“You won’t be arrested,” promised Anabel.
“But will there be more trouble?”
“Dude, you smuggle black market media!”
“Uh-huh, say that a little louder,” hissed Pru. “Anabel. Is this going to be trouble?”
“Please, Pru-Wu.” Anabel’s grin widened. “It’s for a politics class. What do you think?”
“Yeah, no.” Pru shook her head. “Nope. Nuh-uh. Not going.”
Anabel shrugged, crossing her long legs with an air of careful nonchalance. “Fine. Suit yourself.”
“I mean it,” insisted Pru.
Anabel smiled. “Okay. It’s cool.”
* * *
THE NEW COLUMBIA PREPARATORY Academy’s student auditorium was entirely too crowded for Pru’s taste at seven P.M. on a school night.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she muttered, for probably the fifth time.
“So you’ve said ten times in one hour,” said Anabel absently. “Quit bitching. This is going to be fun.”
Pru eyed her friend suspiciously. Ideal prep school stock had a ton of money, a ton of brains, or, in truly unfair cases like Anabel’s, both. This particular cocktail of good fortune made Anabel fun— rendering her witty and generous and resourceful—but sometimes, Pru wanted to throttle her for the way she swanned through life, arch and giddy, with little care for whatever troubles she might drag lesser mortals into.
Anabel, as if sensing the anxious spike of resentment in Pru’s gut, smiled a little softer, and tossed a loose arm around Pru’s shoulders. “Hey, don’t worry so much, eh? Watch the stage. I promise you’ll like the performance.”
“Performance?” Pru asked, but was drowned out by the sudden crescendo of applause from the audience, as the lights sank low.
A single spotlight bloomed to life at the stage’s center, slowly illuminating its subject with an artist’s tender, incremental precision. Here were a pair of shoulders pulled taut beneath soft cotton, here a jawline carved in sharp relief against the theater’s shadows. The eyes, though, were what arrested Pru—dark as she remembered, but all the more striking for how soft they seemed now, looking out at their audience with improbably thoughtful care.
“I’m Alex,” said Alexandre Santiago Lamarque. His mouth curved as he spoke over the answering screams of recognition from the audience. “Classmate and fortunate co-conspirator to the inimitable Anabel Park”—more shouts and whistles, from students who recognized another member of Barricader prep school royalty—“who, if she’s not too busy running for Head Representative of the Barricade Coalition by the time she’s thirty-five, should really consider becoming a modern theater director, or at least a concertmaster.”
“Oh no,” said Pru faintly.
“Oh yes,” said Anabel, gleeful.
“Those of you enrolled in Modern Politics II know all about our infamously high-maintenance midterm project—worth a third of the grade, naturally,” continued Alex. Laughter from the audience, punctuated by a few exaggeratedly sympathetic groans, as he adopted the prim inflections of a stereotypical New Columbia Prep lecturer. “‘Students must produce a work such as an essay, video, or performance project that comments upon the effects of Incorporated rule on the North American continent beyond the democratic sanctuary of the Barricade cities.’” The corner of his mouth tilted upward, as he bent at the waist with a gracefully self-deprecating little flourish. “Well. Ask and ye shall receive, New Columbia Prep.” Looking up from the bow, his gaze shifted, almost imperceptibly, toward something at the back of the auditorium. The other corner of his mouth matched the first, tugging a smile into what should have been full bloom, except for its failure to reach his eyes. “And for those watching from beyond our walls, this goes out to you. Enjoy the show.”
Pru twisted her head over her shoulder, looking for the source of the Lamarque boy’s focus, but all she saw was the tangle of sweaty, school-uniformed bodies and the arch of the ceiling. Before she could make sense of that last sentence, a guitar riff blasted from the speakers. Alex lifted a mic from its stand, with the casual rock-star finesse of someone who probably hijacked prep school auditoriums on the regular, and began to sing.
“Holy shit,” said Pru.
“I told you so,” said Anabel, without so much as batting one of her perfectly painted eyelashes.
For a guy Anabel described as anxious, of all things, Alex sure did a bang-up job of hiding it. Pru recognized the first song—they all did—an old Partition War ditty from the Northern Front, crooned in flawless French into the mic, remixed with a heart-thrumming, rock-and-roll drumbeat. It should have come off cheesy and gimmicky, but his voice actually matched the vision he made, singing rich and low, tender with the bone-deep anger that always underlaid that song. Pru had to give props where props were due.
“Good lord,” Pru shouted at Anabel over the amplified speakers, the delighted roar of the audience, “I swear to god you Northerners are so obnoxiously patriotic sometimes, you’re practically Midlanders!”
“Perish the thought!” Anabel jabbed back merrily. “Just because the Midlands used to be the seat of the United States doesn’t make you the center of the world.”
“Hah! Like you Northerners could have mustered up the numbers to face down Incorporated armies without Midlander aid.”
“As if you Midlands pansies could have held your own without a good Northern Front winter to terrorize those Incorporated hothouse flowers.”
“You and your absurd love of the cold.”
“What can I say? Most Northerners were Canadian before the Partition Wars. Even the Executive General’s corporate armies blanch at the notion of camping out in our tundras.”
When Alex moved into the second song, Pru sensed the way its first chords struck its audience, long before she heard the ripple of excitement through the crowd. He’d switched from his famous Northern family’s native French to the language of the Southwest, the distant rebel territories still bucking under UCC rule. Spanish had been the first language forbidden by Incorporated censorship laws, but it rolled fluent from Alex’s lips now, still a language of revolution, even here in the heart of the Barricade Coalition.
This, though, was no rebellious wartime ditty. Pru watched the way Alex leaned forward, mic cradled between his hands like a lover, and felt something intangible raise gooseflesh on her skin. She knew this song. It was an old radio staple that predated even the Partition Wars, a love song from another time and place, a minor-key ode to the space between two people. Even after Incorporated armies had broken most of the Mexican states down into the Southwest territories, the old Spanish ballad had trickled into underground nightclubs and secret radio streams, love and defiance twined like streetlights down a dark and dusky road.