Over the course of the last two weeks since blastoff I'd been extremely busy. Well, busy by choice anyway. I spent most of my time with Allie and Ridge but I also had school. And Tristen. But school took up most of my schedule. Back at home I'd been that student who always duel enrolled and got straight A's. I hate to say it but that hasn't changed. At all. Most kids had three to four classes but I am in six. I have Basic Survival with Allie, but other than that I kind of went my own way. Many people were going into the medical field, but honestly I find that kind of stuff obnoxiously boring. I want adventure! I want to see the world! So I signed up to be on one of the first planes that heads out and looks for a place to start colonizing. I think Allie still thinks I'm going to stay on the ship. Either that or she just doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that she knows I'm going. I haven't told anyone my schedule for school either. Well, except for Tristen, but we have a lot of classes together so it doesn't matter. I'm just afraid that Allie and Ridge may be shocked that I'm taking such a leap away from my sciences and maths, which had always been my favorite. My full schedule was Basic Survivial, Piloting, Navigation, Some kind of agility class, Advanced Survival, and Weaponry. Yeah I know. 'Woah weaponry what the heck?' I'm just curious! And truth is, I like it! It's really interesting and I'm becoming a very good knife thrower. We never know what's going to be out there so we have to be prepared. We may make enemies just by landing on the planet.
Basic Survival is, well, basic. I could drop it but I really want to keep my class with Allie. I had Piloting, Weaponry, and Navigation with Tristen. Well, I had Piloting and navigation with him technically. Tristen and the other guard, Abram, teach Weaponry. They are scary good at handling guns. I much preferred knives. It feels like i have more control with them. I just keep worrying that this ship is changing me too much.
It was Wednesday, December the 19th after my last class, Weaponry, when the idea struck me. Tristen was walking me back to my room. As soon as I thought of it I stopped in my tracks. Tristen kept going a couple of feet before he realized I wasn't beside him. He looked back with a questioning look. I just smiled dumbly up at him.
"How would you like to be my next victim?" I asked
"How long do I have to sit like this? My butt's getting numb." Tristen asked after about an hour of him sitting on my bedroom floor.
"Well if you keep moving, much longer than it should take!" I said, looking back down at my sketchpad. "And loosen up! Try to look natural." He laughed, making me smile. I was drawing him and he was being a real pain about it.
"How long have you been drawing?" he asked, looking down and running his thumb nail along the seams of the wood paneling on the floor.
"Don't move!" I said frantically. The way his hair just fell over his eyes and the adorable half smile I've grown to fall in love with, would be perfect; if he would just stay still. "And ever since I can remember." He'd gotten ahold of my sketch book during piloting earlier and wouldn't shut up about how good they were until he had to teach his class. It was another trait I'd gotten from my mother. He was about to ask me something else when I got a phone call.
"One second." I said, walking into the bathroom. I closed the door for some privacy.
"Rory?" the voice asked, sounding amazed. "This is the first time you've answered your phone since take off!" It was Allie. Right before I picked up I also saw I had a voicemail so I made a mental note to check it later, though it was probably Allie. My phone had been dead since right after I got the last text from Allie the day we took off.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"I'm in my room drawing Tristen." I'd drown her several times before so she knew how it was to be stuck for hours while I perfected the piece.
