Nine
Rural Virginia
By the next day, Nadiya was aware that she had caused a scandal.
No one dared to say a word to her face, of course, but she caught the whispers. Even the espionage students weren’t subtle.
The gossip was that Nadiya—yes, Nadiya—had eaten lunch with the new girl. Yes, the new girl, redneck Barbie, did you know she’s a pageant queen? Have you heard her accent?
Nadiya had begun to get strange looks in the hall. When she passed, the other students would flush and duck their heads, murmuring
to each other behind their cupped hands. I heard they talked. I heard they even laughed.
Matteo was derisive. “You have to be kidding me,” he said, when they met for breakfast the next morning. “What did you even
talk about? Squirrel hunting? Lawn chairs in the living room?”
“What do we talk about that’s so sophisticated? Half the time you’re admiring your reflection in the back of a spoon.”
Matteo tried to look wounded, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “You know, this is compromising all your efforts
to seem intimidating.”
It would be a lie to say she didn’t enjoy seeming intimidating. But that was what made eating lunch with the new girl all
the more out of character. Nadiya told herself she would never have done it had Dr. Iver not given the order. She didn’t want
to get a reputation for friendliness.
She also didn’t want to admit that some very small part of her had enjoyed talking to Giselle. She was funny, and interesting, both guileless and guileful in a seemingly contradictory way that also made perfect sense.
Admitting that would’ve meant . . . what? That she was following Dr. Iver’s orders so consummately that she had made their
friendship genuine? Or that she was insipid enough to allow herself to be charmed by a girl whose past included modeling star-spangled
bikinis? Or was it something else—something more confounding, something worse?
She didn’t want to fuel any more gossip, so instead of the dining hall, she invited Giselle to join her at the shooting range.
Why not? Giselle had said she wanted to learn to defend herself; she should at least know how to fire a gun. Basic weapons
management was a required course at Valeran, so Nadiya would be giving her a head start.
Even the clerk at the armory window gave them a wide-eyed look, but he didn’t comment. He just passed them the pistol. It
was one of the new Luster models, which Dr. Iver had repeatedly encouraged her to use. Auric must have promised him a significant
endowment, maybe donated a building.
The range was empty. Nadiya led Giselle to her favorite lane and then held out the gun.
Giselle grimaced. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Have you really never used one before?”
“No. I don’t like guns. My mother’s old boyfriend had one. He would pull it out whenever . . .” Giselle glanced away. “But
no, I’ve never used one. Tragically, I missed out on all the squirrel hunting and skeet shooting.”
Nadiya wondered if Giselle had overheard her conversation with Matteo. Her voice had grown uncertain, and her gaze was distant.
“You don’t have to do this,” said Nadiya, “if you don’t want to.”
“I do.” Giselle lifted her chin and met Nadiya’s eyes. “I do want to. Just . . . just don’t laugh when I embarrass myself.”
Nadiya pressed her lips together. Giselle took the pistol from her gingerly, and turned it over, testing its heft. It did
look unnatural in her hands. Giselle’s fingers were small and delicate, and her nails were still painted with chipping pink
polish.
Giselle looked up—noticing Nadiya noticing. “When was the first time you used one?”
“I was nine.”
Giselle watched her expectantly, as if hoping for elaboration. But Nadiya said nothing. She felt a familiar curtain draw shut
inside her, that steel-ribbed veil that held every secret within—and kept everything else out.
She walked over to the lane and took out two pairs of earmuffs from under the window. “Here,” she said. “Put these on.”
Giselle joined her. She brushed back her red-gold hair, which always appeared to be slightly wild, and slipped the earmuffs
on. A strand of hair got caught inside the earmuffs, and before Nadiya could even think, she found herself reaching up and
brushing it back.
It barely qualified as a touch—her fingers had grazed Giselle’s skin for only a fraction of a second—but Nadiya’s heart thumped.
She immediately withdrew her hand.
“Thanks,” Giselle said quietly.
Nadiya nodded and slipped on her own earmuffs. There was a residual prickling in her fingertips.
She guided Giselle into place. Since they couldn’t hear each other with the earmuffs on, Nadiya had to arrange Giselle’s limbs
and adjust her posture in silence. She pressed one hand between Giselle’s shoulder blades, fingers threading the silky-soft
strands of her hair. She used her other hand to lift Giselle’s arms into a rigid, outstretched position.
Her feet were still not quite planted. Nadiya couldn’t figure out another way to correct her pose except to stand flush against her, aligning her body to Giselle’s.
They were near enough that Nadiya could feel Giselle’s muscles tense briefly, and then relax.
She could feel the fluttering of her pulse.
Giselle’s hands trembled as she found the trigger. Another moment passed, a moment in which Nadiya’s pulse also began to race.
And then the shot rang out, audible even through the earmuffs, leaving a bullet mark just to the left of the target.
Immediately, Giselle’s shoulders slumped and she dropped her arm. She stepped away as Nadiya lifted her earmuffs and tried
to find the words to tell her it wasn’t a bad shot, especially for her first time. But her throat was too tight. Giselle stood
at a distance again and Nadiya felt as if she had lost something, but she didn’t quite know what.
That evening she ate with Dr. Iver at the headmaster’s residence, as she did every night. Nadiya felt oddly restless. She
ate uninterestedly, staring out the window as dusk overtook Valeran. The clouds were scattered gray and thin and the sun glimmered
dark gold, slowly vanishing behind the dome of the amphitheater.
Dr. Iver set down his glass. “You seem ill at ease.”
“I’m not. Sorry.” She looked back at him, and then the words came out in a rush: “Why did you bring her here? Giselle.”
Dr. Iver leaned back in his seat, and now it was his turn to glance out the window. He stared for what felt like a long time
at the sun, so vivid in its final hours. “You find her charming.”
His tone was light. Nadiya felt a flush rise to her cheeks.
“No,” she stumbled. “That’s not to say she isn’t—I just want to know what she has that no one else does.”
Dr. Iver turned back to her. “I understand,” he said. “You have a right to be curious, especially given that I asked you to befriend her. I imagine the entire school is equally bewildered. She’s not quite our typical student, is she?”
Nadiya nodded uncertainly.
“So why don’t you join her at her session with Professor Blanchard tomorrow? You’ll see the use we have for her singular talent.”
Professor Blanchard was Valeran’s proverbial mad scientist. Ordinarily he was squirreled away in his office, drinking bright
blue energy drinks of his own invention and examining MRI scans of echidnas. The thought of him having any proximity to Giselle
made Nadiya’s chest tighten.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“Good girl.”
Dr. Iver gave her that uninhibited smile that always put her mind at ease. It reminded her of being nine, ten, eleven, playing
under the desk in his office or clinging to his arm. It was not the same smile he used with his students—thin-lipped, cryptic.
And it was not the same smile he’d used the first time he’d put a gun in her hands.
When Nadiya retreated to her bedroom that night, she saw that Dr. Iver had replaced her old nodes with new ones, in a pristine
plastic case. She felt strangely queasy as she undressed, examined her reflection carefully in the mirror, and then ran her
tablet’s flashlight up and down her limbs, checking for unnoticed cuts or bruises.
Finding none, Nadiya put on her pajamas and sat down on the edge of her bed. Her hand hovered over the plastic case, but she
didn’t pick it up. She lay down without attaching the nodes, hair spreading across her pillow, and turned off the light. For
some reason she didn’t want her usual oblivious slumber. For some reason, she wanted to dream.