2. Differences
Tass liked her house, in a strange kind of way. It was small (although not as small as some of the other houses) and on the forty-second level down, but it was cosy, in a way. All done in blue and red. Her mother liked red, her father liked blue, so the result was a mismatched house.
She pushed the button on the door, it read her handprint and let her in.
"Anyone here?"
Nerra, her brother, came out of the living room. He looked at her, saw who it was, and went back in again. Tass followed him. He was sitting slumped on the sofa, a look of extreme annoyance on his face.
Lelleri, Tass's mother, was sitting on a chair and reading a holopad.
"Don't mind him, Tass," she said, not looking up. "Mayalri's gone."
"Mayalri?" Tass remembered her...vaguely. A pretty girl from Naboo. "What d'ya mean...gone where?"
"Left him," Lelleri said, keeping her voice low. But Nerra got up and left the room anyway. Lelleri sighed.
"Why's she left him?"
"Who knows? He's not saying a word. Could be anything." Tass heard Nerra going up the stairs. "Maybe you could talk to him."
"He won't tell me anything."
"Well, anyway....be nice to him when he comes back down. He really liked her, you know."
Tass hadn't know. She sat down on the sofa, and switched on the holovision.
"Anything to avoid homework, I suppose." Lelleri said sarcastically.
*****
Dinner that evening was somewhat quiet. Nerra wasn't saying anything. Tass was started to get annoyed at him.
"I've got to do a project," she finally said, during a particularly long silence. "For History. They won't let me take my exams otherwise."
Tass's father, Jek, stared at her.
"You didn't tell us this before," he said.
"I only found out today."
"You don't get entered for the exams otherwise?" Lelleri said worriedly. "Tass, this is really serious."
"I know, I know...I promise to do a good job."
"Then get started after dinner," Jek said gravely. "No going out with Dekabyn...go to your room and do some research. Nerra, have you got any holopads she can borrow?"
Nerra looked up sullenly. "There's some books."
"Books?" Lelleri said. "My. I thought we threw those out ages ago." She looked at Jek, who shook his head.
"There's some stuff about History in there," he said. "The Empire and things."
"That'd be useful," Tass said, giving an internal groan. The Empire had sounded fascinating at first, but a few hours in Regimesh's class, with him filling her in on all the boring details concerning politics and the disolution of the Senate, had soon changed her opinion.
"It goes up to the Emperor's death," Nerra said. "You'll have to look up what happened after that on holopads and stuff,"
Then, since he'd finished, he left the table and Tass heard the front door slam. Tass thought back on what she'd learned about the Emperor's death. All she could remember was that his apprentice, Vader, had killed him, because of something to do with his son. Hadn't the Emperor nearly killed him? Regimesh hadn't gone through it in much detail. It had all seemed just weird to her, anyway. If it hadn't been the no-nonsense History teacher who'd told her, she would have doubted it'd actually happened.
Oh well.
"I'll go find the book," she said, and put her plate away. She went up to Nerra's room, and looked around for it. She found it buried underneath some hologames. She retreated to her own room, brushed the dust off the cover and looked at the title.
The Greatest War Of The Stars, by Various Authors.
"Nice title."
She dropped it in her schoolbag and left.
*****
She managed to sneak out and meet Dekabyn anyway. Her parents were in the living room, having a Serious Discussion. They had one every now and then.
She closed the front door quietly, but it made a beeping noise anyway. No-one seemed to notice, however. She crossed the walkway and went to the railing. She glanced down a few levels, trying to see if Dekabyn was there.
He was there, looking up. He grinned and vanished.
Tass turned around, leaned against the railing and waited for him. People walked past her, heading for their own houses. None of them paid any attention to her. She moved down the walkway, away from her house, in case her mother looked out of the window and sent her in to do more work.
Dekabyn came up the metal stairway to her left. "Hi," he said, and went to her. He was carrying a holopad under one arm.
"Poetry," he muttered. "Have to read it for Interplanetery Literature. You're lucky you're not in that class."
Tass nodded. She loathed poetry.
"Worked on your project?"
"Nope. I borrowed a book from Nerra but that's about it."
Dekabyn looked impressed. "Wow, you have books? I've only seen them at archives..."
"We have lots of old stuff, remember? Like the old speeder..."
"Did it start working again?"
"Afraid not."
"Pity. I'd've liked to try it..."
They looked out together at Coruscant. The sun was setting. Tass looked down, all the way down, as she liked to. You couldn't be afraid of heights on Coruscant, after all. It looked like lava at the bottom, although Tass knew it wasn't.
"I wonder..."
"What?"
"If anything will ever grow here."
"I doubt it." Dekabyn pulled himself up to sit on the railing, his back to the oblivion down there. Tass wished he wouldn't. "Still...they're certainly putting a lot of effort into it. Too much effort. I can hear them working all through the night."
"My dad says nothing will grow here. And he says it was mad of them to choose the residential areas to knock down first."
"Well, they only knocked down the oldest buildings...but yeah, you're right. My mum told me the other day that our block was lucky to escape...gave me a shock. We'd have had nowhere to go."
Tass nodded, not sure what to answer to that. "If they do actually manage to make a park here, though...I'd love to visit it."
"Yeah..."
He wobbled slightly on the railing. "The holovision says that if this one is a success, they'll start building one on the East side as well. More than one, in fact. It's a really big thing, y'know. Everyone's on about it."
"Except us."
"Yeah, I guess."
He finally got down off the railings. Tass remembered something.
"I'm going to see Faith tomorrow."
Dekabyn looked incredulous. "What, the high-and-mighty princess has decided to grace her loyal subject with an audience?"
"Don't be like that, Dek, she's really nice."
"Well, she seems like a snob to me. She hangs around with the Rinakels, she's always going on about how much money her daddy has, she lives up on the ninth level...and she never comes to visit you."
"Where someone lives doesn't determine their personality, though." Tass argued. "It's just stereotyping. If the stereotypes were true, you and I would both be undereducated criminals."
"Yeah, I know, okay," Dekabyn said, sounding a little ashamed. "But let's face it...there's a big difference between ninth level and forty-second. Or forty-fifth, in my case."
Exactly the problem, Dek...
"Yeah, you're right."
She nodded, and looked along the walkway to her house. "Mum and Dad will miss me in a minute or two," she said. "I'd better get back."
"Okay," he said, and he watched her as she left.
