1
Chapter 1
Waypoint Research Station
Antarctica
‘Austral Summer’
Dec 10th.
I sat on my bunk and watched the light move across the wall. Rose gold. The color of Antarctic morning light. I should have known it from my photography skills — I did not. I knew it from Apple. Years ago, when I was still in Russia, the rose gold iPhone model from America was all the rage.
“What are you sitting there moping about?”
I turned. The station doctor was in our dorm’s doorway, fixing his sleeves. I pointed a finger at him. “I was not moping. I was contemplating.”
He smiled and shook his head. He picked up his wristwatch from the table and put it on.
“And what does a penguinologist contemplate on a Friday morning?”
“The fact that I walk across the buildings every day to fetch Sam, and yet he chooses to take a dormitory in that building every year. We have been coming here for years now and not one time have I managed to convince him to room in this building.”
The doctor simply raised an eyebrow. He held my gaze, steady, as he shrugged on his white coat — the last step of his morning routine, followed in exact sequence every day. Unlike me.
I had tried to build a morning routine for twenty-five years. At some point I should probably accept that routines and habits were not in my DNA. Maybe it was a Russian thing, I chuckled to myself.
“Well, if you don’t move and get ready, he may already be in the cafeteria and your precious morning walk with Sam will not happen. And then you will mope around even more and I cannot deal with that.”
I barked a laugh. “You are making me sound like a lovesick teen. I do not mope. In fact I want to file a complaint. This is discrimination against Russians. You are being discriminatory.”
The doctor rolled his eyes, his smile leaking through. He turned and left our shared dorm room with one last parting message over his shoulder.
“Get up and get moving.”
The door banging shut jumpstarted my system. Daniel was right about Sam’s punctuality. Sam was my polar opposite in every possible way. Where I kept forgetting things, he was a stickler about times. Where I talked too much and blurted out everything that came to my mind, he hardly opened his mouth, especially in front of other people. Where I was a stack of limbs with no muscle tone, he was a walking, talking underwear model.
The thought of Sam getting exasperated, waiting for me, and then walking by himself to the cafeteria was enough motivation to speed through my morning routine. Soon I was running down the stairs.
Waypoint Station was a small research station. During austral summers we could get as big as 45 people, but during the winterit was down to 10 or 12.
I passed the chef who waved at me. I ran into Grant, who was followed by Adrien. The two had been inseparable lately.
I was mildly jealous, if I was honest. It had been just a few days since they had gotten together, and the only reason I knew was because Grant and I were longtime friends. They had not yet publicly come out to the rest of the base — and they might never.
“What’s the hurry?” Grant asked as I skidded around him, running toward the front doors. I flipped my name tag from the IN slot to the OUT slot — that was how we kept track of who was in the building at a given time. Very old school and basic, but very effective. In case of a fire or emergency, the station chief needed to know who was in a building at any given moment.
“I am late,” I yelled back over my shoulder. “Sam will be waiting for me and he is probably going to yell at me.”
As the heavy insulated door slowly swung shut, I heard Grant’s reply from behind me.
“Then maybe you should give up being his escort.”
I laughed and yelled back just before the door closed, trapping the heat inside the building.
“Never!”
There were two major buildings on the station base. One was the R&R building where Sam’s room was, and the other was the Main building where I roomed with the station doctor, Daniel Park. The cafeteria and the lounge were in my building, so honestly there was no reason why Sam would choose the other building every year. But he was stubborn like that. He liked his solitude, apparently.
