Allies by S. J. Kincaid Page A

corrected absently. Her entire awareness was riveted to that mustard blotch, like it was an alarm blaring right in her ears. “It was the International Mathematical Olympiad .”
    “Fine, okay. Congratulations on your Olympi -ad .”
    Wyatt’s mind flashed over scenarios that might have resulted in that mustard so blatantly smeared on Marissa’s shirt, and she decided Marissa must have eaten something, and glopped on far too much mustard. As soon as she bit down, the mustard dripped out and splattered on her shirt. It explained the shape of the smear; it explained why Marissa hadn’t tried to wash it off yet.
    She needs to wash it off. The thought seemed to compress Wyatt’s head, even as Marissa’s voice chattered on, “. . . don’t even live very far apart. Maybe our moms don’t really like each other . . .”
    Wyatt grew desperate to tell Marissa about the mustard, but she knew it might “cause needless embarrassment,” the way her mother said she tended to do to people. This one time, Wyatt visited her grandmother in her nursing home and informed her that she smelled faintly of urine. She meant it to be helpful so her grandmother would know to clean herself, but her grandmother began to weep.
    She didn’t intend to repeat that scene today. Even if the mustard was right there . . . Just right there in plain sight where Marissa should have noticed it already . . .
    And it would stain .
    “So if you’re a genius,” Marissa complained, casting a look around the garden, “then why don’t you say something smart instead of letting me do all the talking? Come on. I’m waiting.”
    Here it was! Her opening, her moment! Wyatt sucked in a deep breath that made her head spin, and forced herself to meet Marissa’s eyes directly. She managed to hold gazes for a full second before she dropped her eyes to the ground again.
    The words pounded their way out of her, too loud. “There’s mustard on your shirt!”
    Her cousin was silent for several seconds. Then, “What?”
    “Mustard,” Wyatt cried, agitation edging her voice. She made sure to point so Marissa couldn’t miss it. Her words came pouring out, rushed, but such a relief to get out. “Look! It’s right there. It’s so obvious. How haven’t you noticed it yet? You need to go and wipe it off or you’ll have to throw that shirt away. You need to go clean it as soon as you can.”
    Marissa rolled her eyes. “You know, if you want me to go away, you can just say so. You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
    With that, Marissa huffed out a breath that fluttered tendrils of her dark hair, slid off the bench, and walked away from her. Wyatt found herself alone again with the solitary bench and the overhead trees, wondering why people always got upset with her when she tried to help them. Confusion and a sense of hopelessness swirled through her.
    It was a familiar sensation.
    She understood numbers, but human beings were strange, mysterious entities whose actions seemed arbitrary and chaotic—puzzles with pieces that never quite added up to the logical whole. Whenever Wyatt interacted with them, she felt like a broken limb at the wrong angle, entirely out of place. Things that interested her bored them; things that interested them perplexed her. She invariably said something that she wasn’t supposed to, and then they left, angry at her, and never talked to her again.
    That was why she avoided people. They were irrational, strange. They didn’t seem worth the bother.
    She pulled her legs up to her chest and hunched down, hoping no one else would spot her, no one else would approach. She never truly got lonely, after all. She only felt right when she was completely alone.
     
    W YATT HADN’T INTENDED to join the Intrasolar Forces.
    Her mother spoke with the recruiter who assured her a boarding school–like environment would develop Wyatt’s social skills and “utilize her full potential,” and she was sold. Her father’s old college