Chapter 22
Time skips. One second she’s motionless in her chair, the next Julian’s around the table and hauling Clarke to her feet, and the next they’re out of the dining room.
There’s air to breathe out here, even if it’s just a hallway.
Clarke takes a gasping inhale. The oxygen breaks up some of the fog in her brain, the last few minutes coming into focus, and it’s not a pretty picture.
She needs to do damage control. The cameras were rolling that whole time, and Sara won’t have been streaming live but there’s still footage.
She tugs on the hand that’s tucked into Julian’s. “I have to go back. I have to apologize to my management for causing a scene, and to my family for that happening in front of them, and Ndira and Elise for—for—”
There’s a sound behind Clarke, probably a restaurant employee coming down the hall.
Julian swears and drags them both through the nearest door.
It’s a single-occupant bathroom, probably meant for the private dining room their party is in.
Ostentatious, like the rest of the restaurant.
The sink is big enough for Clarke to take an ice bath.
Julian taps his knuckles on the panel next to the door to lock it and turns to Clarke. He looks equal parts worried, sad, and infuriated. “Finish that thought.”
No. No. Clarke doesn’t want to finish that thought out loud. Clarke doesn’t even want to have had that thought in her head.
“Clarke.”
“Don’t.”
“Clarke, ple—”
“I’m the reason he’s dead,” Clarke hisses, covering the two steps from where she is by the stupidly massive potted plant—why would anyone want a tree in a fucking bathroom—to Julian by the door in a heartbeat.
“You want me to finish the thought? I need to go back in there and apologize to Ndira and Elise for being the reason that their son is dead.”
Clarke feels like she’s been torn in half.
She feels like she’s one hitched breath away from puking in the ridiculous excuse for a toilet.
She feels like going back in time and throwing her younger self out a window for putting one of her best friends in an impossible position without even knowing it.
Most of all, she feels overwhelming guilt.
Julian doesn’t back down in the face of her whirlwind. “Keep going.”
“If he’d taken the contract right when Yves offered it, he wouldn’t have been there that day.” The need to move takes over; she starts pacing. “He’d have been up with you in F0. And the only reason he wouldn’t have accepted the contract was because I wanted—”
“You knew Connor, Clarke. He loved you, but he wouldn’t have passed on a chance at F0 to spare your feelings.”
“But Ndira said—”
“Ndira said he was thinking about it, and that must’ve been where you stopped paying attention, because then she said that Connor was going to say no. He didn’t think he was ready for F0 yet. He wanted to spend another year in the lower circuits and keep developing.”
“But if I hadn’t—”
“If you’re blaming yourself, you have to blame me, too.
He didn’t talk to me about the offer, either.
I guess I was so wrapped up in my own shit that season that he didn’t feel he could.
” Julian crosses to the sink, rolls up his shirtsleeves, and washes his hands.
They’re shaking, slightly, under the spray.
“You’ve always said he seemed distracted that day.
Maybe if I’d been a better friend, he would’ve—”
Dismay filters through Clarke’s guilt at the sign of Julian’s distress, and the reminder that she’s not the only one who just got blindsided. “No, Julian. You’re not responsible for what he chose not to tell you.”
He meets her eyes in the mirror. Through the strain of turbulent emotions on his face, he raises a knowing eyebrow.
She flushes and claps her hands to her face. “Fine. Yes. I hear it. Give me a minute.”
Clarke breathes into her palms until her stomach stops shaking. When she drops her hands, Julian is still standing at the sink, turned around and leaning back against it, gripping the basin on either side of his hips. Waiting, patiently, for her to be ready.
She walks to the sink. Adjusts her dress. Presses handfuls of cool water against her cheeks. Her sleeve brushes his.
“Not to rush you,” Julian says, “but I get the feeling that if we don’t get back soon, Imogen’s going to peel Yves’s face off his skull and feed it to him, and I want a front-row seat to that.”
Clarke laughs. It’s shaky, but it’s there. “I’m really glad you were here tonight.”
His smile lights up his whole face as he unlocks the door. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Clarke leads the way into the hall. “You could’ve told me you were coming.”
“And ruin the surprise? On a related note, I’ll be at the beach with you on Monday.”
Clarke sighs. “Who invited you?”
“Kuari got to me first, but Ihaka and Elise asked, too.”
“You don’t have to come.”
Julian’s fingers close around her elbow. It’s a loose grasp, something she’d break without any extra effort if she kept walking, but she lets it act as a fulcrum to swing her around.
Julian speaks quietly, cognizant of the door to their dining room just a step away. “Do you not want me there?”
Clarke almost says that it’s not a good idea.
She really is enjoying talking to him again, but so far they’ve only spent hour-ish sessions together in closely monitored situations, aware of the cameras at all times.
A whole day, with Clarke’s family and Connor’s moms—what if it’s too much? What if they’re not ready for that?
But Kuari invited him.
Kuari was six when Julian moved in with them, nine when Julian moved out, and ten when Clarke and Julian stopped talking.
Clarke never asked her family to choose sides, never wanted them to, but she knows it’s been hard on her little brother.
And Ndira and Elise are as much Julian’s as they are Clarke’s.
“I just—I don’t want to spend my birthday fighting,” Clarke says.
“So we won’t fight,” Julian says, like it’s that simple.
Clarke gives him a skeptical look. “You’re going to be nice to me all day?”
“You’ve never wanted me to be nice to you. When we were fourteen and you were going through that losing streak, you told me you’d rip my spine out and beat me with it if I ever let you win a race.”
“Between that and what you said about my mom tearing Yves’s face off, it’s a miracle you feel safe hanging out with us.”
“The women in your family are terrifying, but it’s a taste I’ve acquired well,” Julian says with a wink, and pushes the door to the dining room open.
—
“Did you know about me before Yves reached out when I was signing my rookie contract?”
The meal is over. Everyone’s heading back to the hotels.
Julian and Connor’s moms caught an aerotrain going their direction; Clarke’s family is waiting for their ride on the sidewalk a bit farther up the street.
Clarke wandered away from them to where Anders is lingering, waiting on Yves to finish settling the bill.
Anders considers her. “Yves asked for my opinion on Connor when Elemental was making a short list. He was only a few months into the semi-pros; not nearly enough elite racing experience for the stats to stand alone. So his coaches included color commentary about what he was like as a student, how he handled wins and losses, how he socialized. Madeline Clarke and Julian Casperi were all over Connor Bennett’s youth scouting report. ”
Clarke looks up at the night sky so she doesn’t have to look at Anders while that sinks in.
It makes sense that she and Julian and Connor would feature heavily in one another’s write-ups from back then.
They were better than anyone else their age by a not-insignificant amount, and their choice to be friends instead of cutting one another down was notable.
Luna hangs full and bright in the sky. Clarke can pick out Mare Imbrium, where they raced two weeks ago, and track down and left to Mare Insularum, where Elemental is headquartered next to the pockmark of Copernicus Crater.
She looks farther out, searching for Mars, but doesn’t find it before Anders keeps talking.
“I knew the last name, and I knew your face. You look just like your mom. So, yes. I knew about you. I knew you were my daughter.”
“You didn’t say anything. You didn’t reach out.”
“Would you have wanted me to?”
Clarke doesn’t know the answer to that, so she moves on to another question. “Did you ask Yves to give me the seat? After Connor died?”
Anders blows out a breath. “The truth? I asked him not to.”
Clarke’s surprise is strong enough to overrule any pain, although she’s sure that’ll set in later. “Why?”
“You’re not good enough for Formula Zero.
” He says it flatly, no inflection. It’s a fact, to Anders.
Clarke isn’t good enough. “You’re a very talented pilot, Madeline, but you’re not exceptional.
And in F0, if you’re not exceptional, you can either accept it and be someone’s secondary, or you can fight against reality until you burn out.
You’re too stubborn for the first, and I’ve lived the second.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, let alone my daughter. ”
“Maddie!”
Clarke turns mechanically at the sound of her mom calling for her.
She feels stricken. Offended. Mad at herself for feeling anything at all.
What right does Anders have to pass judgment on her, and why is she letting it affect her?
People have been telling her she’s not good enough since she first got into a cockpit. Why does this cut so deep?
She passes Yves emerging from the restaurant on her way back to her family and remembers that she’s supposed to give him the marked-up contract proposal tonight. She still could. Right now, in passing, or just send it directly into his inbox without speaking.
But Yves and Anders aren’t going back to the hotels.
They’re headed to a media event, a reunion of sorts with other people who were active in F0 twenty years back and are in town for the race.
Of the two of them, Yves is apparently the one who believes in Clarke more.
She can’t drop her list of demands on his metaphorical desk right before he goes off with Anders, who’ll probably try to talk him out of keeping Clarke at all.
“You okay?” Imogen asks when Clarke’s close.
“Yeah,” Clarke says, pulling her fake smile back into place. “I’m fine.”
—
When Clarke calls for an elevator at the hotel, the interface panel politely informs her that there’s a package waiting at the front desk.
It’s more than one package. It’s several boxes of gifts. The receptionist brings out a liftpad and helps Clarke load them up.
She sifts idly through the packages. The people she knows personally either gave her presents directly or had them shipped to her house earlier this week; these are courtesy gifts from other teams, from the brands she has sponsorship deals with, fashion designers hoping she’ll wear their outfits to the big Sponsors’ Gala coming up toward the end of the season, that sort of thing.
Even if she wasn’t too worn out from the day to open them tonight, she still wouldn’t.
She’ll send them all to Elemental HQ and set up time with Sara to film the unboxings so all the relevant parties can be tagged.
One of the packages draws her attention.
It’s not covered with logos, nor is it wrapped in brightly colored paper.
It’s small, about the dimensions of Clarke’s hand, and there’s nothing on the outside to note whom it’s from or the occasion.
The front desk would’ve done a scan to ensure there’s nothing dangerous inside.
Curious, Clarke props up her cuff’s holoscreen to record just in case it’s something Sara’ll lambaste her over not having a live reaction on film for later. She tears the paper off, revealing a plain brown box.
Two things tumble out of the box when she upends it over the mattress. The one Clarke catches in her hand is a flimsy piece of plasticky material that reads Clarke in black letters inside a double border of white and black. Clarke doesn’t know what it is. A sticker?
She picks up the other item, which had fluttered down to the bedspread. It’s an old-school business card, the type printed on cardstock. The Provenance logo is centered on the back.
Clarke paws through the rest of the packages, suspicion prowling in her head.
Yep, here it is—Provenance sent her something else.
A bigger box, flashy. It’s standard for F0 teams to acknowledge pilots’ birthdays that happen mid-season.
Bright Door sent Clarke a plushie of herself last year.
Sara gave Plushie Clarke her own media accounts.
Why send two gifts?
Clarke turns the business card over. Atreus Skordi, it reads. Team Principal, Provenance Formula Zero. His contact information, a small barcode Clarke could scan, is below.
Odd. Clarke’s seen Atreus around, of course, but they’ve rarely spoken. Odder still is the handwritten note beneath the barcode. Just something to think about.
Clarke sets the card and the sticker next to each other, puzzled. The black-white-black of them match, and the overall stylization. It’s almost as if…
Clarke lunges for her screen to stop the recording, heart suddenly beating hard.
She deletes the video. She hard-deletes it out of her Recently Deleted folder.
She goes to the folder shared with Sara, where everything on Clarke’s camera roll copies over so Sara can pick and choose additional content to post on Clarke’s behalf, and checks the access log—no, Sara hasn’t seen it yet.
Good. Clarke hard-deletes it from that folder, too.
She collapses the holoscreen and picks up the sticker.
It’s not a sticker. It’s a decal. It’s the type of decal you put on the back of an F0 racing ship. It’s Clarke’s name, in Provenance colors, ready to put on a Provenance ship.
It’s been a long, stressful day, but hope sparks in Clarke’s chest. Happy birthday to me.