“He likes it as much as I hate it?” I offer.

“Something like that,” Circ says.

“Don’t worry about it. I can handle him. And saying something to someone’ll just make it worse.”

Circ looks at me for a long moment, then changes the subject. “Honestly, though, you did look like you had gone far, far away. You were smiling at first, but then frowning.”

I scowl at him. “Must you read my expressions when I’m daydreaming?” I say.

“I must,” Circ says, laughing again. “But you’re dodging the question. What were you thinking about?”

There’s heat on my cheeks. “I was just…” My mind races to come up with something. But I don’t lie to Circ—never have, never will—and my mind knows it, so it just goes blank.

“Were just what?” he persists. I wish he’d drop it, but that’s not the way our friendship works.

I look around. We’re alone now—everyone’s left, even Teacher Mas. “I was thinking what it’d be like if you were my Call.” Dropping my head, I study my feet, noticing how small they look from up here.

“That’s not—”

“Hey, Siena!” a voice shouts from the entrance. I turn to see Lara poking her head in. Across the room and out of the glare of the afternoon sun, she really looks like a boy.

“What?” I say, glancing at Circ, who looks surprised that someone else is talking to me.

“Have you thought about what I said to you the other day?” Lara says.

I wince, not because I haven’t, but because I have.

“I’ll see you at the game,” I say to Circ. To Lara, I say, “Walk with me.”

~~~

I avoid her question all the way to the feetball match. She prods and pokes and rephrases it a dozen different ways, but I just keep changing the subject. At the game, I’m doing the same, studying the match like it’s a strange ten-legged insect with a red tail.

Feetball. Yet another activity I’ve never been good at. Trying to run around while simultaneously kicking and throwing and catching a ball? Well, let’s just say it’s about three too many things for my two left feet to handle at once. Not to mention the hordes of defenders trying to do everything in their power to grind you into the unforgiving desert floor. Yeah, violent sports and me don’t mix. Scorch, any sport and me don’t mix.

I played when I had to as part of the physical activity required during Learning, but never for fun. Thankfully, as a fifteen-year-old female Youngling—also known as a pre-Bearer—I’m exempt from any physical activity that might prevent me from having children in the near future. Which means I get to watch Circ play, which is like watching Greynote Giza paint one of his famous paintings: fluid and natural and graceful. The score is tied and it’s already in extra time, which means the next goal’ll be the decider.

I’m sitting next to Lara, ’cause, well, ’cause I don’t really have many friends at the moment. I don’t know if she’s my friend exactly, but at least she’s not an enemy, and she’s never called me any of the not-so-flattering nicknames that I’m used to. So she’s okay in my book. Although she is starting to freak me out with all of her cryptic messages.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she says, asking for the fourteenth time since the match started.

Circ takes a pass off his left foot and quickly darts past a defender who tries, and fails, to grab him. His movements are faster’n the lightning we get during the winter storms, but not nearly as shocking. So far he’s doing nothing I haven’t seen him do ’fore. He has three goals and a dozen steals, far more’n any other player.

“I’m trying to watch—”

“Oh, come on. I could see in your eyes that you were intrigued by what I said. That a life of breeding and childrearing and waiting on your Call hand and foot doesn’t exactly excite you.”

“Shhh, keep it down,” I hiss, glaring at her. She might not hate me like most of t’other Younglings, but if she keeps talking like this, using that dirty word—breeding, shh!—she is gonna get me in trouble. Again. I’m pretty sure my father’s threat to chuck me in Confinement is a load of tugwash, but I’m not itching to test him. Especially not so soon after the last time.

“Sorry,” she whispers, rolling her eyes.

“Look,” I say, as I watch Circ dodge another defender by flicking the ball in the air with his feet, running around them, and then catching it in one hand. “Even if I agreed with you, about the…”

(breeding, shh!)

“…about everything, there’s nothing we can do about it. The Call is all there is for us. Without it the older generations would die off faster’n the new ones could be created. Without it we wouldn’t exist.”

“I thought you were different,” Lara says, a hint of disappointment in her tone. “You sound just like a Teacher. Or worse, a Greynote.”

I grit my teeth. Circ throws the ball over the head of an opponent to one of his teammates, who grabs it and throws it back to him. He catches it in midstride, now streaking down the field faster’n a Cotee, rolls it deftly out in front of his feet and then rips a booming shot at the corner of the rope net. I hold my breath for a second, watching the potential winning shot careen just past the outstretched hands of the opposing net guard. I start to stand and raise my hands in celebration, but the ball glances hard off the edge of the wooden netpost and over the boundary line. “No goal!” the judge yells, waving his arms around like he’s swatting at sand flies.

Blaze. That was so close, but now t’other team has the ball.

“All I’m asking is that you think about it,” Lara says.

I already have. But she doesn’t know that.

While one of the players chases Circ’s errant shot, I study Lara. Her eyes are light brown and flecked with green bits. Really pretty, actually. I’ve never really looked at her. I mean, I’ve gawked at her a few times, wondering what she was thinking with her short hair and absence of femininity. Oh and when she started wearing guy’s britches to school I almost keeled over with shock. But now, for the first time, I’m really seeing her. Not the masculine girl who doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, but Lara, the person, the individual. To my surprise, her face is really pretty. It’s like it was hidden somewhere, like she was wearing a mask, and at just this moment she peeled it away. But that’s not it at all. She hasn’t changed one smidge. It’s me that’s changed. I’m giving her a chance, whereas ’fore I wrote her off as some weirdo. I did to her what everyone else does to me.

I look away, unable to bear my own ignorance. I’m as bad as t’others. But I can make up for it now. I can take her seriously, really think about what she’s saying to me, which is all she’s asking for.

Her words flash back with a vividness that startles me.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Like what?

Crying because you don’t think you’re pretty, shoveling other people’s blaze, being forced to breed when you turn sixteen. The Call. All of it can be avoided.

It’s dangerous talk. I’ve heard ’bout girls who didn’t agree with the Call, and they all disappeared. Maybe taken by the Wild Ones, maybe taken by the Greynotes to be punished forever for breaking the Law.

The ball is back in play, and the opposing team moves swiftly up the field, zipping around like angry bees. Two of them get a good rhythm going: pass, pass back, return. No one can seem to stop them until Circ comes a-flying in and bashes into one just as he releases the ball. Circ lands on top of him in a heap, but now the ball is past him. There’s another bone-jarring tackle, this time by one of Circ’s teammates, but again, it’s too late as the ball’s already been launched elsewhere on the field.

The Call. All of it can be avoided.

Breeding.

But why? Why avoid the Call? What’s there to gain from it? If enough new Bearers decide to skip out on the Call, then our people’ll just die out faster. The very idea is madness! And it’s not even possible anyway. The only way to get out of it is to die, which I’m sort of trying to avoid, or get kidnapped by the Wild Ones, which doesn’t sound particularly appealing either. And it’s not like I can put in a request: