Moon Cliques

by Karen T. Smith

What other readers have had to say about Karen T. Smith's work:

  "I could really relate to the characters...Looking forward to reading more like this!"

  "Excellent story. I read this out loud to my three daughters because I find that there are not enough female lead characters in youth fiction. They all loved it. We all want to know more about the characters and the colony."

  "Karen has the ability to use the currency of teens without the degenerate baggage so common today. This is not my usual genre, but Karen's story has piqued an interest in me."

  MOON CLIQUES

  By

  Karen T. Smith

  *****

  Copyright 2011 Karen T. Smith

  *****

  Moon Cliques

  By Karen T. Smith

  The trick was to game the shop-bots. The wheeled robots that patrolled the perimeter of the Lunar Colony shops were only a little bigger than one of Marci's green and gray magnetic boots. The shop-bots had red laser eyes that glinted as they scanned in a vertical band from the floor up to the rounded ceiling. Jess had talked her through it a dozen times, but still Marci's palms pricked with sweat as she pretended to be interested in the clothes and accessories at Selene's Silks.

  "You have to talk to the staff, the shop-bots are programmed to work the edges, so you have to go into the middle of the shop and chat up an employee. The bots don't seem to pay attention, guess they figure the humans will be watching." Jess's words stuck with Marci as she fingered the nubby sweaters in greens, blacks, and purples pinned in neat rows down the center aisle of the shop.

  For what felt like the thousandth time, she found herself wondering why she was doing this. Jess wanted her to join the pop-crowd, the hot clique at school. Hot literally, since they prided themselves on stealing things from the shops in the Lunar Colony market. They ran a black market resale to other kids at school, never actually wearing or using the things they stole. They were too cool for that. Marci still wasn't sure about them, since many of the girls seemed to have enough moonla to spend on weekly hair appointments. What was the point of stealing?

  But Marci was sure of Jess, her best friend since childhood. They grew up on the Lunar Colony together, knew each other from way before the Eastern Concourses were opened. Jess was so excited, so happy to be part of the clique. She seemed to have lit up since her initiation, aglow from inside with a fire that Marci hadn't seen in years. Jess had stolen three little studded dog collars, impossibly impractical since to have a dog in LuCol, you had to have serious moonla. Her audacity had earned her props with the clique, and fascinated and horrified Marci.

  Red-headed Jess, who used to be too afraid to join in playground games of Jump-N-Go back in e-school. Jess had changed a lot lately, and Marci was trying not to feel left behind, but she felt her friendship with Jess becoming slippery, insubstantial. It made Marci ache to grab onto it, grab onto Jess, but she felt like every time she tried to grab, Jess would slip a little farther away, off on some new adventure with people other than Marci. When Jess had told her about joining up with the pop-crowd, her pale green eyes had sparkled with excitement, and she explained just what Marci would need to do to get in. It was then that Marci had realized just how slick their friendship had become. Marci didn't want to lose it, lose her connection to Jess and to her past, her everything.

  Honestly, what did it matter, a few trinkets from a shop? It's not like the shop was going to miss it if she took something small. Maybe a scarf. She let the thin fabric of a patterned silk scarf glide through her hand, the bright pinks and greens dancing under her fingers like a school of air fish.

  She and Jess used to spend hours at the aquarium watching the air-fish. She remembered hiding under the benches one night, using extra pairs of mag-boots to suspend themselves underneath and avoid detection by the night-bots. The night-bots were the taller, clunkier kind of robot and much easier to evade. After the last night-bot scan, she and Jess thudded down from their hiding spots, giggling themselves into a ten-year-old frenzy. They let themselves into the air fish room to play with the hatchlings. She loved watching them dart and glide, and the girls had danced among the air fish, doing their best to imitate the swirls and waves of the beautiful fins. Their parents had been so upset with them when they were found hours later, having fallen asleep in a tumble of girl and air fish. After that, their best friendship was solidified like a stone, a real stone from earth, not the dusty powdery things from the lunar surface. Real and true, and running as deep as a mining vein.

  Emboldened, Marci twisted the bright scarf around and around her right hand, reaching with her left hand for something else to distract the sole employee of the shop, a dark-eyed boy a little older than her who was at the central counter wearing a navy blue t-shirt with a depiction of the moon that read "This Rock Rocks."

  "Does this one come in any other colors?" she said, holding up a navy and brown wallet that was in a small tray on the counter. She used her peripheral vision to find the two shop-bots, then turned her body to put herself between the shop-bots and the scarf she was twisting into a smaller and smaller shape with her right hand. She tried to ignore the thudding of her heart. It thrummed in her chest in an uncomfortable way, her breath feeling tight against her beating heart.

  "Oh this lovely number?" the boy said, turning the wallet over in his hands. Marci noticed his slender fingers, they looked like a musician's fingers, she decided, long and strong. "This is one of our most popular color combinations, you don't like it?" He winked at her, and Marci felt the beginnings of a flush creep up from the collar of her sweatshirt. Dress in baggy clothes, Jess had told her. Was it getting warm in here?

  "It's, uh, it's fine, I just..." Marci tried to force her brain to work. She could see one of the shop-bots beginning an aisle sweep, and she still had the scarf in her right hand, pulling at the delicate fabric with her fingers, trying to ball it up so that it fit into her fist. Her breath felt like a thousand pin pricks in her lungs, she was sure she must be bleeding. She tried to get her hand to work faster, while her brain felt like it had been doused in molasses.

  Then, as though watching from above, she heard herself talk. "I just really like green," she blurted, "like this color." She felt her hand reach up with the scarf still half-crumpled in it. Only after she had shown it to the boy did she realize what she was doing, at which point the color drained from her face and her eyes opened wide in surprise. What was she doing? She'd just blown it, her one chance. Jess was never going to want to be friends with her if she couldn't get through one simple initiation rite.

  "That's a great green, that would go so nicely with your eyes," he said, reaching for the scarf and smoothing it out on the counter. "You shouldn't wrinkle it so much, though, it'll look better if it's not all crushed."

  Marci stared at the pink and green scarf on the counter, feeling the remainder of her lunch packet burbling unpleasantly in her stomach. A bead of sweat broke out in the small of her back, and she began to give serious consideration to bolting out of the store empty-handed. The shop-bot came down the aisle, sweeping its red eyes this way and that.

  "Here," the boy said, reaching over the counter to wind the scarf around Marci's neck. "Such a nice color, take a look." He spun a small mirror on its axis until it faced Marci and she could look at herself.

  She found she had to remind herself how to breathe. She wasn't sure if it was the proximity of the shop-bot or the way the boy seemed to be eyeing her, looking her up and down while she tried to slow the rapid heartbeat she was sure both the boy and the shop-bot could hear. She had trouble looking at herself in the mirror, her guilt knocked at her, creeping around the edges of her reflection. She didn't meet her mirror-eyes, instead looking just at the scarf around her neck. It was very p
retty. She felt the boy's eyes on her, and wondered if he guessed what she had been doing.

  "It's, it's pretty," Marci stammered. She unwound it from around her neck, looking at the tag for the first time. "But I can't afford it. It's eleven macs." She handed the scarf back to the boy.

  He laid the scarf out on the counter, the began to fold it in careful triangles, making them smaller and smaller until the entire six-foot scarf was folded into a packet about the size of a deck of cards. The shop-bot had finished its downward aisle sweep and was making its way back up to the shop's entrance, the little silver wheels spinning silently.

  "I figured as much," he said, sliding the tightly folded package across the counter. He leaned forward to her, and whispered in her ear, "Here, take it from me on this side, put your hand flat on the counter and I'll slide it in." His hand brushed hers.

  For a moment, Marci was paralyzed, her fingers tingling from the touch. She wanted to hold onto those perfectly shaped fingers, feel their strength for herself. Now was her chance, he was handing her the scarf. Eleven macs would be more than enough to get into the pop-crowd, even the dog collars Jess had taken were only worth eight.

  But something held her back. Marci looked up at the boy's eyes, dark chocolate brown. He was studying her face. She noticed how his full lips curved up just a little at the corners, giving him the look of someone smiling even though he wasn't. His head was tilted a bit to one side, and he had a tiny crease between his eyebrows.

  Marci saw the question in his eyes. He knew what she was doing, and he was trying to help her. She saw the shop-bot's silver body flash as it neared her. It was about to pass her and be on the other side, where it's gleaming red band of light would easily pick out the scarf on the counter. This was it. She flexed her fingers toward the scarf under the boy's hand, reaching, but then let out a sigh. "I can't," she whispered.

  She dropped her eyes, not wanting to see the expression in the boy's face. She turned to go, her head bent down to avoid his gaze. Just then he reached across and touched her hand that was still resting on the counter. "I'm glad," he said, showing her a controller that he now held in his other hand. "I'm supposed to press this, you know, when, er, that sort of thing happens."

  Marci whipped her eyes up from the controller in his hands to his eyes, aware of the shocked look of betrayal on her face but powerless to stop it.

  His voice lowered to that husky whisper again, "I wouldn't have, you know." He shook the controller side-to-side for emphasis. "But I'm glad you didn't."

  Marci wondered if her heart would get a chance to beat a normal rhythm today. Her head spun with the implications, an imaginary vid-reel running of the cops taking her down to the station, bringing her home to her parents, their horrified expressions, the punishments, the humiliation at school, her face on the front of the LuCol news slick. She blinked fast to dispel the images and was surprised to find she was blinking back tears, too. She had changed her mind, after all. It hadn't happened, she hadn't stolen anything.

  "How did you know?" She realized she was still whispering too late to change the volume.

  "The panicked look in your eyes." The boy's eyes crinkled up as his face broke into a wide grin.

  "Panicked?" Marci repeated dumbly.

  "Yeah, I was afraid you were going to puke on the scarf, to be honest."

  Marci smiled at last, her face feeling stiff and unused to the motion. "Yeah, that almost happened."

  "So let me guess, some sort of ridiculous initiation ritual? A couple bored girls with too much time and moonla on their hands?"

  "Yeah, something like that," Marci muttered. "Pretty stupid now that you mention it." She looked back up at the boy, expecting to see a look of judgement, but finding sympathy and understanding in his eyes instead.

  "My year it was this underwear thing we were supposed to do to other guys in the locker room. Ridiculous. I almost got Alfonse, but chickened out at the last minute so instead of ripping his underwear I ended up giving him a bear hug. He was not particularly understanding." He rubbed his chin as though remembering Alfonse's reaction.

  "Ugh. That's awful!" Marci tried not to, but felt a tickle at the back of her throat. She kept her mouth shut, but somehow a laugh escaped. She clapped her hand over her mouth, horror-struck. Here this guy was going out of his way to empathize with her and she was laughing at him.

  To her surprise, he laughed too, long and hard, his laughter resonating roundly in the arched ceiling. They both laughed and laughed until tears trickled out in steaming rows. Marci felt the release of the tension she'd been carrying for too long.

  "I'm Hudson, by the way." He reached his hand across to her again, this time in friendship.

  Marci wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand, then self-consciously dried it on her sweatshirt before reaching across to return the shake. "I'm Marci." Growing serious, she added, "And I'm sorry. It's really stupid. But my best friend is...and, well, she wants me to...ugh, it's all stupid." Marci threw up her hands in frustration.

  "All that, eh? Why don't you tell me about it?" Hudson rested his chin in his hands, fixing Marci with a piercing gaze.

  "It's just, I feel like I hardly even know her anymore. We've been friends forever! I don't want to lose her!"

  "Joining this clique is the only way to stay friends?"

  "Uh, well, I don't know. I guess I thought it was." Marci furrowed her brow, thinking through what Hudson had said. Was joining the clique the only way to stay friends with Jess?

  "Have you told her what she means to you? Sounds like she's a really important person in your life. I'm all for keeping track of the people you care about."

  Hudson's gaze grew more intense and Marci had to look down, to break the tension. "I haven't. It's hard to talk about it with her, she's so busy being all bubbly with the new crew."

  "Well maybe she needs a bit of a reminder." Hudson said, reaching across for Marci's hand again.

  She let him take her free hand into his, again marveling at the perfection of his fingers, surprised at how warm his hand was, how hers seemed small in his. She felt the electricity again. And all of the sudden, she knew what she needed to do.

  "Thank you," Marci said, looking up and holding Hudson's gaze this time. "I better go. I have a friendship to rescue."

  "Okay, but can I call you?" He held up his comm, a hopeful expression on his face.

  Marci slid her hand out of Hudson's, thumbed the pad on his comm and smiled, "That'd be nice."

  She walked out of the shop, feeling his eyes on her back, past the shop bots, who eagerly scanned her with their red bands before moving on to scuttle around the perimeter of the shop.

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