When Alex had told her she would be staying with Sarah for a month, Yulia was more apprehensive than happy. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her friends, she did. She was just worried about being away from Alex for so long.

Yulia had tried to convince him to let her come along, but he wouldn’t budge. And that made her more worried. It meant whatever he was doing in space would be dangerous.

She tried not to let those feelings show as she attended her first sleepover. Even Claire was here, although, she wouldn’t be staying the entire month like Yulia would be. Her two friends were talking about boys. Yuck!

“Have you met the new kids?” Claire asked.

“They’re all entitled core worlders,” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Except Thomas,” she added.

“Oooh!” Claire stated in excitement, “Someone’s got a crush!”

“Do not!” Sarah responded immediately before the pair broke into a fit of giggles.

“Boys are gross,” Yulia stated firmly, earning another round of giggles from the girls before they pulled her into a hug.

“You’ll feel differently when you’re our age,” Claire said sagely as Yulia tried to extract herself from the older girl’s embrace.

“You’re only a few years older than me,” she said with a huff.

“We’re both thirteen,” Sarah pointed out, “you’re only nine.”

Yulia crossed her arms with a huff, “I’ll be ten in two months.”

“Ooh, speaking of your birthday. Has your dad planned anything yet?” Claire asked.

Yulia shrugged.

“You don’t know? How could you not know?”

“Alex didn’t say anything about it. Then he had to go on this trip.”

“Worf!” Dog barked.

Yulia rolled her eyes and patted Dog on the head. “Yes, Dog, I know his trip is important.”

The girls laughed at the interaction. They had instantly fallen in love with Dog when she first showed him to them.

“What do you think you’re going to get?” the girls asked in unison.

“Get?”

“Yeah, like a present? You’ve had birthdays before, right?”

This time, Yulia rolled her eyes, “Obviously. But I was in the orphanage for my eighth birthday, and we just arrived when my ninth came around. It wasn’t like we gave out gifts in the orphanage and Alex was busy last year, so…”

The girls both stared at her, mouths agape.

“Your dad didn’t give you a gift for your birthday?” Claire asked.

“He was busy,” she responded defensively. “Besides, he made the playground for me and gave me Dog. Do your parents always give you gifts on your birthdays?”

“Um… yes. It may not be anything huge, especially when we were moving from place to place, but I can’t remember any time that I didn’t get something.”

“Yeah, same for me,” Sarah added. “But I’m sure your gift will be amazing. Did you hear what he gave Markus?”

Yulia paused, Alexander had given Markus a birthday gift? How had she not heard about this until now? “Wh- What did Alex give him?”

“It was something called a fizzion crystal or something,” Sarah said.

Claire giggled, “No, silly, it was a fusion crystal. I saw it, looks a bit like those cards we’re given at school to access the learning modules. Only it was thicker and made of some transparent blue material. It was really pretty.”

“A fusion activation crystal?” Yulia asked with surprise. She remembered those crystals, mostly because what Claire said was true, they were really pretty. However, she would deny that if anyone ever asked her about it. Alex had shown them to her after he got them. He said a whole bunch of stuff about them that she couldn’t quite remember, what she did remember was that they were used to turn a spaceship reactor back on.

“Yeah, that’s what it was called,” Claire hugged her.

She endured the hug, both girls were very prone to hugging, and she had quickly gotten used to their affection, even though it annoyed her most times they did it. She needed to talk to Markus and find out if this was true.

The next day after class, Yulia pulled Sarah off to the side. “I want to wait for Markus, I need to ask him something.”

Sarah smiled like she knew something and Yulia gave her a strange look. “What’s that smirk for?”

“Oh, nothing,” the girl stated innocently. “Did you want to speak to Markus, alone?”

She didn’t know why Sarah was being so weird all of a sudden, but she nodded.

“I’ll hang out at the next corridor, don’t take too long or my parents will be upset that we are late for chores.”

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Chores was one thing she didn’t miss after being adopted. She had to clean her room and help with dishes, but Alexander did pretty much everything else. Not that she would complain openly about having to help out.

Her friend finally exited the classroom, his face buried in a tablet like it was most days now. “Psst!”

Markus looked around before spotting her. He smiled and walked over. “What’s up, Yulia?”

Was it weird that she missed the times when he used to call her a pipsqueak? She shook her head at the memory and decided just to ask him if what her friend said was true. “Did Alex really give you a fusion activation crystal for your birthday?”

“Wh- who told you that?” Markus looked around, a bit of his defensiveness from back on the station rearing its head for a moment. He pulled her farther away from the classroom where the older kids were exiting.

“My friend did. Stop pulling me around,” she huffed, pulling her arm out of the boy’s loose grip. “What is with everyone acting so weird lately?”

“I don’t want to go around advertising I have it, you never know who might try and take it from me.”

Yulia scoffed. “It’s just a piece of crystal used to turn on a ship, who would want it?”

“Who would want it?” he spluttered. “And it doesn’t just turn on a ship. If you have the crystal, it means you’re the owner of the ship.”

“…Wait… Alex gave you a ship!” Markus muffled her shout, pulling her even farther from the classroom where the mean boy and his friends were now glaring at them.

“What don’t you understand about me wanting to keep this quiet?” he hissed in annoyance when he finally let her go. “And yes. Sort of.”

“But why?” she asked, her mind a complete jumble of confusion. The playground and Dog were amazing but they certainly weren’t a spaceship. Did that mean Alex liked Markus more than her?

Her friend shook her out of her thoughts. “I know what you're thinking, and knock it off.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” she spoke quickly.

“Uh-huh,” Markus replied skeptically. “Look, I don’t know why Alex gave me a ship any more than you do. Maybe Eva told him I wanted to be a Captain when I grew up. And it’s not like I just get it. I have to work for it. I need to earn a flight license, and then a captaincy before I can even fly it. Why do you think I’ve been studying so hard lately? You think I like reading and doing math all day, bleh. No thanks.”

Yulia chuckled at that, remembering how Markus hated math back on Petrov.

The boy smiled after seeing her smile. “Was that all you wanted to ask me?”

“Yes.”

“Ok,” the boy said, looking relieved that the conversation was over. This was why boys were weird. She shook herself mentally and began to leave before she stopped herself. “Good luck with your studies.” With that, she hurried down the hallway.

***

He hadn’t spoken to Yulia in a while due to how busy he was with Eva’s new schedule, it was good to see her. Despite how nice it was to see her, Markus was glad the conversation was over. A few times during their chat, his voice almost cracked as he spoke. Yulia probably didn’t notice, but it sure made him feel self-conscious. Then there was her friend staring at them from down the hall, making the whole thing feel weird and awkward. He wasn’t sure what her friend’s deal was.

He would like to say this was the first time he felt this awkward recently, but it wasn’t. It seemed to happen anytime he had to speak with girls in his age group in class. He never felt like this back on Petrov Station.

At first, he thought it was the newness of being on Eden’s End and being around so many new kids his age, especially girls. It wasn’t like he had much experience talking to girls and there weren’t many of those in the orphanage. Cho and Yulia were the only two he could recall, and they had spent so much time together that they were more like siblings.

The reason for the disparity in adoptions was simple, girls tended to get adopted more often and much later into their childhood than boys did. Yulia would have been adopted a few times before Alex had appeared if she had agreed to it. And this was despite her background. Cho was almost a teenager when she first entered the orphanage, so she had a much harder time initially fitting in. And teenagers rarely got adopted back on Petrov Station. Cho was almost an adult now so getting adopted seemed unlikely for her, but Markus never thought anyone would adopt him, so there was always a chance.

His awkwardness could be from what Eva told him. She said now that he was fourteen, his body would start to change and he would feel things he hadn’t felt before. Whatever that meant.

The growth spurt he had was bad enough, he had grown like an inch and a half since he arrived here. His dad was rather tall, so it was likely he would be as well. It was the other things that he could do without. The acne, the random sweating, his voice cracking at inopportune times. As well as other things he was too embarrassed to talk to Eva about. Maybe he could ask Cho. It would certainly be less awkward than bringing it up with Eva.

Markus sighed and pulled up the information packet he had been studying. Eva had given it to him and it covered everything he needed to do to become a cadet after he turned fifteen. Since there was no naval academy out here, he would need to find a ship that would allow him to serve aboard. That left very few options, but he wasn’t discouraged in the slightest.

As he rounded a corridor, he nearly ran into someone or a group of someones.

“Watch where you’re going, spacer trash,” Charlie stated.

Markus’ Solarian was still rather rough, but he could understand the boy’s tone well enough even if some of the words weren’t clear. The twelve-year-old had never been anything other than mean to him and Yulia as far as he could tell and he couldn’t figure out why. He could have asked the boy but he didn’t like him enough to actually interact with him.

“Don’t stand in the corridor and people won’t run into you,” Markus replied in broken Solarian.

Charlie narrowed his eyes at him. The boy may be younger, but he was big for his age. And he had his three little friends with him.

“What did you talk with Yulia about?” he demanded, earning a look of surprise from Markus.

“None of your business. Now move. I have stuff to do.” Markus tried to push his way through the four boys, but Charlie knocked the tablet out of his hand.

Markus knew a bully when he saw one and the tablet was the last straw, he punched the boy. His attack did little more than anger the boy as Charlie tried to grab him. The pair of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Markus did his best to fight back or at least keep the larger boy from punching him. The other boys tried to help Charlie until someone shouted. Then they took off running.

Someone yanked Charlie off of him and then yanked Markus up as well. They both immediately froze when they realized who had broken up the fight. Markus may not have been at Eden’s End very long, but he knew all about Damien Laront.

“You two have enough energy to throw fists at one another, then you have enough energy to do some work.”

“But my dad expects me home to work the farm,” Charlie whined.

Damien smiled coldly. “Don’t you worry about that, I’ll be having a word with your dad.” Then the man turned to Markus, making him shiver. “And don’t think just because your mother is off the planet that I won’t be contacting her either. Now move. There’s a lot to get done, and I’m not releasing either of you miscreants until I feel you’ve learned a lesson.”

Markus scooped up his dropped tablet and hurried down the hall next to Charlie to keep ahead of Chief Damien.

He swallowed the nerves he felt. Eva was going to be extremely upset when she found out he got into a fight, even if he wasn’t the one who started it. The work that she would give him when she returned would make whatever the Chief of Security had in mind look like a walk in the park, he just knew it. There was no chance she would forget this little altercation either. He had better odds of convincing the Chief of Security not to contact her. When he glanced back at the angry man, he somehow doubted that was going to happen.