Despite My Fear of Heights, the Space Princess Still Loves Me!

The thing no one tells you about space is just how far away it is from the ground.

I mean, it’s obvious, but you don’t really know until they shoot you up the space elevator in fourth grade and force you and all your classmates out onto the transparent observation zone platform. It’s only when you’re there, getting jostled by the idiots who think jumping up and down might crack quadruple-reinforced oxyglass and get you all sucked out into the vacuum of space, that it hits you. You stare down, seeing entire oceans and continents below your feet.

And then you throw up.

“Stretch, Annin! You almost got it, man!”

I stretched my arm as far as I could, almost hearing the muscles in my shoulder screaming in protest.

I, too, wanted to protest. To say that just because I was the tallest one in the class didn’t mean people should always ask me when they needed someone to get something from up high. Especially when that something was as trivial as a bouncy ball. But I was already here, so I squeezed my eyes shut and kept feeling around the top of the cupboard.

“It’ll be easier to find if you keep your eyes open,” said a familiar voice from my right.

“Shut up,” I growled back. “I’m… I’m enhancing my other senses.”

That’s what they always say about blind swordsmen in the shows, right?

Unfortunately, the fact that I was thinking about this kind of thing meant I was now distracted. I knew it was a bad idea, but I couldn’t stop myself. My eyes opened, and I looked down to see Elliso. His face, framed by blond hair with a meticulous middle part, displayed a charming grin designed specifically to harass me.

I had other problems, though.

The feeling of vertigo hit me at the exact same time my fingers made contact with the ball Deji had accidentally bounced on top of the cupboard.

Now, you might say that having your fear of heights kick in when you’re on a chair that puts you barely two feet above the ground is absurd. You might also say that it happening to the tallest guy in the classroom makes it even more ridiculous.

No one would agree with you more than me.

After that, everything happened in slow motion. My fingers loosened around the rubber sphere I’d risked my peace of mind to capture as I started to tip off the chair. My left hand slid toward the edge of the cupboard, unable to decide if it wanted to re-tighten around the ball or grab on to something to save me.

Below me, Elliso’s face transformed from a wide smile into surprise as he took a step back. At the back of my panicking brain, a distant part processed an elongated, “Waaaaaaaatch oooouuuuut!” coming from his mouth.

Finally, my left arm, which was somewhere above my head at this point, decided to give me a hand. The bouncy ball went flying, and my palm slapped against the door to the cupboard, sliding downward until my fingers locked around a metal door handle. I held on for dear life, praying the door was locked.

I don’t know how my feet or the chair didn’t go flying in the opposite direction, but I came to a stop with my arm fully outstretched, body at a forty-five-degree angle above the floor, shoulder once again protesting.

Thankfully, the cabinet door stayed locked shut, saving me from the embarrassment of faceplanting into the floor.

Beneath me, Elliso was leaning away, his face almost directly below mine. His hands had spread wide, and I made a mental note that, despite the fact he had initially looked like he was going to run for it, he’d been ready to catch me.

“You okay?” he said. “What just happened?”

“I, uh…” I dug around my brain cells for my words, but the aftermath of the vertigo had rattled them together and shaken them out in disarray. “I just, uh…”

For just a moment, the easiest answer jumped to the tip of my tongue.

I’m afraid of heights.

It would be so simple to say it. It should be. And yet…

Before I could open my mouth and expose my secret, a new voice inserted itself into my plight.

“Annin’s just doing his T*rzan impression. Right?”

Elliso and I looked at each other.

“What?” he said.

Both our heads turned toward the source of the voice. There, walking up the aisle between the desks, Nelle XI Yumin Ronder held the ball I’d risked my life to recover. Her blue hair, its low, short twintails falling over her shoulder, bounced with her steps as she came toward us. Beneath her shifting bangs, her green eyes held a rueful look that said, “Yeah, not the best I could have come up with.”

What she said out loud was, “You know, hanging from the trees?”

If I was lucky, maybe the fact that I’d managed to get the ball would distract everyone from what she’d just said.

The look Elliso gave me said he wasn’t convinced.

“Why are you doing an impression like that right now?”

“Just help me get back up, will you?”

Elliso put his hands on my shoulders and pushed while I pulled myself back to upright on the chair. I’d just regained my balance when a joyous hoot drew our attention back to the classroom.

“You got it!” Deji, the guy who was the reason I’d had to undertake this rescue mission in the first place, sprang into my field of vision to reclaim the ball from Nelle’s hand. He hooted again, and then, to my dismay, spun and hurled the ball straight into the floor.

I didn’t even need to watch to know where it was going to end up.

“…”

“Annin… please…? You’re already up there.”

I closed my eyes, inhaling a long breath.

“Don’t talk to me this time.”

I reached back on top of the cupboard, leaning my forehead against the door as I stretched for extra stability. As soon as I found the ball, I flicked it over my head, not really caring where it landed.

“Ow!”

Actually, scratch that. I did care. Hearing Deji’s yelp of pain was just the satisfaction I needed.

Behind me, the classroom erupted into chaos as I carefully let myself down from the chair. The ball had rebounded off Deji’s head, ricocheting among our unprepared classmates. Voices rose, but I ignored them as I crouched, then put my butt on the seat, then slid my feet to the hearteningly solid floor, moving like an old man getting out of the bath.

Deji launched himself after the ball, Elliso joining him. The latter tried to grab the pink sphere, but missed, accidentally kicking it across the room. A girl shrieked, several guys ducked, and the quick grin I saw on Elliso’s face made me wonder if it had been an accident at all or if he was just enjoying the unfolding mess. The ball went sailing out the open front door to the classroom.

In the midst of it all, only one person was watching me.

“Come on,” Nelle said, her hand closing around my wrist as she pulled me toward the still closed back door. We slipped out unnoticed, a pile of students forming at the other door to complain and laugh as they stuck their heads into the hallway to watch Deji attempt to corral the ball.

Nelle and I went around the nearby corner in the opposite direction, and I felt a bit of relief as we leaned against the wall. Somehow, I’d manage to escape the whole ordeal with my secret still hidden and only a minor, jungle-man-shaped bruise to my pride.

I sank down until I was sitting on the ground, my face between my knees. A hand patted the top of my head.

“You could have let someone else get it, you know.” Nelle’s light voice floated down from above me. “It’s okay to say you don’t want to do something.”

“I didn’t have an excuse.”

“No one’s going to guess you’re afraid of heights just because you refuse a request like that.”

I sighed. Now that the adrenaline of the incident was fading, all I felt was exasperation. In the grand scheme of life, being afraid of heights was far from the worst thing. It was kind of pathetic, sure, but it wasn’t like I was, say, in danger of dying in an interplanetary war or something truly serious.

“Telling people I’m doing a T*rzan impression isn’t exactly helping.”

“Hey!”

I heard a quick rustle of clothes and turned my head to see Nelle’s eyes large next to me.

“It was the best I could come up with.”

“That was your best?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Did it?”

A smile spread across her face, proud, with one side of her mouth curving up.

“It was close enough. It doesn’t matter anyways. No matter how I have to do it, I haven’t forgotten our promise.”

“Listen, that–”

“No, no.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Whatever happens, I, Nelle XI Yumin Rondar swear to you, Annin Sessa, that I will protect your secret no matter the cost.”

I tried to protest. Unfortunately, the sensation of someone speaking directly into my ear made it not only impossible to speak, but to breathe.

“And a princess,” Nelle whispered. “Never breaks her promises.”

You can understand why I was having such a hard time not falling in love with this girl.

“This week,” Mrs. Wynchis said from behind her desk at the front of the science lab. “We’ll be doing something fun: an egg drop experiment.”

From the seat in front of me, the excitement of Nelle XI Yumin Rondar was palpable. She straightened, as if a shiver of anticipation had gone up her spine, attention directed forward with the intensity of a researcher who’d just discovered a new quantum particle.

For my part, I’d suddenly developed an acute case of wishing I would come down with a devastating cold that would keep me out of school for the rest of the week, possibly even the entire year.

“We’ll spend the rest of today’s class and the first half of Thursday building your containers, then do the drop the second half of that class. Pick someone to partner up with, then come get your materials.”

So that was it. My fate was sealed. I had until Thursday before an unavoidable trip to the school roof would give my secret away once and for all.

Nelle hopped off her stool, making her way to the front of the classroom as conversations between my classmates broke out around me and people began to pair up. I watched her pass between the tall science lab tables, her steps light and bouncy, pick up one of the slatted wood boxes, and make her way back.

She put the box on the high physics lab table, smiling brightly.

“We could never do this back home,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to try it!”

“Because of the gravity difference?”

She nodded, then began to rummage through the box.

“What are we going to do, though?”

“Well, what kind of materials do we have?”

“Not that.”

She gave me a meaningful look, raising her eyebrows as she pointed upwards. My stomach dropped at the reminder of the trip to the roof in the uncomfortably near future.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’ll just get through it.”

“Are you going to tell everyone?”

I’d asked myself the same question hundreds of times in the past. After all, being afraid of heights wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It wasn’t like the ignoble circumstances of how I’d developed the fear had made me pretend that I had food poisoning on that fourth grade trip up the space elevator. It also wasn’t like I was aware of the irony of being tall enough that I sometimes got a bit dizzy just from looking down at my feet. It wasn’t like reasons like that were the reason I still kept it a secret.

It also wasn’t that, after all these years of hiding it, making the choice to tell people seemed impossible.

And it was most definitely not what they called the “sunk cost fallacy.”

“Don’t worry,” Nelle said. I looked up at her and saw the one thing that could possibly terrify me more than having to go to the school roof.

I saw the face of a princess who had just had an idea.

You see, the thing about being raised as royalty, about having your whole life planned out for you, about being given the best education possible from a young age, is that while it makes you very intelligent, it has the side effect of making you very bad at thinking on your feet.

At least, that’s the way it was for the princess I knew.

That’s right. Despite her amazing grades and intuitive understanding of all things scientific, Nelle XI Yumin Rondar was absolutely terrible at improvising.

Actually, let me revise that statement.

In one sense, Nelle’s ability to come up with ideas on the fly was unparalleled. She, in fact, had zero problem inventing solutions on short notice. The problem was, absent the time to properly vet them before they came out of her mouth, there was an almost 100% chance they were bad ideas. She had the kind of spur-of-the-moment, unfiltered creative intellect, for example, that might cause her to suggest someone who had very obviously just lost their balance due to a fit of vertigo was actually doing an impression of a certain character from a famous movie about a man raised in the jungle.

“We can just tell everyone you’re allergic to eggs.”

“Huh?”

I had a vision of a conveyor belt carrying a series of delightful egg-based dishes past me toward a gaping void: eggs and bacon, egg tarts, quiches, French toast. Even plain hard-boiled eggs took on a nostalgic sheen as I reached out futilely for them, the consequences of this single threatening idea of Nelle’s carrying them out of my reach forever.

“That won’t work,” I hissed under my breath.

“Why not?” she asked, looking far too pleased with herself. “It’s not an uncommon allergy.”

“That is not the problem. Think about it. If you go through with this, I’m never going to be able to have an omelet at school again.”

“Again? You eat sandwiches for lunch every day.”

“Maybe I’d like to eat one at school someday. Don’t take my future away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I have to go through with this. For the sake of your honor.”

“There’s nothing dishonorable about being afraid of heights!”

“So you’re just going to tell everyone about it, then?”

“…”

She had me over a barrel there. The phrase “sunk cost fallacy” again floated through my head.

“What about egg salad sandwiches?” I said, desperate to avoid adding a new, completely false character trait to my life.

We both knew I had never eaten an egg salad sandwich, but she had to at least admit the possibility was there. Nelle made a show of pondering my latest rebuttal, tapping a finger on her chin. For a moment, I had the distinct impression she was greatly enjoying herself in the midst of this little farce.

Actually, the way we’d just bantered our way through such an absurd suggestion had me thinking something else was going on here.

“Wait,” I said, just as Nelle opened her mouth to speak. “Have you been playing me this whole time?”

The brightness of the grin that appeared on her face almost blinded me.

“What gives you that idea?” she said, obviously delighted.

I groaned, tenting a hand over my eyes.

Of course.

Even for Nelle, the egg allergy idea was too ridiculous. And, what’s more, when I looked back on the conversation, I realized she had clearly thought of it beforehand. She’d been the one to initiate the whole thing. This was no off-the-cuff idea, invented in a moment of panic; this was a premeditated act of violence. The moment she’d asked me what we were going to do, I’d already fallen into the trap.

Nelle’s shoulders shook with concealed laughter. Watching her, a part of me wanted to free my outrage, but in the middle of the classroom, I had no choice but suck it up and accept my loss.

I sighed and stood up, moving toward her.

“A princess nev–” she began, but I was too quick. Before she could finish the word, I’d stepped as close as I dared and placed a single finger over her lips.

“Not a single word more from you, your highness,” I said, my voice as low as possible to avoid causing a scene.

Her eyes lifted to meet mine, and I became very aware of two facts. One, that her face had gone very red. Two, that her lips were against my finger.

Slowly, I pulled my hand away from Nelle’s mouth, bringing it to rest against my chest. Around us, the chatter of the class seemed to fade. I felt myself swallow, as if it were a different person’s throat making the motion, unable to look away from the spring-colored green of her eyes. Underneath my withdrawn hand, my heartbeat accelerated.

Let’s just say I hadn’t fully planned for the consequences of shushing her like that.

“Annin,” she said, very quietly. In my periphery, I saw her right arm, the one nearest the table, lift. But I couldn’t look away from her face.

I dipped my head slightly in response, not sure sound would come out if I tried to speak.

“Since you’re not allergic, can I offer you an egg in these trying times?”

My gaze dropped to see, in the palm of her right hand, a brown egg.

Nelle’s laughter rang out through the entire classroom, but all I could do was crouch with my hands on my knees and stare at the floor.

It was, I think, what they call a comprehensive defeat for Team Annin.

In retrospect, using a hand-cranked bingo machine is a pretty insane way to try to prevent a cosmic war. But there I was, a third-grader holding out my hand as a man in a ridiculous burgundy three-piece suit churned the balls until a golden one fell out into my outstretched palm.

They called me “The Common Man’s Ambassador to the Princess of —————” or something like that. As a kid, I couldn’t even pronounce the name of the planet. By the time I was old enough to think that maybe I should try to figure out how to wrap my mouth around the syllables, it didn’t matter anymore.

Peace had arrived for humanity.

“Fifteen minutes left!”

I stared at the strange contraption in front of me on the lab table. All around our creation, piles of aerospace-grade foam, unused compressed carbon rods, tubs and tubes of non-toxic superadhesives, and thin oxyglass panels created the impression of an astronaut and spaceship torn to grisly shreds by some kind of interstellar monstrosity. Next to me, fully focused, Nelle stood on her tiptoes, stretching so she could crane her head over the top of our egg container.

“Got it!” she said triumphantly. “Can you hand me the adhesive and then hold it in place?”

I stepped closer, giving Nelle the requested tube. I placed a finger carefully on top of the final transparent panel that would complete the object we’d been working on since Tuesday, keeping it from shifting as Nelle carefully applied the adhesive on each of its three sides. Although neither the substance nor its fumes were harmful, the chemical smell was nasty, enough to make the lunch I’d eaten right before the class—a deliberately chosen, perhaps overly stuffed, egg salad sandwich—churn a little in my stomach.

When she finished and recapped the adhesive, we both sighed in relief.

If I had been allergic to eggs, I was now fully protected from this one. Suspended in the middle of our container by several rods, each tipped by a small stack of the dense foam pads, it looked like the center of some kind of sci-fi energy generator. If the source of the generator was, for some reason, edible and extremely fragile.

Someone whistled behind my left shoulder, and I turned to see Deji examining our container, his oak brown eyes appraising.

“So you guys made a ball for your egg container, too, huh?”

“I told you before. It’s not a ball. It’s a geodesic polyhedron.”

The explanation came from the girl walking up behind Deji, the flat bangs of her crimson hair shifting along the top of her silver glasses’ round frames.

“Pera!”

Nelle circled around Deji and I to greet her fellow Experimentation and Analysis Club member with a hug. I watched Pera raise her arms and pat Nelle’s back twice before dropping them back to her side.

“That’s right,” I said, turning my attention to Deji. “It’s a geodesic polyhedron.”

He gave me a skeptical look.

“Don’t act like you knew what it was before I explained it to you, Annin,” Nelle said, releasing Pera. “You were all like, ‘Won’t a ball just bounce?’”

“Hey!” Deji said, smacking my arm in a gesture of camaraderie. “I said the same thing!”

I groaned.

“Don’t put me on your level. I had a good reason for being worried. Bounces mean more impacts.”

“Yoooo!” he said. “That’s smart. I was just afraid it would roll downhill and crash into something.”

I tried not to feel too devastated by the complete authenticity with which the worst student in the physics class had complimented my intelligence.

“Yes,” Pera said. “Roll down the hill of the flat schoolyard. A major concern.”

“I was trying to help!” Deji said, turning his back on me to confront Pera. “Come on, Pera. You have to admit it could have been a problem if we were dropping them on a hill.”

“I don’t see how that would be a problem with you around to chase after it. Maybe you’d trip and go rolling down the hill yourself.”

“Hey, you’re not imagining another way I could die, are you?”

For the first time since she arrived, a small smile manifested on Pera’s flat mouth.

“Not at all.”

Before Deji could protest further, a clap from the front of the room silenced the conversation around us. Mrs. Wynchis stood at the classroom door, ushering a pair of our classmates and their egg container out.

“Those of you who are done, bring your containers out into the hall. Only come if your adhesive is fully dried.”

“Let’s go,” Pera said, turning on her heel. Deji followed her, continuing to plead his case.

“Why does Pera always partner up with Deji?” I asked Nelle as she rejoined me at the lab table, frowning at the still setting adhesive on the top of our geodesic polyhedron of carbon rods and oxyglass triangles. She shrugged, her focus remaining on the egg container.

“You’ll have to ask her that. I don’t question Pera’s choices.”

I considered the dangers of engaging with Pera’s sharp tongue and made the self-preserving decision to let the topic alone.

“It’ll be done setting one minute before the deadline,” Nelle said. “I hope.”

“You hope?”

“Cutting the foam took longer than I expected.” She blew out a breath. “It’ll be close.”

We stood silently as the classroom gradually emptied around us, growing quieter as more people made their way out into the hall. The minutes passed, and I looked at Nelle. From the side, I could observe the gentle contours of her profile, its delicate dignity accentuated by the silence of her concentration. Her hands pushed into the pockets of her mint-colored bouclé cardigan, stretching out the fluffy fabric.

A slight flush of impatience danced on her cheeks, although her breaths were steady and her blinks regular. Absently, a hand came up to run its fingers through the hair below the tie of one of the twintails resting on her shoulder, the only sign that she was more anxious that she let on.

In moments like this, I could almost forget that I waited side-by-side with the princess they said saved humanity from self-annihilation via cosmic war. I could almost see her as the ordinary, science-obsessed nerd she was now. Maybe even an ordinary, science-obsessed nerd I could let myself fall for.

But only almost.

Isn’t it selfish to want the princess who saved the world to myself?

Isn’t my role just to stand by her, not to be with her?

That’s what it means to be an ambassador, after all.

Still, in these stolen seconds of selfishness, I found myself wishing the adhesive would set as slowly as possible.

Finally, she pushed up her left sleeve to check her watch.

“One minute left. Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’ll be fine. We’ve still got the walk to the roo–”

My gaze collided with Nelle’s, her eyes going wide in a way that said I wasn’t the only one who had forgotten a certain upcoming—no, now immediately impending—reality.

To the roof.

“One minute left, you two!” Mrs. Wynchis stuck her head back into the classroom. “Failing grade if your container isn’t out here in 55 seconds!”

“Mrs. Wynchis!”

My gaze swung back from our teacher to the girl beside me, whose mouth was already beginning to form words she wasn’t going to be able to take back.

Uh oh.

“Annin’s got a stomachache! He’s not feeling well enough for the experiment.”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Wynchis paused for a moment, looking at me. “In that case, get yourself to the nurse’s office. Ms. Rondar can complete the experiment for you.”

She disappeared out the door.

“What are you thinking?” I hissed, turning toward Nelle, who was reaching for something on the lab table. “I feel fine! I can’t just pretend I–”

“Sorry about this!”

“Wha–!?”

Before I could finish my question, the princess who stopped the war whirled from the table and shoved an entire tub of uncovered, noxious superadhesive right into my face.

I’ll let you guess what happened after that.

I stared at the ceiling of the nurse’s office, the phantom scent of adhesive still plaguing me. It wasn’t like I could actually smell it, more like my nose remembered what inhaling the odor at such close proximity had done to my stomach. My delicious egg salad sandwich had long departed from my body, leaving me hungry and yet not especially eager to fill the space it had vacated.

Beyond the bed next to the one where I lay, an open window welcomed in the comforting sounds of the late spring afternoon and a pleasant, sweet-smelling breeze. I inhaled deeply, hoping the fresh air would clear my sinuses. Although the nurse’s office was on the opposite side of the building from the sun this time of day, I still could see trees’ shadows beginning to lengthen across the schoolyard when I propped myself up on my elbows.

It was rather peaceful, enough so that part of me had the gall to feel a bit thankful for my present circumstances.

On the other side of the curtain that separated the beds from the nurse’s station, I heard the door from the hall opening. A few seconds later, the fabric drew back, and a familiar face appeared.

“You look pretty healthy for someone who was supposedly barfing all over the floor of the physics lab.”

I scowled at Elliso.

“Sorry for not being in agony.”

“Heh.” He grabbed the chair near the head of my bed and spun it toward himself, sitting down backwards and crossing his arms over the chair back. “Glad you’re feeling well enough to give me attitude. Where’s the princess?”

“Nelle?”

The last time I’d seen the person responsible for me losing my lunch, she’d been thanking the school nurse before vanishing behind the curtain to go complete the egg drop experiment. Although I’d finished puking well before that, my stomach had still been turning over wildly enough that I hadn’t been able to speak. Which meant I hadn’t been able to say anything to counteract the tight expression on Nelle’s face before the nurse swept her out of the room.

“She went back to class,” I finally said. “We were doing the egg drop today.”

“You missed it, huh? Were you going to be the one loading the container into the launcher or the one observing?”

“Observing?”

“Yeah. Our class did it yesterday. One partner went up to the roof, and the other went to the observation station they set up to take notes from the ground.”

“From the ground?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“From the ground.”

“Yup.”

I stared at Elliso. Then, even though it hurt my stomach, I started to laugh. It started with a single snicker, but before I could try to reel it in I was in the throes of a full-on laughing fit.

“Slap happy much?” Elliso said, eying me like I might be dangerous. “Or is it like, dehydration or something? From all the puking?”

“It’s… nothing,” I choked out between laughs. “Just…”

Elliso, to his credit, waited patiently as I regained my self-control.

“Are you going to explain yourself now?”

I shook my head, wiping away a tear that had beaded in the corner of my eye near my nose.

“It’s nothing. Just something stupid.”

“If you say so.”

A silence descended between us, the sound of the wall clock’s ticks beating out the time until the end of the school day. Elliso drummed his fingers on top of his arms. After a moment, a slow smile spread across his face, one of the devilish ones that he sometimes used when he was flirting his hardest with an underclassmen.

“I bet Nelle was bummed.”

“Hmm?”

“Think about it. Our poor princess, suddenly left alone when she was expecting you at her side. It’s basically like you stood her up on a date.”

“A da–!?”

I knew Elliso was just goading me, but the unexpected turn caught me off guard. The same imagination that made me see energy reactors in eggs now conspired against me to generate an image of Nelle. A certain, very specific image from a day not too long ago when she’d been waiting for me after school to go study at a nearby cafe, and the shining smile I’d witnessed as I approached.

“Or maybe, with that reaction, you’ve already been on one.”

“Leave me alone, man.” I looked away, casting my gaze out the window. “There’s nothing happening there.”

“Isn’t there? Disappointing.” He clicked his tongue.

“What do you mean? I’m still technically her ambassador.”

When I looked back at him, Elliso wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully, a move I’d seen him deploy enough times in the past to make me completely immune to its effects.

“Don’t use your flirting tricks on me. I’m not interested.”

“Because there’s someone else you’re interested in, right?”

“I never said anything about being interested in anyone—don’t wink at me like that.”

“You’re so boring, Annin,” he said, pushing up from the chair. “Who cares if you’re still technically ambassador or not? None of that means anything anymore. Live a little. Like me.”

If only it was that easy.

“I don’t have it in me to flirt with everything that moves. I have standards.”

“Royal standards, eh?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You don’t have to, my boy.” He put a hand on my shoulder, patting twice. “But I’ll leave you to recover. See ya tomorrow, am~ba~sa~dor~!”

With another wink, he vanished behind the curtain. I heard the door to the hallway open just as the bell marking the end of the day chimed.

Despite my earlier laughing fit, talking with Elliso seemed to have left me in better shape, my stomach no longer feeling like it was floating around in zero gravity. I even maybe thought I could stand to eat something. Through the open window, I could hear the post-school buzz of my fellow students beginning. The more time went by, the more I felt my mind easing into silence.

I sat on the bed for a minute or two—or maybe it was longer than that—just staring outside as a trickle, then a steady flow of people made its way through the yard. Another breeze wafted in, rustling the curtain. Somehow, I felt as if I were waiting for someone.

I wasn’t sure who, though.

The door opened again. The school nurse appeared, asked me a few questions, and then shuffled me out the door.

Outside the office, I stood still for a moment, then slowly began making my way toward my locker to retrieve my things. Something about having been taken out of the normal flow of the day, of having run out the final hours of classes in that quiet office, had made everything feel far away.

In an unreachable part of my subconscious, something stirred, but no matter how I grasped, it eluded me.

I passed by people in the hall, wandering through splotches of amber sunlight pooling on the reflective waxed floor. Rooms with half-closed doors filtered sounds of clubs starting up, a distant trumpet blaring alone somewhere, stopping, restarting, stopping, restarting again. Every once in a while, I felt my shirt flutter against my skin as passing forms stirred the fabric.

Where was she?

My locker stood in front of me. I lifted a hand to open the door, but from my side fingers, with nails painted ivory appeared and closed around my wrist.

“You okay?”

When I looked up, green eyes greeted me.

“You okay?” Nelle repeated. “You look like you’re in a daze.”

The trumpet started up again, closer this time. Just a few notes in, another joined it, calling out in harmony.

I blinked, looking from her face to my hand and back. Chatter sharpened around me into gossip and jokes, indistinct shapes becoming people laughing and milling about, the feeling of Nelle’s hand on my skin firm and real.

We were shoulder to shoulder.

“Hey,” I said, my voice feeling as if I hadn’t used it in days.

“Hello? Answer the question.”

I dropped my hand and she let go, an almost apprehensive expression on her face.

“Apparently,” I said. “There were observers on the ground for the egg drop.”

“Yeah.”

We looked at each other, silent until her lips pressed together and cheeks puffed out, trying and failing to fight against the rising corners of her mouth. The pfft came out before I could catch it, and then we were laughing.

Just laughing together.