"Kana?"
"Shut up."
"Kana!"
"I said, shut. Up. I'm trying to master my advanced monster illusion."
Petra placed her feet on the bottom of the mattress of the bunk above her and pushed up as hard as she could. "Hey, I'm just practicing my levitating."
"You are not. I can feel your feet on my butt."
Petra scowled. "Anyways… You know what today is, right?"
"Absolutely. It's that big exam I've been practicing for all week. And all last week."
"That's not what I meant. It's-"
"Listen," Kana was using her I'm-so-much-more-important-than-you voice. "I'm nineteen. You're nine. Whatever you have is not difficult at all. So get over it and stop trying to draw attention to yourself."
"I am not nine!" Petra was incensed. Surely they hadn't forgotten….
Kana sighed. "Ten, then. You're insufferable. I'm leaving." she climbed down the bunk and stormed out of the room.
As soon as she had slammed the door shut behind her, Lylla sat up in the bottom bunk next to her. "I know what day it is."
Vyda shimmied down from the top bunk above Lylla. "Me too." she sat down next to Petra on the bed. "It's your birthday."
"I'm eleven." she muttered, exhaling.
Lylla squeezed onto the bed. "Happy birthday." she pressed a slip of paper into her hand. "This is from us."
Petra looked down. It was a dessert ration card. Each day they got four to share between the eight of them, and they were supposed to take turns having dessert, but somehow, Petra was always missed. "Thank you…" There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but she was pretty sure she already knew all the answers. Vyda and Lylla were the two youngest of her older sisters, the ones closest in age, and the ones who were never mean even if they weren't usually nice, either. Maybe they wanted to be nice, but were afraid that the others would hurt them, too. She looked down at the dessert card. It was the only thing any of her sisters had ever given her, the only acknowledgement of her birthday that she'd ever received. Next year, it would just be the three of them in this room, after Kana graduated and became a real techeun like Pinar, Prya, Tal, and Urula. Maybe they'd have more moments like this next year, and the year after that when it was just Petra and Lylla. After that… Petra would be alone for six more years before she joined them as a full-fledged techeun again. She pushed the card out of her hand and into the air with her mind before letting it float back down into her palm. She closed her eyes as Lylla wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer.
All three girls froze suddenly. Footsteps. Lylla and Vyda scrambled back into their beds and flipped open a textbook, and Petra stuffed the card into her robe-pocket before pressing her feet against the upper bunk. A scowling Kana opened the door, slammed it behind her, and, huffing, climbed back up onto the top bunk and sat down with a thud, muttering something about Pinar under her breath.
Pinar shoved the door open again. "PETRA! You're late for class again. Mother Ryska has been very lenient to you already, but if you are tardy ONE MORE TIME-"
"Okay, okay. Sorry. I forgot. It won't happen again. I promise." She scrambled out of bed. Mother Ryska's class didn't start for another ten minutes and she'd never once been late.
At dinner that night, she waited for her older sisters to leave before trading in her dessert ticket. The old woman at the counter squinted down at her.
"You look familiar," she muttered, "But I never seen you here before. New?"
"Uh, yeah," Petra didn't feel like explaining that she'd never been able to have dessert before. "Thanks."
She sat back down at the table with a little slice of Baryon-nut Toffee and crunched it down gratefully, staring out at the galaxy. It was the sweetest thing she had ever tasted, which wasn't saying much, but she loved every bite.
"Happy birthday to me," she whispered, looking at her reflection in the darkened space station windows. "Today I'm eleven years old."