Chapter 1

Jayla carefully measured the side of her model. It was not quite ten notches on the left side.

“Hey, hand me some clay.”

Her classmate passed her some, and she fixed up the left so it was the same height as the right.

“That looks good,” her classmate observed.

It was a small block of apartments, with windows away from the sun and a courtyard that would circulate air and be a place for kids to play around besides. Jayla was going to try and build it after she graduated.

“You think you can make it, for real?”

“We have that land ever since the fire.” Jayla paused and then appended, “Small fire.”

“Yeah, I know it was small, I was there too,” her classmate said.

True. Why had she said that? Jayla shook off the unease and continued, “Anyways, it’s only a couple months until I graduate. I want to start work right away after.”

“Eugh.”

“Don’t make that noise, you sound like Sai-ee when I ask him to help me do chores.”

Her classmate laughed and then said, “Hey, he’s coming back today, right?”

“Yup, that’s why he’s on my mind.” Jayla shook the table in a rudimentary earthquake-test. A bit of the building fell down and unfortunately it didn’t seem to be the clay’s fault. She made a note on her blueprint and went back to work fixing it. “He said he’d bring letters from Val and Lil.”

“Would you want to travel?”

“Sure, but I like it here too.” Having built up the foundation, Jayla shook the table again. This time it held pretty strong. “I do wish that Cass would actually have organized a trip, like, ever in his life.”

“He’s a real homebody, right?”

“Yeah, like my parents.” Jayla was measuring the new part of the foundation she’d built. “I’m probably going to go on a little trip after I graduate. Short, so I can come back and build this apartment—I feel like I’ve been in school forever!”

“That’s the price of pursuing higher education. You could’ve graduated four years ago and become a farmer.”

“I know…”

“Or even another type of builder.”

“I want to be a trained architect.” Lifting the building, she took a knife and scored the bottom layer of the new foundation off, making it even. “It’ll be nice to be able to really prove the worth of our traditional styles, too. Over in Ry’keth I hear they’re doing a lot more technology, cooling systems and stuff, but nature’s got a cooling system…ah, but the Ry’keth stuff is impressive too, if anything it’ll have less people getting sunburns and heatstroke.”

“Jay-la!” someone shouted through the window.

“Yo! Use the door!”

“I just came back and that’s all you have to say to me?”

Ki Sai-ee was hanging off of the schoolroom’s tall thin window, from the outside, about ten feet above the ground. That was a boy obsessed with the fact that he could fly.

A knock on the door, then the door opened.

“Jayla, your friend is—” Cass started.

“Cass!” Jayla jumped on him, wrapping her arms around him and letting her feet lift off the ground. He smelled like sand and summertime.

He stumbled back and laughed. “What’s up with you?”

Jayla kissed him on both cheeks, then let go of him. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you!”

He lived in a different town but had met Jayla by coincidence and befriended both her and her parents. Her parents had grown to really like him, and ever since, her parents had sent her down to where he lived occasionally so he could take care of her for a bit.

“When did you get in?” Jayla asked.

“This morning.”

“Whaat—and you didn’t tell me?”

“Well, you were in school! You have to study hard.”

“I don’t want to study hard,” Jayla said, letting go of him and turning into a puddle on the floor.

“You were just talking about all the architecture stuff you’re into,” her classmate said.

“Jayla!” Sai-ee yelled at her from the window again.

“Oh, I didn’t need to tell you that your friend got here.”

“You’re so annoying!” Jayla yelled back.

“You can be done with that, right? Want me to finish it for you?”

“No, the point is that I do it! Also, get down here!”

“You should come up here!” Sai-ee said, like the bitch he was.

Ah, that was too rude a thing to think of someone as, even in her head.

But in any case, her “That boy was obsessed with the fact that he could fly” statement stood.

Jayla threw a ruler at his head. Sai-ee ducked, while the ruler hit the wall and fell down.

“Sorry, I’m going to head out,” she told her classmate, fetching the ruler.

“You could have killed me!” Sai-ee said.

“Who dies from a ruler?”

Outside the school building, Sai-ee drifted down to meet her. He wore his usual open-sided tank top and loose pants, as well as his usual shit-eating grin.

“Jayla, you should’ve seen the view from there! It was so nice!”

“I don’t know how you made it to sixteen alive,” Jayla told him. “Next ruler’s going in your eyes.”

“Haha, very funny. Wanna see what I brought?”

She expected him to reach into his pockets, but instead he led her around the school and across the street. The bright murals covering the school building were faded from the sun. It’d been a long dry season, leafless trees standing bare for months and grass going brown and yellow. The sun hid behind one of those trees, like an elephant trying to hide behind a streetlight. The street was thin, and mixed with students and their families—children and adults going home or coming in for the evening classes.

“Where’re we going?”

Sai-ee stopped in front of the little general store his clan owned and said, “Here’s your letters!”

He handed her two envelopes, one addressed in Val’s handwriting and one in Lil’s.

“...Is that it?” Why had they gone out here?

“What, you’re not satisfied with two whole letters?” Lil said, stepping out of the general store.

“Lil!” Jayla hugged her, then took her hands, bouncing up and down. “It’s so good to see you!”

She looked well, a bright smile on her face.

“I asked her to come out,” Sai-ee bragged, “and arranged all of this.”

“How’s Val? Did he come, too?”

“Nah, he was shy,” Sai-ee said. “Said cause I wasn’t his friend he didn’t want to spend four weeks travelling with me.”

…Is that shyness?

“So,” Lil said, “what’re we gonna do?”

“Well—”

Black. Blue. Purple.

Colors suddenly overwhelm my vision. I sink to my knees, head throbbing.