Daphne backed toward the room’s disposal unit. Zada had a brief flash of their tour guide during that school trip, all those years ago, warning them not to get too close: “For security purposes, these chutes reduce anything inside to atoms.”
Zada couldn’t help it. She gasped. This was unlike Daphne. Her pranks at school had been flashy but never cruel.
“Why are you doing this?” said Zada, taking a step forward. If she moved fast enough, maybe she could snatch the Applicator out of Daphne’s hands.
Daphne shifted out of reach and closer to the chute, shrugging airily. “Well, this thing’s too big to flush down the toilet.”
“No,” Zada persevered, “I mean, Flora and Aiden haven’t done anything to you. Why spoil the single most important day of their entire lives?”
Zada wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it was not for Daphne to straighten and say, “Who cares? Flora won’t even remember any of this. Did you see how glassy her eyes were? She’s been a thousand miles away all morning.”
“She’s happy,” Zada said automatically. Florahadlooked a little dazed up there on the stage. “True love and a little Counseling can have that effect. It’s not her fault.”
“No,” said Daphne with a sad smile, “it’s not.” She reached behind her, activating the waste disposal, which instantly hummed to life. “And I’m not spoiling anything. It’s already spoiled.” All Daphne had to do was drop the Applicator into the chute, and it would be reduced in a blink to nothing.
Flora had looked so beautiful in her wedding dress. For years, Flora and Zada had dreamed of finding and marrying their Heartsong match. Daphne couldn’t have forgotten that, the weight of that longing during the six years they’d been together at Dalrymple Academy. To snatch that dream away from Flora, who’d done nothing to Daphne—it made no sense.
Zada took a deep breath and let it out slowly, the wayDaphne had taught her.
Unbidden, Zada could almost see the jewel-bright meadow behind the Auxiliary Building, could almost smell Dalrymple Academy’s signature scent wafting off the silk grass, a heady mixture of vetiver, sandalwood, and ozone.
Lying side by side in that grass, Zada and Daphne had marveled that there was a world in which they could have never met. It was almost unbelievable that they’d both grown up in New Ionia and hadn’t crossed paths until they were partnered together in lab class. Back then, it had felt inevitable that they would always be in each other’s lives, like a pair of moons orbiting each other, spinning together in an endless spiral by shared gravity. They went everywhere together, elbows and hips and shoulders bumping against each other as they rushed to class or wandered to the dining commons.
That had been a lifetime ago, years before Zada had come of age and graduated. At eighteen, she followed the same rule as every other unmatched debutante: No skin contact with anyone outside your family. The only exception, of course, was at designated social events, like dances or dinners or strolls through the botanical gardens.
After all, your Heartsong was designed to play when you touched your destined match. Your perfect partner was chosen for you, for your own good and the good of everyone in New Ionia. It followed that experiencing your Heartsong was meant to be a public event, one that you celebrated with everyone around you. Keeping this thrilling and magical experience to yourselves would’ve meant hoarding the greatest joy of your life.
Some students started following the rules of Heartsong atfourteen or fifteen, years before they came of age. It made going without contact later on easier. Plus, it made you seem older and more mature.
But Daphne had never cared about any of that. She was always starting a tussle with Zada over something ridiculous. Seizing the last buttery-light pastry at lunch, for instance, or holding Zada’s secondhand data pad just out of reach. They’d learned the geography of the surrounding country their first year—the soaring mountains of Michigan, the swamps of New York, the endless toxic wasteland just outside their borders—and at the same time, Zada had committed to memory a topographical map of Daphne’s ticklish spots. Daphne knew all of Zada’s, too. More than one tickle fight had ended with both of them laughing too hard to speak and gasping, “Truce! Truce!”
Daphne had reached the atomizer, her gaze gone dark and distant. She was brooding, Zada realized. She was brooding over something or other, and this was Zada’s chance to salvage Flora’s happily ever after. Nothing was going to ruin today for her friend.
“Give it to me,” said Zada in a loud, clear voice.
Daphne opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver a blistering retort, and that’s when Zada pounced.
The reasonable thing to do would have been to go for the Applicator, which is why Zada instead aimed a light jab at Daphne’s ticklish left side. This sent Daphne scrambling out of the way—and beyond the range of the disposal.
Daphne’s next move, Zada knew from years of experience, would be to use their height difference to her advantage and hold the Applicator out of reach, so while Daphne struggled for her breath back, Zada grabbed for Daphne’s arms. Daphnefought harder than they had in school, but Zada had adrenaline on her side—adrenaline and a growing frustration over how impossible it had become to have one simple conversation with the person she’d once known best.
“What are you—” Daphne began, but Zada shoved Daphne against the wall of the control room with a burst of strength, grabbing hold of Daphne’s wrists and pinning them to the wall, bracketing either side of her head.
The momentum of it brought their bodies flush. Zada froze. Daphne was breathing hard, face unreadable. They were so close that every warm exhale stirred Zada’s eyelashes. Something about the slight rise and fall of Daphne’s chest in that stylish, perfectly tailored waistcoat was hard to look away from, but that wasn’t the worst of it. In the scuffle, Daphne’s sleeves had rucked up just enough that Zada’s left hand was wrapped around not only expensive cloth but also a sliver of Daphne’s bare wrist, smooth and warm, her pulse kicking like a frightened animal.
For a long, tense moment, neither of them spoke.Truce, thought Zada nonsensically.
Then, Daphne began to laugh. It was a bitter, mocking sound, violins with an edge of scorn.
“What,” said Daphne, “were you expecting music?”
Zada hadn’t expected it. Of course, she hadn’t. It wasn’t statistically likely, for one. Heartsong didn’t always pair women with men or men with women, but it happened more often than not. (Any nonbinary young people could apply to choose the gender of their partner. Applications were usually, but not always, approved.)
It was all for the good of New Ionia—there were birth ratesto think of, for one thing.
And anyway, it wasn’t as if shewantedto discover that Daphne was her soulmate, and that she was destined to spend her life married to a fascinating and difficult person who now hated her.
But her face burned all the same.
