RYLIN LEANED FORWARD on the counter of the holography edit lab, so deeply absorbed by the work that she’d almost forgotten where she was.
She’d met up with Leda after school to edit their fencing footage, which Rylin had to admit had turned out pretty awesome. But Leda had left a while ago. On a whim, Rylin had loaded the rest of the footage from her vid-cam—and was now submerged in something else entirely.
She kept rewatching what she’d filmed at the pool party last weekend, scrolling back and forth through it, her eyes glittering with excitement. Because even as she sat in this room, on a black velvet chair, Rylin felt transported back in time.
The party ebbed and flowed around her, light dancing on the walls like candlelight flickering on a primordial cave. The blue-green pool seemed to ripple up to Rylin’s waist. Next to her, Lux surfaced from underwater and gave her head a shake—Rylin instinctively threw up an arm, recoiling from the droplets that flung from Lux’s close-cropped blond hair, before lowering it self-consciously, because of course Lux wasn’t there.
This was even more intense than halluci-lighters, she thought, searching eagerly for a clip to show her friends.
“Rylin? What are you doing in here?” Xiayne stepped inside, and the door shut automatically behind him to block the light. He was wearing a white T-shirt again, the inktats on his chest almost visible through the thin material.
She slammed her console’s central button, and the holo went dark. “Just working on something.”
“Wait—pull that back up, will you?” Xiayne’s voice was eager, curious.
Rylin crossed her arms. For some reason she felt defensive. “Do you need me to leave? Last I checked, this room wasn’t reserved.”
“No, by all means, stay. I’m not here to kick you out.” Xiayne sounded amused by her reaction. “I’m glad that someone is finally using this space. God knows the school spent enough money on it, and it’s always empty.”
“Professor—” Rylin began, but he interrupted her.
“Xiayne,” he corrected.
“Xiayne,” she forged on, a little exasperated. “What was wrong with my video of the sunset?”
“Nothing. It was a beautiful video,” he said evenly.
“Then why did you give it a bad grade?”
Xiayne gestured to the chair next to her as if to say, May I? When Rylin didn’t shake her head, he sat down. “I marked your video down because I know you can do better.”
You don’t even know me, Rylin wanted to protest, but it sounded petulant, and she didn’t feel as angry anymore.
“I’m sorry if I was hard on you,” Xiayne went on, studying her. “I know firsthand that it isn’t an easy transition, coming to a place like this from downTower.”
Rylin let out a sigh. “I just don’t think I fit in up here.” It was nice to say this out loud.
“Of course you don’t,” Xiayne agreed, which shocked her into momentary silence. He grinned. “But I don’t think you really want to fit in, do you?”
“I guess not,” Rylin admitted.
“Now, can I please see what you were working on?”
She hesitated before pushing PLAY.
The pool flared to life around them, glimmering with a wild, almost frantic energy. The neon lights of the glow-lamps danced against the darkness. Music and gossip echoed sharply over the water, mingled with the sounds of laughter and drunken splashing. A couple was pressed up against the corner, another curled beneath the diving board. Rylin could see it all in perfect detail, as if she were diving into her own memory except better, everything brighter and more starkly drawn than her flawed human recollections. She could practically taste the chilled shots of atomic, could smell the chlorine and sweat.
She risked a glance at Xiayne. He was watching, his eyes wide open, as if he didn’t even want to blink for fear of missing something.
When V grabbed the camera and dunked it beneath the surface of the pool, the room seemed to spin wildly, the entire world turning to water. Rylin let out a gasp of panic and shut off the holo.
“No! Don’t stop!” Xiayne cried out.
“You aren’t angry about the camera?” Let alone the fact that she’d recorded an illegal party in a public space, with underage drinking.
“No, it’s fine, the camera’s waterproof! Rylin”—he scooted closer and put his hand on top of hers, lacing their fingers and waving, so that she waved along with him to continue the playback—“this is incredible.”
Rylin blinked, startled by the physical contact, but Xiayne had already let go; he didn’t even seem fully aware that he’d touched her. He was walking in a circle, the light from the holo falling in startling patterns across his features. “You did it.”
“Did what?”
“I asked you to show me how you see the world, and you did it. This footage—it’s visually arresting, it’s narratively compelling, it’s colorful and vibrant. It’s …” He shook his head. “It’s fucking great, okay?”
“All I did was bring the camera to a party that was already happening,” Rylin protested, uncertain.
Xiayne waved his arms so the holo shut off. “Lights on!” he croaked, and blinked at her in the sudden brightness. “That’s the whole point of this class—to be a careful observer, to re-learn how to see the world. What I see from this”—he threw out his arms to encompass the room, which now felt strangely empty without all the chaos of the party—“is that you have a natural eye.”
She was still confused. “You didn’t even like my sunset vid. And that’s when I was actually trying.”
“You were trying to be something that wasn’t you. But this is!”
“How? This isn’t even edited!”
She thought Xiayne might take offense at her tone, but he just leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, as carelessly as if he had all the time in the world. “So let’s fix that.”
“Right now?” Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“Did you have other plans?”
Something in his tone, in the challenging set of his shoulders, broke through Rylin’s irritation. “Didn’t you?”
“Oh, I did, but this will be more fun,” Xiayne said easily, and Rylin couldn’t help but smile.
Three hours later, the holo glimmered around them in glowing tatters. Snatches of different images had been spliced apart and pulled into various groupings, overlapping in the air like a chorus of ghosts. “Thank you for spending so long with me. I didn’t realize how late it is,” Rylin said, feeling a little guilty that she’d taken so much of Xiayne’s evening.
“You’d be surprised how quickly time disappears in here. Especially since there are no windows, no natural light.” He paused at the doorway to let the edit bay’s lights flicker out. Rylin hurried to follow—and tripped forward, barely catching herself from sprawling headfirst in the empty hallway.
“Whoa, you okay?” Xiayne put out a hand to steady her. “Where are you headed? Let me walk you out; it’s so late.”
Rylin blinked, a million voices shouting in her head at once. She felt a pang of embarrassment at her clumsiness, mingled with a surprised, not-unpleasant warmth. Xiayne hadn’t let go of her elbow, his hand steady on her bare skin although she was no longer in danger of falling.
Someone turned the corner at the end of the hall. Of course, Rylin thought wildly, it just had to be Cord.
Rylin saw the entire scene on his face as he walked forward: Rylin and a young, attractive teacher, alone, late in the evening, walking out of the dark edit bay together; the teacher’s hand on her arm in an unmistakably intimate gesture. She saw Cord weighing it all, adding it up, and she knew he would be drawing conclusions about what was going on.
She told herself she didn’t care, but as they grew closer in the empty hallway, her body strummed with a sharp and familiar longing. She kept her head high, unblinking, determined not to reveal to Cord how much it was costing her.
And then it was over: he had walked past, and the moment was gone.