The Summer Prince Page 6

  Even if she somehow knows everything, I don’t care. The mural that the mushi bots have by now succeeded in scrubbing out of existence was one of the triumphs of my admittedly short career. Enki saluted me on camera. Gil could barely speak when we first saw each other.

  My lights are warm and I watch their faint glow reflected along the opaque glass walls of Principal Ieyascu’s waiting room.

  “Will you please turn those down, June?”

  I whirl around and look up, surprised to see Principal Ieyascu with her arms crossed and her expression — as usual — forbidding. She’s a grande’s grande, and has been principal at this school long enough to know Auntie Yaha from her waka days. She’s also giant, nearly seven feet tall, and hates sitting down.

  “Turn … what?” I say, suddenly too nervous to do more than gape.

  She rolls her eyes and takes a few clicking steps toward me. “Those body modifications under your skin, June. The ones that are certainly against school policy and quite possibly violate the Queen’s edicts against technological self-modification, should I choose to press the issue.”

  I swallow and take a deep breath, which brings the lights down to a subtle glow. I should be able to control the brightness at will, but I haven’t practiced enough to be good at it.

  “It will have to do,” Principal Ieyascu says. “Now, shall we go inside my office?”

  She presses a hand to the dark glass wall, which pulls apart smoothly at her touch. Her actual office is only slightly less chilly. There’s a single glass table, clear of everything except a twenty-first-century fountain pen I know must be worth at least a million reals. The chair behind the desk I think might be made of actual dead-cow-skin leather. For her guests, there are two seats of molded glass. They look uncomfortable, and there’s only one free.

  The other girl has a thick puff of dark honey hair she swears is natural but we all know must be modded. She’s fidgeting in the glass chair, but smiles at me when I sit next to her.

  I force myself to smile back, since it wouldn’t do for Principal Ieyascu to see me be petty. At least I know that if Bebel the Perfect is here, then my graffiti exploits are probably still a secret.

  “So why are we here?” I ask, craning my head to look up at Ieyascu, who has of course chosen to pace before her glass wall instead of sitting down like a normal non-giant.

  “If you don’t rediscover your manners, June, you might find yourself back in class.” She pauses and looks between the two of us. “And I think you would regret that very much.”

  Regret not being in the principal’s office? That’s strange, even for Ieyascu, so I bob my head and mutter a dutiful apology. Bebel dips her honey bush too, though we both know she didn’t do anything to warrant an apology. I grit my teeth. That’s Bebel all over — always careful to be considerate when someone important is watching.

  “Well, good. As I’m sure you are wondering — even though you were far more discreet about it, Bebel — there is a reason why I’ve called you both here. I trust you have heard of the Queen’s Award?”

  This is like asking us if we’d heard of the summer king, and did we know one has just been elected? Bebel nods politely. Every moon and sun year (and sometimes other years, if she feels like it), the Queen sponsors one high school student, providing full tuition to any university program plus a showcase of her talent and stipend money as she starts her career. The list of past recipients could double as a guide to the most important people in Palmares Três. Queen Oreste herself won about a billion years ago when she was a waka. When I was younger, Mother would make a point of taking me to the exhibitions of the finalists, as though she really thought that one day I could join their ranks.

  Bebel and I gape at Ieyascu.

  “You have? Good. Then perhaps you will understand the honor bestowed upon you — the result of certain connections or not — when I inform you that you, June, and you, Bebel, have each been named one of the ten finalists.”

  I don’t even register her jibe. I’m too busy trying to keep the room in the proper orientation. Bebel shrieks a little and then turns to me with a huge grin on her face.

  “June!” she says.

  “Bebel?”

  “Good luck!”

  “Uh … thanks. You too.”

  Ieyascu raps her desk and we turn back to face her, abruptly. “The final decision will be made in winter, at the end of the summer king’s term. Until that point, you will do whatever you can to prove to the Queen that you have the talent to make yourself worthy of the honor. You submit nothing formally to her. Rest assured that having picked you out of the hundred thousand eligible wakas, she has her eye on your endeavors, and you should strive to make them as impressive as possible.”

  Bebel is glowing bright as her fake honey hair. She’s a singer and a musician, which is why we’re on the same art track. I can see her already confecting visions of being featured on all the feeds, of the rapturous audiences who will fall over themselves to compliment her talent.

  She’s Bebel the Perfect, and I know that whoever the other eight wakas are, she has a good chance of winning.

  But I’m her competition, and that means she won’t. I remember that other contest, that utter failure, and feel a gladness close to fury that I’ve been given this second chance. To prove myself to him, to do something with my art so great that no one can deny it.

  Bebel leaves before me, dashing out the door with most un-Bebel-like haste, probably to gloat with her friends. Ieyascu’s voice reels me back before I can escape as well.

  “June,” she says. Her voice is softer, almost weary. She’s standing beside one of her glass walls, which she’s turned into a window. For a moment, I swear she looks old, like in the video-holos of the twentieth century, all wrinkled and broken down. The effect passes and she straightens her shoulders.

  “I hope, for Yaha’s sake, that you rise to this occasion. We’ve all noticed how you’ve been slipping this past year. If you fall now — well, let’s just say that Yaha will have a lot to answer for, Auntie or not.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Quick as that, my joy at this opportunity has turned cold and bitter.

  Like everything Mother and Auntie Yaha touch these days.

  “Thank you,” I say, almost meaning it. “I’ll do my best.”

  Auntie Yaha is with Ueda-sama when I find her in the hallway outside her office. The ambassador seems to recognize me from the coronation party, but he offers me his hand and his name. Auntie Yaha is wary, but she passes off my interruption as though she were expecting me.

  “My stepdaughter, June,” she says, her smile somehow conveying reassurance despite not being particularly genuine. “Ueda-sama is the chief ambassador of Tokyo 10.”

  “Enchanted,” I say. “I hope you’re having a nice time in our city. I believe I saw you the other night at the party?”

  He nods vigorously. “Such interesting customs you have here, June. The trouble of translation … I’d been led to imagine your summer king was some sort of consort for your Queen. And I now see it’s quite different.”

  “Consort?” I say, smiling. Auntie Yaha will kill me when this is over, and I don’t care at all. “Well, there’s some of that too, don’t get me wrong. I don’t see much hope for Enki and Oreste, but you’re right, it wasn’t very good manners for Enki to ignore her like that on his election day. Moon year kings don’t have any power — I’m sure she thought he wouldn’t dare.”

  Auntie Yaha discreetly attempts to steer Ueda-sama farther down the hall, but he pauses, forcing her to hover behind him like some lost camera bot. “No power? I had it explained to me rather differently.”

  Auntie Yaha’s mask is slipping. “Power isn’t that simple a matter, June.”

  “Funny,” I say, “I’ve noticed that.”

  I think that’s when she realizes what this is about. She nods her head slowly and then turns to Ueda-sama with a blinding smile and a reassuring pat on the back. S
omehow, she convinces him to wait in her office while she marches me to the far end of the hallway. No need to worry about eavesdroppers so deep in Royal Tower, with its soundproof walls and strict anti-bot policy.

  “I thought you’d be happy,” she says. Something I appreciate about Auntie Yaha: At least she can drop the act every once in a while. Unlike her wife. “This is what you wanted.”

  “Not because you bought it for me!”

  “You’re talented, June. You know that. I just made sure it came to the Queen’s attention. I didn’t need to do more. I know you’ve always wanted this.”

  I want to scream, but I have a feeling that it would draw undue attention even in this place. “And who did I push out, Yaha? What amazing waka’s life have I ruined, and she doesn’t even know it? All so you can go back home and tell Mother that you’ve bribed me a future?”

  It’s strange, Auntie Yaha has only known me for two years, but she’s the one I can hurt. And so I always try to hurt her.

  I know what that says about me.

  “Your mother didn’t ask me to do this.”

  My surprise feels a little like disappointment. Mother’s interference has always been so reliable. Has she even given up on that?

  “She’ll still blame me if I make you lose your post.”

  Yaha puts that reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You’ll do fine, June,” she says.

  I shake it off. I wish I could have gotten the nomination on my own, but it doesn’t matter now. I’ve always had something to prove. “I’ll win.”

  Gil sees Enki once more that week, though they’re discreet enough to keep it off all but the most speculative gossip feeds. Gil isn’t in school the next day and I finally find him that evening, half naked in his mother’s garden, blasting the latest from King Zumbi, one of the verde’s biggest blocos, and dancing with a sunflower.

  “She any good?” I ask when I’m close enough to hear him over the music.

  Gil plants a kiss in the middle of the sunflower’s dark brown center and laughs. “She’s beautiful,” he says. He reaches for my hand and, despite myself, I dance with him for a little while. I can’t refuse Gil when he’s so present and happy. I force all thoughts about the last dance out of my mind; it’s easier than I would have guessed.

  Maybe my feelings weren’t hurt as much as my pride, after all.

  We dance until his sweat gleams in the sunlight and my shirt feels damp. I break it off, ’cause on his own Gil would dance until he passed out (he has, I’ve seen it), and dip my feet in the koi pond to cool off.

  Gil does a back handspring and seems for a moment like he might keep moving. He still has it, I can see, that manic energy that sometimes nothing can dissipate. But I raise my eyebrows at him and he takes a deep breath and sits beside me.

  “I’ve been nominated for the Queen’s Award,” I tell him in a rush. It was hard to hold it in this long, but it’s no good talking when he needs to dance.

  “June!” He hugs me and I let myself enjoy the thrill of his surprise and approval before I have to ruin it with the truth.

  “Auntie Yaha pulled strings,” I say. “I didn’t really earn it. But I’ll win anyway, no matter what I have to do. There won’t be anything she can say to me if I win it.”

  Gil looks sad, as he always does when I talk about my family. “You mean your mamãe?”

  “Papai too,” I say softly. “He’d be proud, I’m sure of it. I’ll make real art. Great art.”

  Gil’s jittery, almost vibrating. I rub my hand up and down his sweat-slick back until he relaxes a little and leans into it. “Nice night?” I say.

  “Dazzling,” he says, like a sigh. “Enki is …”

  I hold my breath.

  “Just like he seems. Only, deeper.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Gil.”

  “Don’t be. I think I’m drowning in him. And I’m hardly his only one.”

  “Well,” I say, flicking my toes at a carp that gets too close. “He’s hardly your only one either.”

  Gil and I solved our virginity problem together a few years ago, but unlike him, I haven’t done much since.

  “He could be. June, he could. Last night, he took me to the very top, to the light, and he pushed me back against that hot glass. I thought it would burn me, and we did it again and again.”

  I imagine it and feel myself flushing. “That doesn’t sound very discreet.”

  Gil laughs. “I don’t know, he said he talked to the bots and they promised to leave us alone.”

  “He talked … what does that even mean?”

  “How should I know? Maybe it’s a new mod?”

  But I’m almost sure the Aunties don’t have anything that would let a human chat with a bot. I wonder what Enki is doing. If he’s getting himself into trouble, will he drag Gil into it also? Suddenly, I’m very glad that Enki picked Gil instead of me. If my dreamy love for him had turned this hard and real, I don’t know how I’d be able to deal with it.

  “Gil,” I say, holding his hand until he looks at me. “Listen. You do what you want to do, that’s the way it’s always been, and I don’t want to change that. But Enki is the summer king. The summer king, Gil. He stopped being a boy you could love the moment Oreste crowned him, and he will be dead this time next year. So you can’t let yourself … I mean, I don’t want you to … don’t be hurt. That’s all. I just don’t want you to hurt.”

  I never thought he’d get mad at me, but I thought maybe he’d be dismissive and mocking. I thought maybe he’d tell me I couldn’t understand because I’m so inexperienced. But he just starts to cry.

  “He told me about the others,” he says. I wrap my arms around his waist, hold him. “I asked. It shouldn’t have meant anything. It did.”

  “Maybe that’s what the moon year is for, querido. Make us love him and break our hearts.”

  “Enki is different.”

  He is. I think that’s what makes this worse.

  This is the story of a war between the wakas and the grandes.

  You might think I’m speaking of something universal, of youth and age, because I’ve read the classics and the teachers would have us believe that’s all we’re seeing here, a repeat of that endless struggle between virility and senescence, between spontaneity and care, between creativity and knowledge.

  You know, insert your bullshit here.

  Here’s the thing: There hasn’t been “age” in that old-fashioned, Dorian Gray sense in about two hundred years. Ever since the Hoshigawa technique was perfected back when men were still only 30 percent of the world population. Death before a hundred and fifty has become optional. And these days, two hundred is pretty much guaranteed. Ms. Hoshigawa herself only died last year, the day after her two hundred and fifty-first birthday. Vertical cities around the world had a day of mourning. Gil and I celebrated the day on the rock of A Castanha in the bay, getting drunk on cachaça and chalking doodles on wet stone.

  “Kill me if I ever get that old,” Gil said.

  “Hey, by the time we hit two hundred and fifty, there will probably be grandes twice our age.”

  He grimaced. “What’s the point of life, June, if you don’t live it?”

  “Some do. Some grandes live.”

  “While they suffocate the rest of us.”

  I couldn’t deny it. Just that morning, I’d gotten a polite rejection from yet another gallery, saying they only accepted work from “mature” artists. At this rate, I wouldn’t get so much as a painting in a show before I turned forty.

  “Your mamãe has lots of work, these days,” I said, trying to make that doomed feeling in my stomach go away. “She’s almost a waka, and designing dresses for Aunties.”

  Gil hurled our empty bottle off the cliff. It biodegraded as soon as it hit the water. “And when they realize how old she is, grandes still look at me like I must be half feral.”

  I bit my lip. I wondered when it would be okay for Gil and his mamãe; when her talent and maturity would matter mor
e than her age, as though she could never be good enough with a son just sixteen years younger.

  “Grandes can be assholes,” I said finally.

  Gil sighed and closed his eyes. We were silent for a long time, so long I got sleepy and rested my head on his shoulder. Through my lidded eyes, I could see water bluer than the sky, and the city like some clean and bright geometric heaven. Gil stroked my hair and I felt warm and happy as a lizard in the sun.

  “Will you kiri, Gil?” It was my greatest fear, but at that moment the terror couldn’t touch me. I felt as though I could see us both too clearly for fear.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Probably. Yes.”

  I knew. I don’t know how, but I did. “Not too soon,” I said.

  “No, of course not. God, we’re only sixteen.”

  My papai was a hundred and forty.

  Had been a hundred and forty.

  The first time the lights go out in Palmares Três, Gil and I are in the third row of the orchestra seats in City Hall, awaiting the summer king’s first public address. The first two rows are filled with important people, mostly Aunties, but a few other dignitaries. I even see three Uncles — men who have entered politics, though they’re not as influential as Aunties. Quite a few sun year summer kings have been Uncles.

  It’s been a week since Enki’s election and I’m exhausted. I’ve spent the past two nights feverishly sketching, designing, and discarding one idea after another. I need to strike quickly and brilliantly if I want to prove myself to the Queen and the other finalists. It’s an open secret that Auntie Yaha got me in — it probably would be even if it weren’t true, and that makes me hate what she did even more.

  Bebel is already planning a free concert in Gria Plaza. I wish I didn’t know, because it’s only making me crazier, but of course she had to tell me in that way of hers, like we’re best friends and not implacable enemies. She even had the nerve to ask Gil to dance for her, but he refused.