“Hello? Dad?” Thirteen-year-old James couldn’t believe his father had answered the phone.

The boy sat alone outside the back of his residence hall, his face hot and puffy from crying. Drawing his legs up onto the bench, James pulled his sweatshirt up to his nose to ward off the nighttime chill.

“James? Do you have any idea what time it is?” Jonathan Siles' voice was not magnanimous.

James shrank even further into his sweatshirt. “Sorry…”

“Is something wrong?”

James’ throat tightened again and he fought to choke back enough control of his voice to speak properly—as if it weren’t hard enough with the braces clogging his mouth. “Can you come get me?”

“Of course not,” his father said incredulously. “Why would you ask something like that?”

“I don’t like it here.”

“It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

“I don’t like it,” James insisted. “The classes are really hard. Everyone’s so much older and different. I 
think this was a mistake.” Tears began to spill down his face again, despite his best efforts to stop them. “I want to come home,” he squeaked. “Please, let me come home.”
“You'll figure it out.”

“Can't I come back and try private high school instead?” James said.

“No,” his father barked in his ear, exasperated. “You’ve been taking college coursework for three years now! You’d be bored and stifled.”

“But—”

“You got a perfect score on both the aptitude assessment and the entrance exam. You’re going to throw all our hard work away because you don’t fit in with your adult classmates?”

James rubbed the sleeve of his sweatshirt under his nose. “I—I don’t know.”

“You’re more qualified than any of them will ever be. We sent you to that school to get an education, to make something of yourself. Not to make friends.”

“Dad…"

“Look, James, I know you’re overwhelmed right now, but give it time.”

James couldn’t answer for several long moments. He slumped against the back of the bench. “Okay.”

His parents knew best. James couldn't waste his talents. He had to push himself far beyond anyone else. 

Anything less was mediocre.

Mediocrity wasn't an option. Failure wasn't an option. His stubborn instincts for capability and survival bloomed like a black hole behind his ribs. The vacuous pull burned, and he embraced its life.

His parents knew best.

They arrived at the airport.

Everything was final. Goodbyes said, possessions sent off. 

After clearing security, the Knights skirted a corner into a wide hallway. The corridor smelled pungently of carpet cleaner and greased escalator panels, marked off like a ruler with gate numbers and restrooms.

Her parents talked very little, and Heather busied herself with keeping up. She reached idly for that suffocating mix of grief, rage, and anxiety that had dogged her since finding out they were relocating, but she just felt empty now, like the bottom of her soul had dropped out.

She hadn’t been happy in Dunesborough anyway. Maybe life really would be better in Worthing. New variables fostered new outcomes, and all that.

She sleepily traced the garish pattern in the carpet as they advanced. The rumble of a jet taking off attracted her attention to the window spanning most of the far wall.

“By the way, Heather,” Richard said. “I invited another one of my colleagues to travel with us, so he’s on the same flight.” 

Heather snapped her head around to look at him. “What? Why didn’t you warn me?” She checked the elastic band haphazardly keeping her voluminous hair at bay, which she had left to do whatever feral thing it wanted. She was battling a bad acne flare from all the stress, had barely slept the night before, and had completely forgotten to consider whether her oversized comfort hoodie might need a wash before the travel day. Definitely not in a state to make a good first impression.

If her hopes were going to pan out, she needed her dad’s coworkers to like her.

“I didn’t want you to be nervous,” Richard said.

“And you were in on this?” she accosted her mom. Su only shrugged.

“Oh,” Richard said. “E17—this is us.”

Heather groaned. If her dad was going to throw her in raw with no warning, then she fully intended to ask this colleague whatever she wanted in front of him.

She trailed behind her parents into the hushed waiting area, glancing around for any overtly nerdy middle-aged men that seemed to recognize them. Instead, Richard caught the gaze of a much younger individual in a hoodie and jeans, seated by the window with a black journal balanced on his knee. Richard waved. “And there he is.” 

The man lifted a hand in return and set his journal aside as they arrived. 

“Good morning,” Richard said amiably. “Glad you could make it.”

“By the skin of my teeth,” the colleague sighed, standing up. He glanced at Su and Heather. “This must be your family? I recognize you from your photos on Richard’s desk at work.”

He was long-proportioned like a scarecrow, with short and wayward brown hair, and dark circles under astute hazel eyes. Something about him seemed restless, an urgency of spirit barely controlled, loosely tethered under the surface. 

“Yes,” Richard said. “This is my partner, Su-Wei, and my daughter, Heather.”

“Pleasure to meet you both,” the colleague said with a tired smile. He shook Su’s hand, and then he was holding his hand out for Heather. She almost jumped as his eyes flicked to hers. “I’m James.”

Richard’s daughter stared at him, and he pretended not to notice her scrutiny. It was far too early in the morning, and James felt unprepared for the full course of niceties.

In the photos he’d seen of her, a bright, happy grin scrunched her pudgy face while she posed playfully with her mother, hips angled and crossed finger heart signs flying. The kid in front of him, understandably, had been dragged through a miserable month, and it showed in her subdued demeanor.

However, when she shook his pale hand, the grip was welcoming and self-assured, and the sullen, sleepy grayness he’d caught on her face moments earlier gave way to a curt but warm smile.

A kid with a filter, he thought. Interesting.

“James is a very talented engineer,” Richard said. “You two might enjoy chatting—Heather also has a knack for the sciences, top of her class. She’s been pretty frustrated with not feeling challenged enough academically, but we’re hoping her new school in Worthing will be a good fit.”

“Which one are you going with?” James asked.

“Evergreen Academy,” Richard said.

“Oh, yeah, that’s a really good one,” James said without thinking. At Richard’s evident surprise, he explained, hastily, “I grew up a couple hours north of Worthing, but took some online classes through Evergreen, and attended chess and engineering tournaments they hosted there. So I’m familiar.”

“Oh wow, I knew you were from the west coast, but I didn’t realize it was that close to where we’re headed,” Richard said. He flashed a wry smile. “How did you do at those tournaments?”

James scoffed. “Good at the engineering, bad at chess.”

Chess was something his parents had made him do. He didn’t care at all about strategy. He also hadn’t wanted to study all the neurobiology his father had made him learn while hoping to push him into his same field. James just wanted to build machines.

He hoped his parents hadn’t somehow found out about the move.

Heather looked up at him. “What do you do at Larkspur?”

Richard flinched. When he caught his daughter’s gaze, she raised her eyebrows at him, challenging, then returned her attention to James, innocently waiting for an answer.

James exchanged his own glance with Richard before he said, “I, uh, do a little of everything. Mechanical, electrical, programming…My specialty is in robotics, technically.”

“Oh, cool,” she said. “Make any robots lately?”

“Not recently, no.”

“What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever made?”

“Well I was pretty proud of that generator—” he said, then stopped himself, fumbling, loathe to bring all those memories cascading back to Richard. Reminders of James’ hazardous failures and impotent conspiracy theories. “But, uh, we’ve had to put that project away for now, as you may have heard.”

“R.I.P, Larkspur generator,” Heather said, in a laissez-faire, wistful tone. She crossed herself in a haphazard religious gesture.

A wan, amused smile tugged at the edge of James’ mouth.

“R.I.P.” he agreed, softly.

Richard cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “Maybe you can ask James about Evergreen,” he suggested to Heather.

Heather shrugged, and angled past her dad to find a seat at the end of the row. She hugged her teal backpack to her chest and gazed turbidly out the window. She donned her headphones from around her neck.

Richard sighed softly, and it sounded unexpectedly troubled.

James glanced from father to daughter. At first, he had suspected inviting him to travel with them was Richard’s way of saying there were no hard feelings, and to make sure James still existed after he had been standoffish in the Larkspur team group chat all month. The offer of bundling airline tickets was convenient—James despised every minute sunk into moving logistics—so he had agreed. But now, he wondered if he had been pulled into something else.

James gave his boss a quizzical look, with a discrete head tilt in Heather’s direction.

Richard chuckled nervously, sighed again, and readjusted his glasses. “She’s struggling with the move. I only recently told her about Larkspur because of the accident, but disclosure has been limited.” His tone waned, becoming quiet. “It hasn’t made up for making her leave Dunesborough.”

“I hope she likes Worthing,” James said, trying to be sympathetic. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Me too,” Richard said. “Do you mind if we join you while we wait?” he asked.

“Not at all,” James said, and returned to his chair.

He resumed the train of thought he was following in his project journal, still pristine and not yet fully broken into like the others he had lost in the accident. He preferred to work analog in brainstorming and troubleshooting. It helped him think.

Su-Wei asked him how the moving process had been for him, and he obliged an answer that sounded as benign as possible. The finer details of the process had been boring and irritating, and he spent the short conversation trying to figure out whether she harbored any ill feelings over his unwittingly putting her partner in danger.

Heather played with her phone, brooding.

Finally, boarding began, and he was able to escape further interrogation. Some kind of frustrated back-and-forth between Heather and her parents buzzed quietly in the background, but he tried to ignore it. Incomplete formulas and technical sketches nagged at his attention as he waited in line, strode down the boarding tunnel, and finally navigated the narrow aisle on the airplane, looking for his seat.

He stowed his carryon bag and got situated, bracing himself for six hours of trying to keep his elbows and knees in check in the cramped aisle seat.

But as more people boarded, his row failed to fill with other passengers. He waited for the cabin to settle in, and once his hopes were confirmed, he moved to the window seat, king of his tiny patch of airplane.

Lucky.

Stifling a yawn, he pulled out his journal to continue working.

Then Heather appeared, planting herself in the aisle seat in his row in a bristle of oversized lavender sweatshirt, her colorful headphones nestled in a cloud of puffy, disgruntled hair. He glanced at her only subtly, but otherwise tried not to react.

Heather glanced up suddenly, as if belatedly realizing what she was doing. “Sorry, can I sit here?” She turned away from the row across the aisle and one back from his, lowering her voice. “I can’t stand my parents right now.”

“Sure,” James said.

Easy come, easy go, he thought.

He continued to work at a diagram of a revamped failsafe system for the deceased generator, his mechanical pencil scratching symmetrical borders. In his peripheral vision, the teenager sat still, hugging her backpack, her face set tiredly as she forcibly contained whatever emotional disturbance rumbled behind her eyes.

God, he knew that look.

By degrees, she went from hugging her backpack close, to gently stowing it under the seat, to buckling herself in. Finally, she pulled her headphones askew to betray an ear. It was pierced, with a small pearl-like stud.

“What are you working on?” she asked.

He handed over his notebook, without being sure why. A vague gesture of solidarity for a fellow only child angry at their parents, perhaps. Briefly, he realized this was probably a breach of Larkspur’s NDA, but who was she going to tell?

Heather studied the drawing. “Wow. Detailed.” She pinched the edge of the previous page, as if considering flipping through the rest of the notebook, but stopped herself. She handed it back instead. James found that simple act of restraint a surprisingly respectful gesture. “What is it?”

“What did Richard tell you about the generator?”

“That it exploded,” she said. “Not much else.”

He nodded. “Well, I’m trying to figure out some other mechanism we could install in a future version that could prevent a repeat of that.” He docked his elbow on the edge of the tiny airplane window and rested his temple against his fingers, frowning pensively at the sketch. “But it already had so many failsafes in it…”

“Why did it explode?”

“We’re still not sure,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to get into more detail than that. Sorry.”

Heather shrugged it off, like she hadn’t expected much anyway.

“How long have you been at Larkspur?” she asked.

“Two years,” he said.

“How do you even get hired at a place like that if nobody’s allowed to know about it?”

“One of my now colleagues gave a talk at my university,” he said. “Larkspur was recruiting for an internship position, which I applied to and was accepted my last year in college. It became a permanent position later.”

She perked up at that. “Larkspur does internships? Do you think I could intern there?”

“Maybe,” he said. It was unlikely, but he didn’t want to rain on her small spark of optimism. “You could ask your dad about it.”

“Oh, I intend to,” she said. “Been waiting for the right moment, but he’s gonna try to turn me down.” 
She huffed. “He’s full of double standards about Larkspur right now. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Best of luck.”

“Thank you.” She gave it some more thought before speaking up again, “So, if you started at Larkspur your senior year and have been there for two, that makes you…” She silently calculated on her fingers. “Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Unless you went to graduate school?”

“Yes to grad school,” James said. He hesitated, questioning why he was giving her personal details. If she couldn’t tell how old he was, he should have just let her believe whatever. “I’m twenty.”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re kind of young then.”

He tilted his head in a lazy shrug, and resumed drawing. “I guess.”

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Get all your degrees that fast.”

“I went to college early and entered with prior credits.”

The wheels were turning behind her eyes. She was counting on her fingers again. “So then you must have gone to college at like…twelve?” She looked at her extended fingers, perplexed, as if shocked and appalled at the math.

James kept his gaze on his notebook, trying to be nonchalant. “Thirteen. I didn’t want to waste any time.”

“Did you do it all online, or go to a university close to home?”

“The prior credits were a mix of online and local. The rest was on campus, far from home. The university I wanted to attend wasn’t close.” He winced inwardly. More personal details.
She blinked. “Did your parents move with you, then?”

He shook his head. He supposed he was committed now. “I lived on campus.”

Her face scrunched into an incredulous expression. “Is that…allowed? To send middle-schoolers to college by themselves? That sounds terrifying.”

“I’ve—never actually asked myself that question before,” he said haltingly, surprised that she would interpret it that way.

Even after graduating and becoming a full time professional in the field, he had logged his college experience as necessary, privileged.

Back then, he called his parents or saw one of the university counselors if he needed guidance, obsessively observed his adult peers to collect data on how to be an adult and how to exhibit traits that made people tolerate him. For matters like finishing his orthodontics treatment, or needing to see a doctor when he developed bronchitis in his junior year, his parents arranged everything from afar. He only had to show up, and put in the work. To make sure his parents’ investment in him was worth it.

For him, this was normal. Everything—his childhood, his mental and physical health, his social life—had been faithfully surrendered in the name of progress. If he was capable of it, he had a duty to walk that path.

Didn’t he?

“I turned out all right,” James said.

Thankfully, she didn’t push. “Oh, okay. So do you have a doctorate?” she asked. “They say that’s the new bachelor’s degree.”

He looked at her, surprised. “You’re a…high school freshman, right?”

“Sophomore in the fall,” she said.

“And you’re already researching college?” He’d gleaned over the years that high schoolers typically didn’t even take a practice test for the college aptitude exams until junior year.

Heather shrugged.

A sideways smile tugged at his mouth, despite himself. “God…” he said quietly.

“What?” Heather said, caught off guard by his reaction.

“Just—” James searched for words, embarrassed. “Try not to grow up too quickly.” A memory intruded on his senses, though he tried to push it away—of a gangly young teenager curled up on a bench behind the university dorms, weeping in hushed tones into the collar of his sweatshirt after his father had hung up the phone. Hating himself for being weak. Unworthy of his own intelligence. “You don’t get this time back, so I hope you can enjoy it.”

After the safety demonstration, the breathy, high-pitched whine of the jet’s engines ramped up, filling Heather with giddy expectation. She hadn't been on a plane in ages, and she looked past James out the oblong window on his left as the aircraft taxied to the runway.

“So why are you in a hurry to get to college?” his voice broke her distraction.

Heather tried to push away a stab of self-consciousness. Whenever she mentioned college hopes or her advanced placement classes, her teachers and family members were always impressed. Heather was the overachiever of the family, the grandkid that never got into trouble and always got the best grades. She was going places. But James, the apparent poster child for an unhinged level of prodigious achievement, seemed to have taken it as a red flag.

“Because high school is boring and horrible.” She sat back, crossing her arms and staring dismally at the seat in front of her. “My best friend moved away as soon as everyone else’s friend groups solidified freshman year, so I’m just kind of around and no one cares. I can barely even get my best friend to talk to me long distance, and when she does, she only wants to talk about her stupid shiny new city friends or whatever. And now because of Larkspur, I’m moving somewhere completely unfamiliar where no one knows me at all.” She fidgeted with a section of her short hair, gathering it from a frizzy puff into a more deliberate coil. She couldn’t stop wondering how Angela had made new friends so quickly, while Heather continued to flounder. What was wrong with Heather that she couldn’t move on so easily too? “I know I should look at this move as a fresh start, and I’m trying. But it still hurts to be left behind all the time. It feels like a curse that will follow me my whole life.”

James was silent for a moment. Heather inwardly berated herself for confiding in him. First impression officially ruined.

“I’m sorry,” James said finally. “For what it’s worth, you and I have met, at least.”

“Thanks,” Heather said, softly. “But when we get to Worthing, you’ll get to go work at Larkspur while I rot at home alone all summer. I’ll probably never see you again. And it’s not like we can see each other socially anyway.”

“I definitely don’t want to cross any boundaries,” James said. His tone was matter-of-fact, despite his efforts to be sympathetic. “Your parents know you too, so you won’t be totally alone until you can make new friends.”

“Ugh,” Heather said. “At the rate everything is going, they’ll forget I exist too.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the plane preparing to take off. As it sped down the runway, faster and faster, Heather gripped the armrests.

Possibilities of botched takeoffs and aerial explosions rocketed through her head. The thought occurred to her that if she died in the next few minutes, she would just have to accept it. She didn’t know if she could.

Fortunately, no forced acquiescence of her own demise occurred. After a little turbulence, they were safely in the air. She hugged herself, and from her peripheral vision, she watched James scribbling away, unbothered. She wished she had work she could sink into like that. To be able to drown everything out, to have a sense of purpose that grounded her wherever she happened to be. Maybe the move across the country didn’t feel so life ending for him because of that.

“Are you leaving friends behind in Dunesborough?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I don’t really have time to make friends.”

“Oh,” she said. “Does that get lonely?”

“I see my coworkers every day. That’s enough social interaction for me.”

She reached under the seat in front of her and retrieved her handheld video game console from her backpack.

Belatedly, he said, “Being stuck at home all summer does sound like hell. Maybe there’s some kind of hobbyist group you can join to help tide you over until school starts.”

She nodded. “I’ll have to look into it.” She switched on her console and slipped her headphones back over both ears. “I should let you get back to what you were doing. Thank you for talking with me.”

“No worries,” James said, and his attention slid away from her and back into his sketches.

It wasn’t his fault, but the ease of the switch stung a little. She knew her father’s coworkers weren’t going to change her life or anything, unless one of them got her into Larkspur, or wrote her a letter of recommendation to a prestigious college or something. After countless nights feeling like a ghost in her own life, she was starving for the smallest sign that this move would indeed change things for the better.

Do I exist?

Do I matter?

Do you see me?

She didn’t think she’d be able to take it if the west coast, too, answered these questions with a resounding “No.”