I
The restaurant had diamond-pane windows, and the early-afternoon lamplight scattered rainbows across the floor.
There was a tile in the middle of those light shards that had almost the same dimensions as a piece of paper from Gillian’s notepad: a pristine canvas. He clenched his fingers open and closed, darting a glance to the white folds draped over the knee across from him.
The lady in the white dress had a penchant for interfering with Gillian’s investigations. That and a few other annoying habits, like grabbing his hand or insisting that he look her in the eye whenever she spoke. She would not be happy if Gillian so much as twitched.
But the temptation insisted; without acknowledging his chaperone, Gillian slipped from the booth and scuttled to the paper-shaped tile. He then dropped his backpack on the floor and fetched the notepad and pen.
“Ahem.”
It was the voice of the lady in the white dress, but it neither asked him to return nor scolded, so Gillian ignored it. If she had a complaint, she could voice it; it therefore reasoned that if she did not voice a complaint, she did not have one, and Gillian had every right to go about his business undisturbed.
The pages of Gillian’s notepad were thin and delicate, much more so than ordinary printing paper; they required special care not to tear or crumple. He pressed his hand flat against the pad and pulled gently to split a page along its perforated line.
Once removed, he squared the sheet with the floor tile. Though from a distance the proportions had looked identical, the exact comparison revealed a discrepancy; the tile was both shorter and wider than the paper, each by less than the width of a finger. Gillian wrinkled his nose. Even if he cut the extra paper off the top, there would still be a gap of tile exposed along the side.
There are certain things one must accept, and a mis-sized sheet of paper is one of them.
The lady in the white dress sighed and clicked her nails on the table. Gillian did not bother to glance over his shoulder; clicking fingernails require no immediate attention.
The tile did not have a smooth surface so much as a slight lumpiness, like plastic warped by heat and cooled solid again. Gillian pressed his paper around the contours of the floor, brow furrowed in frustration. The imperfections were starting to add up. One more and they might reach a critical mass of dissatisfaction, enough to send the paper back to the notepad unmarked.
But not this time.
Gillian traced the pattern of light-scatter, noting the places where the window panes cast shadows. It would be ideal to record the colors too: starbursts of blue, green, and prismatic red. There was a multicolor pen in the moving crate, the kind with adjustable channels for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Gillian dared a glance back to the table, careful to avoid the eyes of the lady in the white dress. If he had to guess, he would put his chances of successfully opening the crate, finding the multicolor pen, and returning to the drawing at exactly zero.
Black it was. Though Gillian made a note in each region to record the proper color.
“You know, you won’t be coming back here again,” said the lady in the white dress.
This comment, like those before it, was not a call to action. Gillian could ignore it, if he so chose, and keep his concentration on the all-important light spots on the floor below him.
But, unlike an ‘ahem’ or finger-clicking sigh, this had unfortunate implications.
The most interesting experiment would be to trace a whole notebook of light-scatter sketches, one each day for a full revolution of the moon around the planet and of the planet around the sun. What patterns could Gillian extract then—to see how the light expanded, contracted, and refracted; to plot the passage of time as the twisting of space and happenstance recorded it. But without a hundred data points—without even two or three—was the drawing worth the effort?
Gillian kept tracing.
Even without a full cycle of drawings, he could still study the pattern against other light-scatters, looking for commonalities between different kinds of windows. And even if that yielded no interesting results, at least it had a pretty design.
The restaurant would not begin serving dinner for another forty-five minutes, but a waitress came by nonetheless. Her heels clacked as she walked across the tile, and Gillian tensed, imagining a hole punched through the middle of his drawing.
“Need something to drink, sweetheart? Juice? Milk?” she asked.
The shoes she wore had upturned toes in glossy red, like the glint on candy.
“Cherry soda, please,” he mumbled.
The waitress nodded, tapping the device on her wrist to record the order. “Such a clever boy,” she said to the lady in the white dress. “I hope it all works out for him.”
Gillian could not figure out what made cherry soda clever.
“Is your drawing done?” the lady in the white dress called.
It was, though not to a satisfactory degree. Gillian’s pen had slipped once, leaving an ugly splotch where a light-spot was supposed to be. The inkblot could be corrected if Gillian drew the pattern again, and he chewed this over with a bit of his cheek. No color, only one drawing for one day and one time—no, it was not worth another piece of paper. Gillian slid the page back into the notebook in the exact spot from which it had been torn.
“Good boy. Now please sit still until Mr. Cloverdell arrives.”
The waitress returned with Gillian’s soda, complete with a synthetic cherry floating at the top. Gillian had never tried a real cherry, nor did he have any desire to; the synthetic kind were delicious.
Delicious enough—he took a sip—to distract, for a moment, from the aforementioned and imminent arrival of Mr. Cloverdell.
Maury Cloverdell was Gillian’s cousin, but Gillian had never met him. He was thirty-five years old—a grown-up—and lived on another moon around another planet. If anyone had asked, Gillian would not have wanted to go anywhere or do anything with some unfamiliar ‘family’ that did not even share his surname. But no one had asked Gillian, and so here he waited, in a restaurant by the sea, for a man he had never met but who was somehow the closest and most willing candidate guardian.
The lady in the white dress put her hand on Gillian’s shoulder, and he pushed it off, too bothered to think through all the fussy rules Mama had taught him for when it was okay to push back against an adult and when it was not. This must have been an appropriate occasion, as the white-dress lady said nothing and returned her hand to its proper place in her lap.
Whoever Maury Cloverdell was, the least Gillian could hope was that he would be less irksome and more interesting than the lady in the white dress.
Someone rang at the door, and Gillian curled into a ball, focusing on the bubbles in his cherry soda. The waitress answered, said “I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” and Gillian released his breath.
It was not time yet.
“It’s all right; don’t be shy,” the lady in the white dress cooed. She leaned in close, her presence prickling at the back of Gillian’s neck. “Tell me, what about meeting Mr. Cloverdell makes you the most nervous?”
Gillian mulled over the possible answers, trying to decide which one would prompt the fewest follow-up questions. Nothing came to mind.
“Look at me when I am speaking to you,” the lady scolded.
Most of the soda bubbles were gathered on the edges of the cup itself or on the surface of the synthetic cherry. A few stragglers fizzled from the bottom up through the middle, but these dissipated as soon as they reached the top. Gillian took another gulp, drawing the liquid slowly through his straw until the buzzing in his nose started to hurt.
The lady had still not leaned away.
Reluctant, Gillian turned to face her. He kept his eyes on the bridge of her nose, which had a lump of skin on the side. Not a mole—a mole would be dark—but something Gillian did not know the name of.
“I don’t want to go to another planet,” he answered.
Another person arrived at the door, and Gillian returned his gaze to the half-full cherry soda sitting in front of him. It had no ice, which was for the better; more ice meant less soda, and the chill always put a funny feeling in Gillian’s teeth.
“Oh yes, they’ve been expecting you,” the waitress answered. “Right this way.”
Gillian had already scanned his soda up and down; there was nothing more to note. He knew its color, the places where the bubbles were most likely to gather, the thin line of residue that marked the level to which it had been poured. His eyes darted around the room, searching anywhere for something intriguing enough to excuse his attention.
“Ah, Mr. Cloverdell! A pleasure to meet you.” The lady in the white dress stood and put a hand on Gillian’s shoulder. “Come now, deary; please get up and say hello,” she whispered.
Even though Gillian obeyed, the lady kept her hand on him. He grit his teeth and let it be.
“Hello Mr. Cloverdell.”
Maury Cloverdell was tall and lanky, his limbs like purple pinstripe scaffolding. He wore brown shoes that were scuffed but recently polished, and his right hand, which he extended in front of Gillian’s nose, had two or three rings on each finger. Although he was not fond of handshakes, Gillian took it.
“Hiya kiddo,” Mr. Cloverdell said, leaning in. “You can call me Maury—we’re cousins, after all. You like to be called Gillian?”
Gillian nodded. He was still looking at the scuffed-and-polished shoes, but he could smell Maury’s last meal: something familiar but implacable.
“Hey, what’s with the face?” Maury asked.
“What did you eat for breakfast?”
“Huh?” You’re not telling me my breath stinks, are ya?”
Gillian wrinkled his nose. “It does.”
“Gillian!” the lady in the white dress snapped, but Maury only laughed.
“Now that’s the kind of honesty I like,” he said. “Now, let me think. It’s not caff-3 you smell, is it?”
Caff-3 was something Dad used to drink: hot, reddish stuff that smelled—and tasted—like liquid ash. Gillian flared his nostrils and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“A little bit. And something else.”
“Eh, probably the cheese sauce I put on my toast. In any case,” Maury stood, and the scent—which was indeed close to cheese sauce but somehow more putrid—dissipated. “Is this everything?”
All of Gillian’s belongings were in the moving crate under the table—all except the most important, of course, which he kept in his backpack. He nodded, assuming that the question was directed at him, and adjusted his shoulder straps for emphasis.
“This is everything,” the lady in the white dress answered. “Everything tangible, at least; his parents’ assets have been put in a trust until he’s old enough to manage them.”
“Yeah, yeah, and until then he’s on my dime.”
Maury’s voice deepened when he said that, and the change startled Gillian enough to glance up at him. His cousin had a professional look: glossy, black hair slicked back along his neck, and a pointy nose.
But it was the eyes that captured Gillian’s attention. Most people have creepy eyes, the kind that pierce you like the zap of a wire with a tear in the sheath. Maury, however, had eyes like Mom’s: brown with copper flecks. Gillian itched to sketch their pattern in his notebook.
“There you are,” Maury said, smiling. “I was wondering when I’d see more than just your forehead.”
“Sorry,” Gillian replied, though he couldn’t exactly say what he was apologizing for.
“Welp, if this is everything, I guess it’s time to get you back to the spaceport; don’t want to overstay our welcome once the dinner rush starts.” Maury hoisted Gillian’s create from under the table, and it shifted with a worrying thwunk. “Although,” he continued, glancing around. “What’s on the menu?”
The waitress was behind the bar counter, pouring out a half-full glass of cherry soda. Gillian had wanted to finish that. When had she taken it?
“Nothing for another two hours,” she replied. “Unless you want a soda?”
Maury shook his head. “Nah, nothing too sweet.” He then turned to Gillian. “You ready to go?”
Gillian had spent all eleven years of his life on Sappho, the smallest moon of the gas giant Pallas. Anything beyond the deep blue sky outside the colony dome, beyond the hydrocarbon sea and the electric lights that reflected off its surface—nothing out there was home.
“Not really,” he said.
And at that Maury chuckled and held open the door. “Well, sometimes that’s the way life is.”
