Chapter Forty Six: One More Lap

The blue mark on the wall had survived every attempt to remove it.

Julian stood over his half-packed bag and rubbed it with the corner of a damp towel. From most angles it was barely visible, a short diagonal above the desk, pale enough to pass for a trick of the light. Unfortunately, he knew exactly where it was, and every time he stepped back to see whether he had made any difference, his eyes went straight to it.

“What are you doing?” Mateo asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then it’s taking a while.”

Julian lowered the towel. In February, Ben had thrown an uncapped marker at Theo. Theo had ducked. Julian, who could catch objects before most people realized they were falling, had been looking at Aisha. The marker had struck the wall, and for several weeks afterward Ben had referred to it as the only successful attack on Julian’s defenses.

Now it would not come off.

Mateo crossed the room, inspected it, and took the towel. He rubbed once.

“That’s in the paint.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

He handed it back and returned to the suitcase open on his bed. Julian remained by the desk, looking around the room and trying to identify why it had begun to feel unfamiliar while almost everything was still there.

Mateo’s shoes lay under his bed, one upright and the other on its side, as though they had disagreed about where to stop. Two cups waited on Julian’s desk. He knew which was his by the small chip beneath the handle; his thumb found it every morning before the first sip. But the sweatshirt was gone from the chair, and Mateo had emptied the shallow dish by his bed. Things that Julian had learned not to move, like the steel dice and the loose button Mateo kept meaning to do something about. With their bags open on the floor, there was suddenly too much bare desk, too much of the beds.

The room had already adjusted its lighting to the cleared surfaces. Soft light reached corners usually hidden beneath somebody’s clothes, and Julian remembered standing in the doorway with his parents, trying to decide which bed to take. Back then, the room had looked ready for anyone. He had liked that briefly, before his parents left.

It was starting to look that way again.

He took his sweatshirt out of the bag and dropped it over the chair.

From the corridor came the sound of wheels catching on a threshold, followed by someone telling a suitcase to stop being stupid. Mateo held up a shirt.

“Clean?”

Julian glanced at it.

“How would I know?”

“You notice things.”

“Smell it.”

“No way.”

He put it in the bag.

Julian sat on the edge of his bed. Inside his own suitcase, his mother’s packing list lay folded between two shirts. She had made it in September and insisted he keep it. Socks. Underwear. Toothbrush. He had thought it ridiculous then, having a written reminder to bring his underwear, but the paper had traveled home with him and back again, acquiring softened folds and a small tear beside the word toothbrush.

Outside, early June moved through the trees. The leaves were broad enough to hide the road beyond the residence, though he could still hear a vehicle arriving. When they had come back after spring break, the branches had been a green lace of new growth, each twig tipped with the tight, bright fists of leaves yet to open. He had watched them from this window without noticing the day they finally opened. There had been an entire season between then and this morning, enough time for schoolwork to become irritating again and for dinner to mean deciding where to sit.

Packing kept bringing back things from much earlier.

A call during his first month at Neurovia, when his mother still asked whether the showers stayed hot for everyone and if anyone made sure he ate vegetables. His father had leaned into view to ask about Mateo.

“Does he stay up late? Are you sleeping okay?”

“Dad.”

“I’m asking.”

His mother had wanted to see the room again. Julian turned the camera slowly, avoiding the clothes on the floor, and when he turned it back she was smiling.

“There’s too much food now without you. Your father is not eating enough.”

“Más bien tú eres la que hace comida de más,” his father teased.

They had both laughed. Julian laughed with them, then kept finding things to tell them so they wouldn’t hang up. He remembered describing a meal in far more detail than it deserved while his mother stood in their kitchen, listening as though the arrangement of his lunch tray mattered.

They still asked whether he was eating. But since the fire, his father sometimes began, “What do you think?” and waited for the answer with an attention that made Julian sit straighter. He liked being asked. He wanted to be useful to them, wanted his father to know that he could be. Sometimes, after the call, he missed having nothing more important to report than what they had served for dinner.

Other memories came without dates attached. Theo becoming impossible about a group project. Ben eating something labeled with Leena’s name and arguing that the label specified ownership without establishing a prohibition. Ethan making him replace it. Julian could no longer remember what the food had been, only all of them standing around the kitchenette while Ben tried to make his case and Leena waited with the empty container in her hand.

One evening last month, Aisha had come downstairs with her hair still damp and asked if anyone wanted to walk. Julian answered before checking whether she meant anyone in particular. They went past the reflecting pool and took the longer path behind the residences, talking about her brothers, maybe, or something Ben had said. He had forgotten most of the conversation. What remained was the brush of her sleeve against his hand and the way he kept his hand out of his pocket afterward, making it available to an accident he hoped would happen again.

Near the entrance, she slowed.

“One more lap?”

He had pretended to consider it.

Now, with his bag open at his feet, he wished he hadn’t bothered pretending. They could have walked until the path lights went out. He would still have said yes.

Mateo brought him back with a familiar click. He was working the heavy steel dice through his fingers without looking, light catching along the milled edges as they turned. Julian had grown so accustomed to the sound that he usually stopped hearing it after the first few seconds.

“Taking those, I assume?”

“I’d feel naked without them.”

Mateo slipped the dice into his pocket. Where they had rested on the desk lay a folded sheet Julian recognized from CISA: a rough diagram, several figures crossed out, a coffee stain cutting through one corner. Mateo looked at it for a moment, then folded it along the existing crease and tucked it into an inside pocket of his bag.

Julian bent to close his own suitcase halfway. Neither of them mentioned the paper.

Their last academic review was scheduled for eleven. At ten fifty-eight, Ben came out of his room to find Theo still in the corridor.

“If they ask what we learned this year, let someone else answer first.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll correct them, and then we’ll still be here in July.”

“That’s not…”

Ben looked at him.

Theo let the sentence go.

“Good,” Ben said. “Take that restraint into the room.”

Leena waited beside the stairwell. As they approached, she turned toward Theo.

“I finished your notes.”

“My notes?”

“In the novel.”

“Oh.” He stopped beside her. “You didn’t have to read those.”

“You shared them with me.”

“I meant you didn’t have to answer them.”

“I just answered some of them.”

Theo’s gaze shifted briefly as he opened the shared text, and Julian watched the moment he found whatever she had written. His expression narrowed into the familiar look he wore when a problem interested him, then changed again.

“Why did you stop there?”

“Because that’s where you stopped reading.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“So have I. Keep up.”

She smiled, and Theo looked back at her instead of the text in his feed.

“Are you reading the next one?” he asked.

“Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll leave the notes open.”

She started down the stairs. Theo remained beside the railing, and Ben waited with unusual patience until she was out of sight.

“‘I’ve been busy’?”

Theo turned.

“What?”

“She’s leaving you messages in a book, and you’re explaining a missed deadline.”

“They’re about the book.”

“Then you should probably finish it.”

Julian followed Leena downstairs. Behind him, he heard Theo ask how far she had gotten, and Ben laughed all the way to the next landing.

The atrium was full of voices and moving chairs. Someone from Cohort Three had brought a bag of sweets and was distributing them furtively, as if it were contraband. There were forty-eight students now, enough that Julian sometimes turned toward a voice expecting one person and found someone he barely knew. But underneath the unfamiliar sounds were the ones he could have recognized from the corridor: Aisha asking someone, “Did you eat?” and then, after an answer he couldn’t hear, “Today?”; Theo beginning, “That depends what you mean by…” before Ben groaned; Ethan offering to carry a bag and being told it was already where it needed to be.

Julian kept moving toward the chairs, smiling before he realized it. By tomorrow, he would miss this.

Soren stood near the garden doors. He saw Julian and waited until he reached him.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Morning.”

“Training over the summer?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Through the glass, sunlight lay across the path. Soren had his hands in his pockets, his weight resting on one heel, and Julian had learned enough by now to keep watching the rest of him.

“You made me change my approach on Tuesday,” Soren said.

Julian looked at him.

During their first matches, he had spent most of his time discovering mistakes Soren had already punished. Lately there were exchanges he could stay inside, moments when he recognized the invitation to retreat and held his ground instead, making Soren reset his feet or take another angle. He still hadn’t won. On Tuesday, he had thought he was about to.

“I thought I had you.”

“I know.”

“Was that the idea?”

Soren took a moment before answering.

“Not when we started.”

Julian searched his face. He remembered Soren giving ground, the brief opening along his left side, and committing because he was certain for once that he had seen something before Soren could close it. Then he had been on the mat, angry enough to refuse the offered hand.

He replayed the exchange afterward, then again before bed. He could see how he had lost. What he couldn’t tell was how long Soren had known he would. He had never seen Soren lose to anyone, which made progress difficult to measure; every time Julian forced something new from him, he discovered there was something new to force.

“You could look worried once in a while,” Julian said. “It would help.”

Soren smiled, and Julian disliked how pleased he was to have earned it.

“What are you working on this summer?” Julian asked.

“My recovery after a missed strike.”

“You miss?”

“You’ve been there for several of them.”

“Usually something worse happens right after.”

“Keep moving after I miss. You stop to see if it worked.”

Julian almost argued. Then he remembered Tuesday, and Soren watched the recognition reach him without commenting on it.

“If you want, send some training footage,” he said.

Julian glanced toward the atrium, where the others were finding seats.

“Only if you send yours.”

A small pause.

“All right.”

“Actual training. Not your best thirty seconds.”

Soren took his hands out of his pockets.

“You want to see me get something wrong.”

“Once would be nice.”

This time, Soren’s smile stayed.

“I’ll see what I can find.”

Halvorsen called for them to sit, and Soren moved toward his cohort. Julian watched him go before taking a seat beside Mateo, still turning the conversation over. He had wanted to beat Soren for so long that he had given very little thought to what it might mean for Soren to want him to improve.

Across the aisle, Rafe bent his head to catch Freya’s low words. A glossy candy wrapper clung stubbornly to her index finger; she flicked her wrist twice without breaking the thread of her argument. Rafe extended an open palm. She laid her hand in his, still speaking, and he peeled the wrapper free. Julian watched for a second longer than he intended, until Ben slipped into the row behind him and leaned between him and Mateo.

“If this turns into speeches, somebody say something nice about me.”

“Like what?” Mateo asked.

“I was hoping you’d have something ready.”

He turned to Leena before Mateo could answer.

“You’d mention me, right?”

“In what context?”

“Never mind. Hostile room.”

She smiled. Ben grinned back, then caught Theo’s eye two seats away and mouthed, You? Theo pointed toward the front, where Halvorsen was waiting.

Ben settled back. For nearly a minute, he stayed there.

There were assessments, acknowledgments, reminders about departure times. At the mention of the morning transports, Ben leaned forward again.

“Who’s leaving first?”

“Leena,” Mateo whispered.

“How early?”

“Ben,” Leena said. “I’ll say goodbye.”

“I know. I’m deciding whether I’ll be around for it.”

She reached back and pressed his knee.

“You’ll be around.”

He smiled and sat back, but his foot kept tapping against Julian’s chair, stopping when he seemed to notice and beginning again a little later. When the first applause came, Ben joined a beat late. Julian glanced back and found him looking along their row.

Halvorsen spoke about their coursework. She named projects from all four cohorts, including Ethan’s study of stress fractures in forged metal. Ethan looked down when people turned toward him, his ears going red, and Julian felt an unexpected affection for those ears. After everything Ethan could do, a roomful of people being pleased with him could still leave him staring at his own knees.

When their final reports appeared, Ben opened his immediately. For a while he said nothing. Then he leaned forward between Julian and Mateo.

“Eighty-nine.”

Mateo glanced back.

“In what?”

“Writing.”

“That’s good.”

“It’s adjacent to good.”

Theo looked over.

“You lost marks for going off topic.”

“The topic was restrictive.”

“It was a question.”

“A restrictive question.”

Leena leaned toward him.

“Show me.”

He shared the report. Her gaze moved through the comments, and Ben watched her read with more attention than he had given anything at the front of the room.

“She says you have a distinctive voice.”

“Read that part louder.”

Morse approached the lectern, and the room quieted.

In the weeks after the emergency, Julian had learned how many ways strangers could describe something they had not seen. A public report had acknowledged Neurovia’s contribution, and the students watched the first broadcast in this same atrium, sitting too close together beneath the high glass ceiling. There had been footage of the campus entrance and a graphic of a brain that resembled nothing Julian had ever felt inside his own head. Their names were withheld. Their ages were repeated.

Some people were astonished; some were angry. A man on one program said that no child should have been put in such a position, and Julian agreed with him until the man began explaining why none of their decisions could have been their own. His father called afterward.

“Don’t watch that one again,” he said.

Morse did not show the broadcast. He spoke briefly about the recovery work, about regional operators who had kept using the approach the students helped build. They had revised parts of it, discarded others, and taught it to people who had never heard their voices. The attacks continued for a time, but the failures stopped spreading. Farrell had made sure the students heard that from him.

Then Morse announced funding for a joint research program with federal response teams.

Julian felt the attention in the room sharpen. He could hear someone behind him shifting forward, and Theo had stopped looking at his report. There would be more work, more people, a future taking on the shape of something they might actually be part of.

“Participation will be discussed individually next year,” Morse said. “This summer belongs to your families and to you.”

Patel sat near the front with her hands folded over a closed folder. Julian had already discussed next year with her. He still wanted someone to call if they needed him, though the conversations had made him think more carefully about what he expected of himself after the phone rang.

At the lectern, Morse looked across the rows.

“We began this year with models of what you might become,” he said. “You have given us reasons to build better ones.”

Julian thought of the first bus emerging through smoke, its shape becoming visible a little at a time. The others had followed. Every one. For a moment he could remember that without beginning the rest of it, without returning to the decisions before or the fears afterward.

He sat beside Mateo and let himself feel proud.

By late afternoon, the lounge smelled of packing tape, warm fabric, and the orange Ben was eating over a bin without managing to keep the peel inside it. A striped blanket lay across the couch. Leena had rescued it from somebody’s departure bag and declared it communal property.

“It was always communal property,” Zara said.

“Then why was it in your bag?”

“I was testing the policy.”

On the low table, Theo spread out a sheet of rules, and Ben looked up with the immediate interest he usually reserved for someone else making a mistake.

“Oh, excellent.”

The paper was crowded with handwriting.

CAUGHT COUNTING CARDS = COURT JESTER DANCE.

CAUGHT CHEATING = PIRATE VOICE FOR THE HAND.

CAUGHT STEERING SOMEONE’S PLAY = WHISPER TAX.

READ TELLS OUT LOUD = SWAP CLOTHES

And, near the bottom:

LEENA-LEVEL READS = AUTOMATIC LOSS.

Leena leaned over it.

“They still have that?”

“They’ve added to it,” Theo said.

“Where did you get it?”

“He asked,” Ben said. “Out loud. Through an approved doorway. I was there.”

Theo ignored him.

“It’s called Undertow. Count the players, deal that many cards to each. Ten people, ten cards. We add decks whenever we need them.”

“So everyone can play?” Ethan asked.

“If you can find somewhere to sit.”

Ben shifted his cushion farther beneath the table.

“Excellent. Furniture determines eligibility.”

“Follow suit if you can. Highest card in the suit led takes the trick. No trumps. If two people play the same highest card, the first one wins. Whoever takes the trick leads next.”

Theo picked up another pack.

“Before we start, everyone bids how many tricks they think they’ll take. You have to get it exactly.”

“Over is as bad as under?” Ethan asked.

“Both miss. You lose a piece of clothing or accessory. Get your bid correct in a later round and you can put one back on.”

Ben inspected Theo’s sweatshirt.

“You’ve dressed with tremendous confidence.”

“You can also quit whenever you want,” Theo continued. “Before you run out of things to take off.”

“And the last bidder?” Mateo asked.

“Can’t make the total bids equal the number of tricks.”

Mateo looked around the table.

“So somebody’s wrong before we even start.”

“Familiar educational environment,” Ben said.

A knock sounded against the open door. Nyx stood outside with Soren, holding up several decks of cards.

“You’ll need these.”

Theo glanced at the packs on the table. Nyx followed his gaze.

“Those have translucent backs.”

Leena lowered her head into one hand.

Ben pointed at Theo.

“We were going to discover that scientifically.”

Nyx placed her decks on the table. Behind her, Rafe and Freya appeared in the corridor, Freya carrying a bowl of something still giving off steam.

“We heard there was food,” she said.

“You brought food,” Zara said.

“Yes. The intelligence was excellent.”

“We can leave it.”

Freya looked at him, then into the room. Leena glanced toward the table, where a chair had been left half under it.

“Bring that one over,” she said to Rafe. “There isn’t room on the couch.”

He nodded and came in, lifting the chair clear of Ethan’s foot. Julian saw Leena notice the care he took before she moved her own bowl to make space for Freya’s.

It took them several minutes to agree on how many people were playing, mostly because Ben counted Soren, Soren said he was watching, and Ben counted him again. Eventually Nyx gathered enough decks, removed the jokers, and divided the cards between herself and Theo to shuffle.

Julian sorted his hand twice and arrived at two different bids. The aces looked dependable until he remembered there were copies of them elsewhere. His king might win if someone drew out the aces first, or leave him taking a trick long after he had won everything he wanted. Around the table, the others made their own estimates, and each number spoken aloud changed how he felt about his cards.

He had been fairly pleased with them before anyone else began talking.

Ben bid three.

Theo looked up.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was a numerical expression.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked at my three.”

Nyx wrote down the bid.

“You can be wrong privately,” she told Theo.

The first hand ended with Theo dancing.

He had taken precisely the two tricks he wanted, then explained why his final club had been safe by naming the higher clubs already played, including which copies had appeared in the same trick.

Ben put his cards down.

“I’d like the record to show that nobody asked.”

Theo claimed he had not been counting. He had only remembered.

Nyx listened to the distinction with the patient interest of someone hearing an old excuse in a new voice.

“Center of the room,” she said.

Ben pulled a chair back. Theo stood in the space it left.

“What does a court jester actually do?”

“Historically?” Mateo asked.

“Do not help him,” Leena said.

Theo made a movement with his shoulders that suggested a shirt had become unexpectedly itchy.

There was a silence. Ethan bent forward, both hands over his face.

“That’s it,” Ben said. “That’s the worst thing you’ve ever done.”

Theo stopped.

“You have context.”

“I do. That’s what makes it devastating.”

Leena was laughing too hard to speak. Theo looked at her, and for one brief, astonishing moment he did the movement again.

That finished Ethan. The stool creaked beneath him, and Tamar caught his bowl before it slid from his knee.

“We need the furniture next year,” she managed.

The next hand began more slowly. People had discovered that a high card could become a burden, and that someone who had spent the first half of a hand trying to win might spend the rest pleading for assistance. Bids were written beside names on a pad near Nyx’s knee. Ben kept checking his, as though the number might improve if given sufficient attention.

Near the end, Mateo watched Aisha consider a discard.

“You might want to keep that.”

He offered it lightly, just as her fingers began to move. Her hand stopped. Then she looked at him.

Around the table, everyone waited.

Mateo exhaled.

“How long?”

“Rest of the hand,” Nyx said.

He leaned toward Aisha.

“That card is still a mistake,” he whispered.

She played it anyway.

On the final trick, Ben led a low spade. Aisha looked at the queen she had kept, then at the harmless little card she had discarded a turn earlier. The rest of the table followed with cards that left her taking one trick more than she had bid.

Ben brightened.

“I’d like to thank you for believing in me.”

“You needed to lose that.”

“And you’ve been very supportive.”

Mateo spread his hands.

“I did warn you,” he whispered.

Aisha unzipped her light jacket and laid it across the arm of the couch. In the next hand she made her bid exactly, put the jacket back on, and settled into it with a glance at Mateo.

“Without consultation.”

He inclined his head.

“Your independence has been noted.”

On the other side of the table, Leena began explaining what Theo’s expression had revealed about his cards.

“You did the same thing when you had the ace. You looked at everyone else first, and then…”

She caught herself, but Theo was already leaning forward.

“No. No, finish it.”

Leena stopped.

Ben slapped the paper.

“Read tells out loud. Swap.”

Theo looked at the rules, then at Leena. She wore the teal scarf her mother had given her, loose around her neck against the air-conditioning. He wore a faded sweatshirt with a frayed cuff.

“You only have to swap one piece of clothing.” Nyx said. “And the swap lasts until you both stop playing. Otherwise people spend the entire evening negotiating.”

Leena unwound the scarf. Theo pulled off his sweatshirt so quickly that he got one arm free before the other, leaving him briefly caught inside it with his face hidden and one elbow pointing at the ceiling. His T-shirt sat crookedly at the shoulder when he finally emerged.

Ben made a small sound.

“Don’t,” Theo said.

“I’m being incredibly respectful.”

“You’re making a noise.”

“It’s the sound of respect under pressure.”

Leena passed over the scarf and pulled the sweatshirt on, its sleeves falling halfway down her hands. Theo draped the scarf around his neck.

“You’re supposed to wrap it,” she said.

“It’s June.”

“You’re the one who wanted me to finish.”

She reached across and adjusted it, folding one end through the other. Theo became very interested in remaining still. Julian looked away and found that Aisha had seen him see it. They exchanged a glance, which was enough to make both of them smile.

“Excellent,” Ben said. “A second investigation.”

“Deal,” Aisha told him.

By the time Isaac and Kael arrived, the room had run out of seats and acquired a fourth bowl of snacks. Isaac stayed behind Kael’s shoulder until Freya moved onto the floor and made a space.

“You can sit there,” she told him. “It’s safe unless Ethan laughs.”

Ethan shook his head.

“That happened once.”

“This evening,” Ben said.

Kael took the floor beside Isaac. People shifted knees and bowls to make room, and Nyx told them they could join the next hand. Theo counted the players again, checked the stack, and opened another deck.

Ben watched him add it.

“We’re going to need somewhere else to put the table.”

“Move your food,” Zara said.

“Let’s hear other proposals.”

Soren had watched from the end of the couch without taking a hand. When Theo reached to deal again, Ben put a palm over the cards.

“No. He has to play.”

Soren looked at him.

“I’m watching.”

“Yes. We’ve noticed. Some of us have danced.”

“You could stop counting cards.”

Ben turned toward the others.

“See? Advice. From a man with nothing at stake.”

Julian leaned back against the couch.

“Come on. Skin in the game.”

Soren glanced around the table. No one came to his defense. Rafe pushed the snack bowl aside, and Ethan shifted his stool enough to leave a narrow space between them.

After a moment, Soren moved forward.

“Deal.”

“One more each,” Theo said, counting again.

Ben removed his hand.

“I’d like mine faceup. Apparently I’m going to need help.”

Soren sorted his cards, and Julian recognized the change immediately: his shoulders settling, his attention narrowing, the room becoming a collection of movements worth noticing. He had seen that look from the other end of a training mat. Seeing it directed at Ben, who had orange dust on his fingers and a cushion wedged behind his back, made him want to laugh.

“Two,” Soren said when the bidding reached him.

He took his first trick early. After that he was patient, letting other people fight over cards he seemed content to lose. Julian caught himself watching Soren more closely than his own hand and had to look down before it cost him.

The second trick Soren wanted arrived several turns later. He gathered it, squared the cards, and placed them beside his first.

From then on, he needed to lose.

He appeared to have arranged that too. His low cards slipped beneath other people’s winners, and once he discarded a queen with such evident satisfaction that Ben leaned sideways to look at his remaining hand.

Soren drew it closer.

“Ask politely.”

“Would you politely turn your cards around?”

“No.”

“Worth exploring.”

By the penultimate trick, Soren held only two cards. Ben led a heart, and Soren placed the king of clubs on the table.

“Hold on,” Leena said.

His hand stopped.

“You still have a heart.”

“No commentary on people’s hands.”

“The corner of it is showing.”

He looked down. Above his thumb, the nine of hearts was plainly visible.

Ben leaned so far forward that his cushion fell behind him.

“Oh.”

Soren drew the king back and played the nine.

“Fine.”

“No,” Ben said softly. “Not fine.”

Nyx slid the rules toward him.

CAUGHT CHEATING = PIRATE VOICE FOR THE HAND.

The room went quiet with anticipation. Soren read the line, his jaw shifting, then looked at Theo, whose turn came next.

“Your move.”

Ben lifted a finger.

Soren stared at him. Ben waited.

At last, in a low, gravelly voice that sounded as though someone had forced a pirate to attend a disciplinary hearing, Soren said, “Your move, matey.”

Ethan folded forward. Aisha pressed both hands over her mouth, and Julian felt the couch shake against his back. Theo tried to select a card and dropped both into his lap.

Soren waited, unsmiling.

Then, still in the voice, he said, “We haven’t got all tide.”

Ben slid sideways off his cushion.

“No,” he managed. “You don’t get to be good at this.”

“Play yer card.”

Theo recovered his cards and played. Soren watched the rest of the trick with undiminished concentration, which made it worse. He was still trying to make his bid. The voice appeared to be an inconvenience he intended to overcome.

Rafe had gone red. Freya watched him struggle for breath, then looked at Soren and started laughing again.

“Say my name,” Rafe said.

“No.”

Nyx tapped the rules.

Soren’s eyes moved back to Rafe.

“Nay.”

Rafe bent over his knees.

It took several minutes to finish the trick. Soren asked Zara to move her drink with a curt “Shift yer cup.” When Mateo hesitated, he told him to “pick a heading.” He delivered each line with the same concentration he brought to correcting someone’s footwork, and Julian’s face began to hurt. He had spent months watching Soren for the smallest sign of an opening. Now he could barely look at him long enough to play.

Ben won the trick. He looked at the final card in his hand, then at the king Soren had been forced to take back.

His expression changed.

Julian knew that expression. Usually someone was about to discover that a perfectly ordinary remark could be repeated in a damaging voice.

Ben laid down the two of clubs.

Soren looked at it.

Zara followed with a five. Tamar put down an eight and tucked her empty hands beneath her knees. Around the table, cards landed one after another: low clubs, useless diamonds, a heart nobody had wanted. The king reached the middle and stayed highest.

A third trick for someone who had bid two.

For once, Ben allowed the result to speak for itself. He sat back with both hands open on his knees, radiating an innocence so elaborate that even Isaac began laughing.

Soren studied the pile.

“Mutiny.”

Ethan made a helpless noise and caught the edge of the table.

Soren gathered the cards, then unzipped his jacket, folded it carefully, and put it beside him.

Ben wiped his eyes.

“I’m never getting rid of this game.”

Soren looked straight at him.

“Enjoy yer shore leave.”

Ben’s smile faltered. Julian lost what little composure he had recovered, and for the first time that evening Soren had to look down to hide his own.

In the next hand, Soren made his bid exactly. Ben accused him of putting his jacket back on smugly.

“I’m using the sleeves,” Soren said.

“Somehow you’re doing that smugly too.”

The game loosened after that. People left between hands to find drinks and returned to discover that the next deal had grown or shrunk in their absence. Each time Theo counted heads, Ben proposed counting someone twice because they were particularly difficult. Kael quietly made his first bid, and Isaac congratulated him with enough surprise to earn a look.

Theo and Leena stopped playing within minutes of each other and somehow neglected to reverse the exchange. The scarf remained around his neck; she drew the sweatshirt sleeves over her hands while watching the next set of bids.

Ben lost his button-down but still had a t-shirt beneath it. When he won it back he insisted the recovery demonstrated resilience.

“You’ve returned to where you started,” Mateo said.

“With experience.”

Julian could no longer have said who was doing best. There were bids recorded beside names of people who had moved to the floor, a jacket on the couch whose owner had gone for water, and an argument about whether Mateo’s whispered bid had been one or two. The person beside him claimed to have heard it clearly. Unfortunately, that person was Ben.

Someone came back with ice cream before the dispute was resolved.

It became difficult to tell when the game ended. Cards remained in people’s hands after conversations drifted elsewhere, and each proposed final deal found one more willing player. A crisp appeared on top of the undealt cards. Nobody admitted putting it there, and nobody reached to remove it.

Outside the open window, evening gathered slowly in the trees. Air moved through the room carrying the smell of leaves and cooling ground, lifting one corner of the rules until Theo set a bowl on it. Julian sat on the carpet with his back against the couch. Above him, Aisha’s foot rested against the cushion near his shoulder. She had taken off her shoes, and one sock had a small embroidered planet near the ankle.

He had seen that sock dozens of times. He wondered absurdly whether he would remember it in August, whether he would find himself missing things this small and feel foolish trying to explain them. He wanted to remember the evening, but every time he tried to hold one part of it, someone said something and he turned, losing the feeling he had meant to keep.

Freya found the lid to her bowl beneath somebody’s discarded cards.

“I’m going,” she told Rafe.

He stood and took the bowl while she pulled on her jacket. Several people answered her good night; Ben raised a hand without interrupting an argument he was losing.

Julian glanced toward the doorway as they left. Just beyond it, Freya reached for Rafe’s free hand. Their fingers fitted together without either of them looking down. Rafe leaned closer to hear something she said, and Julian missed the reply, but Freya laughed and bumped her shoulder against his arm before they passed out of sight.

He looked back at the table. He had spent enough time watching Rafe’s hands to know when they were about to close into fists. Somehow, he had never pictured one held like that.

On the couch, Aisha shifted to make room for someone, her hand settling on the cushion near Julian’s shoulder. He noticed it, then noticed himself noticing and reached for his drink. A moment later she nudged his shoulder lightly with her foot. When he looked up, she offered him the last piece of chocolate from her ice cream.

He took it and stayed looking at her a little too long. She smiled as though she had noticed, then returned to the conversation above him.

Across the room, Isaac was showing Kael a photograph of a very narrow bed.

“It’s longer than it looks.”

Kael examined the image.

“Is that a ladder?”

“Bunk bed.”

“Who’s above it?”

“No one. My brother’s at college.”

“Then why aren’t you giving me the top?”

Isaac blinked.

“Do you want the top?”

“No.”

Ben, passing behind them, stopped.

“I respect every part of that conversation.”

Isaac laughed, and Kael handed back the phone. Julian leaned toward them.

“You’re staying with Isaac?”

“For two weeks.”

“His mother’s asked what he eats four times,” Isaac said.

“I’ve answered four times.”

“You said ‘most things.’”

“Still true.”

“She wants one thing she can buy.”

Kael looked at the food around them.

“Those,” he said, pointing to the crackers beside Ben.

Ben drew the bowl closer.

“An excellent choice. Unfortunately, these are medicinal.”

“For what?” Isaac asked.

“Departure.”

He passed the bowl.

Kael took a cracker and studied it as though committing to an answer of this specificity might have consequences. Julian remembered him sitting alone with his journal in the autumn, so still he seemed to have found a place outside the room without leaving it. Now Isaac was explaining that his father would be late, no matter what time he said he would arrive, and Kael wanted to know how late so he could decide when to come downstairs.

The journal lay beside his knee, a corner of a folded report showing between the pages. Julian knew which report it was. The review had confirmed that the unexplained adjustment changed how the simulation responded to transitions in Kael’s behavior. It had not established who initiated it, or whether it explained what Kael had felt. In the first draft, someone had written that he experienced no adverse effect.

Kael had made them take it out.

He told Julian about that part without being asked. The revised copy had his own comments attached, and Julian remembered the care with which Kael showed him the wording, allowing him to read before folding it away again.

Now Isaac offered him another cracker. Kael took it and asked something about the room in the photograph.

Nyx began collecting the cards before midnight, counting them into their box while people found shoes and abandoned cups. She frowned at the last few, checked beneath a bowl, then closed the lid when Soren said her name from the doorway.

“Keep the rules,” she told Theo.

“We can copy them.”

“We have copies.”

Ben glanced at him.

“Imagine.”

Theo rolled his eyes.

Soren waited until Julian looked over.

“Send the footage.”

“Both ways.”

A small pause.

“All right.”

They touched fists. Julian had expected the gesture to feel like a promise about training. As Soren followed Nyx out, it occurred to him that he now had a reason to hear from him during the summer, and he was pleased about that in a way he would not have wanted to explain.

The lounge became quiet by degrees. Conversations followed people into the corridor, lingered outside open doors, then faded into the sounds of packing. Ethan stacked the bowls, working a thumb between two that had stuck together, while Zara lifted a couch cushion and found a hair tie, a crumpled snack wrapper, and a sweatshirt compressed into the gap.

She held it up by the shoulders.

“Whose?”

Tamar looked over.

“Mine. I’ve been looking for that since March.”

“You’re welcome.”

Tamar took it and shook it out. Something small struck the floor, and a game die rolled beneath the table.

Ben watched it settle.

“Leave it. It lives here.”

Julian bent to pick it up anyway. Without everyone around it, the table looked too large, its surface showing rings from glasses and the pale crumbs they had been brushing aside all evening. He put the die beside the empty bowls while Theo taped the rules to the wall.

They hung crooked.

Leena rose from the couch, pulling at the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

“I should give this back.”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’ll forget.”

“I won’t.”

She looked at him. He looked at the scarf still around his neck.

“Because of this,” he added.

“Yes,” she said. “Obviously.”

She went down the corridor without taking off the sweatshirt. Ben watched Theo watch her go, then picked up an empty bowl and, with extraordinary restraint, said nothing.

Theo turned toward him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was a very loud nothing.”

Ben held the bowl against his chest.

“I’m growing.”

Later, when most of them had gone, Julian found him standing beside the table. One bent card had escaped the box; Ben was turning it between his fingers, smoothing the corner with his thumb.

“You should give that back,” Julian said.

“I will.”

Ben looked up.

“Good night.”

“Yeah.”

Julian stayed where he was. Around them were the remains of the evening: the crooked rules, the striped blanket, a smear of melted ice cream beneath a bowl. Ben looked at each of those things before he spoke again.

“Send stupid stuff.”

“What?”

“This summer. Don’t wait until something happens.”

Julian looked at him.

“Otherwise it turns into a thing,” Ben continued. “You don’t talk for two weeks, then it’s been two weeks, so now whatever you say has to be worth two weeks. And you keep seeing things you would’ve told someone if they were right there, but they’re not, so you don’t.”

Julian understood. He was already imagining how carefully he would choose what to send Aisha, how something funny at breakfast could become less funny by the time he had decided whether to tell her.

“The group?”

“Yeah.”

“And you.”

Ben shrugged.

“Obviously me. I’m the interesting one.”

Julian smiled, then picked up the packing tape, photographed the unusable end clogged with crumbs, and sent it to him.

Yours?

Ben’s phone vibrated. He read the message while Julian stood three feet away.

“Good,” he said. “Strong start.”

***

In the morning, Julian found he had packed his toothbrush too early and left his other shoe under Mateo’s bed. He had told his mother he was ready. Fortunately, she hadn’t asked for proof.

Mateo was already downstairs. His bed stood bare except for the mattress cover, and the room carried a faint smell of the cleaning supplies waiting in the corridor. Julian crouched to check beneath his own bed and found a pen, a receipt, and one sock that could not possibly be his, though he took it anyway. There was something difficult about leaving even that for somebody else to find.

At the door, he turned back. The blue mark remained above the desk, and his sweatshirt still hung from the chair where he had dropped it yesterday. He had another one in his bag. This one could stay for the summer, though the room would be cleaned before September and someone might fold it away or move it somewhere sensible.

He liked the way it looked from the doorway. For a moment he could imagine that he was only going downstairs and that Mateo would return before him, leaving the suitcase open, asking whether another shirt was clean.

Julian pulled the door shut.

Downstairs, departures had begun to interrupt one another. Parents held doors while other parents maneuvered luggage through them. Isaac’s father had arrived early, apparently shocking everyone who knew him. Ethan’s mother stood on tiptoe to smooth something near his collar, and Ethan bent without being asked. Julian recognized voices he had heard through open calls, faces that had lived for months on small screens. In person, they belonged to people who took up space, carried bags, and looked around to see where their children had been.

Leena was trying to fasten her bag. Theo stood beside her with the teal scarf folded in his hands.

“Here.”

She took it and tucked it into the top of the bag. A sleeve of his sweatshirt protruded beside it. When he glanced down, she followed his gaze.

“Oh. Sorry. I was going to give that back before I packed.”

“It’s fine.”

“I can send it.”

“Just bring it back.”

Her hands paused on the zipper.

“In September.”

“Yeah.”

She smiled.

“And finish the book.”

“I will.”

“Before September.”

He laughed, and she stepped forward and hugged him before he had quite finished. His hand found the back of her shoulder. It lasted only a moment, but afterward he stood with his hands loose at his sides, watching her car as though the conversation might resume if he waited long enough.

Ben appeared beside Julian.

“I deserve something,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“The restraint.”

Julian glanced at him. Ben had been awake for Leena’s goodbye. There was a crease from his pillow along one cheek, and he kept looking toward the car too.

Aisha found Julian near the front steps. Her hair was damp at the ends. She had a bag over one shoulder and one hand wrapped around the strap, though it was in no danger of falling.

“Everything packed?”

“Eventually.”

Vehicles idled beyond the steps. A parent called a name, and someone answered from inside the building, too loudly. Julian moved a little to let a suitcase pass and Aisha moved with him, until they stood closer to the wall with nowhere else they needed to go for the moment.

For months, seeing her had required very little courage. He could go downstairs, look toward her usual seat, get water if she was busy and try again later. He knew the pauses in her day without ever asking to be included in them. There were mornings when he saw her before either of them had anything to say, and evenings when they stayed in the same room doing different things.

At home, he would have to send something. He would write it, read it, change it, and decide whether it belonged in her day. When he sat down to dinner she might already be getting ready for bed; if he slept late, she could have spent half a day with people he did not know. He had helped follow a crisis across a country, but he could not work out when to chat with a girl who was standing in front of him waiting for him to speak.

“So,” he said.

“Yeah.”

She looked toward the car waiting for her, then back at him.

“Call me” he said.

“I have your number.”

“I mean I want you to.”

Her fingers shifted on the strap.

“Okay.”

“And I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

He wished there were a way to ask when she would want him to without making her answer for an entire summer.

“My brothers are going to be everywhere,” she said. “If I find somewhere quiet, they’ll want to know why I’m being quiet.”

“My mom will ask who I’m talking to.”

“What will you say?”

He looked at her.

“You.”

She lowered her eyes briefly. When she looked back, she was smiling, and he felt a little less as though he had to get every word right.

“If I don’t answer,” she said, “it might just be a bad time. Don’t think it means something before I get a chance to call back.”

“I’ll try.”

Aisha stepped closer.

“I’m probably going to check too much,” she admitted.

“Your phone?”

She nodded.

“Me too.”

The words relieved him more than anything clever could have. He could picture her looking at her phone now, somewhere across the country, and the distance seemed to contain at least one thing they would be doing together.

Someone called her name. She did not turn yet. Instead she put her arms around him, and Julian held her, feeling the damp ends of her hair against his cheek and the awkward pressure of her bag between them. He could have moved it. He did not want to spend any of the time rearranging things.

He remembered the walk behind the residences, the place where she had asked for another lap. He had wanted more time then without understanding how easily she was offering it. Now he held her a moment longer, until she drew back far enough to look at him, one hand still caught in his sleeve.

“Tell me when you get there.”

“I will.”

“Even if I’m asleep.”

“How will I know?”

“You won’t. Send it anyway.”

He nodded. She settled the bag on her shoulder, then looked back at him.

“Don’t wait for something good to say.”

“Ben told me that too.”

“Occasionally he’s useful.”

From several feet away, Ben said, “I heard my name in an affectionate context.”

Aisha laughed, and the moment opened enough for her to leave. Julian watched her reach the car. At the door, she turned and raised a hand.

He was already raising his.

By the time Julian got into his own vehicle, his shirt had been pulled crooked by hugs and Tamar had told him twice to keep training. Mateo sat beside him, checking that he had his phone, then checking again. Outside, Zara stood with Theo and Ben. Farther down the drive, Kael listened while Isaac’s mother explained something through the open car door, her hand resting on the roof as she leaned toward him.

There were more people to miss than Julian had been prepared for. Even now he kept finding another face, remembering something he had meant to say to someone who was already getting into a car. He lowered the window to say goodbye again, though he had said it inside, and Ben raised both hands as if Julian were leaving under circumstances that called for a larger gesture.

His mother sent a photograph.

His room at home. The bed made, the old blanket folded at the foot. She had opened the window and turned the pillow toward it.

Your father says this side gets the breeze.

Julian enlarged the picture. He knew how the air moved through that room, the sounds that would come through the window if he lay there in the afternoon. He could almost feel the old blanket beneath his hand. His mother had stood in another doorway in September, looking for something else she could check before leaving him in an unfamiliar room. Now she had made this one ready, and he wanted to be there badly enough that it surprised him, sitting outside the place he was already missing.

Looks good, he typed.

Then, We’re leaving now.

The vehicle began to move. Julian looked back at the residence, its windows holding pieces of sky. Bags and parents and students crowded the entrance, people stepping aside for one another, then stepping back because they had remembered something else to say. Through one open doorway he could see the edge of the stairs. He had walked down them that morning thinking about his toothbrush.

His phone vibrated.

Aisha.

So what are you doing?

He could still see her car ahead.

Julian smiled.

Watching everyone leave. Missing them already. Getting texts from my mom.

Three dots appeared, disappeared, then returned.

My mom asked why I was smiling.

Julian looked at the screen as another message from his mother came through. She would be deciding where to stand at arrivals, finding something else she could make ready before he got there. His father would tell her they were too early and come anyway. Julian imagined seeing them beyond the barrier and being able, finally, to walk the rest of the distance.

He rested the phone against his knee. Beside him, Mateo was looking out the window, one hand closed around the dice in his pocket. The residence slipped behind the trees.

Julian picked up his phone again.

What did you tell her?

That’s the end of Book 1 of Neurovia. Thank you for spending this school year with Julian and his classmates.

I’ll continue editing Book 1, and I’d love to hear what you think. Which characters or moments stayed with you? Where did the story lose your interest, leave you confused, or make you wish I’d spent more time? Honest feedback is welcome, whether it’s a few words or a longer comment.

I’m planning to begin posting Book 2 in early 2027. There’s a lot more ahead and I’m looking forward to bringing you back to Neurovia.

Until then, thank you for being part of the story.