Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection (The Lunar Chronicles)(30)

Janette returned with his plate of pancakes, and Carswell was grateful for an excuse to look away from his dad as he slathered them with butter and syrup. It was better than risking the temptation to say what he really wanted to say.

He didn’t want to go to Andromeda Academy. He didn’t want to follow in his dad’s footsteps.

Sure, he wanted to learn how to fly. Desperately wanted to learn how to fly. But there were other flight schools—less prestigious ones maybe, but at least they didn’t require selling six years of his life to the military so he could be ordered around by more men who looked and sounded like his dad, and cared about him even less.

“What’s wrong with you?” his dad said, swiveling a finger at Janette. She began to clear his place setting. “You used to be good at math.”

“I am good at math,” Carswell said, then shoved more pancake into his mouth than he probably should have.

“Are you? Could have fooled me.”

He chewed. And chewed. And chewed.

“Maybe we should get him a tutor,” said his mother, flicking her finger across her portscreen.

“Is that it, Carswell? Do you need a tutor?”

Carswell swallowed. “I don’t need a tutor. I know how to do it all; I just don’t feel like doing it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I have better things to do. I understand all the concepts, so why should I waste whole days of my life working through those stupid worksheets? Not to mention”—he gestured wildly, at everything, at nothing. At the light fixture that changed automatically based on the amount of sunlight that filtered in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. At the sensors in the wall that detected when a person entered a room and set the thermostat to their own personal preferences. At that brainless robotic cat—“we are surrounded by computers all the time. If I ever need help, I’ll just have one of them figure it out. So what does it matter?”

“It matters because it shows focus. Dedication. Diligence. Important traits that, believe it or not, are usually found in spaceship captains.”

Scowling, Carswell sawed at the pancake stack with the side of his fork. If his mother had noticed, she would have reminded him to use a knife, but she was far too busy pretending to be at a different table altogether.

“I have those traits,” he muttered. And he did, he knew he did. But why waste focus and dedication and diligence on something as stupid as math homework?

“Then prove it. You’re grounded until these grades come up to passing.”

His head snapped up. “Grounded? But mid-July break starts next week.”

Standing, his dad snapped his portscreen onto the belt of his own uniform—the impeccably pressed blue-and-gray uniform of Colonel Kingsley Thorne, American Republic Fleet 186.

“Yes, and you will spend your break in your bedroom doing math homework unless you can show me, and your teacher, that you’re going to start taking this seriously.”

Carswell’s stomach sank, but his dad had marched out of the breakfast room before he could begin to refute him.

He couldn’t be grounded for mid-July break. He had big plans for those two weeks. Mostly, they involved an entrepreneurial enterprise that began with sending Boots up into the fruit trees on his neighbors’ property and ended with him selling baskets of perfectly ripe lemons and avocados to every little old lady in the neighborhood. He’d been charming his neighbors out of their bank accounts since he was seven, and had become quite good at it. Last summer, he’d even managed to get the Santos family to pay him sixty-five univs for a box of “succulent, prize-winning” oranges, having no idea that he’d picked the fruits off their own tree earlier that day.

“He’s not serious, is he?” Carswell said, turning back to his mom. “He won’t keep me grounded for the whole break?”

His mom, for maybe the first time that morning, tore her eyes away from her portscreen. She blinked at him and he suspected that she had no idea what his father’s doled-out punishment was for his low grades. Maybe she didn’t even realize what the argument had been about.

After a moment, just long enough to let the question dissolve in the air between them, she said, “Are you all ready for school, sweetheart?”

Huffing, Carswell nodded and shoved two more quick bites into his mouth. Snatching up his book bag, he pushed away from the table and tossed his blazer over one shoulder.

His dad wanted to see an improvement of grades? Fine. He would find a way to make it happen. He would come up with some solution that gave him the freedom he required during his break but didn’t include laboring away over boring math formulas every evening. He had more important things to do with his time. Things that involved business transactions and payment collections. Things that would one day lead to him buying his own spaceship. Nothing fancy. Nothing expensive. Just something simple and practical, something that would belong to him and to him alone.

Then his dad would know just how focused and dedicated he was, right as he was getting the aces out of here.

*

Jules Keller had hit his growth spurt early, making him a full head taller than anyone else in the class, and he was even sporting the start of peach-fuzz whiskers on his chin. Unfortunately, he still had a brain capacity equivalent to that of a pelican.

That was Carswell’s first thought when Jules slammed his locker shut and Carswell barely managed to get his fingers out of the way in time.