Silver Eyes (10 page)

Dahlia didn't appreciate my tone of voice. “And what's your grade point average?”

“Ninety-six,” I said. I was showing off, but it sure felt good. It was even true—sort of. I couldn't remember my high school grades, but I had a ninety-six percent average in the computer modules SilverDollar had made me take.

Dahlia's bottom jaw unhinged. Apparently, she'd had me pegged as someone dumber than her.

I felt smug, until I turned my head and saw Mike. Something tightened inside me. The Renaissance children were supposed to be supersmart. Was Mike smarter than I was?

I received a reply back from Anaximander that afternoon.

“I'm sorry, Angel. I would have told you if I could have that Eddy was going to be there.” Anaximander's jaw knotted, as if he had to fight to get the words out. “It was required of me.” The
message ended, leaving me puzzled. Had Eddy ordered him not to tell me? Why?

Timothy's mother wasn't home that evening, so Operation Planetarium was put into effect. When Graciana called everyone to supper I lagged behind and caught Timothy's arm. “Do you have the keys to the Exhibition Hall? Could you possibly sneak Mike, Rianne, and me in tonight?”

Timothy frowned. “Why?”

I lowered my voice to a whisper. “It's for Rianne. She's dying to see the Mars Planetarium. When we went yesterday, it was too crowded. She can't stand up, so all she saw was other people's heads. We wouldn't touch anything,” I swore. “We just want to see.”

Timothy eagerly agreed. My plan worked so well, I almost felt guilty. He definitely liked Rianne.

“Don't tell her the trip's just for her,” I cautioned Timothy. “She'll get all prickly on us. I told her I was going to ask you so Mike and I could have a semiromantic date.”

Timothy nodded, and we went in to supper.

At midnight the four of us met in the hallway, talking in whispers. I hesitated with my hand on the doorknob. “Should we invite the Flower Twins?”

“Zinnia's all right,” Rianne said unexpectedly. “You could ask her. But not Dahlia, please.” She faked a shudder.

“Invite neither or both, but not just one,” Mike said.

“Why?” Rianne wanted to know.

“Whoever you invite will take it as an insult. They're too close. Rejecting one is like rejecting the other.”

“But they don't even like each other,” Rianne said.

“Doesn't matter, they're sisters. Didn't you notice the way Dahlia zinged Timothy when he commented on Zinnia's running late this morning? They're allowed to criticize each other, but heaven help any outsider who steps in.”

I nodded. Mike was right. “We won't invite them then.”

The night outside had zoomed straight past cool and right into chilly. We cut
ruthlessly across lawns instead of sticking to the paved paths. One of the lawns fought back; it had recently been watered, and everyone's shoes got soaked.

Timothy had a flashlight, but otherwise the Exhibition Hall was dark and rather spooky with its high-ceiling echoes and odd-shaped shadows.

We made it to the planetarium without breaking anything and went inside the small dome. Timothy started up the show, and we stood in the middle of an exotic Martian sunset. The sunset swiftly dimmed, and the Martian night sky with its two moons came out. Then that scene shifted to the view from Phobos. Mars was rust red, so different from Earth, with no clouds to obscure its arid beauty. For the first time I began to feel the pull it exerted on Timothy.

He and Rianne were speechless before it, and Mike quietly took me away from them to a different part of the dome. They would assume we were seeking some time alone, rather than giving
them time alone. Classical music rose and fell, surrounding us in our own little bubble.

The question of Mike's intelligence had been burning in the back of my mind all day, and I couldn't resist asking him, “So what
is
your grade point average?”

My casual tone didn't fool Mike. He was silent a moment. “No, Angel,” he said finally. “I'm not going to play that game with you again. We aren't rivals, and I won't let you use competition as an excuse to keep me at arm's length.”

I opened my mouth to deny I'd done any such thing, and then realized he was right.

“Now can we talk about something important?” Mike said impatiently.

My face burned. “Of course. I talked to Eddy today and tried to pin down some more details about Timothy's kidnapping, but I didn't have much luck. He said the Spacers made ‘unreasonable demands.' ”

“When did you talk to Eddy?” Mike asked sharply.

“This morning.” I explained about Anaximander's message to me. “I hope he's not in hot water over this.”

Mike shook his head impatiently. “Don't waste your sympathy on him. Both he and Eddy are hiding something from us. But that's not what I meant by ‘important.' ” He put his hands on my shoulders. “Let's talk about us.”

Only he didn't talk; he kissed me instead.

He took me by surprise, and I reacted instinctively, closing my eyes and kissing him back before jerking myself away. I was trembling, deeply dismayed
by the way my body wanted to melt against his like plastic.

“Now tell me that you don't remember me,” Mike said, satisfaction in his tone.

“I don't.”

“Yes, you do.”

He touched my cheek, and I caught his wrist, making him listen. “No, I don't,” I said forcefully. “I'm sorry, Mike, but it's true. Shadow Angel may know you,
but I don't.
You can't expect me to have the same feelings for you that you do for me when I've only known you a few days.”

Mike didn't heed my blunt warning, pouncing on the bit of information I'd let slip. “Shadow Angel?”

I ignored him and started talking about what Timothy had told me regarding President Castellan's relationship to her half-brother.

After a brief pause, Mike gave in, and we talked about Eddy.

The planetarium's show started to repeat itself after half an hour, and Timothy turned it off. I studied Rianne's face by flashlight glow to see if anything romantic had happened between her and Timothy. I didn't think it had, but there seemed to be a new harmony between them that pleased me.

The group's mellow mood lasted until Mike went to open the door and couldn't. “We're locked in,” he said.

O
F COURSE, WE ALL PUSHED
against the door to see for ourselves, but Mike was right. The door had been barred from the outside.

Mike sidled up to me while Timothy and Rianne argued over who had entered last. “Is this part of your matchmaking scheme by any chance?”

I shook my head. It hadn't occurred to me.

“Damn,” Mike said.

I agreed one hundred percent. Being locked in was no big deal. Worst case scenario, we were found there in the morning and lectured by Anaximander. No, what worried me was, who had locked us in and why? Had someone followed us to the Exhibition Hall? Dahlia, maybe, angry at being left out? I preferred that thought to the grim one that my midnight excursion might have placed Timothy in danger. Was some would-be kidnapper waiting outside for reinforcements?

“Okay,” I said. “We're four smart people. Let's figure a way out of here.”

Rianne was all for cutting a way through the dome wall, but Timothy objected to damaging someone else's property. Timothy wanted to phone for help on his palmtop, but everyone else voted to leave that as a last resort.

In the end we followed Mike's plan. “Let's look around for another exit. There may be access to a catwalk or something.”

We didn't find any staircases going up, but we did find a ladder going down. A trapdoor in the raised platform that housed the holoprojector led to it. Timothy shone the flashlight inside, but it was hard to tell if the crawl space went anywhere.

“I'll check it out.” I swung my leg over the hole and climbed down. “I'm at the bottom,” I called up a moment later. “Hand me the flashlight.”

Timothy lay on his stomach and held out the flashlight, but I couldn't quite reach it. I jumped up and grazed it with my fingertips. Timothy thought I had it and let go.

Crash! One broken flashlight. Four blind people.

“Angel?” Mike called anxiously.

“I'm fine. I guess I'll have to explore by touch,” I said.

“Move out of the way,” Mike said. “I'm coming down.”

I didn't think it was a good idea to leave Timothy undefended, but I couldn't say so. “There's not enough room,” I said, but Mike didn't listen. I pressed my body against a wall to prevent myself from getting a foot in the face.

Once he was down, we stood back to back and felt the walls with our hands. I'd just gotten to the
bottom of my wall when Mike said, “I found a tunnel, I think. It's pretty small.”

I called up the news to Timothy. “We're going to go down a tunnel. Could one of you start counting so we can get a fix on your voices?”

Timothy began, a slight quaver in his voice. “One, two . . .”

Rianne joined in. “Three, four . . .”

I went first because I was smaller than Mike. I squirmed around, brushing Mike in the close quarters, then started down the tunnel on my stomach. I scraped my elbows on the rough cement. As a bonus, the tunnel was cold and dirty.

After only a few feet, I could no longer hear Timothy and Rianne counting.

“Watch for side passages,” Mike said from down by my ankles.

But all I touched was machinery, the generator that made the holoprojectors go. At the end of the tunnel was a larger space; I sat up gratefully and kept feeling the walls. Nothing, nothing. The ceiling. “Bingo. There's another trapdoor.”

I was afraid it would just bring us up back inside the planetarium, but we got lucky. When I cautiously put my head through I saw the faint illumination of the Exhibition Hall's sunroof. After that it was an easy matter to climb down from the platform and go around to open the door by removing the length of heavy pipe that had been shoved through the double door handles. Mike stayed outside just in case the mischiefmaker was still around.

I followed the sound of voices.

“Eight hundred and fifty-six,” Timothy was saying.

Rianne had stopped counting. “They haven't replied. I think we should go look for them.”

“No need,” I said cheerfully. “We made it out. Come on.”

They didn't have to be asked twice. Twenty minutes later we were safely back in the Castellan house, without having seen any sign of the mysterious person who had locked us in.

Rianne covered her mouth to choke back giggles when we stepped into the porch light. I studied Mike's dirt-streaked appearance with resignation. “I suppose I look just as bad as him?”

“Worse,” Rianne said. “You're blond. At least you used to be.”

Timothy and Rianne had gone to bed by the time Mike and I took turns using the bathroom. “Good night.” I sent Mike a friendly smile.

But he wanted more. His soft voice caught me in the hall. “I want her back. The other Angel. I won't stop until I find her.” And, devastatingly, “I miss her.”

Something of what I was feeling must have shown on my face, because when I came in Rianne sat up in bed. “Angel? Is something wrong?”

I sat down on the edge of my bed and started changing clothes. “Mike kissed me.”

Rianne grinned. “Oh, yeah? Tell me more.”

I shrugged. “He's a good kisser.” I pulled on my nightgown.

A pause. “I thought you liked Mike.”

Whoops. Now I was endangering our cover story. “I do,” I said hastily. “It's just the usual relationship
stuff. You know, does he like me as much as I like him? I mean, after this weekend I have no idea if I'll ever see him again.”

“That's tough.”

I turned off the light and climbed under the covers, but rolled over on my side so I could talk to Rianne across the space between our beds. “What do you think?”

“I've never had a boyfriend, so I'm the wrong person to be asking for advice,” Rianne said.

“Never?” I couldn't believe it. Rianne might not be able to walk, but she was gorgeous. Fairy princess beautiful with wonderful high cheekbones.

Rianne gave a short, bitter laugh. “Yeah, strangely enough boys aren't attracted to the wheelchair.”

I thought perhaps that her coming up short in the boyfriend department might have a bit more to do with the chip on her shoulder, but didn't say so.

“But if I were you,” Rianne said, “I'd go for it. Speaking as someone who might drop dead at any time, I'd say don't waste your chances.”

I was silent a beat. “Would you care to repeat that? What do you mean you could drop dead at
any time?”

From the long pause before Rianne spoke again, I gathered that she hadn't meant to let that slip. “In addition to bad legs I also have a bad heart.” Her voice was ultracasual. “When I was five, the doctors said I wouldn't live past sixteen. My mother had a similar condition, and she lived until she was thirty-five, but sooner or later a bad shock will do me in.”

I was angry that she hadn't told me before—but I also knew that in her shoes I wouldn't have told anyone either. I sensed her holding her breath, waiting to see if the knowledge would change the way that I treated her, so I kept my words practical. “What do I do if you have an attack? Do you have medicine?”

“Yes. There's a vial of pills that I wear around my neck at all times. Give me two of them.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I think I'll take your advice. About Mike. I mean, if I don't give us a chance then I'll never know. Let me know if you change your mind about Timothy,” I teased her. “You can fake a heart attack and make him give you the kiss of life!”

A pillow flew out of the dark and hit me on the head.

The next morning I watched Dahlia carefully, but she showed no awareness that the four of us had sneaked out. That left possibility number two, an enemy of Timothy's. Which meant I would have to tell Anaximander what had happened. The thought put me in a bad mood, and Mike made things worse.

“Well, I will say the food's decent working for SilverDollar,” Mike said for my ears only after another huge breakfast courtesy of Graciana. “Remember back in March when we came home to find Anaximander in our apartment and had to skip town before payday? I was getting pretty tired of roast potatoes before you earned some cash baby-sitting.”

A little Chinese girl giggling as I tickled her—

—
and then I was falling through murky green water, drowning. Again.

Mike reached out to steady me, but I slapped his hands away. “Stop it,” I said tightly. “You know I don't want to remember.”

“Yes,” Mike admitted. “But I don't know why you don't want to remember.”

Instead of answering Mike, I went back into my bedroom and recorded a short message to Anaximander, confessing our midnight jaunt and telling him that someone had shut us in. On the walk to the symposium, I was as cool to Mike as I could be without making Rianne and Timothy wonder if we'd had a fight.

Mike didn't take the hint, lacing his fingers through mine. “Boy, you must be mad at me. You took off your angel pendant.”

My hand flew to my neck, but it was bare. “Where is it? What happened to it?” I forgot my annoyance at Mike, dismayed.

Mike studied me warily. “I assumed you took it off before we left the house.”

“Was I wearing it at breakfast?” I got down on my hands and knees and brushed my fingers across the pavement.

“I don't know if you were wearing it at breakfast.” Mike crouched down beside me. “So you really lost it? You weren't trying to draw my attention to your bare neck?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Mike frowned back at me. “You were touching your neck. Fiddling with your collar. I thought you wanted me to notice you'd taken off the pendant.”

“No.” My hand crept up there now. My neck felt naked. I had worn the angel pendant Mike had given me for Christmas night and day since coming to work for SilverDollar, never taking it off.

And what did that say about my feelings for Mike?

I avoided pursuing that thought. “Think back. When did you last see it?”

“I don't know. Maybe yesterday at breakfast, or supper the night before. Don't worry about it. The chain probably broke and it fell on the floor. Graciana will find it when the robots clean your room.”

I wasn't reassured. What if I'd lost it somewhere else?

Rianne, Timothy, and Zinnia had stopped ahead of us. “What's wrong?” Rianne called.