“Took you long enough,” Sadie groused.

  “I had to get an extra battery for the watch,” Danielle said. “Anyway, that’s the whole store, right?”

  “Unless you’re in dire need of a greeting card,” Heather said dryly. “Well, and there’s the sunscreen lady, but she’s basically in the middle of the checkout line at this point.”

  The three of them went over and got in line. They stood chatting with people around them as the line inched forward, very, very, slowly. “Is it just me,” Heather asked, half an hour later, “or is this stuff getting heavier?”

  “It’s heavy,” Danielle said. “I’m not looking forward to that hike. I definitely couldn’t run, loaded down like this.”

  “We shouldn’t have to,” Sadie said. “Hiking isn’t running.”

  “Right, I know, and we won’t carry this much stuff hunting,” Danielle said. “Most of it’ll stay in the room.”

  Finally, they got past the photo-printing counter and the locked alcohol cabinets, which someone had covered over with Unification Day themed wrapping paper showing the national flag alternating with the state flag. (Danielle thought it was more than slightly ironic, though it did serve well enough to make people want to look the other way.) Soon the line split into two lines, and they were close enough to the registers to have something to see again. First came the woman passing out sunscreen, from whom they dutifully took a tube of each color. They turned out to be two different strengths.

  “Was there no other brand of this stuff?” Danielle mused as she slid the tubes down the sides of her purse-sized backpack.

  “Hold my place, I’ll go double-check,” Sadie said.

  They inched up two more spots in line before she returned, and handed out flattish bottles of sunscreen in another brand; there were two strengths again. “It was hidden in the seasonal stuff,” she said, getting back in line and struggling to get her own pair of bottles into her hip pouch. “Behind the tent section.”

  “Just hold onto it for now,” Danielle said. “The product code is painted on, it’ll have to be scanned directly.”

  “And then?” Sadie asked.

  Danielle shrugged. “In a pocket, if necessary.”

  The sunscreen lady said, “That’s the spirit! The sun Outside is a friend and an enemy; it’ll burn you bad if you’re not careful, and believe you me, a burn is a burn – you’ll be just as miserable from a sunburn as you would from, say, a scalding water burn.”

  “Been sunburned while camping?” Sadie asked her.

  “You have no idea,” the woman said; then she turned to thrust a tube of the stronger sunscreen at someone in the other line.

  Once they were past her, it was the usual checkout-counter stuff; candy, of course, and gossip magazines, and charging cables for electronics. There were a few small toys, placed low to tempt preschoolers, and stream-show tie-in plastic cups, candy, and data pad accessories placed higher to tempt neighborhood-schoolers. Heather shamelessly took the largest king-sized candy bar in the display; Sadie laughed and chose a bag of peanut-butter candies instead, while Danielle took a large candy bar with nuts in it.

  “Don’t you feel stupid taking candy at a time like this?” a girl across the gap in the other line asked.

  Danielle shrugged. “I’m still going to be hungry at snack time today; what are the chances they’ll have snacks on offer at the Sending Authority? Plus, if I don’t eat it today, I can use it to keep my strength up tomorrow on the long hike. This stuff’s heavy, I might need some extra energy.”

  “Who even cares why?” said the boy in line behind the girl that had asked. “If the SA will pay for it, the real question is ‘why not?’ Maybe I’ll get one of everything.”

  “Well, don’t make yourself sick before you have to haul everything two miles,” Danielle said, “but I don’t think it’s crazy to snag a few snacks.”

  “If you’re serious about the hike, there’s granola bars too,” Sadie said.

  When they finally got to the register, Danielle’s dormmates had maneuvered her to the front of the group, so she would have to go first with the envelope full of barcodes. She also presented the cashier with all four sunscreens, the candy and granola bars, and the rubbing alcohol, because they had their product codes printed directly on them instead of on stickers or hang-cards or plastic overwrap.

  The cashier gave her a look of sheer disbelief, and started to say something, but the agent that was watching the line with her tapped her shoulder and shook his head at her. “Really?” she asked, her tone dripping with exasperated disbelief. “Really?”

  “My colleagues have been keeping an eye on these three, and yes, really, scan their codes and let them go. They’ve been very diligent, and frankly, you do not want to unpack those bags. It’d take an hour both directions – unpacking and repacking.” Danielle belatedly recognized the first agent who had seen them pulling things out of their bulky packaging.

  “But they could’ve hidden anything in there! Forbidden plastics! Double copies!” the cashier protested.

  “We’ve been keeping an eye on it,” the agent repeated. “Go on, scan all their codes.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The cashier kept giving Danielle the stink-eye as she scanned every sticker on the outside of the envelope, then pulled out all the cut-out codes inside and scanned them one at a time, putting them back in as she went. She complained under her breath the whole time; the theme was “unbelievable.” Danielle was unbelievable and the SA was unbelievable and this whole situation was unbelievable. Danielle was torn between an urge to laugh, and a sort of half-agreement; the situation was obviously happening, so she couldn’t just not believe it, but it would’ve been hard to believe if she wasn’t in it.

  The degree of attention to what they’d been doing suggested by the agent was also a little unbelievable. How sure could he really be that they hadn’t sneaked in any doubles? Were they just going on principle, because they’d seen her checking the candles for different product codes, or something like that? Did the agent have some ridiculous high-tier System Skill that checked for duplicate contents in containers?

  Sadie and Heather got similar treatment, but the SA man kept the cashier’s disgruntlement from spilling over on them too much, and eventually, they finally made it back to the doors, and the table with the sign reading “Room Requests.” The three of them stood awkwardly near the table, debating among themselves.

  “What should we do?” Heather asked anxiously. “I mean, obviously we need to all request each other, right?”

  “Seems obvious to me,” Sadie said. “The question is what to do about the fourth slot.”

  “I agree we should stick together if we possibly can,” Danielle said. “The fourth slot is a problem, though. We don’t want just anyone there. We’ll have to be strategic about who else we request and hope for the best. Do we know anyone that doesn’t have a big friend group and might make a good roommate?”

  That was the debate. Anyone less popular than them was likely unpopular for a reason. (“To be fair, we’re unpopular for a reason too,” Heather pointed out.) The question was, who had a reason they could handle? Who had a potentially good personality match, that had just stayed away from them to stay out of the splash zone of Vanessa’s ire? Should they request several different people, hoping that at least one of them would end up without another place in the algorithm? Should they all request the same person, hoping that would be enough to get her even if she had one request somewhere else? If they did, but their chosen person didn’t approve, what then?

  Finally, Danielle had an idea. “Hey guys – what about Akari?” she asked. “She’s not in our grade, but the ninth graders are Sent too, right? I’ve been friends with her for a long time, and I’m pretty sure she’ll handle Sadie’s words-limited moods better than any of the last three people we discussed. She doesn’t have a ton of close friends – she’s had her own bullying problems, and I’m not getting into that second-hand here, but I think if we manage to snag her, she’ll be glad to be rooming with a friend and two people who don’t believe in bullying.”

  “You introduced me,” Sadie said. “She seemed nice. She does the religious thing too, though, right?”

  “Um, yeah, she’s Christian too,” Danielle said.

  Heather sighed. “It beats maybe getting a Systemist and having them argue and try to convert each other,” she said.

  “Akari might try to convert you to sports,” Sadie joked.

  “What?” Heather looked to Danielle for a hint.

  “She’s on the fencing team; she’ll probably be a great help getting you and me in better shape for the Outside, but it’s not impossible she might also be pushy help getting you and me in better shape,” Danielle admitted. “Honestly, though, I’m kind of worried we might need the help. Besides, Akari’s not usually annoying. If she gets too pushy, and you ask her to stop, I think we can trust her to actually stop.”

  “It’s not like there are sports teams outside,” Sadie said. “I don’t think? I guess our sporty people could make some teams.”

  “I think – well, Danielle might have a point about us needing to get in shape a little anyway,” Heather said. “You’ve got your extracurricular gymnastics thing, but the two of us don’t really do much really physical stuff besides gym class. Besides, if she’s Danielle’s actual friend, that automatically makes her better than any of the people in our grade that are maybe OK but aren’t really friends, and might be mad if we accidentally separate them from someone they do see as a real friend.”

  “Do we want to ask for just her? Or add her to a list?” Sadie asked.

  “I say we all ask for her, and then each take one or two other possibilities to ask for as backup,” Heather said.

  “I can work with that,” Danielle said. “Um, thanks for trusting me on this one.”

  Sadie nodded, and Heather said, “Well, um, you’re welcome – I mean, it’s not like we had any better options! But I mean – um, yeah. I’m gonna shut up before I say anything worse.”

  Danielle chuckled, and they used the little notepads to divide up their list, then approached the table to make their requests. Sadie had a little difficulty when she had to look up Akari’s last name in her notepad, leading the agent manning the data tablet to ask her a tedious series of questions about whether she was being coerced into requesting someone she didn’t really want, whether she was being bribed to request someone she didn’t know, etc. etc. Sadie answered in uncomfortable monosyllables, which were pretty obviously a sign of stress, but the agent was getting the wrong idea about why she was stressed. Danielle finally said, “Sadie, come on. Use a few more words – tell her why you are requesting Akari!”

  Fortunately, that cleared it up, both because it answered the official questions, and because it made it obvious that Sadie was just uncomfortable talking a lot to strangers. Then Heather stepped up to take her turn, and filled in all the details Sadie left out, until the agent had to cut her off.

  Danielle chuckled as they went to the door. “Sometimes I wonder how you two have managed to endure two years as each other’s roommates,” she said.

  “Seven quarters,” Sadie corrected. “Anyway, Heather talks more than you, but she does know how to take a request for quiet. Unlike a certain Awakening-school roommate who shall remain nameless.”

  Danielle and Sadie knew very well that her name was Susan – and that she still didn’t take kindly to being asked to stop talking. Danielle didn’t know how Susan had ended up in the end-of-row single in middle school, but she’d been moved in with Mallory after Heather’s request for transfer, freeing up the three-person pod for Danielle, Heather, and Sadie; of all the ‘evil foursome’s’ complaints against the three of them, Danielle understood that grievance best.

  Stepping outside, the three of them were immediately directed onto a bus, which was now parked right there at the curb instead of out in the parking lot. Some kind of privacy Skill was clearly in effect, because there were people pressing against the police tape, waving, moving their mouths, and even pounding on an invisible barrier. Danielle paused, startled, to take in the sight.

  “Keep moving,” the agent said. “You don’t need to deal with all the yelling and what-not, and you really don’t want to make things harder for your family by getting your picture on a news-stream. The bus is protected too.”

  Danielle had figured out by then that the people outside couldn’t really see her, or at least, not clearly; their eyes darted here and there and didn’t focus on any of the people inside, though they mostly looked in the general direction of the agent. She supposed they were tracking the concentration of green from his uniform.

  “Come on, Danielle,” Sadie called, and she turned to board the bus.