Kate Day - In the Quick

They only let me sit in because we won the Materials competition last year, she said.

Then I’m glad I’m on your team this year.

She laughed. Then she looked doubtful. You have to pass a fitness test to get into Candidate Group. Most people stay in Trainee.

What kind of fitness test?

You don’t have anyone to talk to, do you?

I did. My uncle. But he died.

Her face softened a little. Your uncle who started this school.

I nodded.

My parents are dead too. But I have my brother—he’s in year six—and my sister.

Amelia, I said. She used to come to my house. Does she teach here like Theresa?

No. She’s in orbit.

Do you get to talk to her?

Sometimes. Not as much as I want.

Is it true she’s going to pilot the rescue mission?

Lion shouldn’t have said that—

But she is, right?

A strong buffet of wind hit the walls and I flinched.

She shook her head. You’re too young to be here, you know. Who sent you?

My aunt.

Did she know what this place was like?

I think so.

Okay June, she said. I’m going back to my book. But you can sit with me if you want. If you stay quiet.

But I had one more thing I wanted to say. Carla, about the hand—

You’ve only just joined the group. No one expects anything.

I do have an idea.

And it will turn out to be an idea we’ve already had, she said.

It has to do with— I hesitated, then reached across the space between our two beds and opened my palm —what a hand is.

She looked at me.

Take it, I said.

She did and I squeezed. Do you know what I mean?

She turned her head to one side; there was a strange expression on her face. Then she laughed and reached for her headphones. Did you do the extra equations for math? If you haven’t you should.

I got my equations out, but I didn’t do them. I turned the piece of paper over and drew hands instead. I liked being close to Carla. I wanted to show her my drawings and to ask her what she thought. I wanted to try again to explain what was in my mind. But I didn’t. I stayed quiet because she asked me to.

Now that I knew about Candidate Group it was all I could think about. Carla and Lion and Nico had already passed the fitness test, but a girl whose bed was near mine told me she had failed it the first time around. She was allowed to take the test again after the holidays, but she was worried about the push-ups and sit-ups. She said she could run the ten miles and do the sixty-minute dive at the pool, but the other things she wasn’t so sure about.

I could take the test then too, since I had arrived after the school year began. But I couldn’t do any of the things she mentioned. Maybe I could do the dive—I’d managed thirty minutes during my last session at the pool. But the ten miles? I could barely complete two at our morning fitness run.

During the next free period I sought out Lion, who I’d seen running extra laps around the track in the yard during free period. I stood where I could see him go past. The cold pinched my fingers and toes, and I stomped my feet. Rockets sparked and fizzed overhead. I wanted to look at my book, which was about robotics, but I didn’t. I waited. Finally Lion appeared and I waved. He ran past me and then ran back.

He stopped in front of me and put his hands on his thighs; his breath made clouds in the air.

I said, I’m not going to pass the Candidate Group fitness test. I’m smaller than everyone else to begin with—

Size isn’t what matters. It’s strength and endurance.

We watched some kids run by, their sneakers crunching on the gravel. Lion leaned against the building and stretched his legs. Did you exercise before you came here? Train your body?

I used to throw a stick for my dog Duster.

I don’t think that counts.

Can you help me?

You’ll have to eat more.

The food is bad—

Yeah. It sucks. You have to choke it down.

I said I’d try, and he said we could start in the morning but I’d have to get up before everyone else. That’s what he did, and I should too.

The next day I woke before dawn. The huge room was hushed; all the other girls were still asleep, even Carla, with their blankets pulled up to their chins. The floor was freezing under my socked feet and I dressed quickly.

I met Lion outside the girls’ dormitory under a sky that looked like snow. He laughed when he saw me. My coat was puffy with the layers I was wearing underneath—track pants (I’d traded for them with another girl the night before), a long-sleeved shirt, and a thick sweater.

He was wearing thermal underwear under shorts, a hooded sweatshirt with the outline of a shark on it, and a pair of very clean white sneakers. His hands were buried deep in the pocket of his sweatshirt. At least take off the sweater, he said.

I pulled off my sweater and he showed me how to stretch my legs, and I tried to move my body the way he did.

No, your left foot. His breath made a cloud in front of his face. Bend it like this, over your right knee.

I pushed my hair from my face and did what he said but it still wasn’t right.

He showed me again.

We did many more stretches, and I saw him suppress a smile when I lost my balance as I reached my arms behind my back like he did.

Finally we were done. This early we can run on the Candidate track, Lion said, and started toward the second track I’d noticed my first morning at Peter Reed. We skirted the stretch of snowy field, and Lion sped up as soon as we reached the pavement—unlike our track it was fully cleared of snow.

My feet smacked the pavement while Lion’s barely made any noise at all. Just a soft sup sup, sup sup. The cold air burned my throat. My feet felt heavy, irregular. I was already breathing hard.

Up ahead another pair of runners came toward us through the frosty air—Theresa and James. They were wearing blue track pants and sweatshirts with the Explorer program insignia on the sleeves. I drew myself up, tried to get my breathing under control.

Then they were right in front of us, the sound of their feet hitting the pavement steady and rhythmic. Theresa wore a blue fleece headband that covered her forehead and ears, and her ponytail streamed out behind her. The way she ran seemed to be all one fluid motion. James took up more space on the track than she did, and he had a long, lean, powerful stride. His cheeks were red from the cold and it reminded me of the day we stood in the field and watched Inquiry ’s launch.

They didn’t acknowledge us as they ran past. I tried to catch James’s eye—I wanted him to remember me. I wanted to ask him about the rescue mission. Lion shifted to the right, off the track to let them go by, and at the last second James turned his head. He had an intense way of looking at people, almost like his gaze was pinning you in place. A memory rose up in my mind—of him standing at my uncle’s door, a stack of handwritten computations in his hands. He’d looked at me the same way when I’d told him, My uncle’s not here.

Then he had pushed the pages into my hands and said, Tell him I figured it out, okay?

I’d brought the papers inside, sat down on the steps, and tried to read them. I stayed there studying them until the hallway turned dusky and my aunt’s paintings threw up strange shadows on the walls, until I managed to decipher the first half of the first page.

I started jogging after James and Theresa. I don’t know exactly why, what I intended to do, but for about thirty seconds I matched their pace. My feet hit the ground hard and my arms pumped against my sides.

Lion yelled, What are you doing?

Stop, I called after them, panting, and they slowed and turned around.