12
This is a very bad idea.
When the first fireworks went off, it was barely dark. The sun had just settled under the horizon when they exploded into the sky, the sparks flaring like stars against the glow of dusk. They launched from one of the inbound ferries packed with revelers coming to celebrate the last night of the year on the Flotilla.
The Flotilla wasted no time in firing back. Now the air is thick with the flash of light and the sounds of bombardment. I’ve gotten so used to the noise that it barely fazes me each time a new firework bursts. It’s fully dark, and the light of the explosions reflects off the NeoPacific’s glassy surface. The whole city feels like it’s wrapped in a cocoon of sound and color. The Flotilla’s essentially fireproof—or so I’ve been reassured. And the fact that we’re climbing to the top of the towers with explosives strapped to our backs isn’t what’s worrying me either.
It’s that Swift’s leading the way, and I kind of like it.
“Pick up the pace!” Chuck shouts from the rear of our procession. I glance over my shoulder at her and Lemon. Swift’s somehow managed to loop both of them into this little excursion, probably to offset the awkwardness a little. Neither of us is really sure if this is a date. And mercifully, according to Chuck, Varma’s off partying with a few other guys from the subcontinent.
I can’t help but delight in how grouchy it makes her. Lemon shares my grin, her angular face glowing as another round of fireworks bursts across the night. We clamber up the narrow stairs, following the clatter of Swift’s footsteps ahead.
“Move it, Cas. Quit ogling Swift’s ass, I swear to god,” Chuck yells.
Swift stumbles.
When we spill out onto the highest deck of the tower, we’re met with a massive crowd. People press against the rails, leaning out over the precarious edge to watch the fireworks. On a normal day, this is the most desolate part of the city, farthest from the docks and everything that makes the Flotilla’s heart beat. Tonight, it’s the place to be. Floodlights powered by rumbling generators bathe everything in a washed-out glow, a speaker system blasts music, and a few dedicated vendors have pulled their carts all the way up to the summit. The rich smell of their food intersperses with the sweat of the crowd. They’ll make a killing tonight.
Even though everyone’s celebrating, we can’t escape the tension that thickens the night air. The Flotilla’s held out for decades, but the cephalopoid attack struck too close to home, and the people are rattled. Every burst of fireworks feels somewhere between a prelude to war and a statement of purpose. We’re here. We’re alive. And we’re going to light you up.
Swift hoists a rocket over her head, and all eyes swing to her. A cheer goes up, and I keep my eyes anywhere but the ink on her forearm as she brandishes the firework. “Anyone got a light?” Swift shouts. I hear the edges of the captain in her voice.
Almost instantly, she’s swallowed in the glow of lighter flames that puff to life around her. Beaming, she holds out the rocket’s fuse, and someone reaches out to light it. The string catches in a flurry of sparks, and Swift lifts the rocket over her head by the stick, leaning as far away from the sputtering fuse as she can. The crowd swells away, some of them clapping their hands over their ears.
It takes off with a scream and a puff of smoke. Swift immediately drops the stick, shaking her hand furiously and swearing as only a pirate can. The rocket spirals up over us, the hiss of its ignition rapidly fading. And then it bursts. I squint as the flash of light sears into my retinas, followed closely by the thunderous blast. Violent orange sparks cascade down over us, and some people in the crowd shriek, swatting away the embers that fall.
The rest are already clamoring for more. Swift beckons the three of us forward, and we unsling our backpacks, which are stuffed with enough explosives to send this entire tower up in flames. Most of them were bought with my salary, since, as Swift astutely put it, “I’m just going to use it for self-flagellation anyway.” The rest were gifts from shopkeepers who saw their hometown hero and insisted she take them as tokens of their gratitude.
We pass out the fireworks to whoever reaches out to take them. A little girl runs past, waving a sputtering Roman candle in a way that makes everyone jump a few feet back, and a few more rockets shoot out of the crowd, one of them careening dangerously close to one of the other towers. The music cranks louder, drowning out the explosions above as my backpack gets lighter and lighter.
Finally I’m all out. I pass the pack off to a scrawny-looking preteen who looks like he needs it and draw back to the railing. Lemon trails after me, her head bobbing slightly to the thunder of the bass beat. We break free from the crush of the crowd, and a wash of cool night air rushes over me. “Ain’t so bad here, is it?” I ask her when we reach the edge of the deck.
Lemon keeps nodding, her eyes flicking back and forth as she tracks each new firework that launches.
“Yeah,” I say, leaning against the bars until the railing bends slightly. “I like it here too.”
A year ago, I never could have imagined this night. I spent last New Year’s Eve at a boat party with my parents and the other SRCese Reckoner trainers. Tom and I were glued at the hip for the entire evening, too nervous to intermingle with the adults and too unfamiliar to hang out with the other industry kids. We’d shot off a few fireworks once we were clear of the Reckoners’ lines of sight—we didn’t want any of them to mistake the fireworks for signals. It had been a quiet celebration. I’d worn a cocktail dress and braided my hair.
And now I’m on a pirate raft, dressed in shorts and a tank top with pirate ink on my body. My hair’s still too short to do anything with it. I’m surrounded by reckless explosions and the sheer energy of the Flotilla, and somewhere out there, the world might be going to hell.
A lot can change in a year. A year ago, I had been so confident that I was going to spend the rest of my life in the Reckoner industry. A year ago, I was brimming with excitement because this was finally it. It was finally here. The year I’d go on my first solo mission. The year I’d prove myself as a trainer. The year I’d be the person I was meant to be.
I can’t help but laugh, looking at where I am now.
But maybe that’s the thing about new years, about time. No matter what’s behind us, the future’s always widely, stupidly open. A new year is a fresh start, a chance to put the past behind us and strike out into the unknown. That’s what makes it worth celebrating.
And just as the thought is settling in, Lemon mutters, “Chuck and Swift are getting into a fight.”
I whip my head around, scanning the crowd for Chuck’s wild mane, for Swift’s uneven hair. I find them, lit by the glow of a food cart’s signage, wrapped in a heated argument. I’m halfway through the crowd by the time I realize they’re smiling even as they gesture and shout, but by then it’s too late. They’ve spotted me.
“Cas!” Chuck yells over the thud of the speakers overhead. “We need a judge.”
“An impartial one?” I ask, once I’ve pushed my way to their side.
Chuck shrugs. “One who can count, at least. You game?”
“What’s the game?”
She grins, gesturing to the cart, which boasts an impressive host of Hawaiian dishes. The Islander owner eyes us suspiciously. “I want to see if this haole can keep up with me, so we’re gonna eat spam musubi until one of us gives up or hurls.”
Swift already looks queasy, but she only grins when I raise an eyebrow at her. “Please tell me you’re not doing this to impress me,” I groan.
Chuck slaps a bill down on the counter. “Just keep ’em coming,” she tells the vendor.
“You got it,” the man replies, passing over two nori-wrapped blocks. Swift takes one, Chuck snatches the other, and they both look to me.
“This is a horrible idea,” I say with a smile. “Go.”
Chuck’s inhaled hers before Swift’s even gotten a bite down. She swipes another off the counter, taking a second to savor the sight of Swift desperately trying to keep her musubi together as she crams it down her throat. Another follows, but it crumbles just as fast as the first, spilling down Swift’s front. “Oh dear god in heaven,” Chuck mutters, incredulous. “If I’d have known—”
“Shut up!” Swift chokes around a mouthful of half-chewed rice. She tries to stuff the rest of the musubi in. She fails miserably.
“Swift, I’m begging you. Retain your dignity, woman,” Chuck says. She tries to take a bite of her second block, but she’s laughing so hard that she nearly spits it right back out. “You can’t win if you’re wearing half of it.”
Swift’s eyes are lit with righteous fire. Bits of spam, rice, and nori are stuck to her chin, and the closest part of the crowd has started to take notice of the competition. Some of them seem to be considering betting.
Swift meets my gaze. “Congratulations,” I tell her. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever had a girl do on a date.”
She thrusts her fists in the air and shouts, “I give up!”
“Oh come on!” Chuck yells, reaching for her third musubi. “You weakling! I thought you’d have more fight than this.”
Swift’s triumphant grin is nori-speckled and shit-eating. “At least I’ve got a date.”
Chuck’s furious stare snaps to me, waiting for me to deny it and leave Swift looking like an idiot. But Swift already looks like enough of an idiot on her own, so I simply shrug and say, “She ain’t wrong.”
“Unbelievable,” Chuck deadpans, but she can’t stop herself from smiling a bit. She turns to the vendor, who’s already laid out the rest of the musubis she paid for. “I’ll just… uh, package the rest of these to go.”
Swift wanders away, picking at the food still stuck in her teeth. I’m not sure if she wants me to follow her, but then she glances back over her shoulder and tilts her head just so. I stuff my hands in my pockets and sidle up to her. “You missed a spot,” I tell her, even though she hasn’t, just to watch her pluck furiously at the crevices in her incisors.
She lifts an eyebrow at Chuck, who’s now trying to bait Lemon into eating one of the musubis. Lemon holds it at arm’s length. Swift shrugs. “Lost the battle,” she says, her eyes shifting to mine. “Won the war.”
And now it’s dangerous. I feel like I’m on the edge of a chasm, leaning forward, ready to jump. No bottom in sight, no idea how far I’ll end up going, no idea whether I’ll come out alive in the end. Do I trust Swift? Do I need to trust Swift for this to happen, or can that come along the way? Maybe I’m thinking too hard about all of this.
“Cas?” she asks, nudging me with her shoulder, because of course I’ve zoned out.
Before I can answer, someone shouts, “TEN!”
The countdown has started. Projections around the city flicker to life, replacing the glow of the fireworks with numerals that tick back one by one. The seconds until the New Year hurtle past, and all the while I’m staring at Swift’s face, trying to decide, trying to figure out the answers to questions I haven’t even asked yet. The towers scream in unison, “THREE, TWO, ONE!”
New year. New start. And it’s like the first time all over again. I don’t know who moves first, but somehow we’re lunging for each other, somehow Swift’s arms are around my waist, somehow mine are around her neck, and when our lips meet it’s just like it used to be.
There’s just me and her, and the rest of it falls away.
All around us fireworks burst, the explosions rattling in my chest and in hers. I see flashes of light through my eyelids, feel the shock of the sparks that fall on my bare shoulders. I press my body as far against her as it will go, my lips urging hers open. This is right. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. The ink on her arm doesn’t matter as much as the fire between us, and the entire NeoPacific isn’t enough to put it out.
I think she feels it too. Swift draws back from the kiss by just an inch, her hands still on my hips, her thumbs running experimentally under the hem of my tank top. “So,” she breathes, the word lost in the chaos of the celebration.
“Happy New Year, huh?” I let one hand trail down her neck, her chest, her stomach, until my fingers hook into her waistband. There’s an implication hanging in the space between us, one I’m not rescinding, one she’s still trying to process.
Swift leans forward until her lips brush my ear. Her hands slip lower on my back. “Think we can make it to the Minnow without you deciding to hate me again?”
We do.
It isn’t smooth, but I don’t think it’s ever meant to be. We fumble through the steps, laughing at ourselves every time an awkwardly placed elbow hits the wall of her bunk, every time a stubborn piece of clothing takes extra tugging to get loose. This isn’t the first time she’s done this. It isn’t for me, either. But that doesn’t make it any less significant, any less overwhelming, any less everything.
There’s hesitation. There are pauses. Questions muttered into the crook of her neck, breathed against the goose bumps on my stomach. Is this okay? Does this work? Are we okay?
And we are.
She doesn’t notice the new ink at first, too distracted by the rest of me. It isn’t until after that she gets a good look at my back, and her breath catches in her throat. “Is that…” She trails off, her fingers reaching over to brush the thin lines etched across my skin. “That’s not Bao.”
“No,” I tell her. “It’s not.”
Swift takes a moment to drink in the inker’s rendition of the monster she killed. Durga’s form splays across my back from my shoulder blades to the crest of my hips. It’s incomplete, some of it little more than an outline, but still I wear the weight of the Reckoner I lost on my back. I shiver as Swift’s fingertips drag down my spine. She leans over me and presses her forehead against the ink, and for a moment we stay like that: utterly still, draped in silence, and all too aware of where we’ve been.
When I can’t take it anymore, I roll over, and Swift’s eyes lock on mine. “You’ll never forgive me for her, will you?” she asks.
Here, like this, I can’t lie to her. “I don’t know,” I say. “But you’ve got to believe that I’m trying.”
And then I feel her smile on my lips as she presses down against me, and it’s enough, it’s all enough. Whatever’s twisted and broken between us, it’s not going to hold us back. And for the rest of the night, it doesn’t.