Author: Lo, Malinda
Date: 2013-09-03
Keywords: Juvenile Fiction / Family - Alternative Family, Juvenile Fiction / Gay & Lesbian, Juvenile Fiction / Social Issues - Homosexuality, Juvenile Fiction / Science Fiction
Description: Malinda Lo brings us an ebook exclusive short story about Amber, a fan favorite character from Adaptation.
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Rights: Copyright © 2013 by Malinda Lo

Natural Selection

Malinda Lo

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It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

—Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

1

Kurra

Kurra is a planet of oceans and mountains, all vertical ascent or plunging drop to rock-strewn waves. Out on the water, floating cities spread like silver lattices over deep blue.

My family comes from the mountains, and that’s where we live. My mother told me that her great-great-great-grandparents built our house. It’s perched on the edge of the mountain called Isi Na, a ten-minute cable ride from Isina’uru, Isi Na City, which is anchored to the mountain with long metallic ropes like a spider’s web.

I stand at the edge of the deck, leaning against the glass and steel railing, and look out and away. I imagine I’m a bird soaring high above the water, the islands tiny dots below. But there aren’t any birds here—not exactly. Not like on Earth.

I was born on Earth, not Kurra. I’m not human, even though I try to be. My people, the Imria, think I’m a little unusual because of that. They call me an Earthsider: as if I’ve crossed a line, chosen a side. Gone native.

“Be careful,” Ama warns me. “Don’t lean too far over.”

I look back at my parents seated at the table behind me. “I’m not going to fall,” I say, irritated. Ama’s always telling me to stop doing things. I think all her years on Earth have dulled her Imrian sense of adventure.

Aba—one of my fathers—reaches for Ama’s hand as he says, “She’ll be fine. She has to learn how to watch out for herself.”

Ada, my other father, glances over at me. Ada has heard Aba and Ama argue over this too many times to count, and lately he’s been siding with Ama. “Be careful,” he tells me.

I sigh but pull back from the edge a bit as I look down toward the city. I see the bright sheen of it on the mountainside below, the buildings gleaming in the sun. I haven’t been to Isina’uru in a week, and I wonder what’s been going on at school. I’m so isolated up here, cut off from my friends and their lives. It’s startling to realize that I miss them, that I’ve become part of their world—this world.

Eight months ago, when Ama and I returned to Kurra after four years on Earth, I felt like a freak. I looked like a freak, dressed in my clothes from Earth that are totally weird here. I realized soon enough, though, that my Earthsider status was exciting as well as strange. We Imria have been going to Earth for so long, but I’m the first one to be born there, to grow up there. On Earth, I had to keep all that secret, but here on Kurra, it makes me sort of a celebrity. I never expected that.

“… remember what it was like when you were her age?” Aba says.

“Of course,” Ama replies, snorting. “I was reckless.”

“And you survived,” Ada says.

“I only want what’s best for her,” Ama responds.

I stiffen. My parents have started in again on what they think I should do with my life. It’s another old debate. I think they like arguing about it; they don’t even seem to notice I can hear them.

“We have to let her follow her interests,” Aba says. He always says he wants me to be free to do what I want, but I know he really wants me to be a painter, like him. Ama wants me to be a scientist—preferably a geneticist—like her.

“Only within the confines of her duties,” Ama says. “She knows that.”

“I don’t see why we need to impose that on her,” Aba objects.

“Within the confines of her duties, our daughter can choose how she can best serve,” Ada says. He’s never said flat out what he thinks I should be, but I know he wants me to be like him: a diplomat. “She’s young. She has plenty of time to decide.”

But Ada’s wrong. I’m turning fifteen in a few days, and then I will have to make a choice. Who do I think I am? I will have to know by then.

2

Earth

When I was thirteen, at the end of eighth grade back on Earth, I went on a school-sponsored camping trip to the Coconino National Forest near Sedona, Arizona. I was at the Hunter Glen School then, a private academy outside Flagstaff, because I couldn’t exactly live with Ama at Project Plato on Area 51. As far as her US government employers knew, I didn’t even exist.

At Hunter Glen, the end-of-eighth-grade camping trip was kind of a legend. There were all these stories about kids wandering off in the mountains and falling down hidden ravines in the dark, but I suspected it was a bunch of crap. The Hunter Glen School did not take chances with their charges, especially when their parents paid so much to make sure they were safe.

On the hot Friday morning in May when we gathered in the Founders’ Hall parking lot to leave, I wasn’t surprised to count five adult chaperones—our two science teachers, Ms. Lucas and Mr. Santos; two parents I didn’t know; and a cook who was in charge of preparing all our meals. In addition to the five adults were the dozen members of the Nature Club, including myself. A special bus had been chartered to drive us to Coconino National Forest. It read SEDONA OUTDOOR ADVENTURES on the side and had tinted windows.

I dragged my gear over to Morgan Jacobsen’s and said, “Somehow I don’t think we’re going to experience much nature this weekend.”

Morgan was my best friend. She had wavy blond hair and a perfect smile, and the only issue I had with her was her continuing obsession with Zach Montgomery, who was, in my opinion, a jerk. Morgan tossed her ponytail and shrugged. “I’d rather spend the weekend at the Four Seasons, anyway.” Morgan’s parents were loaded. “I wish you could come with us in June,” she said.

“Me too,” I said, feeling depressed. Morgan’s birthday was in June, and her parents were taking her and her closest friends to Scottsdale for a girls’ spa weekend. I really wanted to go, but in June I was returning to Kurra with my mom.

Morgan gave me a sad smile and put her arm around my shoulders, hugging me briefly. “I’ll miss you! Don’t forget to call.” She thought I was moving to California, because that’s what I had told her.

I wanted to lean into her, rest my head on her shoulder. Her hair smelled like strawberries. Okay, I kind of had a crush on Morgan. But I knew better than to ever bring that up. There were no out gay kids at Hunter Glen, and I didn’t want to be the first. I knew there was nothing wrong with me—Imrians don’t care about that stuff—but humans could be a little weird about it. I also knew there was no chance I was ever going to be able to call Morgan from Kurra. But I said, “I’ll try.”

“All right, everyone, let’s get packed up and head to the mountains,” said Ms. Lucas, consulting her clipboard as she moved down the line of students and their gear. I saw Zach roughhousing with his friend Brian on the edge of the parking lot, and I wished he wasn’t coming. But of course he was. Zach was the only reason Morgan agreed to join Nature Club with me in the first place, and she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. Any second now, I knew Morgan was going to be hit with the Zach Effect. She’d get all moody and start whispering in my ear about how she didn’t understand why he flirted with her all the time but never asked her out. I pulled away from Morgan before I sensed too much of what she was feeling.

Imrians can sense other people’s emotions through touch, which is great on Kurra, where that’s part of everyday life, but on Earth it can lead to problems. Humans don’t have this ability, which means they’re also not used to controlling how much emotion they express internally. One of the first things I had to learn on Earth was how to close myself off from sensing humans’ emotions so that I wouldn’t become overwhelmed by them. But also, it’s not right for us to eavesdrop on their feelings without their consent. That’s one of the first things my parents taught me when I realized I was different from humans. I slip up sometimes, and it can be really tempting to do it, but I try not to.

I heard Morgan’s breath catch. “Who’s that?” she whispered, nudging me.

A man was emerging from the Sedona Outdoor Adventures bus. “I don’t know,” I said. He had short, dark blond hair and was wearing cargo shorts and a muscle shirt that showed off tanned biceps. The other girls in Nature Club giggled nervously.

“He’s so cute,” Morgan breathed.

“Yeah,” I said. He was cute, and he knew it. I could tell by the way he grinned at Ms. Lucas, who looked the teeniest bit flustered.

“Listen up, everyone,” Ms. Lucas called, turning away from the guy. When we were standing in a circle, Ms. Lucas said, “Let me introduce you to our professional guide. This is Matt Steiger, a grad student at Arizona State. Matt studies ecology and leads tours through the Coconino every summer. We are lucky to have him.”

“Hey everyone,” Matt Steiger said with a grin. Morgan practically swooned, and all of a sudden the Zach Effect seemed way less important. Nice to meet you, Matt, I thought. Thank you for distracting Morgan. Maybe this camping trip would be more fun than I expected.

3

Kurra

I was born on Earth, and I lived there with my parents until I was five years old. That’s when we came back to Kurra for four years. My parents wanted me to go to school for a while with the other Imrian kids in Isina’uru—to learn what it was like to be Imrian—but they were also worried that if I went to elementary school on Earth, I’d slip up and reveal who we were. I had to learn how to lie.

By the time I was nine, I understood what was expected of me. Ama took me back to Earth and enrolled me at Hunter Glen, a boarding school. It was horrible at first. I missed my parents and my Imrian friends, and after four years on Kurra, Earth felt like an alien planet. The food was weird, the clothes were strange, and I had to speak English all the time, which meant I had to remember to call my parents mom and dad rather than ama, aba and ada. The thing that made me most uncomfortable was hiding the fact that I had two fathers. I could have said one was my stepdad; I could have said my fathers were gay and my mom was their surrogate. There were plenty of lies I could have made up, but all of them felt wrong. I’d lie about me, but I didn’t want to lie about my family, and I knew nobody at school would understand my parents’ relationship. Humans were just so incredibly different from the Imria. Their emotions were so volatile that even though I tried to close myself off to them, sometimes they still broke through unexpectedly. At the beginning, it felt like I was trapped in an unending game of dodge ball, and I couldn’t keep my defenses up 24/7.

It wasn’t until I became friends with Morgan, who seemed to totally get me, that I began to relax and to accept my life on Earth. Of course, as soon as I started to feel like I belonged, it was time to leave. I had to go back to Kurra after eighth grade to prepare for my first kibila.

Kibila is a ritual of renewal that each Imrian goes through every fifteen years. The first one, kibila’sa, takes place when you turn fifteen. It’s the most important one, because it’s the first time you officially choose your own identity. Depending on which region of Kurra your family lives in, the ritual involves hiking into the mountains or spending time at sea. You go with a cohort of other Imrians in your age group, and every fifteen years, that cohort will reunite and renew their identities together.

Historically, everyone born on the same day undergoes kibila together, but in recent generations there have been fewer and fewer Imria born, so now we have to fudge the dates a little. Now, kibila links together those born within the same month. There’s only one other Imrian in the Isi Na region whose birthday corresponds to mine: Nasha Shuri.

I knew Nasha when we were little; she was one of only a couple of dozen students at the Isina’uru school. She changed a lot in the time I was at Hunter Glen on Earth. I remembered her only as part of the group—she didn’t stand out or anything—but when I returned at fourteen, Nasha was clearly the one in charge. She dressed in amazing, crazy clothes that looked like costumes to me: with headdresses and platform shoes and makeup that I had never seen before. For a couple of months, she colored her entire body purple and wore semi-clear robes that obscured very little.

The other students weren’t as over the top as Nasha, though her closest friends emulated her styles. She was the one everybody wanted to be friends with; she was the one everybody wanted, period. She was nice enough to me, but she didn’t make any serious attempts to befriend me. I tried a couple of times, but she always seemed uninterested. A few times I got the impression that she was going out of her way to avoid touching me, which was really weird for an Imrian. We usually only do that when we’re hiding something, and I couldn’t figure out what she might be hiding.

My friend Uli told me that she thought Nasha was holding back because we were too alike. “You’ll clash,” she said. “You’d always be competing for attention.”

“We’re nothing alike,” I objected. “She’s dressed like—I don’t know like what—and I’m just normal.” I was wearing a Hunter Glen T-shirt that day.

Uli gave me a pointed look. “Nobody else here looks like you. You wear those clothes to show that you’re different from us. Just like Nasha.”

I had never thought about it like that before. I knew that despite Nasha’s popularity, I was the famous one on Kurra. I was the Earthsider. I hadn’t realized I was wearing that label like ga’emen—an identity—just like Nasha’s purple skin.

So I gave Uli one of my extra pairs of jeans, and later, I kissed her. It was so easy, so straightforward, because I knew Uli wanted to kiss me. I knew when I touched her hand and sensed it in her: that unmistakable bubble of anticipation, that invitation.

I bought some Kurran clothing after that, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop wearing my Earth-made clothes. Maybe I did it to stand out, like Uli said, but I also did it because I missed Earth, and putting on my jeans and T-shirts made me feel a little bit more at home.

Nasha’s ga’emen, on the other hand, changed. She got her black hair tipped with living green sea fronds so that she resembled an underwater Medusa. Uli told me Nasha had to feed the sea fronds regularly by bathing in a nutrient bath or else they would die and turn into stinky brown weeds.

During kibila, everyone wears the same stuff: a climate-controlled suit for the overnight excursion before the ritual, and traditional robes for the ritual itself. I have a hard time imagining Nasha in anything as plain as the clothes I’ve been fitted for.

I wonder what she’ll be like during kibila’sa. Everyone says that the experience changes everything. That it builds bonds between cohort members. For one thing, you’re not allowed to communicate via touch during kibila, so your relationship with your kibila cohort is different from your relationships with other Imrians. Since communication through physical touch—we call it susum’urda—is basically the cornerstone of Imrian culture, it’s kind of a big deal. A lot of Imrians get freaked out about the idea of being isolated within their own consciousness because they’re so accustomed to knowing, always, how others feel about them. I’m not worried about it, since I’ve lived on Earth. Humans never know for sure how others feel.

Kibila culminates in a ritual at one of the ancient temples. The one I’m going to is at the top of Isi Na, and I’ve visited it before. The ascent is pretty steep, but once you get up there, the view is worth it. You feel like you’re on top of the world. You are on top of the world.

I’m looking forward to that part—the arrival. It’s the end of it that scares me. That’s when I will step out of the ritual pool and reconnect with my parents, who will take my hands and, through susum’urda, welcome me back to the community of shared consciousness. That’s when they will sense the name I have chosen for myself, and they will speak it out loud for the first time.

What if I’ve chosen the wrong name? What if I’m wrong about who I am?

4

Earth

The drive to the campground in the Coconino National Forest only took an hour, and when we arrived, I saw that we definitely weren’t camping in the depths of nature. Cave Springs Campground had well-maintained lawns, picnic tables, and coin-operated showers. The Hunter Glen School had reserved four sites next to one another, all within a couple of minutes’ walk from the bathrooms.

Ms. Lucas and Mr. Santos divided us up, six boys on one side and six girls on the other, and then assigned us to campsites. Morgan and I begged Ms. Lucas to let us pitch our tents next to each other, and because Courtney McKittrick wanted to camp next to her best friend, Ms. Lucas let me and Courtney switch places.

After we finished putting up our tents, we went on a hike. Matt Steiger led us along a trail through Oak Creek Canyon, where reddish-orange layers of sedimentary rock formed walls that looked like they belonged in Alice in Wonderland. Morgan dragged me up front with the rest of the girls, and we clustered around Matt as he talked about wildlife and plants. I could tell he enjoyed the attention, but he was actually nice about it. And at least it meant Morgan wasn’t obsessing over Zach.

That night everybody gathered at our campsite because it was the biggest, and Mr. Santos and Matt built a huge fire in the fire pit. We had chili for dinner, and it was better than I expected, even if the meat in it was cut-up hot dogs. Afterward, we made s’mores, which I’d never eaten before. Morgan showed me how to suspend the marshmallow over the flames until the outside blistered black and the insides turned into a melting gob of sugar. We peeled off the blackened exteriors and ate them, hot and crispy and so sweet it made my teeth hurt. Then we sandwiched the remaining marshmallow between graham crackers and milk chocolate, and Morgan made me wait for the chocolate to melt before biting in. Our fingers were sticky and we couldn’t stop laughing, and even though I knew there wasn’t much of a chance that Morgan would miraculously turn gay on the camping trip, I might have hoped a little.

At ten o’clock Ms. Lucas made us get ready for bed. Morgan and I crowded into the bathroom with the other girls, brushing our teeth in the harsh light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead. The girls’ voices echoed in the concrete room as they chattered about what had happened that day. When Morgan met my gaze in the mirror there was a sparkle in her eyes that made the hope inside me glow.

As we left the bathroom she pulled me aside and whispered in my ear, “I’m meeting Zach later. I can’t believe it!” She clutched my arm, and even though I was trying to avoid sensing her feelings, her whole body was jittery with excitement.

It felt like she had shoved me. I tried to hide my disappointment. “Don’t go too far into the woods,” I said. “You heard what Matt said. Mountain lions.”

Morgan giggled. Giggled. “Zach will protect me.”

She was so hyped up she never noticed I wasn’t laughing with her.

5

Kurra

It’s been more than eight months since I left Earth, and my kibila’sa begins tonight at sunset. On Earth my birthday is February ninth, but it doesn’t translate directly to the Kurran calendar. Here, it’s more like autumn than midwinter, although the seasons don’t change much in Isi Na. It’s going to be a cool, clear night, with no storms.

My parents accompany me to the base of the temple trail to meet Nasha and her parents at sunset. I see her waiting with two other people as we approach the lighted stone arch, and I realize that she only has two parents. I don’t think I knew that before. I wonder how she feels about coming from such a traditional arrangement. Maybe they imported additional genes from other relatives. I’m not supposed to ask about that, though. It’s not considered polite to ask about an Imrian’s parentage; you have to wait for them to volunteer it.

Even though I know the girl standing by the archway is Nasha, I barely recognize her. She’s dressed in the same clothing as I am: outdoor gear that will keep us warm as the temperature drops. She has on black trousers with reflective seams tucked into hard-soled boots meant for the rocky terrain, and a long-sleeved black top with a hood to block the wind. Like me, Nasha has a small pack slung over her shoulder. It probably contains the same things mine does: our traditional kibila garments, which we’ll put on at the temple. Water and emergency rations, which we probably won’t use. A blanket, in case it gets really cold.

“Silim,” Nasha says. Hello. We’re not supposed to use our names, because tonight we are nameless.

“Silim,” I respond.

Nasha has cut off almost all her hair; what’s remaining is cropped close to her head. She’s not wearing any makeup either, and for the first time I realize she has light brown skin like Aba’s. Apparently her parents are traditional in more ways than one; they gave her the ancestral pigmentation.

Our parents come forward to greet each other and talk about local events while we wait for the sun to finish setting. They know each other, after all. Isi Na is a small community. When it’s dark, our parents give us the kibila farewell. They bow, making sure not to touch us, and say in unison, “May you have fair weather and calm spirits.”

Nasha and I bow back. My pack bangs against my hip. Then we both turn away from our parents and move toward the trail. We’re not supposed to look back, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes peering forward into the night.

6

Earth

I was almost asleep when someone unzipped the front flap to my tent and crawled in, whispering, “Shh, shh, it’s me.”

Morgan. As she slid inside, forcing me to make room for her—it was supposed to be a single tent—her body quivered with barely suppressed energy. I woke up completely.

“He kissed me, he kissed me,” she said in my ear. Her breath was hot, tickling my skin. I tried to pull away from her, but there wasn’t any room. I shut my mind to her so that I didn’t relive, through her memory, the whole experience. I didn’t want to know what it was like to kiss Zach Montgomery. I really did not.

“Is he a good kisser?” I whispered, because I knew that’s what she wanted me to ask.

“Oh my God, he’s amazing,” she whispered.

I wondered how she knew, since she hadn’t done a lot of kissing yet. Neither of us had. I went out with one of Zach’s friends, Joshua Taylor, last fall—if going out could mean being dropped off at the mall a couple of times. He had kissed me awkwardly in a dark movie theater, and I remembered feeling kind of sick about the whole thing. His breath reeked of mint gum and his hands had pawed nervously at my knee as he leaned toward me. I pulled away before he got too far. I had only gone to the movie with him because Morgan thought it would make Zach hang out with us more. Unfortunately I couldn’t stomach going out with Josh again, and that had resulted in Zach avoiding us completely.

I turned onto my side in the tent so that I could face Morgan, but it was so dark I could barely see anything, only the shadow of her head against the barely lighter tent wall. “So are you going out now?” I asked, because Morgan wanted desperately to talk about it, and even though it felt like stabbing myself in the gut, I wanted to make her happy.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He wouldn’t say.”

“Do you want to go out with him?” I heard the impatience in my voice and wished I had hidden it.

“Maybe,” she said, sounding shy.

“Why maybe?” I softened my tone. “I thought you were totally into him.”

“I am, but…” Anxiety twisted through her voice. I scooted a little closer. Her hair still smelled like strawberries. “I don’t want to get my hopes up,” she whispered.

I suddenly felt sorry for her. “Oh, Morgan. Why don’t you just ask him out?”

She tensed up. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked, and felt her recoil from me slightly.

“Girls don’t do that. And besides, what if he doesn’t really like me that way? What if he just wanted to make out with me and—and…” She trailed off, but I knew what she was afraid of. What if he just wanted to make out with her for the hell of it?

“Then he’s a jerk,” I said.

She sighed. I wanted to comfort her, but I was afraid to touch her. “He’s not a jerk,” she objected.

“Then ask him out,” I said, meaning it for the first time. Maybe if she did it, and he said no, she’d finally get over him. “And girls can do whatever they want.”

She didn’t say anything for a second, just lay there a couple of inches away from me, breathing. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “Not everybody’s as confident as you, you know.”

It was a weird, backhanded compliment—a cross between flattery and accusation—and I didn’t know what to say. Thanks? Or maybe: I’m sorry. I’m sorry you don’t see yourself as the girl I see, a girl who deserves someone way better than Zach Montgomery.

“I’m gonna go,” Morgan whispered. “Before they catch me.”

She slithered out of my tent, leaving me lying there on my side, facing the empty space where she had been a moment before.

7

Kurra

The trail to the temple is steep but smooth, with rounded rocks marking the edge. It’s old and well maintained, reminding me that the Imria of Isi Na have been walking this ritual path for millennia. Tiny lights mark the edges of the trail. They’re attached to slender stalks planted in the ground about every ten feet, making it look as if Christmas lights have been strung up the mountainside.

Christmas. It’s jarring to think about that human holiday here, so far away from their God, their religions. I take a deep breath of night air and smell the spicy scent of the conifer trees around us, mingled with the fragrance of night-blooming inda. Isi Na is famous for inda perfume; Ama even brings it back to Earth with her in a little glass bottle, and every time I smell it I think of this place.

Nasha walks a few feet ahead of me. She stops as the trail makes a sharp right turn and says, “Look.” She points to the left, where the shoulders of the mountain part to reveal a distant view of the ocean. Something sparkles down there. It must be the lights of the nearest floating city, Sakai’uru. Above us, the stars glitter like a city in the sky. The pattern of them sometimes still surprises me. I can’t see the Big Dipper here, or Orion’s Belt. I’m in a totally different part of the universe, and all of a sudden I miss Earth with a deep, startling ache.

“Are you all right?” Nasha asks, taking a step toward me.

I guess it showed on my face. Ama says I have to be careful about letting my feelings show so much, at least back on Earth, where I’m supposed to be keeping a lot of secrets. “I just miss Earth,” I tell her.

She doesn’t respond, and I wonder what she’s thinking. Does she even believe me? Or does she think I’m saying it to show how special I am? Earthsider. I’m a little disappointed by her silence. I guess I hoped Nasha would be different tonight. That she would be friendlier.

We continue up the trail. In the distance the moon rises. It’s a little bigger than Earth’s moon and sheds a bit more light. Soon the mountainside will turn silver. About two-thirds of the way up we come to an overlook that gives us another view of the ocean. Up here the wind is cool and the air is thin, and I pull my hood over my head as Nasha walks toward a stone altar on one side of the overlook.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

I join her at the altar. Three bowls, a pitcher, and two cups have been placed on top. Eres Tilhar, my teacher, told me about this. Three bowls to represent the origins of our people. One contains buru, hard red berries that look like cherries but taste more like olives. This is the fruit that sustained us on the mountainsides. One bowl of kubansurra, dried, salted fish that tastes kind of foul but represents the richness of the sea. Finally, slices of nindaba, flatbread made from coarsely ground grain, to symbolize our discovery of agriculture. It tastes a lot better if you have oil to dip it in or something sweet to spread on it, but we have to eat it plain. The pitcher contains kurun, a clear, sour drink that’s kind of like watered down white wine.

Nasha pours me a cup of kurun and holds it out to me. “Sude,” she says. A blessing.

In the moonlight I see the expression on her face and I realize she’s not being unfriendly. She’s being serious. Her eyes are steady and direct, her face sober. I feel chastened, and I raise my cup to her before we each take our first ritual sips. “Sude,” I say. I’m supposed to be thinking about the fruit that made this kurun, but instead I think about how kibila is still in many ways foreign to me. Even though I’ve known about it my whole life, it’s always been a distant idea to me, probably because I had nobody to talk to about it on Earth except Ama. Sure, I went to the Imrian equivalent of elementary school here, but little kids don’t care about kibila. It’s not until the two or three years before kibila’sa that it becomes a real, serious thing.

One year before kibila’sa—when you turn fourteen—you begin studying with a special teacher who guides you into a deeper understanding of susum’urda and also advises you on choosing your name. Not every Imrian chooses a new name at every kibila. Ada has kept the same name for his last three kibilas, and Aba for his last two. For your first kibila, though, it’s customary to choose a new name. Many Imria think of your kibila’sa name as your true name, even if you choose a different one later.

“It’s not simply what people will call you,” my friend Uli told me. I’d been tossing off various name possibilities with her, and she clearly didn’t think I was taking this seriously enough. “It’s who you’ll be. Your new name will change you.”

“Who do you think I’m going to become?” I asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know,” she said solemnly.

I wondered if she was worried about the two of us. “We’ll still be friends,” I said.

Uli smiled. “We’re hilima.”

Hilima is an Imrian word that doesn’t translate directly into English. It means something like friends who kiss, and it’s much less serious than the human—or American—concept of a girlfriend or boyfriend. Imrians tend to have many hilima when they’re young, especially before their first kibila, because it only involves kissing and maybe a little fooling around. There’s kind of a big taboo against having sex before kibila’sa because it’s believed that if you haven’t yet chosen your identity, you can’t possibly share it completely with another person.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We’re hilima. That won’t change, and if it does, it’s all right.”

“Of course,” Uli said. “But you’ll be different.”

Nasha startles me out of the memory by handing me the bowl of buru. “Here,” she says.

“Thanks.” I take the bowl from her and eat the berries. They taste better than I expected, but when she hands me the fish, it tastes worse. The bread evens everything out, and as I chew, I actually do think about my ancestors: the Imrians who built the floating cities on the ocean, who built giant ships that could fly, that eventually brought my parents to Earth, where I was born.

“We can sit here for a while, or I think there’s a resting spot up the mountain where we can sleep for a few hours,” Nasha says.

I’m not sleepy at all, so I say, “Let’s sit here for a while. We have time.”

“All right.” She pushes her pack over and sits on the ground, leaning against the altar. I sit down a few feet away, my back against the mountainside. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Nasha asks.

“No.” I’m curious about what she wants to know.

“What’s it like on Earth?”

Other Imrians ask me this all the time, but Nasha never has. “It looks different,” I say. “There are oceans and mountains like here, but there are also big flat regions where nothing grows. There are cities and small towns, but they’re only built on land. People drive everywhere in things called cars.” I spend some time explaining transportation to her, because on Kurra nobody drives; we all walk or take what humans would call cable cars, although our cable cars don’t look like the ones on Earth.

“What about the people?” she asks. “What are humans like?”

Imrians really only want to know about one thing: how humans deal with not being able to sense others’ emotions through touch. “Sometimes they’re defensive,” I say, “because they don’t always know where they stand with other people.”

“That must be so weird,” she says.

“Well, they’re not always defensive. Some humans are really open.” I think about Morgan. Before she found out I liked her, she never hid anything from me. I haven’t thought about her in a long time, and it brings back a twinge of sadness.

“That’s not what I mean,” Nasha says. “I mean it must be sad not to be able to do susum’urda.”

I’m a little irritated by the pity in Nasha’s voice. “They don’t have any other choice. It doesn’t feel like missing out to them. Besides, we’re not doing susum’urda tonight either. We act just like humans during kibila.”

“You think so?” Nasha sounds doubtful. “I’ve always thought of kibila as a chance to recognize how important susum’urda is to us. By giving it up during kibila, we appreciate it more afterward. We appreciate who we are as Imrians.”

Her interpretation of kibila startles me. I’ve been thinking about tonight so differently, as if it were a chance to be human—or, at least, to play at being human. Maybe I’ve been looking forward to it because I miss Earth, and I miss my human friends at Hunter Glen even if they never knew who I truly was.

In one dizzying instant, my perspective shifts completely. I’ve had human blinders on the whole time I’ve been back on Kurra. It’s as if Nasha reached over and took them off, and for the first time in a long time, I feel Imrian. Without susum’urda, it’s not that I become human—it’s that I’ve shut off everyone else’s emotions, and I have to sit here with my own. This is a specifically Imrian experience: deliberately turning inward after knowing what it’s like to be connected to so many others.

“It feels strange, not doing susum’urda,” Nasha continues, not noticing how still I’ve become. “It’s like I’m walking around with my eyes closed, and I keep wondering if I’m going to bump into something. Is that what it was like for you on Earth? And how did you feel being surrounded by people who couldn’t experience your feelings?”

I’ve never been asked this question before. I realize it’s because I’ve never had to tell someone how I felt about my time on Earth—not in words. Ama knows, and Aba and Ada, but they know through susum’urda. They know.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Nasha says when I don’t answer her.

The truth is, I don’t know how to explain it. Dozens of memories and emotions rise up inside me all at once, tangled and messy, and I feel as if I’m struggling against myself. With Nasha looking at me like that—as if she feels sorry for me—I can’t find the words.

“Maybe we should keep going,” she says, and she stands up and offers me her hand.

I look up at her. “We’re not supposed—”

“I’m focused on myself,” she says. “Aren’t you? I won’t sense anything.”

I take her hand. Her skin is cool and dry, her grip firm as she tugs me up to my feet. There’s no mental connection between us; only the pressure of her hand. Without another word she picks up her pack and slings it over her shoulder. We head back to the trail.

8

Earth

On Saturday, Ms. Lucas made us count off into three different groups of four. We were given cameras that printed out small photos, and we were supposed to take pictures of particular rocks and leaves in the forest and classify them on a chart. I wound up with Austin Weaver, Jessica Fowler, and Zach Montgomery.

Zach knew I didn’t like him, but when we discovered we were in the same group, he waggled his eyebrows at me as if to say, I know Morgan told you what we did. I gave him a cool look, and he grinned back. He was cute enough for a boy. Not too bad of a haircut, clear blue eyes. He was also full of himself, and I didn’t understand why Morgan couldn’t see that.

All morning, as Austin, Jessica, and I scouted for samples and took photos, Zach made snarky comments. As we flipped through our field guides to figure out whether we’d found the right rock or leaf, it got worse. Austin was a nice boy, kind of nerdy, and he let Zach walk all over him. Jessica’s face got this pinched look on it as Zach started to derail our project, but she didn’t say anything. Finally, as Zach grabbed one of the field guides out of Austin’s hands and waved it around as if he were in a game of keep-away, I said, “Zach, stop being such a jerk. Give that back to him.” Jessica smirked.

Zach’s eyes narrowed on me, and he said, “I don’t take orders from jealous dykes.”

I stared at him as my heart accelerated. I saw Jessica and Austin out of the corner of my eye, looking confused. “What did you call me?” I said in a low voice.

He leaned closer to me, all bully. “Josh told me about you, and I can tell you’re into Morgan. But she’s into me, not you, because she’s not some kind of pervert.”

I stood up. My legs were shaking. I wanted to say something back, something mean, but I was tongue-tied. So I left, stalking away from Zach and our two witnesses, Jessica and Austin, whose mouths were open in shock. I heard someone calling after me—an adult, I don’t know who—but I didn’t listen. I kept going, hiking up the trail away from the group, my stomach turning somersaults inside me and my eyes burning.

It was all over now. The word would be out in minutes, and then Morgan would know, and she would never look at me again.

*     *     *

Ms. Lucas found me in a clearing off the trail. I was sitting on a rock, my head in my hands, thinking about the consequences of Zach’s actions. I was sweaty from the hike and from the knowledge that things were never going to be the same. Maybe it was a good thing I was leaving the planet in two weeks.

“You can’t run off like that,” Ms. Lucas said.

I glanced up at her. She actually looked worried. “Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t sorry.

She frowned and crouched down in front of me. She was wearing a green V-neck T-shirt, and the skin of her throat was flushed from hurrying after me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

She gave me a skeptical look. “Did you and your friends have a disagreement over the project?”

I almost laughed. “Not exactly.”

There was a silver necklace around her neck, and as she breathed, the amber-colored pendant shifted in the hollow of her throat. “Zach can be a handful,” she observed. “Did he say something to you?”

Yes, I thought. He called me a dyke, and it’s true, and now my best friend is going to find out and hate me. But I didn’t say a word out loud.

Ms. Lucas looked at me calmly. She had brown eyes flecked with green, and a faint dusting of freckles over her cheeks. At school she always wore skirts or dresses, but today she was in hiking shorts and boots. The outfit made her look a lot younger. She told me, “Whatever he said, it doesn’t matter.”

My face burned. Had she heard what Zach said? I dropped my gaze from hers and looked at the necklace she was wearing instead. The stone was teardrop-shaped, but there was something embedded within it. “What’s in that?” I asked, grappling for a change of subject. “In your necklace?”

To my surprise, she unfastened the chain and dropped it in the palm of my hand. The pendant and the chain were both warm from her skin, and when I looked closer, I saw that there was a tiny leaf within the pendant.

“It’s a piece of amber from Mexico,” Ms. Lucas said. “That’s a leaf from the extinct Hymenaea tree—the tree that produced the resin that formed this amber.”

I ran one finger over the smooth surface. It was a pretty color—like a dark orange flame. “It’s a fossil, right?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Fossils occur when the original organic structure has been entirely replaced with minerals, but amber is still organic. It’s basically unchanged from when it was first formed.”

“How old is it?”

“I’m not sure, but probably this piece is between twenty and thirty million years old.”

I held the piece of amber up to the sunlight and looked at the leaf embedded within. It glowed. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

Ms. Lucas sat down on the rock beside me. “It is. Did you know that in Greek mythology, amber is supposed to come from the tears of the Heliades? They were the nymph daughters of the sun god, Helios, and when their brother, Phaeton, was killed by Zeus, they were turned into poplar trees as they mourned him, and their tears became amber.”

I made a face. “That’s depressing.”

She grinned, and it lit up her entire face. “A little, yeah. Less depressingly, amber was also thought to have attractive, magnetic qualities, because when you rub it with a piece of cloth, it will create static electricity. In fact the Greek word for amber is elektron, and that’s where we get the word electricity.”

I handed the necklace back to Ms. Lucas. “Why are you telling me this? It’s not on the test, is it?”

She took the necklace and shook her head, laughing. “No, it’s not. I suppose I’m telling you because… well, things are complicated. This piece of amber is a lot more than just a pretty piece of jewelry.” She paused, and when she began speaking again her voice was low and earnest. “Whatever Zach said—and I’m not saying I heard it—but whatever he said, I want you to know that the world is complicated, and what some people think is bad, other people don’t.”

I broke into an involuntary smile at the seriousness of her tone. “It’s okay, Ms. Lucas. I’m fine.”

Her forehead was furrowed. “Are you sure?”

“I know it’s okay to be gay,” I told her. “Zach is… he’s a jerk.”

She smiled slightly. “Yes. Yes, he is.” And then we both broke into laughter. “Don’t you repeat that to anyone,” she warned me.

“I won’t,” I said.

She got to her feet. “Come on. You have to rejoin your group. If you want to switch to another one…”

“It’s fine,” I said, standing. “I can handle Zach.” It was Morgan who would be the problem.

9

Kurra

The resting spot is located about half an hour’s walk from the temple. It’s a building constructed in the side of the mountain, anchored to the bedrock by cables silvered by the moon. A lighted path branches off from the trail, and we follow it toward the structure.

As we enter, the building’s lights glow on, and I see that it’s a big space, large enough to accommodate at least a dozen people. The room is fitted around the mountain itself, so it’s irregularly shaped, with posts scattered across the floor. There are no solid walls, only a railing to separate us from the night. Hammocks hang from the posts, and in the rough center of the room there’s a circular heater for use in winter.

I walk over to the heater and drop my pack on the floor, holding my hands out to warm them. I’m not really cold, but the heat feels nice. Nasha selects a hammock facing the heater and climbs in. We probably have a few hours before dawn. The bells will ring about an hour before sunrise to wake us in time to finish the ascent to the temple. I should try to sleep, but I feel wide awake. I keep thinking about Nasha’s question. How did I feel on Earth, a lone Imrian among humans?

The more I think about it, the more I remember the way I felt silenced on Earth. There were so many things I couldn’t say. It went beyond not being able to have a susum’urda type of connection with someone. I wasn’t able to be myself—not even with Morgan. Especially not with her.

“It was hard,” I say out loud. My voice sounds tinny in the vaulted ceiling.

Nasha’s hammock sways. “What?”

I feel like I have to take her seriously because tonight is our kibila’sa, and that means I have to answer her question. “You asked me how I felt when I was on Earth, not being able to really connect with humans. It was hard. It didn’t feel right, but not only because humans can’t do susum’urda. Because I had to lie about who I was.”

Nasha regards me with pale gray eyes. “Did you like being there at all?”

“I did. It wasn’t all bad.” That’s what makes everything so bittersweet. My mixed feelings confuse me. Parts of it I hated, but parts of it I loved. “I miss it,” I finally say.

“Why?”

“I guess… I miss my friends.” I go to the hammock behind me and crawl in. It’s made of stretchy material that molds itself to my body, sort of like a cocoon.

“But if they couldn’t share your emotions, how could they be true friends?” Nasha asks.

“It’s not like that. I know some Imrians think that humans are less evolved than us, but they’re not. They’re just different. They make connections with each other too—just not through susum’urda. They… they talk. They share their emotions by speaking about them.”

I shift so that I can see Nasha’s face in the golden glow of the overheads. She’s attentive, curious. I find myself telling her about living in the dorm with the other girls at Hunter Glen. About how fast news can travel through texts and messages online and plain old gossip. Nasha seems fascinated by boarding school since Imrians almost always live with their parents until after kibila’sa. I talk about the dining hall and classes and cliques and even watching TV with my friends in the common room at night. Nasha is immediately interested in television, and I spend several minutes explaining what it is.

We have something like acting and theater on Kurra, but it’s very different from human performances. I’ve always thought that there’s a rawness to human TV and movies that our performances lack. Maybe because humans don’t have susum’urda, they spend a lot of their energy trying to simulate it in their TV shows and books and movies. All of those things give humans an approximation of getting inside another person’s head.

Imrian performances, in contrast, would probably look totally bizarre to a human. They take place with very small audiences, because the point is for the actors to lead the audience into a shared emotional experience, and too many people fragment the experience. The seats and the stage in an Imrian theater are made of a special material that can conduct the actor’s emotions—sort of as if everyone were holding hands—and a lot of the performance is silent, although there are incredible costumes and what humans would call special effects.

Nasha asks me about my favorite human performances, and I start to tell her about all of Morgan’s favorites, because she was the one who liked movies. I always liked books more; they felt more like susum’urda to me, whereas movies always seemed too distant.

“Who’s this Morgan?” Nasha says. “Were you two hilima?”

My eyes widen. I must have been talking about Morgan a lot for Nasha to ask that. “No,” I say. “We were just friends.” Part of me finds it hilarious to think of Morgan in this Imrian context. She would have been so far out of her comfort zone. The night that Zach kissed her, she acted as if it was as important as a marriage proposal.

“But you liked her, I can tell,” Nasha says of Morgan.

“Yes, well, she didn’t like girls.”

“I’ve heard about that. How humans have these restrictions about pairing off. It sounds so limiting.” Nasha says limiting with something like disgust, almost in the same tone of voice that Zach used when he called me a dyke.

“Humans are different,” I say.

“You didn’t find it bizarre?” She looks shocked.

“At first, yes, but I got used to it.”

“Did your friend Morgan know that you liked her?”

I hesitate. “She—she found out.”

Nasha swings her legs out of her hammock so that she’s using it more like a chair. “What happened?”

I tell her about the camping trip, and Nasha’s face grows increasingly incredulous. “Why do they think love can only be between people of opposite sexes?” she asks. “It’s so strange.”

I turn so that I free one of my legs from the hammock, and I push my toe against the floor to rock myself back and forth. “Not every human thinks that way,” I say. “But that is the way a lot of them think. It doesn’t make any sense to me either.”

“Is it because they don’t have susum’urda?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re going back, aren’t you?”

“In six months. I have to. That’s why I was born.” My parents created me to do this: to be in between places. After kibila’sa, I will have a job to do on Earth.

Nasha asks, “Do you want to go back?”

I think about it. I’ve always known what my responsibilities are. Despite Aba’s advocating for me to make my own choices, their expectations have never felt like a burden; they have felt like a gift. “I do,” I say. “I like humans, even if they don’t always make sense to me. And maybe someday—if what my mother and the others are doing works out—maybe they will make sense to me. To all of us.”

“They’ve been working on this for so long. Do you think they’re close?”

“Yes. I really do.”

Nasha considers this. “That’s good, then.”

I stop my hammock from swinging back and forth and tuck my leg up inside the warmth of the fabric again. “What about you? What will you do after kibila’sa?” After the ritual, most Imrians transition out of school into apprenticeships. The transition can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year, depending on how certain an Imrian is about what they want to learn.

Nasha smiles at me. She’s very pretty, with bright eyes and curving cheekbones that seem more prominent now that her hair is so short. “I’m thinking of becoming a performer. I might apprentice at the theater in Sakai’uru.”

“Oh.” That makes sense, given Nasha’s many different looks and her curiosity about human performances. “When will you go?”

Her smile turns sly. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think maybe I should stick around for a while. Six months? I don’t know why we’ve never been… friends. Maybe we should.”

There’s a flirtatious look in her eyes, and a flush heats my skin. “Maybe you were busy,” I suggest. “You had so many hilima.”

She laughs her warm laugh. “There’s always room for more.”

Her invitation hangs in the air between us, and if this weren’t kibila, I know she would reach for me, and I would be more than happy to be another of her hilima. But it is kibila, and it’s getting late.

“We should try to sleep,” I say, smiling.

She stretches her arm up to touch the pillar at the head of her hammock, and the lights dim. “We should,” she agrees. “Dream well, then. Tomorrow you will be a new person.”

“And so will you,” I respond. “Dream well.”

As I lie in the dark, I think about kissing Nasha. Or—not about Nasha, but this girl in the hammock nearby, who wants to become a performer. I imagine her on an intimate stage in Sakai’uru, dressed like the legendary Gashan Tabira, the lead in the most famous theatrical production of the last thousand years, with her gleaming fishtail and mouth colored purple by the fruits of the sea. She will be magnetic. I pillow my head on my hands and fall asleep thinking about her lips.

10

Earth

Morgan avoided me all afternoon. At dinner—hot dogs this time, with potato chips and a three-bean salad that nobody except the teachers ate—she sat with Zach. I sat at a different picnic table where the other kids didn’t talk to me, but kept sneaking glances at me when they thought I wouldn’t notice. I noticed.

As night fell, we gathered around the bonfire and Mr. Santos led us in telling ghost stories. I didn’t listen. I sat on a blanket and hugged my knees to my chest and wished Zach had never existed. When it was time to get ready for bed, I walked with the other girls to the bathroom, but when we got there they all looked at me and one of them—prissy Kayla Moore—said, “Maybe you should wait till we’re done.”

I glared at Kayla—Morgan was sort of half-hiding behind her—and I was about to say, Afraid I might turn you gay? when I saw Morgan flinch. My anger died, and all I felt was lonely.

I turned away to go back to my tent. I heard them whispering about me as I left.

When Morgan returned a while later, I heard her unzip her tent and toss her bathroom stuff inside. I thought she was going to ignore me and go to sleep, but instead she said in a low voice, “Can I talk to you?”

I sat up, hope crashing through me. “Sure.”

She unzipped my tent and knelt down, halfway inside. Her face was in shadow as she said, “Is what Zach said true?”

I could deny it. Would that make things okay? But I’d already lied to her about so much—about practically everything real about me—and I didn’t want to lie anymore. With this, at least, I could tell her the truth. “Yes,” I said. “What Zach said is true.”

She sighed, seeming to deflate a little. “You know I don’t feel that way,” she whispered.

Maybe I had expected her to be disgusted, because the tone in her voice—the sadness in it—took me by surprise. And then I remembered: This was why I liked her in the first place. She was honest. She was a horrible liar. I always knew exactly how she felt about me, even without my Imrian abilities. Maybe that gave me the idea—false, I now understood—that she was like my people. “I know you don’t feel that way,” I said. “That’s why I never told you.”

“How did Zach know?” she asked.

I thought about it. Josh told me about you, Zach had said. “I guess Josh told Zach that I didn’t want to make out with him when we went to the movies.”

“But not wanting to make out with Josh Taylor doesn’t make you gay,” Morgan said. “Are you sure?”

She wanted so badly for it to be a lie that I was tempted to give in to her.

“Maybe we just need to find you someone else,” Morgan said. “What about Matt Steiger? Don’t you think he’s so cute?”

“Yeah, he’s cute,” I agreed.

This seemed to encourage her. “That’s great! Maybe you’re beyond the boys at school. I mean, other than Zach, they are kind of annoying. Maybe you’ll find a guy you like in high school.”

I laughed in a half-choked kind of way. “Maybe.”

“You don’t think so?” she said, sounding unexpectedly fierce. “How can you know for sure that you’re—that you don’t like boys? You’ve never gone out with anyone except Josh. Have you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“So you don’t know!”

Her denial made me cringe. “But I do know,” I said.

“How?” she demanded.

“How do you know you’re straight?”

She thought about that for a moment but shook her head. “You’re so pretty. All the boys like you. Why would you—? It doesn’t make any sense.”

My heart seemed to stop. I knew that she was basically insulting me. She thought I was too pretty to be gay—as if all gay people were ugly. But the only thing I could feel was a thick, sad wonder at the fact that she thought I was pretty at all. She thought I was pretty. “Morgan,” I whispered. I took a deep breath, preparing myself. “I like girls. I know you don’t, but this doesn’t change anything. We’re both the same people we were yesterday. Are we okay? Are we still friends?” I reached for her, wanting to touch her the way I would touch an Imrian. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I couldn’t help it at that moment. I had to know how she felt.

She pulled away from me, leaving my hand hanging in the air. She crossed her arms. I drew my hand back, and my heart sank.

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

My eyes were hot. I was glad she couldn’t see my face.

“I better go,” she whispered, and before I could stop her, she left my tent and zipped it shut.

11

Kurra

I wake up to the sound of bells chiming in the vaulted ceiling of the shelter. When I open my eyes, it’s still dark, but as I shift in my hammock the lights come on. I climb out of my hammock and see Nasha do the same. I didn’t think I would be able to sleep at all, and now my head feels muddy—half-awake, half-asleep.

Nasha looks tired too, but she shoots me a smile as she pulls on her pack. “Did you dream?”

I shake my head. “No. I didn’t even realize I was asleep until the bells rang.” I sling my pack over my shoulder and we head toward the exit. “What about you?”

“I don’t remember anything. Some people say that dreams during kibila are prophetic, but I’m not sure if I believe that.”

The air is cool and smells like early morning, fresh and sharp. I take a deep breath as we strike out on the steep trail, and the oxygen and movement begin to shake away my drowsiness. “I bet humans would think we’re crazy to believe in things like that,” I say. “They think aliens are either super high-tech and emotionless, or scary insectlike monsters.”

“I’ve heard about that,” she says. “But why? I don’t get it.”

“I think it’s a projection of their own fantasies. Or nightmares, I guess. A fear of difference?”

“So we’re either robots or monsters?”

“Well, there are also the grays. Those are my favorite.”

She’s ahead of me, and she glances back over her shoulder as she says, “I’ve never heard of the grays. What are they?”

“They’re these aliens with gray skin and giant, bulbous heads and huge eyes.”

She laughs, the sound of it tinkling brightly down the trail. “That’s funny. Where do they come up with this stuff?”

“The grays are the smartest of the aliens. They’re like all brain, and they do experiments on humans too. Sometimes they have telepathic powers.”

“Hmm. Why do you like them?” She sounds amused.

“Well, they’re not giant ugly insects bent on destroying all of humanity,” I point out. “And… they’re mysterious.”

“You like mysterious things?”

“Yeah.” I slow down as we negotiate a rocky portion of the trail in the near dark. “You’re mysterious.”

I can tell she’s smiling as she says, “You think so?”

“Sure. I’ve been here for more than eight months, but you’ve never really talked to me until last night. Why?”

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” she counters.

“I thought… I guess I didn’t think you were interested in knowing me. I mean, you never touched me. I thought you were trying to hide that.”

She pauses and turns to face me. Behind her, the sky is beginning to lighten. “I’ve been interested in you since I was born,” she says.

This startles me. “Why?”

She takes a step closer. “All my life, I’ve known that you would be my kibila partner. That assignment was made at birth. And every time I thought about this night, I thought about you. Who you were; what you were doing; where you were. But when you came back eight months ago, you had changed so much from when we were little. I didn’t know how to talk to you. If I was trying to hide anything, it was only that.”

“Oh. I’m… sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. We have plenty of time to know each other. You and I will always be bound together, even after you go back to Earth. Even after we have lovers, and real responsibilities, and children, if we have children.”

She’s right. Every fifteen years, I will spend one night with her. The weight of that future suddenly impresses itself on me, and I reach for her without thinking, catching her hand in mine.

She’s closed to me, of course, as kibila demands. Her fingers squeeze mine, and she is like an anchor. On this mountain, we are anchored together. She will witness my transformations every time.

I wonder what it was like for earlier generations of Imria, who undertook their kibila in larger groups. That shelter could hold a dozen or more at a time. What would it be like to go through life with that group of people anchoring you throughout every transformation? I feel a sharp ache for a time long past, when this planet was alive with so many more of us. Now it is an isolated, lonesome place. Earth, in comparison, is a hive of bright, vibrant life. Earth is our future.

And I know, finally, that what everyone has told me is true. After today, I will be a new person. Ready to do what I was born to do.

12

Earth

We left Coconino National Forest the morning after my talk with Morgan. At breakfast, Morgan ignored me, but she looked sad while she sat with Zach. Part of me always knew she would react this way. She had never had gay friends or family before, and the few times the topic of gay people came up she always made a face as if they were gross. I felt stupid for ignoring that part of her for so long.

On the bus, I was stuck sitting with Ryan Walker. His parents had forced him to join Nature Club because they thought he needed outdoor exercise, but he never seemed to enjoy it. His nose was already deep in a book when I sat next to him in the only empty seat. He didn’t even look at me until the bus pulled to a stop at the visitors’ center on the way out of the forest. Ms. Lucas told us we had half an hour to pick out a souvenir, and Ryan’s hand shot up.

“Yes, Ryan?” she said.

“Can I use the bathroom?”

“Yes. There are bathrooms around the side of the visitors’ center.”

He stuffed his book into his backpack and was about to get up when he saw that I was still sitting there. “Hey, I heard about—” He cut himself off, turning beet red.

“Yeah? So?” I hadn’t thought Ryan would bring it up.

He looked embarrassed. “Just—I read this book once, and these girls liked each other, and—” He hesitated. “I think it’s okay. You’re okay.”

I was surprised. “Um, thanks.”

He hurriedly brushed past me out of the seat, and his backpack banged against my head. “Sorry!” he said, and then fled the bus as if he were afraid of me.

I waited till the rest of the kids were off before I followed them out. Some of them were hanging out by the edge of the parking lot, talking. Morgan was among the group of girls, their heads pressed together. I went into the visitors’ center before I could catch them staring at me.

Inside there were various tourist souvenirs for purchase in addition to maps and hiking gear. A couple of kids were buying postcards, but I avoided them and headed to the back of the store. I found a rotating jewelry display beside a bin full of sale-priced T-shirts, and I spun the display around to look at the earrings and pendants. I wasn’t planning to get anything—what did I want a souvenir of this weekend for?—but something on the bottom of the rack caught my eye. I bent down and pulled the necklace off the display. It was a piece of amber about the size of a quarter on a silver chain. In the center of the hardened resin was a curled frond, like a fiddlehead fern. I flipped over the card on which the chain was looped, and read: “This GENUINE piece of Amber was formed twenty-five million years ago in Central America.”

I pulled the pendant off the card and cupped it in my palm, gazing at the twenty-five-million-year-old fern preserved within the golden-orange resin. I couldn’t wrap my head around the age of the amber. It was here long before humans existed. Were my people alive back then? Were they only beginning to learn how to stand? This tiny object, warmed by the skin of my hand, had existed throughout all of that. It would exist throughout so much more to come. I rubbed a finger over the smooth surface, and for a second I thought I felt an electric charge in the palm of my hand, as if the amber were tugging at me.

I closed my fingers around it and took it to the cash register. Maybe I did want to remember this place, this planet. I wanted to take a piece of it home with me.

13

Kurra

The temple is built into the peak of Isi Na, the walls made of stone quarried from somewhere nearby so that the temple seems to grow directly out of the mountain itself. The front of the temple opens into a flat, circular area that is tiled in the colors of the ocean, which it overlooks. When we arrive, the sun is slightly below the horizon, making the edge of the sea glow. We enter the temple through its main doors, built of black wood that has been carved into a lattice pattern. Inside, there is an atrium with a long, narrow pool. On either side are murals depicting Isi Na and the sea painted in deep, rich colors.

Two attendants are waiting for us at the rear of the atrium, both wearing long gray robes. One of them approaches Nasha; the other approaches me. We bow. My attendant takes me into an antechamber where I will change into my ritual clothing. Nasha follows her attendant into the same room. There are two stations set up, but there is space for many more; the room is long and extends far into the mountainside. Each station is comprised of a chair and a small table on which several ritual implements are laid out: a clipper, a razor, a bottle of scent. My attendant gestures for me to sit down as he picks up the clippers.

I watch my hair fall in clumps onto the floor as he cuts it off. Kiss of honey. That’s what the hair color I used was called. I bought it because Morgan liked that color, and I packed several boxes to bring back here with me. I kept using it because I couldn’t bring myself to end that part of my life yet. But today, it’s over. My natural hair is dark brown, and after my head is shaved, it will grow back in that color. Some Imrians go directly from their kibila to a stylist to have new hair rooted immediately, but I think I’ll let mine come in on its own. It might be kind of fun to be bald for a while.

Once most of my hair is gone, my attendant rubs a soft, faintly scented foam into my remaining hair, then picks up the razor. The blade slides cool and wet over my scalp, and nervous energy begins to flutter inside me.

The first time Eres Tilhar walked me through all the steps of kibila, I told my teacher I thought it sounded bizarre. Why would we change ourselves every fifteen years? I remember Eres saying, “It is the natural course of things—to change. We cannot hold ourselves back from changing. Kibila honors that, and gives us the opportunity to recognize how we are evolving.”

This morning, I’m eager to change. I’m eager to become who I am now.

When my attendant finishes shaving my head, he picks up the bottle of scented oil and taps some of it onto his fingertips, then makes a ritual marking over my newly shaved head. He touches the oil to my temples and my lips, and then he bows to me. I stand up and take off my hiking clothes. Nasha has already changed and is waiting near the entrance to the atrium. I slide into my ritual robes, gray like the attendant’s, made of a soft cloth woven from a cottonlike plant that grows on the southern slopes of the mountains. It’s like a caftan, with embroidery at the wrists and the collar in the shape of waves breaking upon the shore. I will wear this robe at every one of my kibila for the rest of my life.

I walk toward the entrance to the atrium to meet Nasha—though I shouldn’t think of her as Nasha anymore. There is excitement in her eyes, and I smile at her. Her head is smooth and slightly glistening from traces of the scented oil. We bow to each other.

A bell rings. It’s time.

She goes first because she was born first, and as she leaves I think: Good-bye, Nasha. I wonder what name she has selected for herself.

I wait long minutes until my attendant nods at me, and then I step through the door into the atrium. I see my parents waiting on the far side of the pool, the light of the rising sun behind them casting their faces into shadow. There is no one else in the room. I take a deep breath. My hands are trembling.

I enter the pool. The water is blessedly warm, and as I descend the tiled steps my robes swirl out around me, floating on the surface. The pool is slightly deeper than I am tall. I must walk across the length of it, ducking my head underwater at the center point, and then walk up the steps on the far side. When I’m in the middle, I suck in a breath of air and plunge beneath. The water slides over my head. I pause. I hold my breath, suspended in this moment between the past and the future, and I hear my heartbeat.

This is me.

The water streams over my face as I emerge from the pool. My robes are weighted with water, wet against my skin. I smell the scent of the oil: warm and sweet, almost like burnt sugar. My parents are waiting for me. They hold out their hands. Aba is crying, and Ada looks as if he might start at any minute too. Ama’s eyes are shining. I reach out for them. They take my hands in theirs, and I open myself to them.

This is me: my heart beating, my lungs breathing, my eyes hot with tears, and I am so grateful that they have brought me into this world, that they are here for me.

In unison, they say the name I have selected for myself: “Amber Gray.”

I smile so big I feel like my face might crack. “Amber Gray,” I repeat out loud, and then they fold me into their arms and I feel all of their emotions: a giant pile of love, warm and buoyant and beautiful.

I think I’m going to dye my hair black.

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About the Author

Malinda Lo is the author of several young adult novels, including Ash, a retelling of the Cinderella story with a lesbian twist, which was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. She is also the author of Adaptation and Inheritance. Before she became a novelist, she was an economics major, an editorial assistant, a graduate student, and an entertainment reporter. She lives in Northern California with her partner and their dog. Malinda invites you to visit her at www.malindalo.com.

Also by Malinda Lo

Ash

Huntress

Adaptation

Inheritance

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Welcome

Epigraph

1: Kurra

2: Earth

3: Kurra

4: Earth

5: Kurra

6: Earth

7: Kurra

8: Earth

9: Kurra

10: Earth

11: Kurra

12: Earth

13: Kurra

About the Author

Also by Malinda Lo

Copyright

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Malinda Lo

Cover design by Alison Impey

Image of water © Shutterstock

Image of girl © Getty Images

Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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First ebook edition: September 2013

ISBN 978-0-316-27837-9

For more about this book and author, visit Bookish.com