Newton's Second Law:

Force equals mass times acceleration. F=ma.

________

I think my liver is gonna explode.

No, really. I'm not joking.

You think I'm joking.

You asshole.

No, I'm not. Because as of right now, my entire abdomen feels like someone just rearranged all my organs several times over and then left me there to unwind my small intestine from my kidneys.

Is that anatomically correct?

I don't care. Who cares? My liver is gonna explode, I don't have time for nitpicking human biology details.

We were currently suffering in the beautiful glow that was Monday morning conditioning. Core conditioning, that is. Conditioning of the weakest part of my body that should really be stronger considering I play pitch but I never relied much more on my muscle than I did my whip-fast impulse. I called it adaptation.

I did fine without a good core. Let me be without a good core. This is a free country. I have a right to a weak core. That was in there, right? All people reserve the unalienable right to completely suck at sit-ups.

If not, Thomas Jefferson has failed this country for the hundredth time since he wrote that damn thing.

"Briar," Coach said sternly.

"Yes?" I said, slightly muffled.

She sighed. "Get up. You're gonna swallow a worm."

"Good."

Coach grabbed me by the back of my shirt and hauled me to my feet, sighing heavily.

"I see we have a weak core on our hands," she said, looking me up and down.

The team snickered, to my chagrin. I huffed.

"Thanks, Coach," I muttered.

"No problem. Now quit moping and get to the sit ups."

"I know how to sit up just fine, I don't need to practice it," I objected.

She stared, then sighed heavily. "I don't get paid enough for this," she muttered. "Come on, I won't ask again. Get a partner and get in line."

"Aren't you in one of the higher income tax b--"

"Get a partner, Black."

I slumped, but followed her directions anyway, muttering a few choice words under my breath. Early morning fog provided us all with a scenic view of APU's light disk rink, cold and barren and, for once, relatively quiet. Mondays weren't all bad, considering my only classes occurred near afternoon, but rather than sleeping in, the price of elite light disk status brought me here. What have I done to deserve this?

Don't answer that.

The rest of the Hunters were doing far better than me. But it wasn't so much the ache in my core or the gloomy morning that was plaguing me as much as it was the faint scent of strawberry banana humiliation that carried itself everywhere Heather or Raj went. Everyone else had either gotten the memo, or took the atmosphere's hint, and conditioning had been horribly silent since it started.

Until now, of course.

Cole and Theo had partnered up, and Kate had taken Heather. Because I had great luck, obviously. Which left one person to be my option.

Raj stood alone, eyes turned downwards. Her hair was straightened today and pinned in a perfect, sleek ponytail atop her head. She looked towards me at my approach.

I heaved a breath. After what happened yesterday, we had avoided each other for majority of today's practice and I was hoping to do that for the rest of my days. But by my usual fortune, life (and Coach) had other plans. Thanks, Coach.

I know Theo said she didn't mean it, but whether she meant it or not didn't matter. If she was willing to say that shit just to fit in, I wasn't going to be a part of it. I had better things to do than be liked.

"Briar—"

"We're partners," I said blankly. "Come on. I'll hold your feet first."

She took that with a hesitant nod, lying down on her back and putting her hands behind her ears. I held her feet and Coach echoed for us to start.

One.

Two.

Three.

The sky was darker today and some officials even said it might rain, but we all knew how highly unlikely that was. And even if it did rain, most of the time we had to go inside because of its pollution levels. I remember watching an old movie with my brother that practically took place in the rain.

Difficult to imagine that now.

Maybe not on Pax, said a thought.

Definitely not on Pax.

Four.

Five.

Six.

I tried not to look at her shoes, pristine and unmarred. Money had never entered my mind as much before this team, and I'd been on it less than two weeks. Was this what rich people did to you? If so, I could see why G was so freaked out.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

"Hey, Briar," Raj began.

I would much rather punch my head into a wall than talk to you, is what I wanted to say.

Instead I said, "Hey."

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

She bit her lip. "I'm...I'm really sorry," she said quietly.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

Something made me doubt the sincerity of that. So I didn't reply.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

Sixteen.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

"I shouldn't have said that stuff," she went on. "It was...inappropriate of me." She paused. "But I never meant to push you into that guy, that was an accident. I promise."

"Yeah," I said.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

Twenty one.

"Moneda isn't that bad," she continued. "I guess I—"

"Am not used to it?" I muttered.

She winced.

Twenty two.

Twenty three.

Twenty four.

"I didn't mean to say it like that. So mean, that is. It was rude of me," she said. She sat up, stopping her rounds, so I angled my gaze to count Heather's sit-ups next to us, not daring to look her in the eye. "And you're better than it all anyway."

You're different. You're not like them. You're better than the gutters because you make sure we don't have to see it all the time.

She didn't have to say it. But I replied, "Yeah." Because mustering up anything more would take too much energy for too early an hour.

Twenty five.

Twenty six.

Twenty seven.

"You're a great player," she added. "And really fun to hang out with. That matters more than which estate you belong to."

Twenty eight.

Twenty nine.

Thirty.

Easy to say it. It's always easier to say good things than be good. If they were one in the same, we'd all be saints on the church walls right now.

Thirty one.

Thirty two.

Thirty three.

"So...I'm really sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean to be so..."

"Rude?" I muttered.

Thirty four.

Thirty five.

Thirty six.

"Really...rude," she repeated. "You're new with us. I don't want you to get that impression of me or anyone here."

I sighed. It was probably in positive points for Pax, but I couldn't blame her for that. Anything nice anyone did these days was in effort to get there. I didn't have to worry about it too much because of my plan—don't with that look, it's not like it's not allowed to give up your spot. They put it in the announcement that you were given 24 hours to hand it over—but I knew she and others did. And as easily as I could have held it over her and shoved it down her throat, I knew if I wanted any luck with getting along with this team, or Theo, I'd have to discard the pettiness for once in my life.

You couldn't expect too much from aristocrats. Theo had a point after all: different worlds, different lifestyles. Asking her to give a real apology and understand was like asking a whale to learn to walk. Fruitless and likely more trouble than it'd ever be worth. So channeling my inner Henry, I just nodded and sighed and pretended all my contempt escaped with it.

Thirty seven.

Thirty eight.

Thirty nine.

"You're forgiven," I said.

She lit up. "Really?"

I shrugged. "I say shitty things, too. Just swallow your venom next time."

Forty.

Forty one.

Forty two.

She laughed at that, her bubbly persona popping back into her. In a snap of an instant, the corroded face from yesterday became hidden behind a thousand layers of welcoming and thank you and please and sweet. The twist only re-spelled the same mantra.

Different worlds. Different lifestyles. Different secrets.

"I think I'll get indigestion," she said.

I sewed on a grin. "Just drink some ginger ale. It's what I do."

We both laughed at that.

Forty three.

Forty four.

Forty five.

"So wise," she said. "Hey, I'll make it up to you."

"That never ends well," I said.

"No, trust me. Hey, Theo is tutoring you now, right? Tomorrow?"

Of course he said something. "Yes. Why?"

"Let's go shopping after," she said.

"Shopping?" I repeated. "Physically shopping?"

"It'll be fun! Very old fashioned of us."

"Exactly. Very old-fashioned. Where do you find these places? People haven't had walk-in stores for decades."

"It's in the east part of the north, B," she said. "We'll go with Theo. He needs to replace his boots anyway."

"Since when did I even say I was going—"

"Since we're teammates that need to bond," she said.

Forty six.

Forty seven.

Forty eight.

"No way," I said. "I can't shop in the north part of town. I can't even afford a beanie."

"I'll pay," she said, as if whatever conversation we had just had before this didn't exist. "I've seen your clothes, I'm not letting you strut around in that."

"What's wrong with my clothes?"

Forty nine.

Fifty.

"Switch!" Coach called.

"If you don't make me do fifty then I'll let you dress me in whatever you want," I quickly said.

Raj held out her hand and smiled. "Deal."

"What the hell happened to you?"

I ignored G, stumbling to my seat and clutching my mid-section, groaning. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. Fuck core. Fuck Raj. Fuck Coach. Fuck it all.

"Light disk," I muttered.

"Take a disk to the stomach?"

"I wish," I snapped, tapping my tablet. I saw the distinct logo of a mink appear for a split second before my desktop opened up, which I was only noticing now after Raj and I's argument. "We had core conditioning yesterday and I'm feeling the consequences."

She smirked. G was sweet beneath all her sarcasm and overachieving anxiety, but it took a special shovel to get to it. My abdominal soreness was not one of those special shovels. Which, really, it should be, but G was a stone cold bitch sometimes.

"You'll finally get some muscle," she said.

"Shut your face," I muttered, fishing into my pocket and pulling out a sugar stick. "I've had enough taunting for a week."

Her eyes narrowed and newly pink hair fell in front of her eyes. "What's that?"

"My only hope."

"Briar," she snapped. "Do you know what'll happen to you if you're caught with red hornet on school grounds?"

"Keep your pretty school girl ass away from my red hornet," I hissed.

"Briar."

I chopped down some of the rocky candy. "It's the most mild form of it," I pointed out. "Stop worrying."

"You said you quit."

"I said I tried to."

"Briar, we talked about this."

"Bueno, Mami, lo siento," I muttered.

"I'm just trying to keep you from wasting your life on drugs," she snapped.

"It just helps me calm down, okay? A mild head rush," I said. "It's like medicine."

"Unprescribed medicine."

"But medicine nonetheless," I pointed out.

"It's not medicine," she snapped.

"Your face isn't medicine."

A sharp ring made us whip our heads to the front. Miss Opal stared at us, annoyed. Robots had too many human-like emotions and I was not here for it.

"Briar and Genevieve," she said. "Please stop talking or I will change your seats for the rest of the semester." She pointed at the board. "Briar, I hope you were listening."

"Why does she always pick on me?" I whispered.

G smirked. "Because at least I do well on the tests."

"Nerd."

"Just answer."

I sat up, lowering the stick and squinting at the board. Miss Opal pressed the share button and it appeared in front of me on my screen. I hummed.

"Newton's...second law," I said.

"Correct. What is it?"

"An equation."

"What's the equation, Briar?"

You're the robot teacher with all of human knowledge stuffed in your brain, why don't you know the damn equation?

"Force equals something times mass."

"Mass times acceleration," she corrected. "Good. Please pay attention next time."

"Right on it," I said, then turned my head down and pulled my hood over my face.

Before I could even close my eyes, a jolt rattled me awake. My head popped up and I whirled around.

Theo lowered his foot, eyes angled on a screen beside him. His mouth was curved in a slight smile though and I glared.

"Thanks," I muttered.

"Anytime."

"You're an asshole."

"An asshole that's keeping you awake. First part of my job as a tutor." His grin was dimpled and I hated it.

Miss Opal spoke up again. "Briar. Theo. Stop talking."

I turned to face the front. G nudged me.

"Tutor?"

"Say more and I'll rip your hair out."

"Your arms would break with the effort."

"Whatever."

"A tall, cute tutor meets struggling light disk boy. Will the stars align and—"

"—punch struggling light disk boy's best friend in the face? Find out in this stunning novel of a hundred pages of uncensored rage."

She snorted. I waved her away, chomping the sugar stick again.

"It'll be simple," I said. "It's just a tutor session."

"Sure, B," she said. "Sure."

Never mind. It's not simple. It's so not simple.

Theo tapped the screen in front of me. "I promise it's not that complicated," he said.

I shook my head. "Lies. Lies upon your tongue."

"It's middle grade math, I promise you can do it if you just tried."

"I barely passed middle school! The principal only let me go because I did well in robotics!"

Theo pointed at the equation, scooting next to me. We were sitting at the back of Miss Opal's class, since study hall was too far for me to walk to. Weak core, remember? I didn't appreciate Theo's unimpressed look when I told him so.

He hummed. "Okay. Break it down then into sections."

"Sections?"

He paused. "Think of it like...cutting pan brownies. You can't eat the whole piece at once right? So you have to break it up and eat it little by little. Same with this. Cut the brownies." He gestured at the first few numbers. "You have these few numbers so all you need to do is substitute them in the equation and then solve for these unsolved variables. Then you need to use those variables in this equation for circumference and put it in the table to use for the three other equations of diameter and volume in the next two planets."

"You had a good thing going and then you lost it," I said.

He grinned, did some sort of face that made me guess he was thinking about how to dumb down basic math, and then nodded.

"Okay," he said. "You like robotics?"

"Sure."

"Well, you have to do math in robotics right?"

"It's not guessing math," I said. "This is guessing circumference and guessing diameter and using scientific notation for god-knows-what kind of planet this or that and estimating everything."

"Then make it definite," he said. "Stop thinking that this is a ballpark and just make it definite."

"Then what? It still asks for all these indefinite answers and equations."

He bit the inside of his cheek. "Okay," he said. "Okay. Here. Let's take brownies—"

"You really like brownies."

"Who doesn't? Anyway, let's take brownies. You have to put in certain ingredients to get those brownies right? Certain instructions. That's what this is. You have your...butter, sugar, eggs, and chocolate."

"Brownies don't just consist of—"

"Let me do my example," he said as he gestured at the screen. "You have your instructions on what to do with those ingredients." He pointed at the equations.

I hummed, but did the math anyway.

He grinned when I finished. "You're quick."

"It's the starting to do it that gets me," I said.

Theo laughed, then gestured at the rest of the problem.

"Okay. So you finished making your brownies. Now you have to give them to a bake sale. Let's say the bake sale has a preference for the relative size and quantity they want." He gestured at the next few equations. "So now you have to measure the cut of those brownies with—" The circumference equation lit up beneath his finger. "—this equation."

I did the math. He nodded. "Great." I glared at him. He frowned. "What?"

"I don't like that you know what you're talking about."

He chuckled at that, grinning. "It helps you."

"Exactly," I muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing, brownie."

He laughed again before tapping the screen again to continue. The dimples on his cheeks disappeared, pale skin smooth again. I almost missed it.

Almost.

I guess it was just nice talking with someone who wasn't a natural asshole. G was great, but she was sharp-tongued and sarcastically cold just like I was, and with the AE happening this year, she was unbearably uptight about everything. Martinez was nicer, more vibrant, more loose, but we only really talked on the phone since he went to different school now.

Henry was serious. And if he wasn't serious, he was busy. And if he wasn't busy, he was lecturing me. Heather and Raj only hung out with me during practice, too. Cole was fun but he was a jackass when you picked away the carefree charisma.

Theo was just...calm. Nothing was intense with him. He was the kind of person you could do absolutely nothing with and never feel bored, or at least I figured so. It was somewhat unsettling; how calm he always was. How calm everything turned with him.

Very punchable.

We finished the rest of the lesson, with a myriad of brownie analogies may I add. Which wasn't great for me because even with the red hornet in my system, I was willing to jump a toddler for a brownie at the end of it.

He walked with me down the steps of the forum before Miss Opal stopped us in the middle of our conversation about whether double chocolate brownies were better than blondies.

(Correct answer is double chocolate brownies. It's always the correct answer. Obviously.)

"Mister Maize," she said. "Thank you for helping out Briar."

He nodded and smiled. Stupid dimples.

"Of course," he replied, voice shiny and slick. "Happy to."

"Briar, I expect you to raise your grade to a C by the end of this," she said.

"Of course," I said. "Happy to."

Theo elbowed me and I grunted, feeling the sharp impact against my sore abdomen.

"I mean, I'll try, thanks, Miss Opal."

"I told you not to call me that," she said as we turned around and headed for the exit.

"It's an endearment, ma'am!" I called back, and she sighed. Who knew robots could sound so tired?

We walked out onto campus and turned the corner, passing a group of giggling girls with smoke rods and projections of some male DJ on their phone. One girl chattered about his next concert, but we were past them before I found out where it was.

"Why do you call her Miss Opal?" Theo asked. "No one else calls her that but you."

A gang of guys sped past us, one shouting at the other about past due cubes he had won over a bet. I stepped back to avoid getting crushed against the pillar.

"She wears that opal necklace," I said, falling back into step next to him. "Calling her a number seems degrading."

"I don't think robots can be degraded."

"Just because she's not a person—"

"No," he said, laughing. "No, I mean, they're smarter and more capable than any of us. I don't think we have the ability to really degrade them."

"We built them."

"Someone built us, too," he said. "We're still pretty hard to degrade with all our pride."

I raised a brow. "You're Christian?"

Religion had become rare in the world after the War of 2121, which wiped out nearly three fourths of all religious people. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and so on. You name it, they killed it.

He shook his head. "Oh, no. I'm just talking about like...moms."

The dark memory of history disappeared as I laughed. "You're kind of weird, Theo."

"You're kind of weird, too."

"Thanks."

He grinned. "Hey, I heard Raj is taking us shopping."

"21st century style," I said, snorting. "I don't know where she finds these places."

Theo slung an arm around my neck and pulled me close to him as he raised his arm. "It's called the internet. Very fascinating place."

I scoffed, craning my neck up. Stupid tall people with their stupid tall bodies.

"Sounds fascinating," I said dryly as he released me from his grip. We rounded the last corner to the exit, letting scans pass over us and our bags for a few seconds at the entrance before we walked out. "You're not actually for this, are you?"

Theo sucked in a sharp breath, taking his bag from the glass checking case as a green light lit up above it. "I mean, your wardrobe does kind of need an update."

"That's negative points right there," I said. "Insulting someone's wardrobe is wrong."

He laughed. "My apologies."

I didn't like how that sounded somewhat sincere.

A loud ring made us turn around before I could comment just that.

You're kind of weird.

Which was the biggest understatement I'd ever said.

(hi there vote if you would like. Thanks, lovely)