After answering directional questions so many times, Aaron easily told her were to go. When she left, he turned to the group in general and wailed, “Why do they keep asking me for directions?!”
“Because you know the answer,” Miles answered promptly, his mouth twitching in an aborted smirk.
Aaron shot him a dirty look. “I know that, and you know that, but they don’t! What, am I sporting a neon sign that only they can see?”
Steve slung an arm around his shoulders. “Now, now. Why don’t you come with me? We can eat pocky and flirt with pretty girls.”
Aaron looked up at him, still a little flustered, but it faded under the open invitation on Steve’s face. “Is that stuff actually any good? It’s hard to tell with you, since you’ll eat anything that doesn’t crawl off first.”
“And put up a fight doing it,” Duane added. “I want to go too.”
Miles also looked interested, his eyes lingering over some of the (less scary) girls that passed them. Rys waved them on. “Go, we’re done for the night.”
“You’re not coming too?” Steve’s eyebrows arched in faint surprise.
I already have someone pretty to flirt with was not the answer that Rys intended on handing them any time soon. “I have plans for tomorrow. Not to mention a certain report to write. Go ahead.”
These excuses didn’t fly with Aaron, and the man gave him a thoughtful look. “You’re not going because of Anne, are you?”
Rys flashed him an enigmatic smile, deliberately not responding. With a casual salute, he turned on his heels and headed for the main doors.
Chapter Ten
Okay, this was creeping her out.
Anne cautiously looked out her kitchen window. This late at night, not very much was visible; only the moonlight shimmering off of the water gave enough reflection to see the outline of the deck, the pool house, and the diving board. She couldn’t see anyone back there, but there were more than enough shadows to hide a whole platoon of people.
Normally, being home at night didn’t bother her. But for some reason, as soon as Rosalita and George went out on an occasional date, and Candace went to sleep over at a friend’s house, the absolute stillness of this place began to unnerve her. When Anne was the only one home, every creak of the house and scratch of a limb against the window panes, served to pour fuel straight into her imagination.
She took a deep cleansing breath, trying to ease the churning caldron in her stomach. No effect. Her nerves were still stretched as tight as the strings on a new tennis racket.
Scriiiiitch.
Anne jumped three feet in the air, whirling around trying to locate the source of that ominous sound. Her mind conjured up a wicked witch dragging her gnarled claws across the glass, trying to find a way in.
Seconds oozed past in agonizingly slow increments…but nothing happened. “I have got to get a hold of myself,” she whispered, clenching both hands in front of her stomach. “Seriously, this is ridiculous! There is nothing out there in the darkness, that isn’t there in the daylight. What am I, a five-year-old?”
From upstairs, there was a distinctive creak of a floorboard, like a person had just taken a step.
Anne, even though she couldn’t possibly see through the ceiling, stared upwards anxiously, fixed in place. “Either I am home alone and imagining things or I am not home alone…” At that precise moment, she wasn’t exactly sure which one of those options that she preferred.
Calling either her parents or the police seemed foolish to her, even in her paranoid state of mind. They would just say what she already knew—that her imagination was running away with her. Rosalita and George were due back in several hours, couldn’t she wait that long?
No. Absolutely not.
All right, so…what was a good alternative plan?
Rys.
It wouldn’t be weird to invite her best friend over for a movie night, would it? Even if it is, perhaps I can get myself invited over to his house for a while. Anything is better than sitting here alone, and giving myself a nervous breakdown!
Determined to alter the course of her evening, she snatched up the phone like a life line, and dialed his number.
He must have recognized the number on the ID, because he immediately greeted her with, “Hey, Anne. What’s up?”
Anne gave her surroundings a rueful look as she plunged forward. “Hey, Rys. How would you like to come over and watch some movies and eat some popcorn? I’m home alone tonight and the house is so dead that I am bored to tears.”
***
She felt a thousand times better when Rys walked through the front door. He was like the warm rays of the sun, dispelling the gloom that brooded over the empty house, and chasing away all of the things that go bump in the night. All of the worry and tension from just moments before evaporated into nothing. “Hey!”
“Hey,” he responded with a smile. “So why are you home alone, anyway?”
“Well, my parents are attending this huge conference in Delway, Candace is spending the night with a friend, and Rosalita and George are out on a date. They will be back later tonight.” Which was good, otherwise Anne would be seriously sleep deprived, and wired for sound.
“Ah.” His eyes were sharp and penetrating, like he could see right through to the backside of her skull. “Being here alone has made you nervous.”
She blinked, astounded at his immediate assessment of her situation. “How in the world did you know, can your read minds too?!”
He just shook his head, half-exasperated and half-amused. “Anne, you have every single light in this house on. I’ll bet your power meter is spinning like a high speed gyro.”
Oh…she did, didn’t she?
“Not to mention the fact that even though you were expecting me, you peeked out the window first before going anywhere near the door. How many locking devices do you have on the door anyway?”
Rats. He’d caught that, had he? Her shoulders slumped. “Okay. You’ve got me cold. I am afraid of being home alone, and the house always amuses itself by playing Name That Noise when no one else is around.”
He put one arm around her shoulders, hugging her to him for a moment. Against her forehead he murmured, “You can always call me any time you need me, Anne. I’d rather be here keeping you company than having you dance with shadows all night.”
And that’s why she loved this guy so much. Rys never made her feel silly or insecure. She hugged him back gratefully, with an arm around his waist. “Thanks. You are my hero.”
With one last squeeze, he let go. “So what movie did you want to watch?”
They wandered into the impressive “theater” room, which existed for the sole purpose of viewing movies. There was an enormous screen that covered one entire wall, an inviting looking couch, and several over-sized bean bag chairs. Anne gestured Rys into one of the bean bags before heading to the shelves covering the opposite wall to select a movie. Rys hadn’t seen many movies in his life, and this came as no surprise to Anne. Movies were a luxury, considering how little spare time he’d had as a member of an elite military unit. She decided to expand his horizons with a selection of movies she considered essential. She pulled out an old Earth science fiction movie and loaded it into the projector. Capitalizing on the opportunity, and the size of the chair, she snuggled into the same bean bag that Rys was sitting in.
Judging from the smile on his face, and the arm he automatically put around her shoulders, he didn’t mind sharing in the least.
The first thirty minutes or so, Rys just watched the movie, not finding anything particular to remark about. Anne knew why. Despite how old they were, with their knowledge at the time it was made, this was remarkably well thought out.
There was the spectacular scene, when the ‘astronauts’ on the screen finally launched into space.
When a hydraulic line ruptured on the shuttle, and liquid hydrogen spewed into space, he groaned. Rys threw his head back dramatically, hands covering his eyes and shaking h
is head from side to side. “Oh please!” he hissed in a near-whisper. “Like anything would not freeze instantly when hitting open vacuum of space like that!”
“Maybe they didn’t understand that,” Anne pointed out a little defensively.
“And even if it did gush out in a stream,” Rys noted disapprovingly, “it certainly wouldn’t drift backwards. The momentum of the pressure in the lines would propel it forward. There’s no wind factor or gravity in space to make it behave like that! And by a remote possibility that both of those things COULD happen, it certainly wouldn’t make the engines blow up! They would just cut out and die.”
Anne rolled her eyes. Rys was obviously very familiar with space, and how things operated in space. Maybe the space fiction film was a poor choice for a little light entertainment.
The action on the screen kept going, with one of the actors drifting far enough away from the shuttle that he couldn’t be ‘‘safely’’ rescued.
“Stupid woman,” Rys grumbled. “Don’t just stand there gibbering!”
Anne was distinctly amused by this. “You never had anything like that happen to you? You weren’t ever drifting in space, cut off from your team mates?”
“No, safety was very proactive. It was drilled into us constantly: you never made a move without thinking about it first. And if I pulled a stunt like that,” Rys pointed to the now floating corpse on the screen, “all three of my lieutenants would find a way of resurrecting me, just for the pleasure of killing me again. And why in the world did she fossilize instantly like that?”
“Theatrics,” Anne offered weakly, trying to excuse the writers of this technically flawed classic. Mental note to self: don’t show him any more science fiction movies.
The actors on screen finally landed on the planet Mars, coming across the lone survivor of a previous mission. Anne was following the explanation of how the aliens had tried to make contact with low beats of sound when she was distracted by another agonized groan. Torn between exasperation and amusement she turned and gave him a stern look. “You find fault with their story line?”
“Affirmative.” Rys nodded, giving her a mournful look. “We had no idea that so much information could be packed into just three simple beats of sound. Imagine of all the uses we could have put that information to in the war. I could be back sitting in my barracks on Fourth right now, polishing my collection of enemy weapons!”
She had to concede he had a point there. Anne broke down and just started laughing, struck by the humor she had never considered before. “I can see now, this is not the right movie for you. Help me up, and I’ll change it for something more suitable.”
He pulled her back down when she started to rise. “Negative, don’t do that. I want to see what they’re going to come up with next. This is better than an early morning fire drill with a vacuum leak; I can’t wait to see what they will dream up to accomplish their mission. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase thinking outside the box.”
Since he seemed to be sincere, Anne relaxed back into the bean bag. She found it impossible to get back into the movie, though. Rys was making far too many observations for her to suspend her belief and mesh up with the plot. It was more relaxing for her to just forget about the movie, which she’d seen a dozen times or more, and focus on him. It was so satisfying to just sit next to him. His steady, even breathing was as soothing as any lullaby. Anne was amazed at how at ease she felt at this moment. No sound the house would be able to generate could put her on edge with the solid warmth of his body radiating beside her.
When the credits started rolling, Anne was seriously tempted to just close her eyes and drift off to sleep. But that would be an awkward position to put Rys in, which she refused to do. I need to get up and move, right now, otherwise I will go to sleep. “Hey, Rys, how about a snack? I’m getting kind of hungry.”
He perked up noticeably. “Food sounds like a good plan.”
“You’re a teenaged boy, food always sounds like a good plan,” she responded with a grin on her face. “Hunger and adolescent male are interchangeable words. I think it is probably a universal law, no matter what planet you are from.”
“I can’t argue with that.” He grinned at her cheerfully. “Just one question, before we head off on a supply mission.”
“And that would be?”
“How do you get out of this thing?”
Anne couldn’t quite contain her laughter. “Well, the best way that I’ve found that works is to wriggle to the edge and try to roll out of it on your side. Once you have freed yourself from its evil grip, you get to your knees and stand up the best you can.”
He gave the bag under his a thoughtful study. “Well, since we are a duo, what if I push you out first, and then you can help pull me up?”
Anne thought about that, and couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work. “It sounds like a good strategy to me. Let’s give it a try.” She sat up as straight as she could, turning her back to him.
Anne was not in the least prepared for what happened next. He put both hands on her back and pushed, that she expected. But what she hadn’t planned on was almost soaring out of the bean bag, like she had been launched from a catapult. “Whoa!” Flailing with her arms, she managed to regain her balance, before she executed a spectacular one point landing on her face.
“I am so sorry. I didn’t realize how light you are.”
Anne blushed a little at this inadvertent compliment. “No problem. Here, let’s see if we can extract you now.” She extended both hands to him, bracing herself to accept his weight. He locked his hands with her and easily pulled himself up. Anne had to concentrate on keeping all of her weight balanced backwards, to keep from toppling over on him, and sending them both crashing back down on the bean bag.
When he was free, he let go of her hands and puffed out a relieved breath. “That was a pretty tricky maneuver. Whoever invented these chairs had a seriously warped sense of humor.”
“They are comfortable, though,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, it was at that.” He dismissed the chair with a wave and turned his most devastating hungry puppy eyes on her. “Sustenance?”
Laughing, in spite of herself, she led the way into the kitchen.
***
Rys was bored out of his mind. Literally.
Monday morning, Mr. Blake announced there would be a test the next day, which elicited a collective groan from the class. He then continued, with no trace of humor on his face, that today would be a helpful review, and attention would be prudent. Rys didn’t take that last instruction to heart like he normally would have, because reviews were completely redundant for him. Reviewing anything was a poor use of time when you had a photographic memory. He already had the textbook for the course memorized.
Rys sat back and ignored Mr. Blake. That meant he had nothing constructive to occupy his mind, a mortal sin that Sergeant Barrett would have been distinctly unhappy about. Just recalling some of the inventive punishments that Barrett had come up with, made Rys shudder.
With nothing better to do, he went back to analyzing the data that Gremlin had sent him. From the recon missions they’d performed this past week, it became obvious that not every Novan on this planet had nefarious purposes. Rys hadn’t actually expected that to be the case, but he still found it heartening that not every Novan here intended to make trouble. Still, they had no idea what all of the intel was being gathered for. Gremlin, now that he had the source pinpointed, had turned his attention to where it all got sent after being collected. He still hadn’t made significant progress on that the last time Rys had checked in. All he had been able to say definitively was that it didn’t get sent immediately to Nova.
Well, that made sense, really. Intergalactic communications took a great deal of time and expense. No one would do data dumps to another planet on a regular basis. Just the sheer volume of it would catch unwanted attention. They had to have some sort of processing hub on Bijordan to break it down to the essentials be
fore it was forwarded on. But where?
While they’d made great strides in their mission, Rys had to glumly admit that they still had no idea what Nova had planned. Conquer or Annihilation?
Could they even repel either scenario?
They were about ten minutes into the review when the phone in the front of the classroom rang. Frowning at the unexpected interruption, Mr. Blake broke off mid-sentence and answered it. Rys was a little too far back in the class to hear the man clearly, but the conversation lasted only a minute before he hung up the phone.
“Savar!” Blake called with an amused set to his mouth.
“Yes sir?”
“Mrs. Grimes wants to know if you would be willing to volunteer as an art model for her class this period. I suspect that you’re bored anyway, it’s not like you need the review.”
An art model, what did that entail, exactly? Rys had absolutely zero experience with any of the arts. He thought about asking for more information, but anything would be better than just sitting here browsing through files he’d already read three times and thinking glum thoughts.
“Yes, sir! Where would the art classroom be, sir?”
“306.”
***
Anne felt a smug confidence about how the female art students in her class would react when Rys entered the room. She was dead on the mark. All of them came to attention, as if he were a superior officer, when he walked in. Some of them were very open about their avid approval, resembling starving children looking in a candy store window. The small, petty segment of her mind enjoyed their reactions tremendously, taking note of any she might have to encourage to look but don’t touch.
Anne popped up from her chair when he showed up, greeting him with a familiar, “Hey Rys.”
“Anne?” He turned to look at her, and one could see the pieces clicking rapidly into place. “Ah, I was wondering how I was nominated for this honor,” he nodded in enlightenment. “So this was your idea?”
“You didn’t need to be in class anyway,” she pointed out. “And we were desperate for someone who knows how to sit still, besides a bowl of fruit.” Motioning her hand in the direction of the heavy set woman behind her, she made the introductions. “Rys, this is Mrs. Grimes, the art teacher. Mrs. Grimes, my friend Rys Savar.”
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