Connie trudged on long shadows back toward the warp pad. The sun sat low behind them, turning the strawberry fields into a dark nest of stalks, berries, runners, and buried weapons for her leaden feet to catch on, which made the going even slower. But the Gems behind her didn't seem to mind the pace, barring one loud exception.

"Hey, watch those hands!" Amethyst yelped. Her masterful shapeshifting had created a flatbed wagon big enough to haul back the collected debris that remained of Polarite's equipment. At the rear of the belligerent purple wagon, Garnet and Pearl braced on the back slats to push Amethyst through the rough terrain.

The lithe pale Gem grunted as Amethyst's wheels pushed through another strawberry, slowing their progress with its delectable, agonized gushing. "We wouldn't have to push so hard if you made yourself wheels designed for off-road activity," Pearl huffed.

Amethyst's face, molded into the front of the wagon, twisted itself to look past her spoked wheels so she could glare at Pearl. "How about you be the wagon and I push instead?" she snapped.

The arguments had been coming more and more frequently as the day had waned, and the last of Connie's nerves strained to hold her frustrations silent. Shortly after Garnet has saved Connie from becoming strawberry fertilizer, the two had returned to the landing site to prove Garnet's predictions correct: none of Shard's forces had lingered, but they had left behind the remains of their destroyed cargo. And so, with a brief stop back at the house to rally some help, they proceeded to excavate any trace of Polarite's technology from the site, gathering anything that might give them a clue as to the Gems' whereabouts or machinations. Only scrap remained, but they hoped Peridot might still glean some insight from it.

Steven kept ahead of the wagon to clear as many strawberries as possible from the wagon's path. Connie was meant to be doing the same, but couldn't muster nearly as much energy as Steven had. Her body ached, and her hands were raw from the work, and every inch of her was either dirty, or sticky, or both.

"Almost there!" Steven called as he rolled another melon-sized berry out of the way. "And that's one more for the birds. Or bugs, maybe. Do birds eat strawberries? They eat bugs, so I guess it still works in the end."

With four people pushing, and a little wiggling from Amethyst, they heaved their living cart onto the warp pad. Connie felt tempted to crawl into the wagon just for a chance to sit, though remembering that the wagon was also her friend made her feel weird about the impulse. Fortunately, the semi-weightlessness of warp space pulled them into the sky, easing her full-body ache.

Gravity returned all too soon, bouncing Connie onto the arrival pad with a jolt. She blinked at the interior of the beach house, surprised that they hadn't traveled straight to the farm. "Did we forget something? I thought we were taking this stuff straight to Peridot," Connie said.

Pearl rested a hand on Connie's and Steven's backs to usher them off the pad. "We three are," she said primly. "You two need to eat something and rest. You've been working all day."

Any argument Connie wanted to make was drowned out by the rumble in her stomach. She'd snuck a Protes bar when they'd first returned to the house, but had eaten nothing since. Looking back, she felt silly for not grabbing a handful of strawberry at any point in their excavation or the trip back. How much messier could it have made her to eat one tip-to-stem with her hands?

When Pearl's touch brushed the sheath at her back, however, Connie paused at the edge of the pad. She slung the sheath carefully overhead, keeping the hilt at the top. Once it was removed, though, she pulled the hilt out to show Pearl the broken sword. The rest of it rattled loosely in the sheath. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she said, offering the broken weapon to Pearl. "I should have taken better care of it."

"Goodness!" Pearl exclaimed. "Well, I'm just glad you didn't get hurt when it broke. We'll see about finding you a replacement when we get the chance." She smiled, but made no move to take the weapon from Connie.

"Should we come find you after we eat?" Steven asked.

Garnet shook her head. "After we're done at the farm, we'll be looking for signs of where the other Gems might have gone. They could have left traces for us to follow. You two should stay here."

Connie still lingered at the warp pad's edge, biting her lip. After a moment's hesitation, she stammered, "Garnet? I…I'm sorry I gave us away. We could have gotten killed because of me, and…"

"It's okay. You couldn't help it," Garnet told her. She glanced at Steven, and said, "Take care of each other."

The wagon's wheel stretched forward to nudge Connie off the pad. "Go on, already! I'm not exactly lugging feathers here," Amethyst complained. As Connie trudged back a step, the shifted Gem added, "Ooh, but don't finish all that leftover macaroni and motor oil I left in the fridge. I'm gonna be wheelie, wheelie hungry when I get back." Her spokes jiggled to punctuate the joke.

Pearl's eye-rolling groan followed the three Gems as they vanished back into warp space.

As the light faded and the chime of the pad rang silent, Connie sagged. A long sigh wilted her. She let her head fall to her chest, and the rounded edge of Jade's gemstone pressed coolly into her chin. The temple door across from the warp pad seemed to loom large before her, its five colorful gemstones dark and empty after the flash of the pad was gone.

Movement appeared at the edge of her vision, and she looked up to find Steven offering her a glass of water. He held a glass for himself as well, already half-empty. "It's not easy," he said apologetically, his smile a little sad, "being the one left behind. I get it."

The full glass of water vanished into Connie with one long gulp. "Thanks," she wheezed, fractionally quenched. "So, what now?"

"Now we eat and rest," Steven said. And he turned back to the kitchen to begin foraging in the refrigerator.

Her shoulders sagged a little more. "That's all? We're really not going to help?" she insisted.

His voice came back muffled from the interior of the fridge. "We did help. Now we have to take care of ourselves. Are you thinking sandwiches, or do you want to microwave something? I wouldn't recommend Amethyst's mac and oil. Her pasta always turns out crunchy."

Connie went to the sink and sucked down two more glasses of water. Halfway through another, she noticed the brown fingerprints mottling the sides of the glass. It took another two minutes of washing her hands before she saw the fresh, raw skin of her fingers again. The stark line of where her washing ended at the wrists made her cringe. "I, uh, think I'll take a shower first, if that's okay," she said.

"Sure," Steven called distractedly. He was playing smell-roulette with a host of different resealable containers he'd found at the back of the fridge, trying to decide what among them might still be edible.

Carefully so as to shed as little dirt as possible, Connie tiptoed to the living room and hauled out her footlocker. As she considered her wardrobe, her eyes drifted to the seascape out the window. Sunset had fallen across the strawberry battlefield half a world away, but there in Beach City, the sun still shone through a brilliant blue afternoon sky. She decided on a tank top and shorts since they wouldn't be leaving the beach for the rest of the day.

She was stacking the clothes together for her trip to the bathroom when Steven appeared at her side again, this time with a sandwich in hand. "Hey, what's that?" he asked through a spray of crumbs.

Connie yelped and stuffed the fresh underwear she'd collected from the locker in between her clean shirt and shorts to hide them. Then her horror tripled as Steven found, instead of underthings, a stack of facedown books in her locker. "Wait!" she cried.

But he had already picked up the top book from the stack, turning it over to read the cover. Connie only barely closed her eyes in time to keep herself from seeing it. "Destiny's End? Hey, I haven't seen this in a long time. And you brought the whole series? Awesome!" she heard him say.

"Put it back!" Connie snapped. She cringed at the edge in her tone, and even with her eyes closed, she could feel Steven doing the same. Trying to measure her voice more evenly, she said, "Put it back the way it was, cover-down. Please."

Only once she'd heard the knock and scrape of the faux-leather covers sliding together did she open her eyes, and found exactly the worried expression on Steven's face that she'd been dreading. Worse, he'd taken a full step back from the table. From her.

"Why did you bring your Spirit Morph Saga books if you don't want to see them?" he asked. Then he blinked, and she could see him realizing the true question in front of him. "Wait, why did you bring any books? I thought you had already booked though everything in your house."

"Almost everything," she admitted. When she had told her parents that she had read all of their home's books, it hadn't been a lie. But once she had started booking everything she could, she instantly decided to leave aside her collector's edition of her favorite of all favorite books.

"But why?" insisted Steven, looking confused. "You could remember all of it forever. Lisa, Archimicarus…maybe some of the cake stuff isn't your favorite, but—"

"Because!" Connie snapped. Once more, they both recoiled at her voice's edge, and she covered her mouth until she could blunt her words a little. "Because I want to read them again, and I can't do that if I book them," she explained.

He hung his head sheepishly. "I'm sorry. I guess I don't understand," he admitted.

She struggled for some way to explain it to him. Finally, she asked, "What's two plus two?"

He answered immediately. "Four."

"How do you know?" she challenged him. "Did you do the math in your head? Did you count it out?"

A scoffing chuckle rolled through him. "Of course not. I just know what two plus two is. Is this some kind of school thing?"

"You just knew it," Connie emphasized. "The answer just came to you when you thought about it. That's what booking is like for me. When I read something I've already booked, my brain tries to feed me the entire thing with every time I look at the next word on the page. Over and over, until I'm so sick of it I can't even look at it anymore."

"…oh," Steven breathed.

She wrapped her arms around her stomach and risked a glance at the blank back cover of Destiny's End. "I reread The Spirit Morph Saga every summer break. I used to never let myself read them any other time of the year, just so I could stay up late and go through as much of them at once as I could. The new ones used to come out at the end of the summer, so I'd always want to catch up, and even after the last one, I…" She sighed. "I was hoping I could get my booking power under control so I could actually read them again. Really read them, like I used to."

The but in her voice was evident to both of them. She had already speed-binged a full season of Camp Pining Hearts in just a few five-minute increments with no sign that her booking power could be stopped.

Connie sighed again and picked up her stack of clothes, making for the bathroom. "I'm going to go clean up," she muttered, hurrying through the door to avoid any further conversation.

She closed the door with her whole body, sagging onto it with her head thunking against the wood. A frustrated scream wheezed out of her in a long, long, silent sigh. Her whole body trembled with exhaustion, echoes of the adrenaline that had supercharged her body during the fight. She was embarrassed by her outburst at Steven, ashamed of how she had endangered herself and Garnet, furious at herself for not doing better or being better. It was too much for her to feel at once.

As the breath dwindled out of her, she let her glut of feelings drain into her empty half-hollow. She focused all of it into the void until her heart slowed and her spirit felt blissfully, emptily numb.

The pipes rattled, the showerhead hissed, and steam began to fill the room as Connie let the water run while she peeled herself out of her clothes. Muddy strawberry juice had staked its claim on her, taking its tithing of skin and hair with it as she worked the crusty fabric. Her clothes fell to rest in a pile on the floor, unsalvageable.

Dazedly, she stared at the mirror. The shower had conjured a thick layer of fog over her reflection, but she could still see herself underneath it, still intact, framed with a black halo of hair. And there at her center sat that tiny green speck.

"You were a lot spunkier back on the landing pad. What a disappointment."

Her whole body clenched at the memory of Pyrite's taunt. Eyes, fists, teeth, she tightened until her whole body shook. The black halo surrounding her reflection began to ripple, and she felt the steam in the room whirling around her body. Before she could erupt, she tore sightlessly into the shower and yanked the curtain shut, letting the water pound against her.

Connie scrubbed her skin almost to the bone. The strawberry muck sluiced off of her into a muddy pink swirl at the drain. She dragged shampoo through her long sheaf of hair until her scalp ached. The pain of her rough care trickled into her half-hollow, making it burn bright.

She gathered all of her sad feelings and stuffed them into the bottom of the half-hollow, crushing them to make room for something new. She was sick of feeling sad. Those feelings had wasted their chance to make Jade's gemstone work. Now she would give anger a try instead.

She would train harder. She would master Jade's powers, live up to the responsibility that Jade had entrusted to her. She would protect the Earth and become worthy of Jade's gemstone.

And she would wipe that smug grin off of Pyrite's face while she did all of it.

When she emerged from the shower, the whole bathroom was thick with steam, and the mirror was a solid gray wall. Only a hint of green color pierced the haze. But as Connie watched, it shone brighter. She looked down and found the stone aglow with a corner of Jade's sailcloth emerging from its surface.

It resisted her this time. She had to pull harder than she did before in the heat of battle. But finally the whole sailcloth emerged, fluttering in her hand as she held it up before her. "You're not what I need, but you're a start," she harrumphed to the cloth, savoring the little snarl she could feel gathering in her half-hollow and she fed it her angry dissatisfaction. Then, out of curiosity, she patted at her armpit with the cloth. "Huh. You're not very absorbent, either," she noted, and let the cloth evaporate into motes.

In short order, Connie marched out of the bathroom with fire in her belly, wet hair flopping at her back, and a thick cord of anger winding in and out of her half-hollow. Exhaustion would have to wait: she would tape up her broken saber, or find some old broom handle or other stand-in, and she would train until she dropped. Then she would pick herself up and train more. And if her body hurt, she would wring that pain for every last drop and feed it to her half-hollow.

But her determined march stopped short at the sound of a ukulele on the porch. Some nameless tune wandered the instrument's strings, the kind of song that went nowhere in particular and savored the journey in getting there. She started for the door, curious of the music, but stopped again when she saw a plate on the coffee table.

The smell of tuna salad pulled her closer, and she saw two sandwiches waiting on the plate. Her half-hollow growled, reminding her of all that righteous motivation she had been feeding it so it could feed her in kind. But her stomach growled louder, reminding her of the breakfast she'd lost and the Protes bar it had already burned through hours ago.

Her indecision must have been heard outside, because the ukulele music paused briefly. "Come outside when you're done eating. You can make yourself something else if you don't want tuna, or if you want more," Steven called unseen, his voice cheerily drifting through the screen door. Then the music started again, content to pick up where it left off on its trip to nowhere.

Connie considered herself extremely restrained in that she had only finished one of the sandwiches by the time he had finished speaking. The second sandwich didn't last much longer than the first, giving her only seconds to be curious about his invitation before she heeded his instructions and pushed through the door to the patio.

In lieu of the patio furniture, Steven had chosen to sit on the decking with his back to the house, his legs crossed and his ukulele in his lap. He rested atop a square white cushion, with an identical cushion positioned in front of him, both of the squares having been taken from the couch for his purposes. When the screen door creaked, he opened his eyes and smiled at Connie. "You look a million times better," he said, and quickly added, "Um, not that you looked bad before. You just look like you're feeling better."

Connie could feel the warmth spreading in her cheeks. She tried holding onto that anger, keeping the flow moving in and out of her half-hollow. "What is all of this?" she asked. Then she saw the object sitting on the cushion beside him, and her stomach clenched. "Why do you have that?"

He patted the object beside him, a faux-leather-bound book sitting facedown on the deck. Even with its spine tucked against Steven's leg, Connie recognized the color and shape and knew it immediately: The Unfamiliar Familiar, the first book in The Spirit Morph Saga. "I hope you don't mind that I grabbed this."

She minded quite a lot, and kept her eyes pointed skyward rather than risk booking any part of the volume. "Steven, I told you what happens if I read that," she snapped. Why, after everything she had tried to explain to him, did he think she would want to read? And why now, when the world was in more danger than ever, when Pyrite and the rest of Shard's cronies were out there, plotting and scheming and skulking?

His tone remained pleasantly cool in spite of the heat in her words. "You're not going to read anything," he promised her. "And if you want to leave, you totally can. That's okay too. But I think I know how you can keep your summer tradition going."

"How? Are you going to turn off my brain? I'm not sure if Peridot still has that gadget anymore," she said, not proud of how snidely she sounded, but not altogether unhappy about it either. "Steven, I can't—"

"Do you remember what I said yesterday?" he interrupted her gently. His hand was still poised on the book, but he made no move to lift it. "When I got back from my dad's, before dinner. Do you remember exactly what I said, word for word?"

Frustrated, she gave her memory a halfhearted skim. "I don't know. Something about how your dad tricked you into licking one of the car wash brushes?" she said. It had been funny at the time, but she had no patience for reminiscing, especially about something that had just happened a day ago.

He grinned. "Exactly. When someone just talks to you, you don't automatically book it, right? You have to be reading, or watching. Focused. But if you're relaxed, just talking or listening to someone, you don't book what you say or hear." He patted the book again, and declared, "Well, if you can't read your book yourself, then all you need is someone to read it for you."

She let her gaze drop back to him, surprised. Then she hardened her face, and said, "Steven, we don't have time for this. We should be training. Or strategizing. Or, or…something! We can't just do nothing."

"We're not doing nothing," he said, his smile unfaltering. "We're taking care of each other."

"Steven!" she fumed, feeling her cheeks puff. "Do you remember what Pyrite did to us at the landing pad? She just did it again, but worse! She tossed me like I was nothing. If it happens again, we could die. You could die! I won't let that happen."

A hint of discontent creased his brow. "'We' won't let that happen," he said. Then his brow smoothed and his smile blossomed in full once more. "But part of training is resting. We won't be ready if we're tired and frazzled."

"I'm not frazzled," she shot back, folding her arms.

"You're frazzled," he informed her. "On a scale of One to Frazzled, you're at about an eleven. Maybe even a twelve."

"I…" The anger in her half-hollow pushed its threads deeper into her, demanding that she change into her training outfit and find a sword. But the sandwiches in her stomach felt pleasantly heavy, splitting her resolve down the middle between comfort and motivation. Steven, with his book and his cushion, threatened to be the tipping point. "But…"

"I'm your coach, right?" he reminded her. "And I'm with you on this adventure every step of the way. But it's a marathon, Connie, not a sprint."

Her anger put up a magnificent fight. It tingled all the way down to her fingertips, demanding a weapon. It put jitters in her legs and down her spine. In the end, though, it could do nothing against the power of Steven's smile. So it retracted its tendrils into its half-hollow nest, rumbling, but asleep.

Connie knelt at the edge of the empty cushion. "Okay," she sighed.

He grinned. "Okay," he echoed. "Now, lie down."

She did so, awkwardly sidling her wet hair. Her scalp rested next to his crossed ankles, and she watched his grin widen upside-down. "What now?" she asked.

"Now you close your eyes and do nothing," he said. "If you do start booking, tell me right away and we'll stop. But otherwise, if I do the reading for you, we both get to enjoy the book again. Win-win."

She couldn't help but smirk up at him. "Nobody's read to me since I was four," she admitted.

"Then you're way overdue," he said, beaming. "Are you comfy?"

She shifted on the cushion. "Pretty comfy. If I had known what you were planning, I would have grabbed my pillow," she said.

His brows dropped. "Oh." As he considered her head, his cheeks reddened. "If you want, you could… Um, never mind. I'll go get you a pillow."

Reaching up, she touched his knee to keep him from rising. "What were you going to say?"

His blush spread up to the tips of his ears. "I was going to say that you could use me. My legs, I mean," he admitted, looking away. "I wasn't thinking. It's fine if—"

"My hair's wet," Connie blurted. Steven's blush was truly amazing, because it had somehow spread all the way to Connie's face too. She could feel the heat pouring through her cheeks. "I wouldn't want to get you all soggy. That's all. I mean, if you…"

She could hear him swallow hard. "I don't mind," he mumbled.

As hard as her heart had pounded back in the clutches of her anger, or out of fear as she'd sailed over the battlefield, it seemed to Connie as though her chest might explode as she scooted herself up the cushion to lay her head in Steven's lap. She could feel his muscles shifting to accommodate her. The warmth of him blazed through his jeans, warming her damp hair instantly.

"Good?" he said.

"Mm-hmm," she hummed, not trusting her voice while her insides fluttered.

"Good," he squeaked. Then he cleared his throat and instructed, "Now, close your eyes."

When she did, she heard him shuffling things around. Ukulele music began to play once more, this time tinnily from a source next to them. His phone, she realized. The sound of rifling pages sent a little thrill through her body, and she couldn't help smiling.

"Chapter One: The Morning Thief," he began in a resonant tone, speaking just a little slower than he normally would. "Lisa awoke with a start, the echoes of her dreams still dancing in her mind. The low rumble of thunder murmured through the quiet house."

The words Steven spoke felt familiar, but not with the certainty that came from her booking power. They were familiar, yet delightfully unfamiliar, changed in the cadence of Steven's voice and his choice of emphasis for the way he read each sentence. Pillowed in his touch, she let her favorite story wash over her, feeling half of herself sink into contentment.

Her anger nestled in the other half, in the seething half-hollow where it now took root to grow and seethe out of sight. Today it would lay at rest. But tomorrow? Tomorrow, and many days after, would belong to the anger.