He looked dreamily at her as he thought about fighting Dreth pirates. “I hope that if I do join the military, they will let me fight them in the system too, at least before they throw me in with the real thing.”

  Stephanie snorted. “Me too. They are some vicious aliens, I will tell you that much. Honestly, they simply don’t care who they kill or for what reason. They simply want to take. So, tell me about your summer.”

  Todd shoved his hands in his pockets. “Um, I worked at the restaurant in the dish pit again. That was cool because I put my headphones on and washed stuff for minimum wage—I think eleven dollars and fifteen cents an hour. I saw a few movies I wanted to see again. I hacked my way into the systems and watched some seriously awesome eighties movies. I saw Gremlins, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Goonies, Sixteen Candles, Back to the Future, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the first Die Hard. I still have some to watch, of course.”

  She giggled and ended with a small snort. “That’s seriously a lot of movies.”

  He put his hands up and flipped around to walk backward. “Right? But it’s the eighties. I mean it was the Brat Pack. They were moody, sarcastic, pushed back, did what they wanted to do and didn’t give two shits. Which I think I’ve discovered might be the actual motto of the 1980s.”

  Stephanie made her eyes really wide. “Uh oh, it sounds like you have abandoned the precious nineties for its older brother, the eighties.”

  Todd stopped her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t ever say something like that out loud. Quentin Tarantino might send Mr. White to off me. Jay and Silent Bob will drag me back to the mall. The Quick Stop will actually wait on people and the video shop next door will make money! You savage! Not to mention that Randall “Pink” Floyd will start accepting drug tests from the coach, ʼcause what the hell, right? And then there’s Matthew McConaughey’s famous David Wooderson who will still be standing around waiting to get older as the girls stay the same age and never actually deliver his signature, All right, all right, all right. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will get their wings back and come to attack because we are cursing the nineties, only leading to Alanis Morrissette having to open her mouth and crush the heads of anyone who hears her.”

  He huffed and puffed, having not taken a breath through the whole tirade. He started to back up again as he calmed himself. “And all of this will happen before we lose the record store. Which record store? It doesn’t matter because they always tried to bring them back in the nineties. Because the moral of the story is…the nineties cinematic wonders would have never blossomed into the pop culture classics they are today without the awkward and brooding, poorly filmed cinematic train wrecks that were the 1980s classics—”

  Stephanie put up her hand and grabbed his arm to stop him before he tripped over the curb onto the sidewalk. “I have to stop you here. One, because you will fail all your classes if you don’t get it together. And two, I’m starting to get a tick listening to you talk without breathing.”

  Todd chuckled and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “And this is why we will always be friends.”

  She shook her head. While she always tried to keep up with his interests—they were interesting to her too—she had been far too busy in a virtual coma during the summer to do anything.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  At school, Stephanie walked beside Todd through the halls and tried to ignore the weirdness that went on around her. Whether it was a look of ill intent that harnessed a seriously envious and jealous hatred, or a bashful smile backlogged with admiration and practically worship, it all really began to creep her out.

  Todd glanced around and clicked his tongue. “Okay, so no one knew you breathed on earth last semester and now, it’s a freaking scene from Carrie in here.”

  She walked closer to him. “Drop pig’s blood on me and it might come true. Just saying.”

  One of the asshole guys, Trent, stepped out in front of her, a smirk on his braced teeth. He was slightly overweight, played football, and was about as dumb as a box of chewed Skittles. Which was probably why he made it his mission to attempt to make people feel like shit all the time. “Look who it is—the freak with the laser hands. Why don’t you give it up and show us how it’s done?”

  Stephanie jerked and clenched her hand into a fist. Trent stepped back and his expression sobered. She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “Do you want to find out how painful it is to grow your nuts back?”

  He swallowed hard, tripped backward over his own feet, and fell. Stephanie and Todd continued to walk forward and literally stepped right over the top of him. When they had made it a little farther down the hallway, he leaned over to her. “Do you actually think you perform precise enough magic to cut a dude’s balls off and not anything else?”

  She tossed her head defiantly and fixed him with a hard look. “No. Not that it matters because I didn’t bring a battery anyway. But I figured if he already knew what I could do, he wouldn’t really question me. The details mean nothing, really. No balls today? No balls tomorrow? What’s the difference?”

  Todd blinked wildly. “Only the fact that if he knew that—because his brain is the size of a flea—he would not comprehend pain tomorrow and cause you serious pain right here, right now.”

  Stephanie sighed. “Fine. I will make sure that I don’t use that one again. Seriously, though, I want to go on record and say that even though he acts all tough, he has never hit a girl. He probably would threaten me and punch you.”

  He put his finger up in instant protest. “Uh, I don’t like that outcome. You do realize that I am of a sensitive nature, right? I am not to be trifled with or physically incapacitated. I am a wimp and don’t want to be punched in the face by that giant ogre of a guy. That’s purely common sense.”

  She patted him on the shoulder as they walked. “Don’t worry, I’ll never call you out for not having some of the worst traits of masculinity in society ever. But that’s showing your care for women and the equality of all. It’s a political statement.”

  Todd raised an eyebrow. “I’m not quite sure how to take that. It seems good and kind, but also condescending and snide. Either way, good acting skills back there. The Toddster approves.”

  Stephanie snarled and her lip twitched. “Do not refer to yourself in conversation as the Toddster. It will only bring you pain and suffering. But thank you. I actually did learn some stuff on verbal conflict resolution as well as how to deal with some of the most sexist and non-agreeable aliens in the universe. So I guess I didn’t completely lose out on that deal.”

  The truth was, Stephanie had learned a lot of things at the prep school. Some of them were obvious to her while others were so hidden that only those around her actually began to notice. She was focused but not stressed and spoke out but didn’t make things a huge problem. And the way she carried herself was different than it ever had been before. The classes went on around her, but she sat there as if she were in another place.

  A couple of the teachers who had known her for practically her entire youth were very quick to notice the change in her. Her history teacher, speaking with the English teacher in the hall, was slightly alarmed. “She seems absent. Like she is only here because she has to be. Her answers are short and to the point, her eyes are somewhere else, and she constantly looks down at whatever she is scribbling on the papers in front of her.”

  Her English teacher nodded. “I know. She didn’t even raise her hand to answer a question once. And her frustration with the headsets was visible to everyone.”

  That was absolutely true. For her, staring into a VR headset to learn was like sitting too close to the television. She used to look forward to the opportunity to use them, excited that she knew her last semester would have a new set. But when it came time to use them, she fiddled, complained under her breath, and sat with the headset on, her head resting on her palm, and simply pushed through it. The images weren’t quality and all she wanted was to reach out and do some magic. But that would do nothing because the only things she could see were her poorly animated hands and whatever the Federation Scholastic Foundation had thrown together as scenery to tell a story.

  On a better note, though, she didn’t mope the entire time. About an hour into the program, she took a deep breath and forced herself to sit straight, reminding herself that her days in twenty-four-seven pods were over. They might have been awesome, but in the end, they were not made for her. The VR headsets were a much better option than the text, at least. You could touch things, pick them up, and explore the different places in history during that time period.

  They were definitely not interactive and not even close to system quality, but they were what they had, and she had dealt with that her whole life. She had to constantly reiterate to herself that it was good to have dreams but that she couldn’t allow that to cloud the life she had to live. If she succeeded, great, but if not, she had to live her life in a VR headset. Flat, pixilated, and cloudy.

  At the end of school, she made her way slowly outside and squinted at the bright sun as she exited. Todd stood out at the street, eating some sort of pastry. She didn’t even want to ask him where he’d gotten it from. They didn’t say a word at first, merely walked quietly down the road. He had noticed the change in her, and her thoughts were so far away that she felt disconnected. It was a reversal of that morning, but she figured it was bound to happen at some point.

  When they reached the entrance to the subs, Todd sniffed. “So I think I have a new desire. I joke about it a lot, but I actually think this is what I want to do.”

  Stephanie looked at him and tried to pull herself into the conversation. “Oh yeah? What’s that? I’ve told you a hundred times that they don’t have comic book reviewers or cupcake testers. Those jobs simply don’t exist. Remember? We spent that one night in eighth grade looking them up for hours?”

  Todd shook his head and chuckled. “No. That’s not what I am talking about. I think for real, I want to go into the military. If I’m accepted, they will give me the Virtual Reality training.”

  She tapped her fingers to her lips and nodded cautiously. “That’s true. I can totally catch that logic. And I got to see glimpses of what it’s like. I think you would be good at it.”

  He beamed and stood straighter. “You know what else I thought? If your celeb status ever wears off, you should definitely go with me. We could be one hell of a team. Through boot camp, training, and then we could ride the galaxy together. I’ll steer and you protect us with your magic.”

  Stephanie giggled. “Right. So you do the fun stuff and I’ll put myself in the line of fire. I mean, seriously, it sounds legit. We could be like that superhero movie you thought was so funny…uh… Guardians of the Galaxy. We could save a raccoon and have him be our rough-them-up guy.”

  Both of them laughed, and it felt good, Stephanie had to admit. Things were so serious and pressured in her life now. Still, in the back of her mind, no matter how much she joked with Todd about the military, she really hoped that didn’t end up being her only choice. She had never put a full amount of thought into it until she fought the Dreth pirates on their ship and, although she would like it if it were that dramatic and wild on the majority of days, she knew that would rarely be the case. Or she would end up on some ship sailing out into the galaxy, never to be seen or heard from again. It wasn’t what she thought of when she saw the rest of her life.

  There had been so many wars in the past, and with the difference between the nations, it could be really dangerous out there. Plus, she would have to be comfortable knowing that in those wars, so many innocent people died and for no good reason. That there was an answer to it and it was so simple to see, but it took them opening up to it. Allowing it in. Humans were hard-pressed to do things like that for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes because of money, but mostly, and number one, because of fear. Fear drove almost everything that they did.

  The friends stopped in front of her house. She hugged him and turned to head inside. As soon as the door was shut, she felt a load lift off her. She wasn’t sure what had caused it, but she felt comfortable again, not having the pressure to be who people thought she was all the time. With a sigh, she set her bag down and went to the counter, where an apple and a cupcake sat on top of a note from her mom.

  Hey sweetie. We have quite a bit of work to do so might be late. Eat whatever but try to be healthy. We stopped through here to have lunch so I figured I would write you a short note to tell you that you are amazing, intelligent, and wonderful and I am so proud of the woman you have become. See you for dinner. Love you, Mom and Dad.

  She smiled as she read the note and grabbed both the apple and the cupcake. At the family computer, she sat but didn’t turn it on until she had eaten her cupcake and removed all the icing from her fingers. She didn’t want to mess the thing up. It was basically her only window at that moment to really think about what happened in the rest of the world while she sat in the ghettos, blinded by the smog and constant rumbling of cars on the highway.

  Stephanie brought the apple to her lips, took a big bite, and sucked the juices through her teeth. She smiled as she set it down and slid her hands down her pant legs to make sure they weren’t sticky. Satisfied, she turned the computer on and grabbed her bag to retrieve the notes for her homework. One of the big things was to work on a report about the information they had learned in the headsets that day during history. To talk about the stark difference between one war and another. To talk about the toll it took on the people.

  Truly good quality or not, that was hard to see through her eyes. The dead, the dying, the destruction, and all because humans were more fixated on the need than the reason. Because they were quicker to draw a gun than to talk about a crisis. Because numbers, in their political world, had become a way to justify it all and continue to battle against each other even when there were real threats circling the universe.

  She sighed and leaned back to stare at the few words she had written. They seemed depressing and tired. Even to her, they seemed to say there was no spark left in her, and she knew that was not true, not even in the least. She had to get her hope back. To keep searching for answers. To keep hoping that one day, a company would come looking for her to do the impossible. To change the way that magic was used on Earth. That seemed like such a pipe dream by that point, but if she didn’t keep that nestled in her chest, she would end up like everyone else in the subs, never leaving and simply repeating the cycle over and over. And the world might never know what she could have done to help it.

  With a heavy sigh, she closed the document and reached to turn the computer off when she decided a nap was probably the best way to rid her of the negativity. But, before she could hit the switch, the email notification came on. She clicked over to it and found a new message waiting for her from ONE R&D.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Stephanie pressed her tongue to her right incisor and tapped her fingers on the desk as the message came up on the screen. ONE R&D had been the ones to get her into the pods in the first place, and she was mad at herself for not noticing that they had written to her before she left. Of course, it wasn’t on purpose. She had merely completely blanked. The excitement of it all had been more than she had expected and, well, she’d screwed up.

  She took a deep breath and leaned forward to squint into the light of the screen. It was an invitation. After all that, it was an invitation to handle R&D Research using the pod waiting for her at her TimeWarp. She scanned through the email, read the exciting parts, and went back to the beginning to read it over again. This time, she paid attention to the details and attempted to not to let herself get excited. There was no use in it. She had already been let down by people more than once in a small time period.

  The letter outlined what she would do but gave no real specifics. However, it didn’t only involve hours in a pod. If she accepted the position, she would be paid a small stipend, which would be based on her success. When she read that, she stopped for a moment. She’d never actually been offered a paying job before except when she helped her parents clean houses and offices. She rubbed her face and continued. It covered a few small insignificant details and mentioned that the car was still part of it. Then it went into numbers.

  Her mouth dropped and she leaned in closer as she stared at the number under the pay section. In her eyes—the eyes of someone who didn’t really know what she could make in that field—the money seemed more than fair. In reality, though, it wasn’t. It was actually a little low, a tactic included by BURT to register where she was from a negotiation of business standpoint. Would she push back or not?

  The answer to that, since she had no idea of any of this, was to absolutely not push back. The money was perfect for her. She read through the rest and found no real fine detail or anything that would throw caution into the mix at all. In some places, she even stopped and re-read several times to make sure she hadn’t gotten too excited and overlooked things. When she finally realized that everything looked great, she shrugged and used her finger to sign on the screen.

  As soon as she pressed send, another email popped up giving her a code for a special immersion pod at TimeWarp. She wasn’t exactly sure what was meant by special, but she figured that at that point, it really didn’t matter. It was a pod with little to no restriction on use and a stipend to go along with it. Not to mention actual job experience and a very good possibility of working in Meligorn.

  “What do I really have to lose?” she asked herself as she jotted the code down.

  She swiped next and an alert blinked in the corner of her screen. A deposit had been made into her bank account. She clicked on it and found more Federation “credits” in there than she had ever held in an entire year. In fact, she was sure a few of those would outweigh what she had made on side jobs and such for her entire life. She put her hand to her mouth and began to laugh, her head tilted back as she shook it in disbelief. Stephanie didn’t know what this company wanted with her so badly but hell, they were there before the magic, before the public show, and even after she’d been lobbed out of prep school. Why not give it a shot?