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Well, they could make him go, but they couldn’t make him learn. He took classes as an opportunity to socialize instead, chatting with as many people as he could, scoping out who had promise and who was an irredeemable nerd. There were lots of those, especially in his astronomy class. He could feel disapproving eyes boring into the back of his head whenever he started talking with one of his new friends. But that didn’t matter. The first rule of popularity was that you were never going to have a hundred percent success rate—you just had to be selective about which portion of the population you won over. Target the confident, the assertive, the people who were going places. The winners, in other words. If you were popular with them, you could take or leave the rest. What did his father always say? Once you were paying their salaries, it didn’t matter whether they liked you or not.
By the start of the second week, the word had spread, and he and his housemates had transformed their stuffy little living room into something that had the makings of being a cool hangout spot. Sure, it was an embarrassment compared to most of the places he’d been spending his time before he came here, but it was miles better than anything else on the insula. Cool music, chill vibes, beers in the fridge… he could build from here, he told himself. And it was nice, at the end of the day, to come home to the buzz of a party, even a low-key school night party. He hated silence, hated being left alone in his own company. Nothing good ever came of that.
His major regret was in choosing an evening class. Astronomy had seemed like a good idea at the time—just three hours on a weeknight plus a short afternoon class later in the week, a much smaller study load than the alternatives, most of which involved daily classes. And from the description, it sounded like a whole bunch of stargazing. Not bad. Besides, the class took place at the top of the university’s tower, and what dragon didn’t like a lofty perch? But by the second week, it had become clear to Archer that stargazing was less fun when you then had to carefully record the location and identity of each tiny dot you’d been staring at… and even less fun when you had to share your telescope with a nerd.
Archer liked working in pairs. But he absolutely hated having those pairs chosen for him. Unfortunately, it seemed that that was the preference of their astronomy teacher, who was one of those irritating dorks who was convinced he was fooling everyone into thinking he was cool. Well, not Archer. It’d take more than a novelty bowtie on the first day and a few stupid sleight-of-hand tricks to fool him.
Nor was he impressed with professor Rowton’s insistence on pairing him with the nerdy redhead who always sat right up the front of the class, like proximity to the teacher was somehow going to result in a better grade for her. He’d encountered her once or twice, and something about her always ground on his nerves somehow. It was the way she looked at him. Something insulting about it… like she was pretending not to know who he was. And she’d had the nerve to shush him a few times in class. Him!
“Do you even remember what you’re looking for?”
Archer gritted his teeth at the thinly-veiled impatience in her voice, biting back on a defensive rejoinder. Defending himself would only make it seem like he was insecure about failing at this stupid, pointless task, which he obviously wasn’t, because it didn’t mean anything. They were sitting by one of the astronomy classroom’s many windows, pointing a telescope out into the night in search of… something that he’d tuned out of, not that that was any of her business.
“Too many clouds,” he mumbled, fiddling unnecessarily with the focus on the side of the telescope. “You find it.”
“I found the last two.”
“Well, don’t let me steal your opportunity for a hat trick.” She frowned at him, a furrow appearing between those pretty green eyes of hers. “Three in a row? Hat trick? You really are from the middle of nowhere, huh?” He knew this much, vaguely. The girl with the weird clothes, that was how people talked about her. Not weird in the sense of bad-looking, necessarily… but nobody could place the brands.
“Yes,” she snapped, and despite his impatience with the whole situation, he couldn’t help but feel a chill run down his spine at the look in her eyes. Something about it needled him.
“What’s your problem, anyway? Your vibes have been rancid since the minute I sat down.”
She didn’t rise to the bait, which annoyed him. Instead, she answered his rhetorical question, which was much, much worse. “I don’t like your attitude,” she said calmly, as though she was explaining which star they were looking for next. “I don’t like rudeness or entitlement much, either.”
“Chill. We met like thirty seconds ago. I don’t even remember your name.”
“That’s alright. I’ll remember yours.” She swung the telescope over and looked through it, a dismissive gesture which didn’t improve his mood. “Archer, right?”
“Don’t pretend you haven’t known since day one,” he muttered, rolling his eyes as he bent to copy her answers into his notebook. He felt those cool green eyes slide onto him, saw her frowning.
“Did Cato say something?”
“Who?”
“Cato. My brother-in-law. Said he knew you, a while ago.”
The name rang a distant bell, but so did most names, these days. Archer shrugged. “I meet a lot of people, as you can imagine.”
“Can I?”
Something wasn’t adding up here. Archer leaned over and pushed the telescope away from her face, feeling a momentary petty satisfaction at the look of irritation on her face. Finally, a crack in that icy armor. He pressed the advantage. “Just be straight with me for a second. You’re not seriously saying you don’t know who I am? Who my family is?”
She shrugged. “Cato said something about some transport company.”
“Some transport company.” He sat back in his seat in utter disbelief. If he’d had friends around him, they’d have been roaring with laughter … but right now, he felt terribly alone, like he’d been hurled into some alternate universe. Morgan was fussing with the telescope, for all the world as though that was more important than him and his father and the whole blasted company. “You’re embarrassing yourself. Trythetransport company. Try the biggest transport company on any insula, anywhere. Try—”
“Archer?” Professor Rowton clicked his tongue from the front of the room. “Save the business pitches for after hours, hmm?”
Archer’s face burned as a titter of laughter went up among the students. If he’d been talking that loud, it was her fault for being so stupid he had to raise his voice to get it through her thick head. He subsided into sullen silence for the rest of the class, but there was precious little satisfaction in it. Morgan didn’t seem to mind doing all the work for both of them, and when class finished she stalked off without a backwards glance. Archer watched her go, open-mouthed. He couldn’t remember the last time the silent treatment had failed on someone. Generally, when the people around him even suspected he was annoyed with them, they’d bend over backwards to get back into his good graces.
How could she know who he was—know how rich and influential his family was—and still treat him like that? It was … it was unthinkable. Absurd. Unforgivably stupid, really. She was the one who was setting herself up for disaster, if this was her approach to networking. He took the long way back to his dorm after class, hoping that the walk would help cool his head, but the memory of her utter indifference just kept grinding at him with every step, and by the time he was getting close to his dorm, he was angrier than ever. And what was worse, he could feel his anger cooling off, shifting its target… and he knew from experience that once he was out of reasons to be angry with her, that rage would turn inward.
Only one cure for that, he thought, taking a deep breath and fixing a casual, easygoing smile to his face. There were still a half-dozen or so guys hanging out in the dorm, and he grabbed a beer from the fridge amid the usual chorus of greetings and slid into the spot that had been cleared for him at the card table. That was more like it, he thought, taking a long swallow of beer. These were the people he should be spending time with. People who gave him the respect he deserved.
“A party,” he said abruptly, slamming a fist down on the table. “That’s what we need. A proper rager, none of this weak dorm room crap. No offense,” he added, flashing the guys a self-effacing little grin.
“The full moon’s coming up,” Brody pointed out. “The school usually does something for those, right? Should we really compete with them?”
