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Taylor laughed and smiled, just as Kopano had predicted. “Of course,” she replied, but her face soon clouded over. She glanced at the security camera on the kitchen’s wall. “We have to be careful talking like this.”
“I already told Lexa we’d be in here,” Kopano said.
For cybersecurity reasons cooked up by Professor Nine, all the Academy’s surveillance footage—and who accessed it—went through Lexa. That way, if Taylor slipped up or needed a break from playing the bad girl, she wouldn’t be caught on camera. Kopano had made sure to tell Lexa not to record in the kitchen that night.
“But you’re not a stalker,” Taylor said dryly, her eyes warm.
“So maybe I have arranged to bump into you here and there,” Kopano continued with an airy wave of his knife that ended with him chopping the stem off a pepper. “Is this stalking? I don’t even know what this word means, but I think not.”
“Oh, sure. Play dumb,” Taylor said. She hopped onto a clear section of counter and sat there with her legs dangling. “I’m not complaining. Hiding out together beneath the training center isn’t the same as actually hanging out. I’ve missed it.”
Kopano flashed a grin. “I still take my pledge to you very seriously. I am dedicated to making your experience here as boring as possible.”
Taylor snorted. “I think boring has pretty much gone out the window. Thanks for trying, though.” She reached out and pinched Kopano’s sleeve. “This sweater looks good on you.”
For all his attempts at being smooth, he couldn’t keep the dumb grin off his face.
“Huh? This? Just something old I tossed on.”
Chapter Nine
TAYLOR COOK
THE KITCHEN
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
TAYLOR HAD BUILT UP A TOLERANCE TO CHORES. It came from her old life, when she spent every day after school and most of her summers helping out around the farm. School, chores, homework, sleep. It was a rhythm that Taylor was used to. She could turn off her mind and just get stuff done.
When a student got in trouble at the Academy—and Taylor had made a point of getting in trouble a lot lately—the administration favored two kinds of punishment: extra training sessions with Professor Nine or community service around the campus. Both punishments boiled down to basically the same thing—a loss of free time. Taylor didn’t mind that so much. All she did in her free time was worry, so better to have a bunch of dull tasks to take her mind off things.
Mopping floors on Christmas Eve, though? That was something that would happen to a desperate orphan in one of those sad British holiday stories. And yet, Taylor had been looking forward to it.
Normally, she didn’t wear any of her nice outfits when she was going to be spending her off time scrubbing grime out of crevices. But, she’d had a feeling that Kopano would show up tonight. Or, maybe more than a feeling. A hope.
Sitting on the counter beside him, occasionally brushing her shoulder up against his—entirely by accident, of course—Taylor felt at ease. Like she could be herself. Not the old, nervous, homesick Taylor who had first come to the Academy, or the angry, revenge-minded Taylor who had emerged after the incident with the Foundation. With Kopano, she was in her sweet spot, perpetually. Kopano made her feel comfortable and hopeful, like they were always on the verge of some great adventure where things would work out perfectly.
“He’s hot,” Isabela had said to her earlier that day, in their suite, when Taylor mentioned she thought she might see Kopano that night. “You should hook up with him. A Christmas miracle!”
“God, Isabela, it’s not always about hooking up,” Taylor replied.
“Not always, no. But this time?” Isabela wiggled her eyebrows. “This time? Yes. So much yes.”
“I don’t know, I mean—I like him. We’re friends. And he’s, um—I mean, yeah, sure, objectively, he’s an attractive guy. But I don’t know if he even likes me that way and, if he did, I don’t know if I’d want to mess with the friendship—”
“Oh, he likes you that way,” Isabela said with a smirk. “Please. That you guys haven’t done it yet is crazy. Everyone knows it’s going to happen.”
“Isabela!”
“What else is there to do around here? Besides plan our secret war against a bunch of rich assholes? Might as well have some fun.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind,” Taylor replied with a nervous laugh. She looked across the suite for help, where Ran was listening with a faint smile. The Japanese girl shrugged.
“I agree with Isabela,” she said simply.
The memory made Taylor’s cheeks warm, the flush luckily covered by the steamy kitchen. Kopano stood over the stove, shaking a heavy pan filled with fried rice. There was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. Without thinking about it, Taylor grabbed a clean towel off the counter and lightly wiped his forehead.
“Ah, thank you,” he said with that infectious grin of his. “You make a very good assistant chef.”
“Happy to help,” she replied, glancing down at his growing vat of fried rice. “With whatever this is . . .”
“Christmas rice!” Kopano declared again. “You think it’s strange, eh? I should’ve maybe made desserts like all these others, but that’s not how we do it in Nigeria.”
“You don’t have desserts there?”
Kopano stuck out his stomach and slapped his free hand against it. “Of course we do. But the rice . . .” He tilted his head. “This story might be boring.”
“No, tell me. I like hearing about your home.”
Kopano beamed. “Before I was born, there was a revolution in my country. My mom and dad were very poor. Dirt poor, you’d say. I guess most people were back then. They would consider themselves lucky if they had a cup of rice to eat for dinner.”
“Wow,” Taylor replied. “That’s terrible.”
Kopano shrugged. “Terrible, maybe, but it turned into a cool thing, in a way. For Christmas, the people who could afford to would make big pots of rice like this one and invite their neighbors over to eat. It was a tradition in the village my mom was from that carried on even after the revolution was over.”
Taylor eyed the pan of dark, chopped meat that Kopano was gradually stirring into the rice. “Is that liver?”
“Shh, it’s the secret ingredient,” Kopano replied, chuckling when Taylor wrinkled her nose. “Anyway, every Christmas my mom would cook this and invite all the neighbors in our apartment building over to have some. My dad didn’t like it. He’d forgotten the lessons of the hard times and would always complain. Why do I have to feed all these people, huh? These freeloaders. But my mom did it anyway and, I think, my dad secretly enjoyed having all these visitors he could brag to about his wife’s cooking. It was fun. I liked having a full house back then, everyone around.”
“That’s a nice tradition,” Taylor said, but there was a creeping sadness behind her smile. She folded her hands between her legs and looked down at them. “My dad and I . . . we didn’t do big celebrations like that, didn’t really invite anybody over. It was cool, though. He would buy all these frozen appetizers from the store—like, real unhealthy stuff that we didn’t normally eat, and we’d just binge on them all day and watch movies in our pajamas. It was . . . it was kinda awesome, now that I think about it.”
Kopano put a hand on her shoulder. “It will turn out okay, Taylor. I promise.”
Taylor nodded. She wasn’t so sure.
“It’s hard to believe that place is gone now,” Taylor said after a moment, swallowing. “Gone because of me, basically. I know my dad agreed to it and I know it’s for a good cause but—” She shook her head. “He’s staying with a cousin, sleeping on his futon. I hate to imagine that’s what his Christmas is like.”
Kopano put his hand on his heart. “You have my solemn promise that, when these Foundation people are brought to justice, I will return to South Dakota with you and we will rebuild. As you already know, I am very strong.”
Taylor snorted and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Kopano put a lid on his vat of rice and stepped back with a satisfied exhale. “This needs to simmer a bit. Come on, let’s get some air.”
Taylor hopped down from the counter and the two of them headed out of the kitchen. As they went, she noticed Kopano sneakily grab a small package from a shelf by the door. He tried to hide it behind his back.
“Hey, what’s that?”
Still hiding the package behind his broad back, Kopano turned around and walked backwards through the kitchen’s swinging doors. He smiled sheepishly at Taylor.
“This? Um . . . it’s a present.”
“Kopano. What did you do?”
Taylor followed him into the student union. The lights were still on, but the place was completely deserted at this time of night. After the heat of the kitchen, the cool air was a relief. The strings of blinking lights were reflected in Kopano’s eyes.
“Before you say anything, you should know it was just dumb luck. I pulled your name for Secret Santa.”
