Dare Mighty Things Read online

  Mitsuko smiled, showing perfect white teeth, and bopped Hanna under the chin as if she were a toddler. Hanna flinched away. “It’s sweet of you to be concerned, but I’m not worried about my chances.”

  This was getting a little much. I tried to deflect Mitsuko’s attention. “So you live in San Antonio?”

  Mitsuko turned as if noticing me for the first time, and smiled as though nothing unpleasant had just happened. “Just for now. It’s where my husband’s from. I just graduated from the University of Tokyo and was looking for a job. I was actually trying to get a job here, at Johnson.” She laughed. “Worked out a little differently than expected.”

  I whistled, legitimately impressed. “So who recruited you?”

  “One of my old professors had some contacts here, put in a good word for me.”

  At that moment the door opened and in walked a girl with long chestnut hair, blond highlights, and golden-brown skin—much of which I could see, as her shorts were very short.

  Giselle.

  She looked as young as me, but that could have been because she was wearing huge bug-eye sunglasses and carrying a pink leopard-print bag. She had the slight, muscular physique of a gymnast, or maybe a dancer. She surveyed the occupants of her room with a sour look on her face and said nothing.

  I’d followed the suggested packing list I’d been given: four to five casual outfits, one formal outfit, exercise clothes, one pair of everyday shoes, and my running shoes. It didn’t take long to unpack. While I transferred everything from my suitcase to the footlocker, I mentally crossed my roommates off the list. First Giselle. Then Mitsuko. Hanna might stick around awhile.

  The door didn’t even have a chance to close. Right on Giselle’s heels came a tall, lithe black woman in a blue JSC polo, with close-cropped hair. I immediately felt like standing up a little straighter. Maybe even saluting.

  “All right, ladies,” said the woman. “I’m Dr. Copeland, your RA and medical instructor. Despite the title, this isn’t your college dorm, and I don’t want to hear about it if your roommates snip their toenails too loud or leave their dirty underwear on the floor. It probably won’t be long until you can have the room to yourself, so just suck it up until then.”

  I’d certainly never heard a doctor talk like that. I already kind of liked her.

  She opened up a bag and started handing out tablets, starting with mine. The gray device was heavy and clunky, a little scratched up, possibly older than I was. Her words were crisp, efficient, matter-of-fact, like she was checking items off a mental to-do list. “These are preloaded with all of the textbooks you’ll need for the classroom portion of training. There’s no wireless here, so don’t bother trying. Leave your dirty laundry in the laundry bag with your name on it outside your door, and it’ll be washed and returned the next day. The RA office is down the hall. There’s four of us who double as your instructors, and we take turns with office hours. You’re on your own after nine thirty, so try not to kill any of the other candidates in their sleep.”

  Hanna raised an eyebrow, like she hadn’t thought of that yet.

  Copeland noticed the look and closed her eyes for a moment, like we were giving her a headache. “You’ll each get time to send emails to your loved ones. Outside communication will be monitored. No live calls. Possession of a cell phone or any recording equipment is grounds for immediate expulsion from the program. Understood?”

  We nodded.

  “Stay inside the facility at all times. That means the red door is off-limits unless you want to go home. The door leading off the cafeteria will be unlocked, though, if you’d like to run on the track. Otherwise, I don’t care if you bring food or boys or bazookas into your room, as long as you aren’t selling government secrets. See you in class.” She gave us a brisk nod, met each of our eyes, and left, letting the door fall shut behind her.

  “She’s a peach,” Mitsuko said cheerfully into the silence, plopping onto her bed and crossing her legs.

  Giselle dropped her bag in the middle of the floor and collapsed backward on her bed—she’d chosen the one next to mine. Luckily a nightstand separated our beds, so she wasn’t too close.

  I flashed back to space camp, age twelve, sharing a room for the first time with dozens of other kids, both boys and girls. My bunkmates had formed a clique almost instantly and decided it would be funny to pretend I didn’t exist for the entire week.

  I told myself that this time, I wouldn’t care. I wasn’t here to make friends.

  Sorry, Mom.

  I’d only brought a carry-on full of clothes and a few essential extras, so unpacking didn’t take long. We’d been told not to bring anything electronic, so it had been pretty hard to figure out what I could bring. My cell was basically everything to me besides food and shelter, and now it was locked up in some government box for the foreseeable future.

  My head buzzed with electronic emptiness.

  Back home, I’d found an old paperback in my mom’s closet. It smelled weird and had yellow, crinkly pages, but at the last minute I’d stuck it in my bag. It was better than reading nothing at all. I put the book on the nightstand for later.

  “Wow, look at this bathroom,” Mitsuko said. She’d pushed open a door opposite my bed.

  Hanna and Giselle came over to see.

  “It’s smaller than my closet,” Hanna said, which sounded kind of bitchy, but when I got up to join them I had to admit that yeah, my closet at home was bigger than that, too.

  One shower. One sink. One toilet. For four girls, for two months—or however long we lasted.

  THREE

  I GAVE UP trying to sleep at five thirty and slipped out of bed and into the bathroom. When I came out, freshly showered and dressed for running, the room lights were on and everyone except Mitsuko was awake.

  Giselle pushed past me, towel in hand, into the bathroom. She shut the door and the shower started up. Hanna was already dressed in a tracksuit, hair in a ponytail.

  “Aren’t you going to shower?” I asked, not really bothering to keep my voice quiet. Mitsuko didn’t stir from sleep.

  Hanna, on the other side of the room, applied sunscreen in front of her mirror and looked at me. “They told us we’d be running first thing. No point in showering now, when all the hot water will be gone anyway. I don’t care what anyone here thinks of how I look.”

  I shrugged a shoulder and went over to the wall mirror to twist my wet hair into a thick, tight knot, then spread sunscreen across my face.

  A few minutes later, Giselle emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, her hair hanging in dripping strings around her bare shoulders. Hanna slipped in after her and was back out within five minutes. Efficient.

  Just as the three of us were about to walk out the door, Mitsuko rolled out of bed, fully dressed. After a grand total of thirty seconds in the bathroom, she stuffed her feet into tennis shoes and turned off the lights behind us.

  “Beautiful morning, ladies!” she said as she caught up to us in the hall, gathering her long black hair into a high ponytail.

  “Nice breath,” Giselle said, the first words I’d heard from her. “Ever heard of a toothbrush?”

  Mitsuko just grinned.

  There had been a daily schedule loaded onto our tablets. Breakfast was at seven every day. First class today was at eleven. Lunch at one. Classes the rest of the day with each of our four instructors.

  The suspicious amount of time between breakfast and class had me running mental scenarios. Something was going to fill that time. And I suspected it was going to be something big—something to weed out the unworthy ones.

  We were on the early side, but soon kids poured out of doors on both sides of the hall, joining the throng on the way to breakfast. We passed the set of double doors we’d entered through on our first day, the ones painted red like a giant stop sign. It was almost eerie to look at it, as if I were breaking a rule by noticing its existence.

  The exit.

  We entered the cafeteria with m
ost of the other candidates. A line formed for the buffet: piles of every kind of breakfast food imaginable, and some things I couldn’t even identify.

  I took a plate of eggs, a waffle, and an apple, and picked up a bottle of water. Somehow, by default I guess, I ended up sitting with Giselle, Hanna, and Mitsuko.

  “Good, the gang’s all here,” Mitsuko said, leaning in over her plate of eggs and cantaloupe. “We should discuss our strategy.”

  “It’s not a team effort,” Hanna said.

  “Not yet, it isn’t. But if we work together, we might be able to outlast some of these yokels.”

  Before anyone could reply, a body slid into the empty seat between me and Giselle. “Good morning, beautiful ladies,” a male voice said.

  I snuck a look at him from the corner of my eye and groaned inwardly. That preppy trust-find type who had been bothering Hanna yesterday.

  “So what do you think they’ll have us do today?” he asked, settling in. He must have already eaten, because he didn’t have a plate.

  “I’m sorry, who are you?” Mitsuko asked, her voice suddenly unfriendly.

  I decided I wanted her to stick around a little longer.

  The guy’s gaze passed right over Mitsuko and lingered on Hanna like she might introduce him, but she didn’t look up from her toast.

  Changing tactics, he turned on the charm like nothing had happened. “Landon Blake,” he said. “I would have thought you’d heard of me.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “The only guy here I know is Luka Kereselidze. His dad is an ambassador for the UN. You know him? He’s sitting right over there.” I nodded over to where Luka sat, alone. He looked kind of forlorn, but like he was used to it. I felt a little bad for him, actually. The fact that I was sitting at this table with four other people was a temporary fluke. Normally I was the lone wolf in the lunchroom.

  I took a small amount of guilty pleasure seeing Landon’s smug expression fall just a little. Once he realized he wasn’t recognized or welcome, he slid out of his chair with a sour look and wandered to find a new group to bother.

  “Did you guys get some weird brain scan thing?” Giselle asked. “In all those medical tests?”

  “An EEG? Yeah, I think I remember getting one of those, somewhere between the eye tests, the blood draw, and the pee test,” Mitsuko said.

  “That was weird,” I agreed quietly.

  “Yeah, wasn’t expecting all those electrodes.” Giselle popped a chunk of biscuit into her mouth. “Just wondering.”

  “Do you think it’ll be a race?” Mitsuko asked.

  “Yes,” Giselle said firmly. “I bet they’ll cut everyone but the top ten. Or maybe even the top five. That’ll get the pool down quick.”

  “They won’t cut it short so fast,” Mitsuko said, sounding far more reasonable. “There are people with a lot of different talents here. It depends on what they’re looking for. This isn’t the Olympics.”

  I flinched as a shrill whistle broke into the quiet din of small talk. Colonel Pierce marched into the room, flanked by two women holding stopwatches.

  “All right, campers! Welcome to your first day of training.” Colonel Pierce’s voice bounced off the walls. “Breakfast’s over. Everyone outside, now!”

  There was an orderly stampede to the doors. Everyone left their plates on the tables.

  We followed the colonel to a quarter-mile track. A barbed-wire fence, maybe fifteen feet tall, lined the perimeter. Empty yellow prairie grass and scattered cacti stretched for a long, long way.

  It was August, the sun was barely in the sky, and already it was in the eighties. Swarms of gnats flitted against my ears and eyes and ankles. Gross but familiar. I’d run plenty of miles in Alabama summers, which I hoped gave me an edge. The humidity was so thick we might as well have been swimming. A few wisps of hair stuck to my forehead, my neck. And we hadn’t even started running yet.

  Colonel Pierce blew his whistle again, and the whisper of conversation hushed until the only sound was the buzzing insects. I had to constantly wave my hand in front of my eyes to keep them at bay. God, they started early.

  “My assistant’s handing out some numbers. It’s random, so don’t go fighting about which one you get.”

  Pierce and his assistant moved through the crowd, handing out numbers. Mine was eighteen.

  “If you hear your number called, you come over and sit on the grass. Everyone else, keep going till we say stop. We’ll be making cuts as we see fit. There is no grievance policy. If we say you’re out, you’re out.”

  Some guy up front raised his hand. “Sir, but—we just ate.”

  I had to stifle a laugh. Had he even been here yesterday? Had he thought a man who expected us to call him jackass would give us time to digest our breakfast before sending us out into the heat to run? This was a competition.

  The colonel’s face contorted into something between a grin and a grimace. “I didn’t fail to notice that, Number Fifty-Three. Hopefully you all had the foresight to eat light this morning. Believe me, puking in your space suit is neither fun nor pretty. You’re lucky in that all that will happen to you here on Earth is a free ride home.”

  I tried to take deep, calming breaths. I felt the weight in my stomach of the few bites of breakfast I’d been able to eat—light, but noticeable. The water I’d drunk was the worst part. I could feel it sloshing around.

  “You get five minutes to warm up. Starting—” Colonel Pierce clicked his own stopwatch. “Now!”

  The group scattered, each person trying to make enough space for themselves. I found a bubble of open grass for myself and did a few lunges, heart already pounding from sheer adrenaline. This air was like breathing soup. I filled my lungs from my diaphragm, trying to prepare them for what they’d have to do. The good thing about the heat was my leg muscles were already pretty warm.

  “And that’s five. Everyone line up on the track. Spread yourselves out some.”

  I jogged to the track, relieved when the liquid in my stomach stayed put. I situated myself near the back of the pack. The bodies in front of me would give me an edge in wind resistance, and the inside edge was a shorter circumference than the outside.

  The others all wanted to be first, to have their numbers easily visible. But that wasn’t important at the beginning of the race; it was only important at the end.

  I looked around me and saw Hanna had the same idea—she was right behind me. Mitsuko was somewhere in front and to my right. Giselle was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hey, Cass!”

  The boy who’d sat next to me in the auditorium came up behind me. “Emilio Esteban,” I said. “The boy with two names.”

  He grinned. “You remembered!”

  I jumped around a little, shifted my weight on the balls of my feet. “Good luck.” It seemed like a nice thing to say to end the conversation. Sort of like “have a nice day.”

  “Don’t need luck. But same to you!”

  Another shrill whistle to quiet us down. Colonel Pierce’s voice came flying over our heads.

  “This is not a race,” he called out. “On the next whistle you will start to run. You will keep running until you hear a second whistle. Feel free to stop before that time. We don’t want any heatstroke cases today. But we also don’t want any quitters on our team, so keep that in mind. Ready!”

  I sucked in wind, my nerves jumpy.

  The whistle blew. It took a few seconds for the front half of the pack to get going enough for me to start up, but by then I was more than ready. For the first lap we were all jogging the same leisurely pace, staying together in one entity, like a school of fish swimming in slow circles. It was hardly an effort, barely more than speed-walking. After the first two miles, the wheat began to separate from the chaff.

  I stayed about in the middle, letting the slower ones fall behind me, not trying to advance. Endurance was the name of this game.

  Five miles in and I was feeling good. Hanna was now nearly beside me, and though she hung back
I didn’t think it was due to weakness. We were in the front third now, our feet pounding the cushioned pavement in a rhythm that made it easy to keep going.

  Humans really are herd animals. I almost always ran alone, but it was so much easier to keep going when you were surrounded by other people.

  Sweat ran into my eyes and down my back, and the air began to feel like water in my lungs, heavy and slow. But the rhythmic pounding, pounding of many feet, was like the beating of a giant heart that never stopped. It propelled me forward.

  I heard coughing somewhere behind me but didn’t look back. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and slowly let go of my thoughts, letting consciousness fade from my body, which was just a tiny segment of this beating heart muscle to which I belonged.

  Rounding the corner to the thirty-second lap, people began to fall out. It was bound to happen. I’d seen vomit on the track the last few rounds.

  I was just starting to feel fatigue. I tried not to look at the people bent over on the grass, heaving, gasping like stranded fish. The failures who couldn’t hack it. It would be too easy to stumble and give up. Too easy to become one of them.

  I lost track of the laps after that. Round and round we went. My cheeks were on fire, my quadriceps burning, my feet hot in shoes of cement. The group thinned out and I lost the rhythm of the beating heart. Sweat ran down my face like water, unable to evaporate in the humidity, unable to cool my body even a degree. My tongue grated against my teeth, dry and thick as wool. Everyone I passed was floundering.

  Each time I rounded the corner, I glanced furtively at the colonel and the two women staring at their stopwatches, hoping that this would be the last, that someone would look up and realize they’d forgotten to tell us to stop.

  My lungs ached.

  How long were we supposed to keep going? I couldn’t keep this up forever. How long had it already been? My inner clock had become unreliable. The sun was higher than when we’d started, its face scorching the dry earth. Despite the sunscreen, my skin felt like a raw egg on a hot skillet, charring beneath the heat.