22.

The day began bad and stretched into something long and dreadful. It started to rain as Freya biked to school and when she finally arrived she was soaked through. She had to go change into her gym clothes, and she felt awkward in the halls, like everyone was looking at her.

She had to explain herself again in every class. Her teachers all had distrustful looks, as if she would lie to them to get away with wearing musty gym clothes. She checked her locker after lunch but everything was still damp, it was going to be a really uncomfortable ride home.

In all the empty spaces of the day, she kept remembering the awful look on Lassa’s face. It was the shittiest thing Freya had ever said to her mother. The apology didn’t matter. Neither of them would ever forget it.

Classes dragged on. There was something wrong with the school network and none of the interactive whiteboards worked. No one could retrieve anything off the shared drive, and it made all the teachers irritated, except for Mr. Mazzini.

When they sat down for Trig, Mr. Mazzini gleefully wheeled out an old incandescent lamp projector, the kind you used with transparency sheets and vis-a-vis markers. As he set it up, he was cackling about how he hadn’t used one in almost a decade. It was kind retro at first, but the novelty wore off quickly.

Freya squinted at the screen, wondering if that squiggle was supposed to be a four or a nine. At the center of the whiteboard, an image of an ethernet jack with a break in its cord kept blinking. She ran her fingers over the Starball in her pocket.

Is it you? she wondered. She remembered when their internet at home had gotten messed up. The mysterious entry in the DHCP table that was maxing out their cable modem. What if that wasn’t just some neighborhood kid running torrents? What if it was the Starball?

Freya frowned at the implausibility of it. For that to be true, it would require that two weeks after crash landing in the river this probe from an alien civilization had figured enough of the OSI protocol stack to communicate with their router. Not just communicate, it would have had to crack WPA3 to even authenticate in the first place. There was no way. She couldn’t believe it would go to such crazy lengths without even bothering to pulse “Hi!” at her in Morse code or flicker the lights in her bedroom. Freya would have gladly told the Starball anything it wanted to know.

Still, the possibility had to be addressed. How could she test that hypothesis? Her first idea was to put the Starball in a heavy lead box, to see if isolating it fixed the network, but she didn’t have anything like that. Then she wondered if it had to be lead, pretty much any metal was good at blocking wireless transmission.

It was a shame she didn’t have the halves of the meteorite with her, she’d brought them home and hid them in her closet. She tried to think of where she could find a metal box to act as a faraday cage and realized she could just put the Starball in her locker. Her clothes were in there right now, probably still damp and dripping. She could put the Starball in the pocket of her jeans, shut the door, and see if the disruption stopped.

As she was thinking about it, there was a chime from the intercom and everyone looked up. A reedy technician’s voice announced they’d fixed the problem. He apologized for the disruption, and asked teachers to manually reboot their whiteboards.

Feigning outrage, Mr. Mazzini trundled over to hold down the power button, and after a few minutes the Grayson Logo appeared. The whiteboard booted back up and found the network. Freya frowned at the screen. That was awfully convenient timing.

Can it read my thoughts? Did it know I was about to put it in my locker?

It was a weird thought, and it made the whole interaction this morning seem even stranger. Had she really drunk the ensure? She tried to remember if she’d had a weird taste in her mouth when she woke up and couldn’t. She was usually pretty out of it for a few minutes after waking.

Was Lassa right about the Lunesta? For a moment, Freya doubted everything. Maybe she’d just gone mad with grief, or suffered brain damage getting socked in the eye. Maybe the Starball was just an ordinary rock and she’d imagined everything at the river. Maybe she’d died that night and hell was just Mr. Mazzini going on and on about polynomials. As the hour stretched on, it seemed more and more plausible.

When class finally ended Freya remained behind as everyone else stampeded for the door. She was the only one left in the class, but she still looked over her shoulder before she pulled the Starball out of the pocket of her shorts. It was real, she hadn’t dreamed this.

“Do whatever you want, I don’t care,” Freya whispered to the orb. She waited for any communication at all, but there was nothing.

Trigonometry was her final period. Outside the hallway was a surge of people scrambling to leave Grayson. She entered the stream, feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the herd. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore and she ducked into an empty corridor that led to the covered walkway to the Arts Building side entrance. No one ever came this way. There was a bench halfway across the walkway where she could wait for the madness to subside.

The Arts Building was a blocky hulk that had been built in the mid 1970s. Every year the school board discussed tearing it down to put up something more modern, but they never quite found the money. The building’s facade was concrete inlaid with pebbles. Over the years many of the stones had fallen out, and near the entrance to the building the wall was studded with used gum people had stuck in the gaps.

A steady rain was falling. Freya swept water off the bench and sat down, feeling dampness soaking through her the back of her shorts. It didn’t matter. She was about to change into wet clothes and then bike home in the rain. She would basically never be dry again.

Freya told herself she was just waiting for the mob to clear out, but nearly everyone was gone already. Time continued to creep along, she was getting colder and wetter but she didn’t move. The day had drained everything out of her, she didn’t even want to go home. As rain hissed down around her, she had the peculiar feeling once more. This was all happening to someone else. She was just a disembodied observer, watching someone pilot a malfunctioning human.

Down the hill, Freya could see the spot she’d lain in the grass and let the rain cover her. Now she imagined herself melting in that rain, dissolving into the earth like salt until a patch of dead grass the only sign she’d ever existed.

Her spiral of self pity was interrupted by lights flicking on in the nearest classroom. It was the dance studio, the walls were floor-to-ceiling mirrors ringed with ballet barres. Girls in yoga pants were filing in, forming small clusters of conversation. Peering down from her perch on the bench, Freya could see thin slashes of the class through the recessed arrow-slit windows. A boy in a leotard entered and stood apart from the others.

He was Radomir Stich. his father worked in Lassa’s department at Hiidenkirnu, she was his boss’s boss. Radomir was a skinny boy with with thick eyebrows and large, wide-set eyes, Freya had been friends with him since middle school. They’d once been close but no longer. Just like everyone else.

Radomir stood at the front of the room and said something, everyone turned to face him. Freya realized he wasn’t taking the class, he was teaching it. For a moment she was afraid he would look out the window and see her skulking in the rain, but he was too focused.

She watched his mouth moving on the other side of the glass. The bench was was ten meters away and the rain was roaring against the steel roof of the walkway, but she could still perfectly imagine what he sounded like. When they’d first met, his Russian accent had been so thick she could barely understand him. He’d gotten so much better in just a few years.

Freya looked at the way the girls stood as he spoke with them. This was the boy who used to shrink into his shoulders and stare at people’s shoes when he talked to them. Now he was in his element, holding his head high and speaking confidently. It didn’t matter at all that he was a junior teaching seniors.

Radomir began to show the class all a series of steps that looked simple when he did them, but when the class tried to follow, many faltered. When he moved out of the window’s narrow field of view, Freya would watch the girls, trying to pick out who the good dancers were.

She saw Radomir stop everyone and correct a girl who was a head taller than him. Though Freya couldn’t see her face, her hair gave her away. It was curly and black, her ponytail could barely contain it.

That had to be Jennette Lewis, the captain of the Lacrosse team. She was ferocious on the field, but she wasn’t one of the better dancers. Freya watched her bring her palm to her forehead in embarrassment. Radomir said something short to her and then went to another girl, moving out of the frame. Jennette’s head tracked him for an extra beat. Freya wondered if there was something to that, but she couldn’t really tell from this position.

Another lost cause. She kept staring at the class, getting colder as they worked up a sweat. Contracting while they grew. She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t find the strength.

* * *

Yeats Middle School had been better than Grayson in every way. Freya had liked the teachers better, it was closer to her house, she had more friends. Even the building was newer. But mostly it was just spending every day with Betty and Jane. Betty and Freya always rode to school sitting together on the front seat of Randall’s truck. He would tell them all the dumb things people had gotten arrested for the night before, and sometimes he could make Betty laugh so hard she would snort. Seventh grade was the best year, they had four periods together, and Jane was in three of them, the three of them were inseparable.

Every morning Freya woke up excited, she couldn’t wait to get to Yeats and see all of her friends. Half the reason she got involved with Drama was so she would have an excuse to stay after school. Most nights both Randall and Lassa had to work late, she hated being alone in the empty house.

Freya’s first meeting with Radomir was thrust upon her by Lassa. Her mother had introduced them at a Hiidenkirnu company picnic and then abandoned Freya, leaving her trapped in an incredibly awkward conversation. At that point Radomir had been in America for less than three months, she could only understand about half of what he said. Freya tried to soldier through out of politeness, but she got nothing back from Radomir. He obviously had nothing to say and didn’t want to be there.

Things weren’t any better for Radomir at Yeats. He’d arrived halfway through the school year and everyone had already decided who their friends were. No one was enthused about making room for someone they could barely understand. Freya felt sorry for Radomir, and for a while she tried to be nice to him. She would say hi when they passed in the hall, offer to partner with him in science class when no one else would, and once she’d even brought up inviting him to sit with them at lunch, but the suggestion was swiftly vetoed by Jane. She thought he was creepy. Every interaction was like their first conversation, she never got anything back from Radomir. It felt like he resented her efforts. He walked around with a perpetual scowl, dark eyebrows slanted as if every day was worse than the one before. Finally Freya gave up.

Two months later during lunch she was sitting with Betty and Jane. Earlier that day in art class Mr. Hendrix had brought in his miniature schnauzer Winky to be their model for figure drawing. Dogs were hard to draw, and the three of them were chattering about it, bemoaning that none of their parents would let them get a dog of their own.

Their table was very close to the stoner\skateboarder table, a raucous group of eighth graders whose bi-weekly visits to the principal’s office were as regular as a paycheck. Any time that table got quiet, something awful was about to happen.

They got quiet. Freya glanced over and saw Malcolm Lewis hunched over something. Back then he’d had one of those skater cuts where the side was buzzed and the hair fell in his eyes in a big swoop. She saw he was loading up a half-eaten cup of red jello with chocolate milk. He caught her eye and winked at her.

“Grosssss,” she hissed, nudging Jane and Betty.

“If he eats that I’m gonna barf,” Jane groaned.

Malcolm had other plans. He stuck the label back on and ducked under the table with the jello cup. A moment later they saw his arm pop up and lob the jello-grenade across the cafeteria. Freya followed it as it sailed through the air, and then she saw the target sitting on his own with his back to the rest of the cafeteria.

The jello grenade scored a direct hit on the back of Radomir Stich’s head. The whole cafeteria exploded in howls of delight and disgust. With bits of red and brown gunk running down his neck, Radomir stood up and slowly turned around to face them. His fists were clenched at his sides. His eyes moved from person to person, lingering on each. It felt like he was memorizing their faces. The laughter died.

Freya could still remember the way he’d stared at them. Radomir wasn’t angry or embarrassed. His eyes were wells of sadness, like this was just the latest in a long line of disappointments. It was a teacher who broke the silence. Miss Matteo rushed over and asked Radomir who threw jello at him.

“I saw nothing,” Radomir said. He was gathering up his spattered bookbag. “I will go home now to clean up.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. We’re going to the principal’s office. No one is leaving here until we find out who threw that jello.”

Radomir was looking at her like she was insane.

“I will go home now,” he told the teacher, speaking slowly as if to an idiot. He turned away from her and walked out the side entrance to the cafeteria. Miss Matteo shouted after Radomir, ordering him to return but he ignored her completely.

Everyone watched him cross the parking lot through the windows and disappear up the street. Radomir was given three days of in-school suspension for leaving without permission. No one would rat on Malcolm, he was the biggest boy in the eighth grade.

In a way, Malcolm did Radomir a huge favor. After that, he was no longer the weird effeminate foreign kid. He was the one who’d stared down everyone, then told a teacher to fuck off. That was how everyone told the story even though he hadn’t really said that. Freya couldn’t get the way he’d stared at her out of her mind.

The day Radomir got out of ISS, she overruled Jane and invited Radomir to sit at their table. She was surprised when he accepted, and returned every day. For a while he said little, mostly just listening to them talk, and they got used to him. It changed one day when Freya and Betty were talking about The Fifth Element. Betty’s favorite scene was starred Diva Plavalaguna, a tentacle-headed opera singer who performed a sensuous dance while hitting impossible notes. They were wondering aloud what that style of dancing was called, and just about to google it when Radomir suddenly piped in. He was a big fan of the choreographer, Mia Frye and told them about all the other things she had worked on, La Femme Nikita and The Dancer.

It was the first time they’d ever really gotten him to talk. As soon as the topic was dance, he was a broken faucet, everything came flowing out.

They learned that Radomir’s family had moved from the Czech Republic to Moscow when he was very young, and he’d wanted to be a dancer for as long as he could remember. He’d started ballet when he was eight and pursued it seriously all the way until earlier this year, when his father Dymek got the job with Hiidenkirnu. When Radomir arrived in Maine he was despondent to find himself stuck in Sillas, hundreds of miles from anything resembling a real ballet studio. He took a four hour bus ride to Portland every Friday night and stayed in a hotel room on his own, returning late on Sunday evening so that he could have two full days of classes at the Lafayette Ballet Academy.

After they got to know him, Radomir fit in well with the three of them. He was even more serious about his grades than they were, he wanted to go to Columbia. His English got perceptibly better every day. Slowly he started to make friends outside of their group, but stayed close to them, grateful they’d given him a chance.

Freya always felt a little worried about Radomir. There was a note of sadness surrounding him that never quite faded. Once day they’d been on their own at lunch. Radomir told her the story of Nijinsky. For ten years, he’d been the most famous male dancer in Europe. Then he went mad, and spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

“Ten years of growing up, ten years of training, ten years of dancing, and thirty years of darkness,” Radomir had said, looking haunted. That was another look she’d never forgotten.

Radomir worked very hard and managed to skip the eighth grade. By the time Freya got to Grayson he had a whole new set of friends. The were still friendly, but not close anymore. Their paths didn’t cross that often.

Overhead, the rain continued to drum on the roof of the walkway to the Arts Building, it showed no sign of relenting. She could see Radomir’s class was starting to break up, she needed to move if she didn’t want someone to notice her.

Thirty years of darkness.

Freya was shivering as she walked back into the school, the back of her gym shorts and underwear were soaked through. She got her still-damp clothes out of her locker, remembering her hypothesis about sealing the Starball inside. It had been a stupid idea. She changed clothes in the girl’s room and walked in the pouring rain to her bicycle. Before she undid her lock, she glanced over at the cars idling in the pickup lane, even though she knew it was useless. Lassa wasn’t there.

* * *

It was a long, wet ride home. Freya could have left her bike at school taken a cab but she didn’t want to. She deserved this.

She hadn’t brought a hat, so the whole way home she was squinting against the rain until her face hurt. Towards the end of the ride her hands were getting numb. When she was coming down the big hill she was afraid she’d lose her grip, but she just kept pushing forward until everything was one long, aching blur. She hoped Lassa would be home so she could try apologizing again but her car wasn’t in the garage. The house was dark and empty.

Randall used to have the early shift on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When she was in middle school she would ride her bike home and the garage door would be open. Randall would be inside tinkering with his truck or fooling around on his laptop.

She would ring the little bell on her handlebars and his head would perk up. It never mattered what he was doing. Even if he was under the truck he would crawl out covered in oil and grime with a big goofy smile. He was always so happy to see her. He’d grab their baseball gloves and they’d ride to Nading Hill Park to play catch, or they’d drive to Dorsey to play mini golf then see a movie. She hadn’t realized how good she had it. Nobody lit up when they saw Freya now. Nobody was happy to see her. Certainly not Lassa. For the hundredth time she felt shitty about this morning.

Freya was standing in the rain in the driveway, staring at an empty garage. She thumbed the bell of her bicycle but it was wet and it wouldn’t ring, it only made a dull Tink! It just ached and ached, it never stopped.

She entered 1984, the key code to the garage door and dragged her bike inside. The tires left wet lines on the cement. For the first time she wondered what Randall did on Tuesdays and Thursdays once she started after-school drama and had rehearsal those nights. Was he still here in the garage? With perfect clarity she imagined him turning from his computer chair to look out at the driveway, then giving a sad little shrug and turning back to the screen.

Freya started to cry, little sobs rising above the sound of the rain outside as she dripped onto the garage floor.

Why not? I can’t get any wetter.

She kept doing this to herself. Digging at the wound, dragging herself deeper. There was really no way out, things were just getting worse. She went to her room to get dry clothes, and there was half of a pill sitting on her dresser. The message was clear, Lassa wasn’t coming home tonight. Freya spent a long time staring at the half pill, and finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She went to Lassa’s closet and looked for Randall’s gun.

But the case was gone.