Part 3: I'll Be There For You
"Hey Arin, what are you looking at?"
Arin looked up as her best friend Zoe walked into their room. "Someone sent me a note," she explained, showing Zoe the compupad.
Arin, I love you. Please go with me to the dance. From ???
"Wow," Zoe said. "I wonder who it's from."
"I don't know. The sender is anonymous. It's been routed through several different identities." She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. It's probably just a joke."
"What makes you say that?" Zoe said, astonished.
"Well, I'm not pretty or popular," Arin said quietly. "Who would want to go to the New Year's Eve dance with me?"
Zoe noticed some movement from the corner of her eye. She saw a dark shape creep from the doorway, but it was gone before she could see who it was.
'I wonder...' she thought.
*****
Zoe put her tray down at the table with a thump. Zac and Barrett looked up at her in surprise. With the exeption of the two of them and Zoe and Arin, none of the kids from their class ate lunch together.
"What are you doing here?" asked Barrett.
"I need to talk to you guys. Scram," she told the other boys at the table.
Obediently, they stood up with their trays. Zoe wasn't particularly impressive physically, but she was wiry and tough, and none of them wanted to get on her bad side, especially when she was as determined as she was now.
"Okay, you've cleared out our friends," Zac said irritatedly. "What do you want?"
"Just a second." She scanned the room for a moment before standing up, cupping her hands around her mouth, and yelling, "Rich, come here!"
Rich's eyes narrowed at her. Normally he would have ignored her, but she seemed particularly focused today. He walked over, ignoring the whistles and catcalls that followed from his friends.
"Okay, what's up?" Zac repeated. "Unless you're waiting for Arina and Gianluca too. Speaking of which, where is Arin?"
"She's in the library. And no, we don't need to wait for them. It's kind of about them." She took a deep breath. "Arin would kill me for telling you guys this, but she got a message today. An anonymous message. Asking her to the dance."
"Big deal," Rich scoffed. "Who cares?"
"Who could have sent it, though? I mean, who has the knowledge to send a message without the automatic sender's address popping up?"
Barrett shrugged. "No one, unless...you mean Gianluca sent it?" he asked incredulously. "Gianluca asked her to the dance?"
"Think about it, though," Zoe insisted. "I mean, we saw him *kiss* her. I hacked into the main computer--"
"Oh wonderful, now we're all going to be expelled," Rich groaned.
"--and I managed to find his file," Zoe continued, ignoring Rich.
"What did you find?" Zac asked.
"Nothing."
"Nothing? I know I'm not an experienced hacker like you, Zoe," Barrett said, "but come on. Shouldn't you have been able to get into his files?"
"It's not that," she explained. "His information is all classified."
The kids were stunned. Classified information was things like military positions and weapon's information, not someone's name and birthday.
"So you didn't get anything?" asked Zac.
"I only got one thing. The only things that weren't classified were basic information: height, weight, home, etc. Except he doesn't have a home address. It's blank. That made me curious, so I started looking through the general info file for stuff about him before he came here. All I could find was a previous address, which is a psychology clinic in New York."
"Weird," Barrett commented. "Why would he live in a psych clinic?"
"Maybe he's crazy," suggested Rich.
"Oh come one," scoffed Zac. "He's kind of weird, but he's not crazy."
"Well, whatever the explanation is," Zoe said, "we need to get to the bottom of this." Seeing Rich's incredulous expression, she continued, "Come on! He's in our class. We're supposed to work together. How can we do that if we don't know anything about him?"
"Zoe's right," Barrett said. "We need to try to get to know him. For better or for worse, we're a team."
"Then it's settled," Zac said. "When class starts, we'll start getting to know Gianluca."
*****
But after lunch, when they went to class, Gianluca continued to ignore them. They tried to talk to him, but all they got was a glare from Commander Collins and an admonition to be quiet and listen for once.
After class he left before they could talk to him.
"It's like he's avoiding us," Barrett commented.
"Maybe he is," offered Zoe. "Maybe he's embarrassed about the note."
Just then, Arin walked over to them, her eyes shining. "You guys," she exclaimed, "I got another note."
Arin, You are the most perfect person I have ever met. Please go with me to the New Year's Eve Dance. I love you. From ???
"It's so romantic! You don't think it's a joke, do you?" she asked, worry evident on her face.
"Of course not," Zoe said. "I just wonder who it's from."
Arin was looking down at her compupad, so she missed the look that the others shared. "Well, whoever it is, I hope he tells me soon. I'm leaving soon."
"Where are you going?" asked Rich.
"I'm going back to Luna Colony to visit my parents. They were so worried after the thing on our survival mission that I promised to come and see them during the winter break."
"When are you coming back?" Zoe asked.
"Oh, I won't be gone long. I'll be back on New Year's Eve."
"Have fun," Zoe said.
"Thanks." Arin smiled. "I have to go pack. I'm leaving tonight. I promised my parents that I would leave right after our final exams."
Once she left, Zoe turned to the others. "This is perfect. Arin will be gone until the dance. We have plenty of time to confront Gianluca."
"Why do we even need to?" Rich asked. "I mean, if he wants to go out with her, that's his business."
"Something's wrong with him," Zoe insisted. "I've never even seen him acknowledge that other people are around, and then suddenly he's kissing Arin and sending her love notes."
"Maybe you're right," Zac said. "He is acting differently. Why don't we drop off our stuff, and then we can go find him."
But when they reached the boys' room, all of his things were gone. Not that he had a lot of stuff, but the things that he had brought to the Starcademy--some clothes and a compupad--were gone.
"Where could he be?" asked Barrett.
The four students ran out of the room and straight into Commander Collins.
"Commander, where is Gianluca?" asked Zac.
"I don't know," she said. She punched some buttons on her compupad. "It says that he went back to New York for the break."
"Thank you."
They ducked back into the boys' room. "So now what do we do?" asked Rich.
"We can go down and see him on Earth," Zoe said eagerly. "None of us were planning on going home, right?"
The others shook their heads. They only had a week during which to go home, so most students decided to just stay at school.
"Great. Then let's go. I'm from New York, so we can say that we're going to visit my family."
Barrett looked at Zac for confirmation. He nodded. "We have to do this," Zac said. "We need to talk to him. We're a team, and if something is going on with him, then it affects all of us."
*****
Thanks to Zoe's expert knowledge of New York, they easily found the Greenwood Psychiatric Clinic. Getting in proved to be no problem either. As soon as they said that they wanted to see Gianluca, a young woman let them in.
"Come in," she said with a smile. "You must be his friends."
The others exchanged a look. "Um, yeah, we are," said Barrett.
"We really need to see him," added Zoe.
"First I need to talk to you." Her smile evaporated, replaced by a much more serious expression. "How much do you know about Gianluca?"
"Not much," Zac admitted.
"I thought so." She paused before continuing. "This is a long story, but I think that you need to hear it." She had led them to her office, and she sat down, gesturing for them to do the same.
"I'm sure that you have heard of Astro Industries, the computer company. Well, many years ago a young couple owned it. They were extremely wealthy, and they lived in a beautiful apartment and went to all of the best parties.
"Then one day they died in a hovercar accident. They had no close relatives, and so dozens of people fought over who would inherit the fortune. The case lasted several years before they finally reached an agreement.
"For the first time in two years, their apartment was opened. And, to everyone's shock, they found, hidden away in a room at the back, a five-year-old boy." She stopped for a moment before continuing. "He had been alone in their for two years. The room was filled with machines to dispense food and water, so his physical needs were met, but he had not seen another human being in two years.
"No one knew what to do with him. They finally managed to track down a record of his birth. It wasn't much, just a record of a baby boy born in New York whose fingerprints matched the boy's. Beyond that, though, no one knew what to do with him, especially because he wouldn't talk. He was fine physically, but he simply refused to talk. So they gave him to us.
"He lived here until he left for the Starcademy, so that would be...let's see, about eleven years. During that time, he never talked. He never looked at us. He never touched us, and he never wanted to be touched. We took care of him as best as we could, though. We tested him, and his IQ was off the charts. We gave him a compupad so that he could learn how to read and write, and he just kind of went off on his own. He studies everything that he can get his hands on. And he's an excellent engineerer. He just seemed to live in his own world...until he arrived here yesterday."
"What do you mean?" Zoe asked.
She smiled. "He *talked*. He talked to us. I couldn't believe it. He's very upset. He's been in his room since yesterday, sitting very still staring at the wall. But he talked to us."
"What did he say?" asked Barrett.
"When we saw him, we asked him why he was there. He hadn't told us that he was coming. We didn't expect him to answer, but he did. He said, 'I need help. I need my friends.' We didn't know who he meant by his friends, but then you showed up." She smiled at them.
"We're glad to help in any way that we can," Zac said. The others nodded their agreement.
"Good. Let's go. I'll show you to his room."
As they walked down the hall, Zac asked, "I don't understand one thing. How could his parents hide his existence? Was it some kind of conspiracy?"
"I don't know. When you're rich enough, I guess you can pretty much do what you want. The records were there; they just lacked a lot of information, like his parents, where they lived, and things like that. My guess is that someone must have helped them to falsify the records."
Zac looked grim, probably, Zoe thought, thinking about his brother. She realized how little her classmates knew about each other. They always ignored each other outside of class. She looked at Barrett and Rich, and she wondered about them. What were their secrets? And what about Arin? They truly were strangers, and for the first time, Zoe realized that she did not want them to be.
*****
When they reached his room, Gianluca was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly into space. No, Zac thought, not blankly. He was looking at them. His eyes were dark, like looking into a black hole, but Zac could detect humanity in them. Was it fear? Sadness? Something was radiating out of his dark eyes, but Zac couldn't tell what it was.
"Hi Gianluca," Zoe said.
"Hi."
It was such a small thing, that one whispered syllable, but it stunned his classmates.
"How are you?" asked Zac.
No answer. But Gianluca didn't look like he was on another planet like normal. Instead he looked withdrawn, as though he were trying to hide from them.
"We wanted to be sure that you were okay," Rich explained. "So are you?"
"Wh-where is Arin?" He looked alarmed.
"She's at home on Luna Colony," Zoe told him.
Gianluca seemed to relax. "Good."
"Don't you want to see her?" Zoe asked.
"No-not now. Not here. Not like this." His eyes scanned his room, so bare of any personal items. It looked kind of like a hospital room, only without the medical equipment. It had the same sterile, impersonal feeling, though.
"Um, Arin got some notes asking her to the dance," Barrett said. "Do you know who sent them to her?"
He nodded. "I did." He seemed to be struggling within. "I love her," he said, so softly that the others barely heard him.
"She likes you too," Zoe said.
"She does?"
"Yeah." Zoe seemed surprised. "Why did you think that she kept talking to you, even though you ignored her?"
Gianluca shook his head. "I heard her. I was scared."
"Of what?" Zac asked.
"I want her to like me. But it-it is hard for me to-to talk to people. It is so much easier to be alone. But with other people, it is harder."
"What's harder?" Barrett wanted to know.
"This. Talking. I understand things. Computers. Words. Not people. Not feelings."
"It is hard for you to understand what we mean when we say things," Rich said.
"Yes." Gianluca's soft monotone grew slightly louder. "I understand words, but they have so many meanings. And it is not only talking. People touch each other. They look at each other. All of these things have meaning. I do not understand them."
"It's okay," Zoe said. "The doctor told us about your parents."
Gianluca stiffened.
"Do you remember them?" Barrett prodded.
"Yes. I remember they were gone a lot. I had to stay in the room. I could not leave. They hated me. Then they stopped coming to see me. I was alone. The machines did things. They gave me food and water. Then people came. I was surrounded." Gianluca's voice seemed slightly panicked. "Lots of people wanted to see me. They tested me. They asked me questions. I was scared. They were angry. They left me here." The panic receeded, replaced by the same soft monotony. "They took care of me here. I was safe."
"The doctor seems to care about you a lot," Rich commented.
"Do you care about me?"
"Yes," Zoe said emphatically. "You are one of us, Gianluca. You are our friend. We will always take care of you and help you when you need it. That's what friends do. They help each other. They care about each other."
"You are my friends. I care about you," Gianluca said.
"We care about you too. We'll help you," Zac told him. "No matter what, we will always be a team. We will always help each other."
Gianluca's mouth turned up slightly. For the first time in over eleven years, he smiled.
*****
"Oh, isn't it beautiful?" Arin gushed.
Zoe smiled over her head at Rich, Zac, and Barrett. They returned her grin.
"Come over here. I think I see the guys," Zoe said, steering Arin over towards them.
"Hi g--" The words died in her throat as she stood face-to-face with a nervously smiling Gianluca.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment. Both of them were very dressed up; Arin wore a silvery dress that matched her eyes, and Gianluca wore a tuxedo. (They had bought it last night, when Zoe realized that he had nothing to wear to the dance.) Arin appeared totally dumbstruck. Gianluca simply looked shocked and nervously happy.
"Hello, Arin. Would you like to dance?"
She just stared at him. "Yes. I'd love to."
The two of them stepped out onto the dance floor.
"They look cute together," Zoe commented.
"Who would've thought that Gianluca would be the only one of us to get a date?" asked Rich.
Zoe thought about that for a moment. "Okay, Rich. Do you want to dance?"
For the first time since they had met him, Rich appeared speechless. "Sure," he said.
"Well, I guess that leaves you and me," Barrett said.
"Yeah. Well, think of all that we did this week," commented Zac. "We helped Gianluca all week. No wonder we didn't have time to get dates."
"We made a new friend, though."
"Not just that," Zac said. "We got to know Zoe and Rich better too. Pretty soon we'll be as good friends as the old Space Cases--you know, Harlan Band and Catalina and them."
"Well, it took getting lost in the White Circle to make them friends. A camping trip and a mental breakdown are pretty tame in comparison."
"Maybe there's something about being Space Cases that binds people together."
"Do you really believe that? That's kind of a weird way to make friends."
Zac shrugged. "Before, no, but now..."
The two looked out at their friends, so happily dancing and laughing. When they had first been assigned to be in the same class, they had been upset, angry, and wary of each other. At least for tonight, though, they were friends.
"Hey Arin, what are you looking at?"
Arin looked up as her best friend Zoe walked into their room. "Someone sent me a note," she explained, showing Zoe the compupad.
Arin, I love you. Please go with me to the dance. From ???
"Wow," Zoe said. "I wonder who it's from."
"I don't know. The sender is anonymous. It's been routed through several different identities." She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. It's probably just a joke."
"What makes you say that?" Zoe said, astonished.
"Well, I'm not pretty or popular," Arin said quietly. "Who would want to go to the New Year's Eve dance with me?"
Zoe noticed some movement from the corner of her eye. She saw a dark shape creep from the doorway, but it was gone before she could see who it was.
'I wonder...' she thought.
*****
Zoe put her tray down at the table with a thump. Zac and Barrett looked up at her in surprise. With the exeption of the two of them and Zoe and Arin, none of the kids from their class ate lunch together.
"What are you doing here?" asked Barrett.
"I need to talk to you guys. Scram," she told the other boys at the table.
Obediently, they stood up with their trays. Zoe wasn't particularly impressive physically, but she was wiry and tough, and none of them wanted to get on her bad side, especially when she was as determined as she was now.
"Okay, you've cleared out our friends," Zac said irritatedly. "What do you want?"
"Just a second." She scanned the room for a moment before standing up, cupping her hands around her mouth, and yelling, "Rich, come here!"
Rich's eyes narrowed at her. Normally he would have ignored her, but she seemed particularly focused today. He walked over, ignoring the whistles and catcalls that followed from his friends.
"Okay, what's up?" Zac repeated. "Unless you're waiting for Arina and Gianluca too. Speaking of which, where is Arin?"
"She's in the library. And no, we don't need to wait for them. It's kind of about them." She took a deep breath. "Arin would kill me for telling you guys this, but she got a message today. An anonymous message. Asking her to the dance."
"Big deal," Rich scoffed. "Who cares?"
"Who could have sent it, though? I mean, who has the knowledge to send a message without the automatic sender's address popping up?"
Barrett shrugged. "No one, unless...you mean Gianluca sent it?" he asked incredulously. "Gianluca asked her to the dance?"
"Think about it, though," Zoe insisted. "I mean, we saw him *kiss* her. I hacked into the main computer--"
"Oh wonderful, now we're all going to be expelled," Rich groaned.
"--and I managed to find his file," Zoe continued, ignoring Rich.
"What did you find?" Zac asked.
"Nothing."
"Nothing? I know I'm not an experienced hacker like you, Zoe," Barrett said, "but come on. Shouldn't you have been able to get into his files?"
"It's not that," she explained. "His information is all classified."
The kids were stunned. Classified information was things like military positions and weapon's information, not someone's name and birthday.
"So you didn't get anything?" asked Zac.
"I only got one thing. The only things that weren't classified were basic information: height, weight, home, etc. Except he doesn't have a home address. It's blank. That made me curious, so I started looking through the general info file for stuff about him before he came here. All I could find was a previous address, which is a psychology clinic in New York."
"Weird," Barrett commented. "Why would he live in a psych clinic?"
"Maybe he's crazy," suggested Rich.
"Oh come one," scoffed Zac. "He's kind of weird, but he's not crazy."
"Well, whatever the explanation is," Zoe said, "we need to get to the bottom of this." Seeing Rich's incredulous expression, she continued, "Come on! He's in our class. We're supposed to work together. How can we do that if we don't know anything about him?"
"Zoe's right," Barrett said. "We need to try to get to know him. For better or for worse, we're a team."
"Then it's settled," Zac said. "When class starts, we'll start getting to know Gianluca."
*****
But after lunch, when they went to class, Gianluca continued to ignore them. They tried to talk to him, but all they got was a glare from Commander Collins and an admonition to be quiet and listen for once.
After class he left before they could talk to him.
"It's like he's avoiding us," Barrett commented.
"Maybe he is," offered Zoe. "Maybe he's embarrassed about the note."
Just then, Arin walked over to them, her eyes shining. "You guys," she exclaimed, "I got another note."
Arin, You are the most perfect person I have ever met. Please go with me to the New Year's Eve Dance. I love you. From ???
"It's so romantic! You don't think it's a joke, do you?" she asked, worry evident on her face.
"Of course not," Zoe said. "I just wonder who it's from."
Arin was looking down at her compupad, so she missed the look that the others shared. "Well, whoever it is, I hope he tells me soon. I'm leaving soon."
"Where are you going?" asked Rich.
"I'm going back to Luna Colony to visit my parents. They were so worried after the thing on our survival mission that I promised to come and see them during the winter break."
"When are you coming back?" Zoe asked.
"Oh, I won't be gone long. I'll be back on New Year's Eve."
"Have fun," Zoe said.
"Thanks." Arin smiled. "I have to go pack. I'm leaving tonight. I promised my parents that I would leave right after our final exams."
Once she left, Zoe turned to the others. "This is perfect. Arin will be gone until the dance. We have plenty of time to confront Gianluca."
"Why do we even need to?" Rich asked. "I mean, if he wants to go out with her, that's his business."
"Something's wrong with him," Zoe insisted. "I've never even seen him acknowledge that other people are around, and then suddenly he's kissing Arin and sending her love notes."
"Maybe you're right," Zac said. "He is acting differently. Why don't we drop off our stuff, and then we can go find him."
But when they reached the boys' room, all of his things were gone. Not that he had a lot of stuff, but the things that he had brought to the Starcademy--some clothes and a compupad--were gone.
"Where could he be?" asked Barrett.
The four students ran out of the room and straight into Commander Collins.
"Commander, where is Gianluca?" asked Zac.
"I don't know," she said. She punched some buttons on her compupad. "It says that he went back to New York for the break."
"Thank you."
They ducked back into the boys' room. "So now what do we do?" asked Rich.
"We can go down and see him on Earth," Zoe said eagerly. "None of us were planning on going home, right?"
The others shook their heads. They only had a week during which to go home, so most students decided to just stay at school.
"Great. Then let's go. I'm from New York, so we can say that we're going to visit my family."
Barrett looked at Zac for confirmation. He nodded. "We have to do this," Zac said. "We need to talk to him. We're a team, and if something is going on with him, then it affects all of us."
*****
Thanks to Zoe's expert knowledge of New York, they easily found the Greenwood Psychiatric Clinic. Getting in proved to be no problem either. As soon as they said that they wanted to see Gianluca, a young woman let them in.
"Come in," she said with a smile. "You must be his friends."
The others exchanged a look. "Um, yeah, we are," said Barrett.
"We really need to see him," added Zoe.
"First I need to talk to you." Her smile evaporated, replaced by a much more serious expression. "How much do you know about Gianluca?"
"Not much," Zac admitted.
"I thought so." She paused before continuing. "This is a long story, but I think that you need to hear it." She had led them to her office, and she sat down, gesturing for them to do the same.
"I'm sure that you have heard of Astro Industries, the computer company. Well, many years ago a young couple owned it. They were extremely wealthy, and they lived in a beautiful apartment and went to all of the best parties.
"Then one day they died in a hovercar accident. They had no close relatives, and so dozens of people fought over who would inherit the fortune. The case lasted several years before they finally reached an agreement.
"For the first time in two years, their apartment was opened. And, to everyone's shock, they found, hidden away in a room at the back, a five-year-old boy." She stopped for a moment before continuing. "He had been alone in their for two years. The room was filled with machines to dispense food and water, so his physical needs were met, but he had not seen another human being in two years.
"No one knew what to do with him. They finally managed to track down a record of his birth. It wasn't much, just a record of a baby boy born in New York whose fingerprints matched the boy's. Beyond that, though, no one knew what to do with him, especially because he wouldn't talk. He was fine physically, but he simply refused to talk. So they gave him to us.
"He lived here until he left for the Starcademy, so that would be...let's see, about eleven years. During that time, he never talked. He never looked at us. He never touched us, and he never wanted to be touched. We took care of him as best as we could, though. We tested him, and his IQ was off the charts. We gave him a compupad so that he could learn how to read and write, and he just kind of went off on his own. He studies everything that he can get his hands on. And he's an excellent engineerer. He just seemed to live in his own world...until he arrived here yesterday."
"What do you mean?" Zoe asked.
She smiled. "He *talked*. He talked to us. I couldn't believe it. He's very upset. He's been in his room since yesterday, sitting very still staring at the wall. But he talked to us."
"What did he say?" asked Barrett.
"When we saw him, we asked him why he was there. He hadn't told us that he was coming. We didn't expect him to answer, but he did. He said, 'I need help. I need my friends.' We didn't know who he meant by his friends, but then you showed up." She smiled at them.
"We're glad to help in any way that we can," Zac said. The others nodded their agreement.
"Good. Let's go. I'll show you to his room."
As they walked down the hall, Zac asked, "I don't understand one thing. How could his parents hide his existence? Was it some kind of conspiracy?"
"I don't know. When you're rich enough, I guess you can pretty much do what you want. The records were there; they just lacked a lot of information, like his parents, where they lived, and things like that. My guess is that someone must have helped them to falsify the records."
Zac looked grim, probably, Zoe thought, thinking about his brother. She realized how little her classmates knew about each other. They always ignored each other outside of class. She looked at Barrett and Rich, and she wondered about them. What were their secrets? And what about Arin? They truly were strangers, and for the first time, Zoe realized that she did not want them to be.
*****
When they reached his room, Gianluca was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly into space. No, Zac thought, not blankly. He was looking at them. His eyes were dark, like looking into a black hole, but Zac could detect humanity in them. Was it fear? Sadness? Something was radiating out of his dark eyes, but Zac couldn't tell what it was.
"Hi Gianluca," Zoe said.
"Hi."
It was such a small thing, that one whispered syllable, but it stunned his classmates.
"How are you?" asked Zac.
No answer. But Gianluca didn't look like he was on another planet like normal. Instead he looked withdrawn, as though he were trying to hide from them.
"We wanted to be sure that you were okay," Rich explained. "So are you?"
"Wh-where is Arin?" He looked alarmed.
"She's at home on Luna Colony," Zoe told him.
Gianluca seemed to relax. "Good."
"Don't you want to see her?" Zoe asked.
"No-not now. Not here. Not like this." His eyes scanned his room, so bare of any personal items. It looked kind of like a hospital room, only without the medical equipment. It had the same sterile, impersonal feeling, though.
"Um, Arin got some notes asking her to the dance," Barrett said. "Do you know who sent them to her?"
He nodded. "I did." He seemed to be struggling within. "I love her," he said, so softly that the others barely heard him.
"She likes you too," Zoe said.
"She does?"
"Yeah." Zoe seemed surprised. "Why did you think that she kept talking to you, even though you ignored her?"
Gianluca shook his head. "I heard her. I was scared."
"Of what?" Zac asked.
"I want her to like me. But it-it is hard for me to-to talk to people. It is so much easier to be alone. But with other people, it is harder."
"What's harder?" Barrett wanted to know.
"This. Talking. I understand things. Computers. Words. Not people. Not feelings."
"It is hard for you to understand what we mean when we say things," Rich said.
"Yes." Gianluca's soft monotone grew slightly louder. "I understand words, but they have so many meanings. And it is not only talking. People touch each other. They look at each other. All of these things have meaning. I do not understand them."
"It's okay," Zoe said. "The doctor told us about your parents."
Gianluca stiffened.
"Do you remember them?" Barrett prodded.
"Yes. I remember they were gone a lot. I had to stay in the room. I could not leave. They hated me. Then they stopped coming to see me. I was alone. The machines did things. They gave me food and water. Then people came. I was surrounded." Gianluca's voice seemed slightly panicked. "Lots of people wanted to see me. They tested me. They asked me questions. I was scared. They were angry. They left me here." The panic receeded, replaced by the same soft monotony. "They took care of me here. I was safe."
"The doctor seems to care about you a lot," Rich commented.
"Do you care about me?"
"Yes," Zoe said emphatically. "You are one of us, Gianluca. You are our friend. We will always take care of you and help you when you need it. That's what friends do. They help each other. They care about each other."
"You are my friends. I care about you," Gianluca said.
"We care about you too. We'll help you," Zac told him. "No matter what, we will always be a team. We will always help each other."
Gianluca's mouth turned up slightly. For the first time in over eleven years, he smiled.
*****
"Oh, isn't it beautiful?" Arin gushed.
Zoe smiled over her head at Rich, Zac, and Barrett. They returned her grin.
"Come over here. I think I see the guys," Zoe said, steering Arin over towards them.
"Hi g--" The words died in her throat as she stood face-to-face with a nervously smiling Gianluca.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment. Both of them were very dressed up; Arin wore a silvery dress that matched her eyes, and Gianluca wore a tuxedo. (They had bought it last night, when Zoe realized that he had nothing to wear to the dance.) Arin appeared totally dumbstruck. Gianluca simply looked shocked and nervously happy.
"Hello, Arin. Would you like to dance?"
She just stared at him. "Yes. I'd love to."
The two of them stepped out onto the dance floor.
"They look cute together," Zoe commented.
"Who would've thought that Gianluca would be the only one of us to get a date?" asked Rich.
Zoe thought about that for a moment. "Okay, Rich. Do you want to dance?"
For the first time since they had met him, Rich appeared speechless. "Sure," he said.
"Well, I guess that leaves you and me," Barrett said.
"Yeah. Well, think of all that we did this week," commented Zac. "We helped Gianluca all week. No wonder we didn't have time to get dates."
"We made a new friend, though."
"Not just that," Zac said. "We got to know Zoe and Rich better too. Pretty soon we'll be as good friends as the old Space Cases--you know, Harlan Band and Catalina and them."
"Well, it took getting lost in the White Circle to make them friends. A camping trip and a mental breakdown are pretty tame in comparison."
"Maybe there's something about being Space Cases that binds people together."
"Do you really believe that? That's kind of a weird way to make friends."
Zac shrugged. "Before, no, but now..."
The two looked out at their friends, so happily dancing and laughing. When they had first been assigned to be in the same class, they had been upset, angry, and wary of each other. At least for tonight, though, they were friends.