The Weight of the Stars - K. Ancrum Page 0,72

didn’t ask much of her.

She just wrapped her arms around Ryann’s neck and swayed her side to side.

“Thank you for making this easy for me,” Ryann whispered.

Alexandria laughed full and open, then rested her forehead against Ryann’s collarbone.

“No really, I’ve never slow danced with anyone before,” Ryann said seriously.

“Why not?” Alexandria asked.

Ryann shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t think anyone wanted to. With me.”

“I want to,” Alexandria said. “I always will.”

3 HOURS, 18 MINUTES, AND 47 SECONDS

Tomas took James and Charlie home like he promised. He got back just in time to join everyone in cleaning up the warehouse. Blake had already packed his speakers back in his car, but he had come back in to sweep up all the confetti and popped balloons. Ahmed was helping Ryann stack chairs in the corner while Shannon and Alexandria gathered up all the trash.

Ryann rolled her shoulders to loosen them, then began dragging the chairs outside to Tomas’s parents’ van. When she came back inside, Ahmed and Tomas were standing by the radio, looking shocked.

Alexandria dropped the trash bag she was holding and sprinted across the warehouse. She wrenched the volume up, and the room filled with Eferhilde Watts’s warm, rich voice echoing from six billion miles away.

“—Age, both wondrous and quite simple after all. And in this place of noise and silence, of light and darkness, of family and loneliness, of death and life, all that we are is humanity.

“All that I am is a terribly brave small thing, with a terribly brave small life, and a terribly brave love that spans eons.

“All that you are is the tether to that love—as timeless and brilliant as the night sky.

“And all Alexandria is, is the very last thing I did before I turned into a brave small thing, and she’s bigger than the both of us combined, I bet.

“As we step out into the black, as far and wide as hope, and take steps that will always be humanity’s first, I am reminded that I no longer have to wonder, or look back at what was left behind. Because I know who and what I am, and I know where I am going. And I know that when I finally get there, you’ll be coming to join me.

“Because we’ll always wind up at the same place when the sun goes down for good, Raleigh.

“We are all together in this incomprehensible wait.”

The wind blew warm and strong through the skylight, buffeting against them with the strength of an oncoming storm.

“Wow,” Ahmed whispered, his dark eyes glittering. “I think I get it now.”

8 MONTHS

Ryann tightened her tie and ran a nervous hand over her shaved head.

Training had gone as well as expected, she supposed. She was svelte and angular now. She was ready.

Ryann tucked her white shirt into her dress pants and slipped her leather jacket on over her suit. She wouldn’t be allowed to take it with her, but she wanted her friends to see her in it one last time. So they could keep that memory.

Brigitte, her dorm roommate, watched as she got ready. “You look good,” she said. “Like a boy, but a pretty one.”

Ryann huffed a laugh at that. “I don’t think Alexandria will mind.”

She closed her room door behind her and headed down the hallway. Ryann turned past the library and reflexively glanced inside. Roland’s office door was open a crack. She thought about going in to speak with him, but decided against it.

She scanned her ID and took the elevator up to the first floor.

“She’s always late,” she heard James say. “She doesn’t bother to hurry. I always told her it was super rude, but whatever. It’s not like I know anything about—”

James stopped talking.

Ryann stared at them.

James had dyed back his hair to brown from purple and was holding Tomas’s hand.

That was new.

Charlie was standing all by himself. Blake had a tight grip on the back of his overalls as Charlie strained to get away.

Shannon had chopped her golden ringlets into a bob, but she still beamed like sunlight.

Ahmed was six inches taller, evidently having hit a long-awaited growth spurt after graduation.

Alexandria … had shaved her head. Her face was just as sharp and lovely as the first time Ryann had seen it.

Ryann let out a breath and tried to crystallize this image in her mind.

James crashed into her like a freight train, dragging Tomas with him as he screamed her name. Ahmed, Shannon, and Blake followed close behind, adding to the pile. Ryann kissed Charlie and held him