Dangerous (6 page)

Wilder was waiting just inside.

“What is your dad doing here?”

“He’s a control freak. He stops by once a week to make sure

the security is vigilant in protecting an important man’s son.”

Wilder traced my lower lip with his finger. “I like your mouth.”

“I’m not that girl,” I reminded him, but I wondered if may-

41

Shannon Hale

be I was.

So much knowledge gained in the past two weeks, I

couldn’t contain it all. I started to organize it into a tidy list:

1. Turbulence is characterized by chaotic, random prop-

erty changes in air flow.

2. The most dangerous part of scuba is the buildup of ni-

trogen molecules in your body and those gases expanding if you

rise up through the water too quickly.

3. You can like a person’s mouth.

4. You can feel your heart beat not just in your chest, but

everywhere at once.

“Let’s skip the next session,” he whispered, his hand finding

my lower back. “We could find an empty room and talk about

microscopes.”

I shook my head. “No. No way.”

“You’re a good girl.” He frowned. “Your middle name lies.”

I didn’t want to be rude like his father. So I took his hand

and said, “Jonathan Ingalls Wilder, you have become one of my

top five favorite people in the world. Now come on.”

We found seats and watched a documentary about the build-

ing of the Beanstalk . . . sort of. Wilder kept holding my hand,

rubbing the backs of my fingernails over his lip. I was field testing

a theory that a person’s skin emits a scent, and if you’re attracted

to that person, his scent enters you and releases hormones in your

brain that make you disoriented and apt to grin.

After the movie, Bonnie Howell hopped onto stage, dressed

in florals and stripes. She pulled three green balls out of a bag

and juggled. The uncomfortable silence became twitchy.

Howell caught all three balls, pulled the podium’s mi-

crophone lower with a grating squeak, and spoke with her lips

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Dangerous

touching it. “I learned how to juggle this year so I could be

more entertaining.”

She didn’t seem to have any other reason for being on

stage. Dragon nudged her away from the podium.

“We have the fireteam results,” he said.

My stomach made friends with my shoes.

“Congratulations to Fireteam 36. Jacques Ames, Maisie

Brown, Mi-sun Hwang, and Ruth Koelsch.”

I had never known before that you can smile so hard your

cheeks hurt. But I couldn’t stop. It was like my body was on hap-

py mode. My first ever trip out of the country would be jetting

to the equator and getting a front-row seat to a Beanstalk launch.

“In addition, the student with the highest individual rating

is invited to join Fireteam 36 as its fifth member. Congratula-

tions to Jonathan Wilder.”

Could this moment get any better? Dragon dismissed us,

but I couldn’t seem to move.

“We’re both going.” Wilder’s words were as heavy as bricks.

“I know it, but I can’t get myself to believe it!”

“But . . .” He didn’t look at me. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Wilder’s eyes seemed darker, his whole mood blacker. His

gaze slid off me as if I were too lowly to contemplate, and he got

up and walked away.

43

C h a p t e r 7

I hurried after Wilder, running into Jacques, Ruth, and

Mi-sun in the hall. Wilder stood apart from us, his gaze locked

on the ceiling. Ruth and Jacques were celebrating by shoving

each other.

“Jacques, you’re the man!” I said. Our last couple of victo-

ries had been thanks to his awesome strategies.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, fake-buffing his nails on his shirt.

“You’re not half bad yourself, tiger.”

“I’m very proud of all of us,” said Mi-sun, smiling with lips

stained blue.

“That slush can’t have enough nutrients for you,” I said.

She had it for every meal.

“At home I only eat saltines and pickles,” she said, “and I’m

fine.”

She started to talk about the meals she made for her broth-

ers, but my attention kept clicking back to someone and his si-

lence. I walked closer.

“Wilder,” I whispered, “what’s wrong?”

His expression was blank, yet it affected me like a force.

How had I made myself so fragile?

“This,” he said, gesturing between the two of us, “was a

mistake. I wasn’t planning on flying off into the sunset with you

or anything, so let’s not get tacky about it, okay?”

What?

The troupe of blond girls bobbed up to tell him “Con-

grats!” Wilder put his arm around the nearest and pulled her

Dangerous

closer, whispering something. His lips brushed her earlobe. She

blushed and giggled.

For the rest of the day I felt like I’d been hit by a train, car-

toon birds twittering around my head. I’d just gotten the best

news of my life, but I was wasting it moping after an asinine boy.

We rushed from the medic to supplies to suit fitting. At din-

nertime we ate the cafeteria food on leather sofas in Dr. Howell’s

office—malibu chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, peach

cobbler. Wilder was a dead space in my periphery. Did all boys

turn weirdo-zombie after kissing a girl? Had I done something

wrong? I should have stuck to my plan—work toward becoming

an astronaut, eschew emotions, become Maisie Robot.

When Bonnie Howell asked if we had any questions, I

jumped in.

“How did you get the Speetle to work on liquid hydro-

gen?” I asked, referring to the spacecraft Howell Aerospace had

launched years before the Beanstalk.

“Speetle?”

“The...uh, the Space Beetle. I’ve been calling it the Speetle

in my head. By the way, I’m surprised you don’t shorten Howell

Aeronautics Lab to HAL.”

She sniffed. “I will now. Anyhow, you wouldn’t understand

if I told you.”

“I might,” I said.

She obliged me with an explanation that had me lost by

the first sentence. Howell had hazel eyes, neither warm nor

cold, but they pierced me.

She’s not just a crazy old bat, I thought. She’s scary-smart.

“We should wrap this up, Dragon. I want the fireteam back

here at 0500.” And she bounced out of the room.

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Shannon Hale

“Good night, um, Dr. Howell,” I said.

“Everyone just calls her Howell,” said Dragon.

“Like she’s some cool teenage boy?” I said. I glanced at

Wilder and wished I hadn’t said “cool.”

Dragon escorted us to small private bedrooms, mine next

to Wilder’s. I locked my door and fell into bed. I could hear

Wilder moving around for a long time, so I didn’t move at all. I

wanted to be soundless, invisible.

I woke with a jolt, terrified I’d overslept, but the clock read

3:14 a.m. My heart was pounding. No chance I was getting back

to sleep.

The luxury of having my own shower made everything

feel hopeful, the heat scraping the lack of sleep from my skin,

yelling at my muscles to wake up. I was an hour early, but I

headed to Howell’s office. It felt closer to midnight than dawn.

My nerves danced on dagger shoes.

Someone was singing. I stopped, peeking in the door.

Dragon, his back to me, was doing paperwork and singing opera

in a faux soprano. I couldn’t believe that squeaky voice came

from such a massive, muscular body. And most surprisingly, he

wasn’t horrible.

He saw me and stopped. “Busted,” he said, laughing a

bouncy, high laugh. “Don’t tell anyone and spoil my formidable

image?”

I zipped my lips. “Dr. Barnes, can I borrow a phone? I

want to let my parents know about the trip.”

“It’s too early to call, but they signed a release form with

your initial registration, so everything’s set.”

When the others arrived, we took a van to Howell’s private

airstrip. Wilder claimed one of the comfy leather seats in the

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Dangerous

back of the jet, so I sat in front.

Jacques leaped aboard, shouting, “Cry havoc!”“Why do

you always say that?” asked Mi-sun.

“It’s an old military command, instructing soldiers to pil-

lage and generally make chaos,” he said. “Besides, it sounds

kicky.”

Ruth snorted.

Two days ago, I couldn’t have imagined regretting those

eight kisses. The first one that lasted seven heartbeats, and that

second one lasting five. The third when his knee touched mine,

the fourth, when his thumb twitched on my cheek. The fifth

when he breathed in through his nose, the sixth when a whisper

of a moan escaped his throat. The seventh and eighth that had

slowed, lingering.

My mom said that my mind is a scanning machine that

makes a copy of everything I see or read or hear. I wished I

could delete those kiss files. But the memory sat over me, mock-

ing, like that mouthy raven in Poe’s poem.
Nevermore
.

Stupid bird.

We watched a couple of movies before landing on a little

island off the coast of Ecuador. The scenery was scrubby and

bare, the sun relentlessly hot. But we only stayed long enough to

put on astronaut suits. I felt kind of dorky, like a teenager still go-

ing trick-or-treating. But Howell wanted us to have an astronaut

experience. We even had to wear astronaut diapers.

“This is a stupid place to build something expensive,” Ruth

said, looking over the sea. “I’m from Louisiana, yo. I’ve seen

what hurricanes can do.”

“Actually this is the safest place,” I said. “Due to the Corio-

lis force, hurricanes don’t develop on the equator.”

47

Shannon Hale

Ruth smacked me on the shoulder—for correcting her, I

guessed.

“Back off, Ruthless,” I said, rubbing my arm.

Jacques snorted at the nickname.

“How’s about I call you One-Arm?” she said.

I shrugged. “If it’s a good name, it’ll stick.”

“Let’s call her One-Arm,” Ruth whispered to Jacques.

“That’s stale,
Ruthless
,” he said.

So she hit Jacques.

“Ruth, keep your hands to yourself,” Mi-sun said in a per-

fect gentle-but-firm tone. “I won’t tell you again.”

Ruth snorted but stopped hitting.

From the island we took a helicopter out to sea. The sun

was high—a hot brand melting through the blue. The helicop-

ter was silent under the deafening stutter of the blades. Every

face pressed to a window. Slowly the Beanstalk’s base came into

view.

The ocean platform resembled an oil rig with an Eiffel-

like tower. Invisible from this distance was the six-centimeter-

wide ribbon made of carbon nanotubes—lightweight and stron-

ger than steel, the only known substance that could support the

tension and pressure of climbing into space. The Earth end ran

through the tower and attached to the ocean platform. The

space end was attached to an orbiting asteroid thousands of ki-

lometers away.

We landed, and I was the first out. At the top of the tower

waited the elevator car—a silver pod with wings of solar panels.

I could make out the glint of the ribbon. I looked up, following

the line into the sky, and got vertigo.

“Hello, gorgeous,” I said.

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Dangerous

Wilder’s face swung toward me. I smiled.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“I didn’t think—” He shook his head and walked on.

“Howell, can we get a peek inside the elevator?” I asked.

Howell considered. “Well, since you’re here . . .”

Jacques gave me the thumb’s-up.

A metal cage elevator took us to the top of the tower where

the pod rested, looking as dangerous as a boulder on a cliff.

Howell and Dragon went into the pod first, and the rest of us

followed. From the outside, the solar panels had made it look

deceptively large, like long legs on a small-bodied spider. Inside

it felt downright cozy. If the interior of a metal ball can be cozy.

Six seats with harnesses were bolted to the floor around

one half of the pod. Each faced a small window—just a slit, real-

ly, like the ones on old castles that archers would shoot through.

The cargo area took up the other half of the pod. In the center

was a hollow metal pillar. The ribbon ran through it, and the

pod used robotic lifters to climb the ribbon.

“Companies pay us to transport their satellites,” Dragon

was saying, “which in turn pays for the expense of building and

running the Beanstalk. This trip we’re only carrying food and

supplies for the Beanstalk’s two space stations: Midway Station

and the Asteroid Station.”

“So you don’t have a lot of cargo this trip,” Wilder said, rest-

ing his arm on one of the chairs. “You’re not overweight. You

could take, say, five passengers on a quick jaunt?”

For a few seconds, no one spoke. Then Howell said, “Well . . .”

My legs turned cold.

“Howell,” said Dragon in a warning tone.

“We’re
not
overweight,” she said.

49

Shannon Hale

“Howell,” said Dragon again.