Nine months before impact

"Who is that slice of pretty?" Eliza said.

Angharad tried not to roll her eyes. No, wait, she could totally do that here. They liked her when she was bitchy, unlike at her last school. Maybe one day she could let them know who she really was.

"Oh, please," Stacey said. "He's skinny."

"I think you mean lean and tasty," Eliza said.

"Thin and underwhelming, like plain lettuce." Stacey bumped Angharad's shoulder. "Katherine, your opinion is required."

Angharad turned to look. "Oh, that's just James." Sure, he was good looking, tall and sharp, grin lit up in the light as his sunglasses reflected the sunset. He leaned against the car like he thought it made him look cool. "He works for my father. He's super annoying. He thinks he gets to have opinions in my direction just because daddy's paying for his MBA."

"I would love to share a building with someone who looked like that," Eliza said.

"That's because your taste sucks. Whatever, he's kind of like an older brother to me. An annoying older brother who actually thinks that outfit works."

Stacey nodded. "His taste is tragic. That jacket is revolting."

"It would look better on my bedroom floor," Eliza said.

Angharad couldn't stop herself from giggling. "You skank. Your dad would kill you."

"What he doesn't know won't ruin my social life." And then Eliza and Stacey high-fived.

Angharad felt warm next to them, in the day's last glow. But she looked back at James, waiting with the car, and narrowed her eyes. She could already feel the threat of the cold night ahead.

"I miss my old driver," she said. "He was so much less annoying."

*

She could already tell he was winding up to say something embarrassing as soon as she slammed her car door shut.

"Little Miss Popular. How did you ingratiate yourself so fast?"

"It's called social skills, James. You should try developing some."

"I'll have you know that potential investors on the wrong side of middle age love me."

She wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. He turned on the radio to some terrible political station and she resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. After all, she was 15 and basically the woman of the house. Totally time to stop.

"Wow, all those ageing widows who want you as their sugar baby. You must be so proud."

"It's called networking. You should learn about it some time."

"I already have. But my version is better."

She tried to ignore him for the rest of the drive. Outside the window the sky still looked hot but darkness edged over the horizon. The street lights were sparking into life, minty-white.

She loved the look of the city at night, the lights over the glittering asphalt highways and gleaming towers of glass more beautiful than the sea of stars above.

"I'll wear you down," James said. "You'll see. You build the robots and I'll sell them. We'll be a great team."

"I don't want to be a robotics engineer," she mumbled. "I want to create beautiful, useless programming languages. But I can learn to sell things and then we won't need you."

"Feisty."

She went back to ignoring him.

*

They took the side entrance into the facility and daddy stood there waiting for them, arms crossed, unimpressed tilt to his eyebrow.

"What took so long?" he asked.

"James is a bad driver," Angharad said, and reached up to kiss her father on the cheek. "I'd get home faster if he didn't do 40 in a 60 zone."

"Go do that assignment you have due." Daddy looked grouchy when he said it, but she knew he wasn't really cranky at her. Just cranky.

"Oh, I'm going to do something way better that will make my English teacher so grateful she'll forget she ever assigned an essay, like last semester."

"As long as you pass your classes I don't care how. Go, do your thing."

James' shuffling steps followed behind her, as she walked deeper into the corridors of the building. "You can't just manipulate your way out of everything."

"Watch me. Or, like, don't. One of the sports teachers keeps harassing Ms Hambly, making her feel bad and stuff. So I'm going to find the evidence that he's scamming on under-age girls and get him removed."

"Stitching some poor, innocent man up like that isn't fair."

She stopped. Swivelled to look up at him. "Innocent? Oh, no, he really does get skeevy at every skinny, vulnerable looking fifteen year old girl he can get five seconds to speak to alone. Including, sadly for him, me. He must be stopped. And he's an idiot who doesn't understand password security, so he's probably stupid enough to be inappropriate in email, too. If you think about it, I'm doing everyone a favour. Also, I already did the essay. Survey's in: the book we're assigned sucks."

She turned back to walk to her room and left him behind in the hall.

*

The next morning daddy drove her in early, and she convinced the librarian to let her in before school officially started for the day. Eliza and Stacey were already used to rescuing her from the library on early mornings, not that she really needed to be rescued.

Stacey seemed really unexcited for PE with Mr Greasy.

"I don't think that's going to be a problem any more," Angharad said, and winked.

"What did you do?" Eliza hissed.

"Oh, me? Nothing at all." But she laughed, anyway.

The hours she waited to see her little extracurricular work come to fruition were tedious. She started to feel like nothing would ever happen.

But when she looked out the window during her ever so boring Accounting class and saw the creep being dragged across the quad by school security, she felt that special feeling that only comes with doing good things for other people.

And when people smiled and said, "Katherine, you're the best," it felt almost not weird to wear a different person's name.

*

Three months after impact

Sophie talked about taking dates to that dance she was organising as Angharad picked at her sludge. The food had not gotten any better in the time she'd been awake. By now even the smell of it was making Angharad feel sick before it even made its way into her mouth.

"Obviously Angharad isn't taking a date because she has a long distance boyfriend, but everyone else should try to get one," Sophie said.

Maybe it was actually the food that was making her sick?

"Men suck," Tabitha said. "I don't want to dance with any of them."

She didn't want to have to do this. "Where's Jin?"

Sophie gasped, theatrically, hand over her mouth and eyes artificially wide. And in a stage whisper, said, "Do you want to dance with him?"

Angharad crinkled up an eyebrow in disbelief. "No. I need to get something from him."

"It's okay if you want to dance with him," Josephine said. "It's only a dance."

Angharad hadn't even noticed Josephine's arrival, she'd been so preoccupied by how gross the food was.

"I wasn't planning to ask your permission to dance with anyone," Angharad said, voice sharp.

She looked around the room, in case someone else had suddenly arrived when she wasn't paying attention. The monk and the priest were playing cards at one table. Good for them? Mac was definitely trying to flirt with Zelko by the food trays with her too obvious hair flip and fluttered eyelash move. Angharad rolled her eyes and looked away.

"If your boyfriend was here and he told you not to dance with someone, what would you do?" Sophie asked.

"Always with the hypotheticals! I'd ignore him. In fact, when James tells me not to do something that makes me want to do it more."

Tabitha looked delighted. "I always knew you and I had a lot in common. We both agree that men are pointless."

"Who needs them?" Angharad asked. "You know what I do need though? A new exercise routine and something better to eat. Like, something that doesn't make me all nauseated just by smelling it."

"I have just the thing," Tabitha said. She leaned across the table and placed a hand over Angharad's wrist. "I have a routine I started when I was recovering from injury. It really helps you slowly build up your strength again without pushing things too fast."

"Awesome. You have just what I need. You should come by my room later today so we can get started."

"Maybe all the girls should dance together instead," Sophie said.

"Definitely. That's way more fun," Tabitha said.

Angharad started to push her seat back and stand up, when Mac came over, collided straight into Angharad's shoulder and knocked her back in the chair.

"Okay, we're all good friends, right?" Mac said to the entire table.

Were they? Angharad hadn't thought she and Mac were that close. But she was willing to roll with it, so she nodded.

"If you thought there was a chance we were all going to die here, would you seize the day and do that thing you really want to do?" Mac asked.

Tabitha's face went blank.

"Nobody's going to die here," Angharad said. "I'm banning it."

"Ah, I think it would be better for me to leave," Josephine mumbled.

Tabitha stood up straight and walked out, even as Josephine slowly shuffled away. Angharad looked around. Was nobody else paying attention?

"Okay, but would you? Or, should I?" Mac asked.

"Um, I guess," Angharad said.

"Okay, great."

Sophie looked completely used to Mac but Angharad felt totally confused. She couldn't help but watch the wreck as Mac bounced up to Zelko, grabbed his face, and kissed him.

He shoved her away.

Nobody else moved. Even the robots were silent.

"I think you have the wrong idea," he said.

Mac made a weird, indecipherable noise. "But you kept flirting with me."

He stepped back. "No."

"That was... Come on, you acted interested."

Sophie leaned in toward Angharad and hissed, "This is very awkward."

Zelko put his hands up. "I already have someone. I'm not looking for anything else."

Angharad finally took her chance to stand up. Then dragged Sophie up to stand with her, because nobody should have to watch this disaster. "Let's go find Tsuyoshi."

"Good idea!" Sophie said.

Mac swung around to point at them. "This was your idea."

"What? No, it wasn't," Angharad said. "I would never tell you to kiss someone in a relationship, and neither would Sophie. That's, like, bad idea number one."

Zelko looked like he was about to start laughing at her. Did he know—? She'd only told Tsuyoshi about misjudging where on Josephine's face to put her mouth. Had he told? Did this mean she could never tell him a secret again?

"But, whatever, I'm not getting involved in your bad ideas," Angharad said, and stomped out.

She bumped into Jin on the way out. Literally bumped into him, but thought quick enough to grab him by the shoulder and drag him away further.

"Don't go in there," she said. "They drove straight at the iceberg and there's not enough lifeboats for everyone else."

"What?"

Mac stomped out the door straight past them, anyway. Angharad winced as she saw the annoying look on Jin's face. He was definitely going to interfere if she didn't stop him.

"Mackenzie and Zelko had an altercation but, whatever, it's over now," Angharad said.

"That bastard! Nobody should be mean to girls," Jin said.

"Not that kind of altercation, okay? She made a bad decision. They exchanged words. The fault was hers but we're all letting it go."

He didn't look pleased. "He should be nice to her, anyway."

"Okay, enough of your benevolent sexism. Let's talk about me." She took a deep breath. "I will eat your stupid crickets."

"I knew you would give in."