“Do you want to tell us about it?” Liu said, after I’d finished wolfing down the food and had sprawled back out on my bed.
“The machinery was broken in some different exciting way that took them more than an hour to fix,” I said, staring at the ceiling. “We lost one of the artificers on the way in, and Pires keeled over doing the shield, and we got back late and got caught on the shop floor during the cleaning and Orion kissed me,” which I hadn’t actually meant to say, but it came out, and Liu gave a squeak of excitement and covered her mouth.
“But how did you get clear of the cleaning fires?” Aadhya said, deadpan, and Liu shoved her knee and said, “Stop that! Was it nice? Is he a good kisser?” and then blushed bright red and burst into giggles and covered her face.
I would probably have been the same color if I could have managed it. “I don’t remember!”
“Oh, come on!” Aadhya said.
“I don’t! I—” I groaned and sat up and put my face against my knees and finished in a mutter, “I kneed him and shoved him off me so I could cast a firebreak,” and Aadhya laughed so hard she fell off the bed while Liu gawked at me, totally stricken on my behalf.
“ ‘I’m not dating Orion at all, we’re just friends,’ ” Aadhya wheezed from the floor without even getting up, mimicking what I’d told her and Liu the night before we’d shaken on our alliance: I hadn’t wanted them to come into it on false pretenses. “You fail at dating so hard.”
“Thanks, I feel loads better,” I said. “And I wasn’t wrong! I wasn’t dating him.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Aadhya said. “Only a boy would date somebody for two weeks and not mention it to them.”
We all kind of sniggered together for a bit, but after we settled back down, Liu said, tentatively, “Do you want to?” Her face was serious. “My mother told me it was a really bad idea.”
“My mom told me that all boys are carrying a secret pet mal around in their underwear, and if you get alone with them they let it out,” Aadhya said. We both shrieked with laughter, and she laughed, too. “I know, right? But she did it on purpose, she told me to pretend that was true, the whole time I was in here, because it would be true, if I let a boy get me pregnant.”
Liu gave a shiver all over and wrapped her arms around her knees. “My mother got me an IUD.”
“I tried one. I got massive cramps,” Aadhya said grimly.
I swallowed. I hadn’t bothered; it had seemed the least likely of my many worries. “My mum was almost three months gone with me at graduation.”
“Oh my God,” Aadhya said. “She must have freaked.”
“My dad died getting her out,” I said softly, and Liu reached out and squeezed my hand. My throat was tight. It was the first time I’d ever told anyone.
We sat quiet for a bit, and then Aadhya said, “I guess that means you’ll be the only person ever to graduate twice,” and we all laughed again.