Thrice Uncharmed (Wynne d’Arzon)
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Thrice Uncharmed
by Cara Lee
Published by Astraea Press
www.astraeapress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.
THRICE UNCHARMED
Copyright © 2013 CARA LEE
ISBN 978-1-62135-171-9
Cover Art Designed by Book Beautiful
My friend Holly, whose hatred of all things vampire gives me incentive to write vampire-free stories, every now and then.
Take One
The first people who tried to set Wynne Layuman up with one Hector Primuman the Fourth were a pack of classmates in their primer school. They were in the play annex within the colony dome, and a group of them clustered just inside the black line that marked her year's boundaries for recess.
Wynne sat in the gray area, herself, where kids who preferred getting their homework done early could, theoretically, work without distractions. At least the wallfield — an energy 'wall' that could be strengthened, reduced, or dropped when needed — kept stray balls out. The sound socket had worn out years ago, though, so nothing blocked the noises of kids yelling as they played and soles squeaking on the Shelter-grade floor.
As her classmates giggled her way, Wynne pointedly didn't look up from her tablet. There was an exam that afternoon, and if she did better than everyone else, nobody would care that she'd avoided playing baseball. A small ball being flung at her head by kids who knew little more about the archaic game than she did and whose parents might not have elected to give their children the recommended coordination genegineering? No, thank you!
The game was even explicitly banned in the 'lanes — too much risk of in-ship damage — so it was even a poor choice of hobby for anyone planning to leave the Arzon colony someday.
Not that Wynne wanted to leave. She just preferred considering such things.
The huddled pack of classmates evidently shared Wynne's dislike for the game, but they chose to pass the time in gossip rather than study. Despite her giving the hand sign to say ‘Kindly leave me be,’ a few of them edged toward her to whisper, "Hector likes you! He wanted us to tell you!"
Wynne doubted it — she knew the games some of the other kids played, spreading gossip and lies and seeing what came of it — but she frowned over at Hector, who sat a few niches down, where he sped through something on his tablet. Their math workbooks, probably, since he wasn't hesitating at all, but maybe a short story for Culture Studies.
Hector nudged his glasses further up the bridge of his nose while she watched.
She wrinkled her nose. Glasses were for old people like their grandparents, who were born before the genegineerings were made common practice, to repair problems like shoddy eyes before the baby was born. Hector's father was even the governor, so it wasn't as if he couldn't have afforded the resource costs for the treatment.
After the next person suggested Hector liked her, she answered, "So? He wears glasses. It's as if he has as many eyes as he does family members with the same name."
Whispering spread like wildfire, and everyone started calling him Four-Eyes instead of Hector, and Wynne had felt terrible. She wouldn't have wanted anyone to call her Four-Eyes, even if she'd worn old-people things like glasses. But she couldn't stop it, and apologizing wouldn't accomplish anything, anyway.
Besides, Hector seemed better at ignoring their nagging than she was.
So Wynne focused on studying for the exam. She didn't protest when others called him Four-Eyes, but she herself never called him that. Even if it weren't mean, he'd still be their governor once they all grew up.
But the nickname continued, even into the next class. And that afternoon while they waited for pickup by the nannies who made sure everyone got back to their apartments safely, without wandering into places they shouldn't.
Wynne's mother always took her on a walk through a habitat where they could see and smell the plants that were grown hydroponically, for the good of the colony. They visited one of the fruit habitats that day, the one with pears. The 'spring' section was blooming, the warmer 'summer' one had fruits growing, and her mother spent the resource credits for them to get fully ripened fruit from the 'autumn' section. Wynne munched her sweet, bright red pear and figured that everyone else's parents would do something similar, and they'd start the next day with fresh minds and new targets for their harassment.
But the nickname wasn't forgotten.
By the time exam grades were returned, the name was being used so persistently that their instructor nearly called him the same thing and had to correct herself.
Wynne felt humiliated on Hector's behalf. She wished she'd never mentioned his old-people glasses. That afternoon, while they waited for their parents to pick them up after classes, she'd bit down her pride and edged over to him, hiding her face with her tablet and her hair. "I'm sorry."
He glanced up from the tablet he was reading. "For what?"
Was he that dense? Wynne didn't see how he could be, with his grades surpassing hers — though only just — and with how Wynne's Auntie Sea had grumbled once that the governor even took his son's advice, and what way was that to ruin a ten-year-old?
Maybe he didn't realize what she'd done. "I'm the reason everybody's calling you Four-Eyes."
"But I am a Four-Eyes." Hector adjusted his glasses and met her stare placidly. She knew that word from the advanced placement book they'd both done a report on last week.
She clarified, "They're being mean when they say that."
He shrugged. "They can only insult me if I let myself be insulted."
She hesitated, making sure she understood what he'd meant before she replied. "But it's mean."
Hector smiled slightly and leaned her way, as if sharing a secret. "I can't control how they mean it, but I can control what I think and feel about it." He leaned back and nudged his glasses again. "Besides, it's true."
Wynne kept staring. "You're weird."
He smirked at her, as if they shared a secret. "I know."
Take Two
The second setup was more of an accident. Or so she thought at the time, though she later supposed their cousins could've been that devious, even at twelve. Wynne's cousin Bridge and Hector's cousin Matthias wanted to see a horror movie, and their parents wouldn't let them go without a chaperone. They'd each nagged their parents into letting their respective cousins Wynne and Hector into sufficing as their respective chaperones, so the four of them ended up on an odd double-chaperone-but-not-double date.
In the cinema, Wynne stared longingly at the poster for an epic fantasy movie that she'd been wanting to see. Her family never went to the cinema — her mother couldn't handle sitting so long — so she'd have to wait for it to be available on the network for streaming on her tablet, by which time somebody would surely spoil the plot for her.
Hector studied her askance and adjusted his glasses. "If you wanna go see that, I'll stick with Matthias and Bridge."
Wynne squared her shoulders and turned away from the poster, shaking her head. Her aunt and uncle did think her responsible for a reason, and she wasn't going to betray that trust. "No. Auntie Sea told me to keep an eye on them."
He paused for a long moment before nodding once and heading after their respective cousins.
Bridge and Matthias had already found a pair of seats to snuggle in: two rows ahead of a crossways aisle, between the wall and the stairs that led up the left side of the stadium. Hector's shoulders slumped slightly, as if he were sighing, and he promptly slipped into the pair of seats above their cousins before someone else snagged them.
Smooth, Wynne thought, taking the aisle seat left to her, but she reminded herself that this was — Hello! — Hector Primuman the Fourth, who wore glasses and who quietly but steadily made her have to work to try to be top of any of their courses. He was her rival, not her friend, no matter how friendly he was. She scowled at him.
He studied her, brow furrowed, and adjusted his glasses, resting his other elbow against the wall to their left. "Did you want some popcorn?"
Yes, she thought, because she'd not gotten a chance to eat second dinner, but she wasn't his date and didn't want to give him the wrong idea. "No."
He glanced at their cousins in the row ahead. Bridge and Matthias were hunched forward and giggling over something. Wynne thought that she probably didn't want to know what their hands were doing.
"I'll get some popcorn," he said briskly, and he promptly hopped over the back of his seat to get into the aisle behind them, then hurried out.
Wynne huffed and leaned back in her chair, which belatedly started molding itself to suit her contours. Her grandparents would've been able to fix that.
She'd have to smell his popcorn all through the movie. Her stomach would growl — probably loudly, at an inopportunely quiet time during the movie — and then somebody would recognize her — that looked like one classmate's carrot top, two rows down and six seats over — and she'd be mocked for a month again, for the ‘monster’ living in her stomach.
Well, probably not that long. Everybody would get their laughs, and it would fizzle out. Always did where she was concerned.
Even though everybody still called Hector "Four-Eyes," two years after she gave them the idea.
Hector returned bearing two huge tubs of popcorn — one stacked atop the other, supported by his arms — and two cups in his hands. Wynne accepted the cups, so he could take care of the popcorn. He dropped one tub between Bridge and Matthias — on their hands, from their recoils and squeaks of protest — and stuck the other on the chair arm between him and Wynne as he sat down.
He took one of the cups back, the colder one, and set it on the floor by his left foot. "Behave, you two," he said, loudly enough for Bridge and Matthias to hear him. Nobody would throw Hector Primuman the Fourth out of the cinema, she supposed. "Unless you want ice down your shirt."
Wynne found herself glancing at the cold cup he'd set down. He caught her glance, smiled, and nodded.
She wasn't his date. She quickly turned away and settled in her seat.
Hector sighed — loudly enough for her to hear, quietly enough that it likely wasn't intended for her to hear — and grabbed a handful of popcorn. "Help yourself."
"Not hungry."
He gave her a flat look and raised an eyebrow.
Heat washed over Wynne. The governor had access to everybody's… eccentricities, all the better for arranging their schedules. Evidently, her materline's metabolism was known to the governor's heir, too.
She self-consciously grabbed a handful and munched it. It was good popcorn, fresher and better-tasting than she could ever remember getting from a cinema, not that she had all that many experiences to compare it to.
Hector grabbed another handful, and she felt stupid. Of course the cinema wasn't going to serve the governor's son the same junk they served everyone else.
The movie was as torturous as she'd expected it to be. When Wynne wasn't squeezing her eyes shut thanks to the gore on the screen, she was averting her eyes from her cousin's exploration of Hector's cousin. Hector used the ice, as he'd threatened, and she threw popcorn at them, but the pair were persistent. So was Wynne's stomach, for that matter.
The movie ended — without her losing her stomach contents, to her relief, but with her still wanting second dinner — and she took Bridge aside, while Hector guided Matthais in the other direction.
"Oh, c'mon," Bridge protested. "Tell me you didn't play with Four-Eyes when nobody could see you doing it."
"I did not!"
Bridge smirked. "Liar."
Wynne scowled. "We're not even at Dyad yet! And you want to get pregnant?"
Her cousin rolled her eyes. "You can play without going all the way, you know."
Wynne's face felt as hot as Bridge's should've been, to say that. "Uh-huh. And you want to be known as a girl who got assigned a Partner at Dyad because she couldn't keep her clothes on?"
Bridge sniffed. "They can't make you take a Partner until Triad. That's twelve more years. I'll be ancient."
It was Wynne's turn to roll her eyes. "That's when they make everybody take a Partner, because it's an optimum age for childbearing and rearing. But they can make you take a Partner sooner, just like they make everybody get the base gene treatments. It's under the 'for the colony's wellbeing' proviso of the charter. Look it up."
Hands on her hips, Bridge turned on her heel to scoff in Wynne's face. "What, so all of a sudden you're a Lawuman?"
She sighed. "No, I'm—"
"That's right. We're Layumen, not Lawumen, and if I want to know some 'legal implications of my behavior,' I'll ask a spaced Lawuman!"
"Bridge—"
"Bye, Cuz." Bridge signed 'talk to the hand' and strutted off toward Matthias and Hector — the former of whom paled and quickly scurried away, so Hector had obviously been more successful in his talking-to than she had.
Hector nonchalantly studied Bridge, even when she got in his face and started giving him attitude, if her posture was anything to go by. Wynne sighed and figured her cousin was her responsibility, so she'd better go rescue the governor's son before he got offended. Despite being the reason everyone called him an unflattering nickname, Wynne had never seen him lose his equanimity, and she didn't want her cousin to change that.
But as she approached, Hector smiled slightly and shook his head, raising a finger to tell her to wait a minute. Maybe he was used to this kind of behavior from the governmental meetings he regularly sat in and advised.
He lowered his hand. "Your point, Miss Layuman?"
"My point is that you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do!"
Hector adjusted his glasses. "Ah. And would that be familial antigovernment sentiments or personal teenage rebellion speaking?"
Wynne went cold. He'd just obliquely accused Bridge of treasonous inclinations — a dangerous, dangerous thing, in a colony as young as theirs — and her cousin was too dumb to notice.
In fact, Bridge snickered and mocked him for all his big words, a sure sign that she hadn't even understood him.
Making fun of the governor's son and heir. What level of stupidity would Bridge drop to next?
Wynne lurched the last meter or so to be at her cousin's side. "I'm sure she's just—" Just what? "She doesn't mean to be insulting you. She's just — just—"
"Her blood sugar's dropping, and it's going to her head?" he suggested, with a little smile.
"Yes," Wynne said desperately, grateful for any excuse that would let him overlook her cousin's atrocious behavior, as Bridge got indignant and started using some of the words that nobody in the family was allowed to say.
Hector nodded and beckoned a woman in the uniform of the cinema's Secumen, the family line in charge of colony security. "Please see Miss Bridge Layuman out. I believe she's forgotten to eat dinner."
The security woman's eyes widened slightly upon recognizing Hector Primuman the Fourth — or maybe upon realizing the abuse that Miss Layuman was heaping upon Master Primuman — but she caught Bridge by the arm and escorted
her out, with the threat that charges of disorderly conduct could and would be applied if she didn't cooperate.
Wynne didn't think she'd ever been more embarrassed in her life, though her accidental dubbing Hector with that atrocious nickname made a close second. "I'm so sorry—"
He shook his head, warding off her apology, then nodded at a nearby poster for the epic fantasy movie she'd been eyeing earlier. "Want to see it?"
She blinked. Was he asking her on a date? "Um." They'd come to the cinema as chaperones for cousins who had now left — separately — and Wynne wasn't sure she wanted to risk giving him the wrong idea, but she didn't exactly want to risk offending him, either. "Um. When?"
Hector shrugged. "We're both here now." He glanced at the screen that displayed the showtimes for all the movies. "And it starts in twenty minutes."
Wynne was tempted. To get to see the movie before anybody spoiled it for her, to even see it on the big screen?
He pressed a credit chip in her hand and indicated the snacks bar. "Get what you like — and water for me, please. I'll go get the tickets."
She blinked and stared after him as he slipped through the crowd toward the ticket booth. He didn't seem to expect anyone to recognize him and get out of his way, but when they did, he took advantage of it. What would he do if the movie was sold out already?
Hector Primuman the Fourth, she remembered. If the movie were sold out, they'd probably knock a pair of Servumen or maybe a couple from tier five families into the next available showing.
He'd even given her a credit chip, so she'd be spending his allotted resources for her snack, not hers. With her metabolism, she had a larger resource allotment than other tier threes her age, and her tier two paterline meant she got a slight bonus there, too, so she could readily pay for her own snack, if she chose.
But he was offering to pay. She thought he might be offended if she refused.
Or so she tried to convince herself, because she really wanted to try the gummy spaceships, and her mother would've pitched a fit if Wynne spent so many resource credits on something so unfilling. Using Hector's resource credits meant the purchase would show on his records, not hers.