Page 52 of Legacy Ascended

"I think about it more often than I'm willing to admit." He looks sideways at me. "You're going to tell your friends."

"I'm going to tell them tonight."

"That's what I assumed," Ander says, "and I find I don't care," and I laugh loudly enough that one of the runners looks over.

Eventually, he asks about America.

"What was your life like in America? Before any of this."

"School. Work. Arguing with my car about starting." I turn my face up to the thin sun. "It was extremely normal and nobody in this school believes me when I say it."

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Because they've decided there must have been something. A sign. Somebody's always asking whether I felt different."

"Did you?"

"No. I felt cold, mostly. It's a cold house." I glance at him. "That's disappointing for everybody. They want a portent and they get a girl who was bad at math."

"How bad?"

"Catastrophically."

"Which part?"

"All of it. Any of it. Put a letter in a sum and I leave the room."

"That's not bad at math, that's—" He stops himself, visibly. "No. You didn't ask me for an opinion about it."

"I did not."

"Then I'll keep it," he says, "at considerable personal cost," and I shove him with my good shoulder.

"What would you do if nobody had planned your day for you?"

He looks across the lawn before answering.

"Fix something," he says. "I like radios. The old valve sets, where you can see what everything is for. There's nothing political about a radio. It works or it doesn't, and it doesn't matter at all whose son you are."

"Do you have one?"

"Two. They're in a cupboard in a house I don't go to."

"Have them sent."

"It would raise questions."

"Ander, have the radios sent."

He looks at me sideways. "You're going to be like this, aren't you."

"Constantly," I say, and our knees are touching, and neither of us moves.

The light goes orange over the roofs and the runners get released and we don't move off the wall.

"Can I ask you something else?" I say.

"Yes."