Feyland: The Dark Realm

Chapter Two

Tam watched the new girl. Sure, it looked like he was taking notes while Ms. Lewis droned on about ancient civilizations, but under cover of his moving hand, under the hair he never bothered brushing out of his eyes, he was watching.

He always watched. Everything. Never said much, but that was okay. It kept him invisible and out of trouble.

So, the new girl. Jennet Carter. Everything about her screamed ‘elite.’ Elitist, too. She tucked a strand of pale hair behind one ear, and the chip implant in her wrist glinted. More proof that she didn’t belong here.

“Welcome to Crestview High,” Ms. Lewis said.

Jennet only nodded. She didn’t look too happy to be there, and for a moment, unwilling sympathy moved through him. Everyone was staring at her. It couldn’t be easy, coming into a new school after the year started—even if you were one of the privileged. Which, here in Crestview, made you a severe outsider.

She sat down and pulled a shiny new-model tablet out of her bag. Clearly the school ones weren’t good enough for her. Though, to be honest, some of those tablets barely worked. If he had the option, he’d bring his own gear, too.

She obviously lived in The View, the compound VirtuMax was building for their company employees. He’d heard the houses there were huge, that they were putting in specialty stores, a g-board park. Probably money falling off the bushes, too. All you needed to get in was a wrist-chip.

What would that be like? Wave your arm and have the gates of paradise open. Instant access to a safe and sanitary little world, full of the best tech money could buy. A fat credit account, probably kept full-up by a doting daddykins. Strings fully attached. He grimaced and rubbed his own wrist.

No thanks. Better to be under the radar, far as he was concerned. Not that the VirtuMax kids would know anything about being chewed up and spit out by the authorities. Even the regular townies thought they lived in the real world, but they were dreaming. Nothing was grittier and more real than the Exe. Even the locals tried to avoid his part of Crestview.

But despite his dislike of the new girl, he couldn’t stop sneaking looks. There was something about Jennet Carter. Something more than her long pale-gold hair and the high curve of her cheekbones. She seemed fragile. Mysterious.

He shook his head. The last thing Crestview High needed was another VirtuMax entitlement diva walking the halls.

At lunch, he and his friend Marny claimed a table near the back of the cafeteria. He’d known Marny for years—she lived on the outskirts of the Exe. But where he was lean and agile, she was easily as large as the big guys on the football team. Most kids avoided her, like being fat was a contagious disease. But she didn’t care.

Marny was who she was and the rest of the world could go blink. She was unapologetic to the point of rudeness, and he liked that, how actual she was. Plus, she noticed stuff. Not as much as him, but enough to make it worthwhile to hang with her. Sometimes. There were plenty of days he wanted to be alone, when he was all edges and sharpness. But not today.

“Look at her,” Marny said, pointing with her chin across the cafeteria. She made her eyes narrow and took a long, slurping drink of her cola, as if to show she wasn’t impressed.

“Who?”

He knew though. Jennet Carter was pretty hard to miss. He’d been aware of her from the moment she walked into the cafeteria. It was like an itch. Maybe if he ignored it, it would just go away. Uncomfortable, yeah, but scratching always made it worse. So he tried not to stare at Jennet’s sky-blue eyes, or notice the way she moved. Though now that Marny was pointing her out, he had to.