewalk, Molly turned to me, still looking upset. “Does she always order you around like that?”

I shrugged. “Pretty much. It’s not like she knows, uh, who I am. To her, I’m just some orphan she got stuck with a dozen years ago.”

Molly’s distress turned to wonder. “Wow. You really are like some fairy tale heroine. Like . . . Cinderella or something.”

I laughed, though her words startled me. I’d often pretended to be Cinderella when I was younger, while mopping the floors or weeding the garden. It kept me from getting bored or feeling sorry for myself.

“Right. But with Trina and her friends instead of wicked stepsisters,” I joked, shaking off the coincidence. “They tell Earth fairy tales on Mars, too?”
 

“Some of them,” Molly said, relaxing enough to chuckle along with me. “Along with our own. I guess Cinderella is pretty universal.”

We’d reached the corner by then. “I should get back,” I said. “Thanks for coming over, Molly. I, uh, learned a lot today.”

She opened and closed her mouth, with such a strange expression on her face that I wished I could sense her emotions the way I could Rigel’s.
 

“I learned a lot, too,” she finally said. “We’ll talk again soon. Maybe tonight?”

“Maybe.” It was Friday, but I didn’t have any plans since Rigel was still busy at home in the evenings. And there was obviously tons more I needed to know about Nuathan society, the Royals—and exactly what people expected me to do eventually.

Walking slowly back, I thought over everything she’d told me. Now that she finally believed me about the
graell
, she could help me convince Sean, too. Then the friction between him and Rigel should go away and we could all be friends after all.

Unless there was something else Molly wasn’t telling me.

twilly
:
obnoxious person; jerk

When I suggested going over to the O’Garas’ again after dinner that night, I expected an argument since Aunt Theresa was usually suspicious if I wanted to do anything on a Friday night. But to my surprise, she agreed immediately.

“I’m glad to see you making the effort to be a good neighbor to the O’Gara children, Marsha,” she added. “Lili told me they all appreciate it, as they came here knowing no one.”

“Yeah, they’re, um, really nice. So you’ve been talking with Mrs. O’Gara some more?”

Her smile seemed strangely sincere. “Yes, she came by the flower shop last night and we had a nice chat. I encouraged her to join the choir at church and she seems open to the idea.”

“Really? That’s great. What time do I need to be home tonight?”

“As it’s a Friday and it’s just around the corner, I suppose you can stay till ten. Tell Lili I said hello.”

“I will,” I promised, fighting a sense of unreality. It was positively weird for Aunt Theresa to be acting so . . . so
nice.
If it was Mrs. O’Gara’s influence, I couldn’t help but appreciate it.

Walking to their house—it was cold tonight, but with no hint of the rain we’d had off and on for over a week—I wondered if Sean would even be there. Surely a guy that popular would have better things to do on a Friday night than hang around home? But when I rang the bell, he was the one who opened the door.

“M! I’m
so
glad you came,” he greeted me, with a smile that looked both relieved and contrite. “I was such a
twilly
, I mean, such a jerk on Wednesday, I was afraid you wouldn’t, even though Molly said— Anyway, I really, really wanted to apologize.”

“Really, really?” I echoed with a reluctant smile.
 

He laughed, looking even more relieved. “Okay, I’m pathetic, I admit it. But I am sorry. Really, really sorry,” he added with a grin that showed his perfect teeth. “Molly!” he called up the stairs. “M’s here!”

She came clattering down with a smile as big as her brother’s. “You came! Yay!” She surprised me with a hug, then surprised me again by jumping back like I’d burned her. “Sorry, sorry! I shouldn’t have done that without asking. It’s just—“

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “Don’t go all weird and respectful on me. Please? Just let me be M with you guys, like you have so far.”

They exchanged uncertain glances, then Sean said, “I guess it’s okay when it’s just us. But when we’re around other
Echtrans
, don’t get upset if we observe the forms, yeah? It’ll look bad if we don’t.”

“Oh. Sure. I don’t want to get you guys in trouble. So, um, any chance I can see more pictures of Mars?” I asked to change the subject, and was relieved when they both relaxed.

“I already picked some out.” Sean led the way into the living room, pausing to close the curtains.
 

“Mum and Dad will join us later. They figured you might have questions they can answer better than we can. Here, have a seat.” He indicated the sofa, now clear of boxes.
 

Molly and I sat down together, but then Sean squeezed between us, saying, “It’ll work better if the omni is in the middle.”

I immediately felt that tingle from him, but since I really did want to see the pictures, I just scootched an inch or two away and tried to ignore it.

Sean kept talking, apparently unaware of the tingle or my slight withdrawal. “Since you’ve never been to Mars, I thought this might give you a better feel for it than regular pictures. Plus, it’s pretty cool.”
 

He punched up the control screen and this time, instead of a little video projection, we were suddenly in the middle of a pinkish stone courtyard dotted with what looked like shiny black picnic tables and at least twenty teenagers milling around. There was sound, too—I could hear people laughing and talking in a language I didn’t understand.

I glanced left, right and behind me—sure enough, the scene was three-sixty. The courtyard was surrounded on three sides by a one-story building of the same pinkish stone, opening out on our left to a view of the same green countryside I’d seen in the picture Tuesday night.

“Whoa,” I breathed. “Is this, like, a holodeck?”

“A what?”

Feeling like a huge geek, I explained about Star Trek holodecks—I’d been hooked on STNG reruns for the past couple of years. “But I guess you guys wouldn’t know about our old TV shows, would you?”

To my surprise, they both nodded. “We do watch some Earth television on Mars. It’s even required for Earth Studies class,” Molly told me.

“But no, this isn’t a holodeck like you described,” Sean said then. “It’s just images, nothing solid that you can touch. This is—was—our school back on Mars. Our cafeteria, I guess you’d say.” I could hear a note of wistfulness—homesickness?—in his voice.

As I watched, two girls and a boy walked toward us. They were all very attractive—of course—and all dressed in similar but not quite identical shimmery, pale blue outfits that fitted them well.

“Uniforms?” I guessed.
 

“Yeah,” Molly replied. “The upperclassmen’s are way cooler than what I had to wear. That’s Liam, Gwynne and Doranna—good friends of Sean’s.”

Sure enough, just as she said that, they stopped a few feet away and grinned right at us. One of the girls said something in a pleasant, teasing tone of voice, but the only word I recognized was “Sean.”

“Can . . . can you talk to them?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” Sean said. “Wish we could—you’d really like them. The hologram’s not interactive, just a video loop like the picture you saw before, but on a larger scale. Gwynne was asking why I had to make a recording when she was having a bad hair day.”

Gwynne’s short blond hair looked fine to me. And they did all look like nice people. “Are they still on Mars?”

“Yeah. Though Doranna’s folks were talking about leaving if Faxon put many more rules on them. They’re metallurgists and he was demanding more and more resources for his military buildup—the one he keeps officially denying.” Sean snorted. “But they’d been pulled off their research enough times to do stuff for his engineers that they knew what was really going on.”

“And Liam’s older brother was drafted into Faxon’s security force—which was getting to be more and more like an army,” Molly added. “They hardly ever got to see him after that. He had to go live in Thiaraway, the capital city.”

The scene looped around then, blinking Sean’s friends back to where they’d started. Sean had apparently stopped recording just after Gwynne’s complaint. I couldn’t help wondering if she’d been his girlfriend. There was something about her expression . . .

“So nobody speaks English on Mars?” I asked then, wondering if I’d be expected to learn Nuathan.

“Oh, yeah, pretty much everyone does,” Molly assured me. “It’s all the media ever uses, in fact. We’re just required to use Nuathan in school—though Faxon was threatening to change that, claiming English is more useful.”

I grimaced. “Probably because he was planning to invade Earth and bring pretty much everyone here. Luckily, Rigel and I—”

“Here, I’ll show you part of Thiaraway,” Sean said before I finish. “It’s where you would have lived. I mean, if Faxon had never . . . you know.”

I nodded, a sudden lump in my throat diverting my thoughts from last month’s battle. If Faxon hadn’t killed my whole family, Sean meant. For the hundredth time, I wondered what my life would have been like if Faxon had never existed, or if he’d been stopped before he got all that power.

The scene around us abruptly changed to a city scene, though it looked like no city I’d ever seen. The street was narrower than city streets on Earth and there were no cars, just wide walkways on either side and a metallic grid running down the middle.
 

A building that looked like it might be made out of rose quartz towered at least a dozen stories high on our left. Similar glassy skyscrapers were visible in the near distance, along with smaller buildings of brick, stone and metal. People hurried along the sidewalks on both sides, and a silver bullet-shaped train whizzed down the center track, making a whooshing sound as it passed.

“This is just an old promo vid,” Sean explained. “It’s not quite like this now, unfortunately. The trains hardly run anymore, except when Faxon needs someone or something moved quickly. And his troops are everywhere, keeping people from congregating on the streets. My dad says Thiaraway isn’t as clean as it used to be, either. Guess that’s not one of Faxon’s priorities.” His voice was scornful.

I was still gazing around, rapt. “So this is what it looked like when my . . . I mean, before Faxon? It’s wonderful.”

“Yeah, it really was,” Molly agreed. “Look behind you.”

I turned and caught my breath. It was a stunningly beautiful palace—a pink diamond palace, astonishingly like the one I used to imagine when I was little. Or had always assumed I’d imagined. “I remember this,” I whispered disbelievingly. “How can I remember this? I was just a baby when I left.”

“Most of us can remember things well into infancy,” Sean told me. “And it’s possible your parents showed you pictures after you came to Earth. Before—”