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different.
    The musical tones of a piano.
    A teacher playing? Perhaps, but Brooklyn suspects otherwise. She tracks the sound to one of the music classrooms. As it’s a Sunday, no classes are being taught. No one should be in here today—it’s against the rules. She quietly cracks the door just enough to peer inside.
    Risa.
    She should have known. Risa is Brooklyn’s age, but you wouldn’t know it. She seems to exist in a different place from most StaHo girls. And while other kids are terrified of breaking the rules for fear of getting unwound, Risa does whatever she pleases. A lot like Brooklyn—but unlike Brooklyn, Risa never seems to get caught. It’s infuriating.
    And what makes it even more irritating, is that she’s good.
    Brooklyn watches her dainty fingers dancing across the keyboard, playing a piece that seems too complex for two hands. Even though the practice piano is out of tune, Brooklyn finds herself soothed by Risa’s playing, and while part of her wishes that a guard would stomp down the corridor and haul Risa away for discipline, another part of her wishes Risa would just play and play and play.
    Piano—or any other instrument—was out of the question for Brooklyn. She didn’t have the ear or know-how to infuse her playing with passion. In fifth grade Mr. Durkin actually grabbed her recorder and snapped the plastic instrument in half. I felt an overwhelming need to put the poor thing out of its misery, he said, and the other kids laughed.
    But Durkin loved Risa. Risa was chosen for musical enrichment, while Brooklyn was hurled into the mob of kids relegated to “physical refinement.” In other words, they discounted her brain and set out to build her brawn, putting her on track to become a military boeuf. Not that Brooklyn minds the physical focus of her life. She likes sports and strength training, she scores high points in marksmanship—but to know that Risa was seen as somehow better than her still makes Brooklyn stew.
    If it had been anyone else but Risa, Brooklyn might be able to stomach it, but they have a history. A history that goes back nearly sixteen years to their cradle days and exploded seven years later. Perhaps everyone else has forgotten it—perhaps even Risa has—but Brooklyn is not one to let wounds go, no matter how old they are.
    Still, she enjoys Risa’s playing in spite of herself. So she lets the door of the music room stay open a crack and sits beside it, just for a minute or so, listening as Risa performs, taking guilty pleasure each time she stumbles and misses a note in her performance. It’s good to know that little Miss Perfect isn’t so perfect after all.
    Risa ends the piece and begins monotonous scales, and so with Brooklyn’s musical interlude over, she takes the stairwell to the staff offices. Sunday means that the headmaster isn’t in his office, and it’s a good time to snoop. Information is everything. Brooklyn learned that in her intermediate electronic warfare class. But she isn’t using electronics to gather intel now. She will go old-school. Flipping through files, searching the desk, finding information she can use.
    Hearing raised voices, she stalls in the stairwell. Luckily, she hasn’t opened the stairwell door—which creaks badly and is directly across from the headmaster’s office. In small increments she cracks it open, just as she had inched open the music room door to hear Risa play. This time she won’t be hearing a sonata.
    â€œNo more delays, Marshall,” she hears Headmaster Thomas say. “Give me your preliminary metrics now. You have till four thirty for your interim assessments—and I expect a final report one hour after testing tomorrow.”
    Brooklyn holds her breath. A meeting with teachers on Sunday? Even surprise government inspections happen during the week. She shivers, and not just because the stairwell is drafty. StaHo