Daughter of Nox

Chapter Thirty-One

Freya dragged her hands down her face, steeling herself against the laughing fit she was sure to hear.

Let them laugh, she thought. She didn't care what they thought. She repeated the words silently, hoping she'd start believing it.

"Are you planning to sleep in there?" the voice called again.

Freya winced and thumped her head against the headrest. It was a boy. And given her luck, probably a boy in her class. Why did this kind of thing have to happen to her?

She fumbled at the buckles to her harness and crept up out of the cockpit. The boy was standing just off to the side of the sim with his hands on his hips, a grin spread across his face.

"You saw it all?" Freya asked even despite already knowing the answer.

His grin seemed to actually get bigger. "You were amazing."

Freya blinked. Amazing was not the word she'd have used to describe getting flamed by a computer program.

"Are you sure you were watching the right sim?"

He seemed to weigh the question. "As you were the person I was flying against, I'm going to go ahead and say, yeah, I was watching the right sim."

"Wait," she said. The picture of what happened in the sim became clearer. "That Rimmer junk heap? That was you?"

The smile on his face widened as he nodded. "Pretty crash, huh?"

Freya was felt her cheeks flush, and her tongue knot in her mouth.

"You look kind of familiar," he said after she didn't respond. "Do we have classes together?"

Freya thought about it but couldn't come up with anything. He looked older than her, so if she had a class with him it would have had to have been piloting. And with his skills there was no doubt she would have spotted him during sim sessions. Plus, the way he smiled caught her eye–the genuineness of it, as though each smile was something new he'd created right then and there rather than a tired gesture he lugged from storage whenever the situation called for it.

Well, that and his eyelashes were long enough to make her a tiny bit jealous. No way she'd have missed that either.

"I don't think so," she said, deciding to leave out the bit about his smile. "Maybe you saw me at lunch or something?"

He reached up and tapped his chin. "No I don't think so. I hardly ever eat in the mess hall. Maybe we had a class together last year?"

Freya's cheeks felt hot. "That wouldn't have been me."

He looked confused. "You seem pretty certain of that."

Freya's teeth worked along the rough inside of her lip as she thought. Of course she was certain of it, but she didn't want to tell him why she was. But what else could she say?

She decided to go with the truth, no matter how bad it flamed her.

"Well, uh," she sputtered as she struggled to find the words. "This is sort of my first year."

Freya watched as he seemed to choke on thin air. This is it, she thought. He's not even going to want to talk to me now.

"You're only a first-year?"

Freya's shoulders sunk to the floor as she nodded.

"That is so crash!"

Freya was about to launch into a wild defense when what he'd said registered.

She looked up and met his eyes. "Really?"

The excitement on his face looked genuine. "When I saw you come out I knew you were younger than me and all. But a first year? I never would have thought that."