Jayme bent closer and read:

“I can’t believe nobody’s figured it out yet. I always have to ask people if their logs have skipped before they start to talk about it.”

She straightened up, furrowing her brow. It’s true, nobody looked much in their old logs, even the most recent ones. And Jayme always seemed to hear about it from Starsa first.

“She wouldn’t dare!” Jayme breathed in disbelief.

“I checked,” Reoh agreed, “and of the three‑hundred‑and‑forty‑seven cadets who have reported this skip virus, all of them were either in one of Starsa’s classes or on a project she worked on.”

“She’s been gathering people for years!” Jayme exclaimed. “That little slime devil!”

Reoh was shaking his head. “I don’t understand why she would expose her own personal logs to the virus.”

Jayme was reading the sentence again, laughing at how much it soundedlike Starsa. “The risk of being caught is part of the fun. Besides, she wants to read someone else’s paragraph as much as we all do. Don’t you run to your logs to check when you hear it’s happened?”

“She has to stop,” Reoh said, ignoring the question.

“Fine, you talk to her.”

“Starsa doesn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t even stop when I told her not to ride her grav board with her cast on.”

“Everyone tried to tell her that,” Jayme reminded him. “She never listens.”

“I’ll have to inform Admiral Brand,” he said slowly. “It wouldn’t be good for Starsa to get away with something like this. Do you think she needs counseling?”

“Hey, we allneed counseling for one thing or another.”

“I’m worried about her,” he insisted.

Jayme tried not to laugh. “Then talk to her. Do what you have to do. But if it happens again, I’lltell everyone it was Starsa who did it.”

Reoh walked her to the door. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Ohh . . . you sounded very professorial there.” Reoh blushed, but it reminded Jayme of something else. “I almost forgot, have you heard anything about this Red Squad?”

“I heard when Johnny Madden made the Squad,” he admitted. “I checked, but it’s not an official Academy designation.”

“Maybe not, but they’re sent on special trips and field training as a group. You have to be recommended by a high‑ranking officer in Starfleet, so it might be something new they formed for us cadets.”

“Have you been asked?”

“No!” Jayme shrugged, figuring she should ask some of her relatives. “I think it’s elitist.”

“I’ll see if I can find out more,” Nev Reoh promised.

Jayme had to smile. “Thanks. With you on the job, I feel I have nothing to fear.”

Reoh tried to talk to Starsa on the grand square, but she only wanted to know how he had discovered the log skips were caused by her. She also wanted to know what Jayme had said, and she kept laughing.

Reoh became impatient, and finally he snapped at her, “Do you want to die, like Titus?”

Starsa blinked at him, then her eyes filled with tears. She sat down on the bench, her head in her hands.

“I’m sorry, Starsa,” Reoh told her helplessly.

“He’s dead!” she said, looking up with a tear‑stained face. “It’s worse now, you know? At first it seemed like I’d see him any day. He’d appear behind me and pull my ponytail or call me a pest. But now I know he’s never coming back.”

Reoh sat down next to her. “Is Titus the first person you’ve ever known who died?”

Starsa nodded, wiping her eyes.

“It’s not something you ever get used to,” he told her. “That’s why I worry about you so much. You do these dangerous things for no reason. It could have been your head you broke instead of your leg when you fell off your grav board. And you could get into real trouble if you keep doing things like sending a virus through the computer system.”

Starsa didn’t look up, her brow furrowed. “It’s just a joke.”

“I don’t understand you, Starsa. You’ve never let your pursuit of fun override your good sense. How many times in the past few months have you made the logs skip? Three times? It’s like you wanted to get caught.”

Starsa stood up with a huge sigh. “If you’re just going to counsel me, I might as well go confess to Admiral Brand and get my official counseling over with.”

Reoh tried to stop her. “Don’t go, Starsa. Talk to me about this–”

“Gotta run.” She grinned, that old sly look in her eyes. “You never know what trouble I could find between here and Brand’s office.”

He couldn’t keep her from jumping on her grav board and taking off. She skimmed around two cadets, then did a somersault over the fountain, making his heart leap into his throat. Then, with a wave, she was gone.

He sat back down, his heart pounding. Starsa had never been cruel before. Thoughtless, yes, but no one could ever call her unkind.

“That girl has a problem,” someone said from behind the bench.

Reoh turned to see Boothby, the oldest gardener at the Academy. “Hi, Boothby. Haven’t seen you lately.”

“Been tending a hillside of blueberries behind the recycling center,” he said, very satisfied with himself. “I see you’re taking up cadet counseling on the side.”

Reoh shifted, remembering how he used to come to Boothby when he needed advice. “It’s part of my job. Do you want to know something? I’ve been chosen to be the cadet advisor for an incoming student–a Ferengi. He’s the first Ferengi to apply to Starfleet, but he used to live on DS9, so they thought a Bajoran would be a familiar face for him.”

“What is this place coming to?” Boothby said in mock‑wonder. “But I know nothing will top our first Klingon cadet.”

“What about a Borg cadet?” Reoh offered. “Or a shape‑shifter?”

“We can only hope it comes to that,” Boothby agreed seriously. He cleared his throat. “About that girl; she’s in big trouble.”

“Oh, Brand will give her a reprimand and some community service. I’m afraid she’ll enjoy the attention more than anything.”

Boothby shook his head. “No, she’s in trouble. She needs help.”

“Help? What kind of help?”

“Medical help, if you ask me,” Boothby said.

“You think she’s sick?” Reoh knew better than to question Boothby. “I thought she’d been acting oddly, but nobody would believe me.”

Boothby shouldered his spade. “See what you can do about getting her to a doctor.”

“Of course!” He started toward the medical building. “I’ll tell them to call her in right now!”

Starsa didn’t like doctors. She had never been sick in her life until she left her homeworld and went to the Academy. Then it had taken nine long months for her to acclimate, and she had hardly been able to run up a flight of stairs without killing herself. She hated her medical monitor so much that, when they told her she no longer needed it, instead of turning the device back in she had thrown it off the top of Quad Tower Two.

So, at first, she resisted being called in by the doctors to be prodded and analyzed again. But when they started giving her hormone and biocellular treatments, she began to realize how ill she really was.

“Hi,” Reoh said, edging his wrinkled nose past the door. “Can I come in?”

“I was wondering when you’d visit,” Starsa told him. “I have to thank you for getting me into medical.”

Reoh grinned shyly. She was struck by how it lit up his face. “You were pretty angry at first.”

“I didn’t realize how bad I was. I was wound so tight I was hardly sleeping. These hormones,” she said, shaking her head. “You had to go through this when you were twelve years old? That’s so young.”

Reoh swallowed as if she had asked an awkward question, but she was used to that. “Bajoran puberty lasts several years and isn’t as . . . dramatic as yours.”

“I’ll be glad to get it over with.” She looked down at her chest. “I’m developing, aren’t I?”

Reoh turned beet‑red. “Uh, I think I’ve got to go.”

Starsa laughed as he ran out of the room, but later she felt awful for making him uncomfortable. She started to cry about it and couldn’t stop. Eventually a nurse noticed and gave her another hormone shot. Starsa fell asleep feeling lost and alone.