Proud Machinery

CHAPTER ONE

There were stars on the palms of her hands. Two of them, one for each hand, two small dark-metal spots embedded in Kess's skin. They were set near the top of her palms where her heart line met her palm-reading-is-stupid-so-why-should-she-know line, and they each had five tiny points like stars in a kid's drawing.

Kess hunkered over in the leather desk chair and scratched at the stars. The metal didn't come off, but the skin around it swelled red and angry. She gave up and tugged at her hair in frustration. Which was a bad idea, because now her curls were even puffier than usual and she'd have to go down to the party looking like a blonde Raggedy Anne. Solution: never go downstairs.

They were all down there. She could hear them through the floor—the big-footed boys and the girls with pink phone cases, all crowded together, talking too loud, filling the air with body heat and hormone stink and carbon dioxide.

Kess's palms throbbed where she'd scratched them. The stars weren't some speck stuck to the surface of her skin—they were embedded deep. How did that happen? Was she sick? That was stupid, sickness didn't give you stars—Of course she was sick. The eating thing—

She'd have to go to a doctor. She'd have to tell him about the eating thing, and he'd cut into her hand with a sharp, sharp blade.

Ugh. Doctors.

Maybe the stars would go away. Maybe they'd be gone by morning and in the mean time she should just not think about it instead of freaking out like a freak. So she leaned back and put her feet up on the desk, like someone not freaking out would do.

Her foot hit something on the desk that jangled, the sound of metal on metal. She snapped upright. There, hidden under one of the many boring documents on the desktop, was a little white bowl full of brown and silver coins. They glinted in the electric light, and they looked so—so delicious and—

She resisted for maybe three seconds. Then she grabbed up a nickel and popped it into her mouth. It tasted good the way chocolate tastes good—not only sweet, but satisfying. Another nickel, a quarter, a penny. The penny smelled wonderful in a way that surprised her. Looking closer, she saw that it was from 1954, back when they were copper all the way through instead of just a coating on the surface. When she dropped it on her tongue it tasted so good her toes curled in her shoes.

Someone turned the doorknob.

Kess ducked beneath the desk. An instant later she realized that, if she didn't want to be seen eating someone else's spare change, she should have just dropped the coins. But now she was hunkered in the dark hollow beneath the desk, and there was no way she was crawling out until the person was gone. At least she had some metal with her. She swallowed a dime and waited.

The person seemed to be checking out the books on the shelves. Then they walked across the room to the desk (probably realizing the books were terrible) and sat down in the chair. They—he, those were male legs—didn't seem to have seen Kess. She pressed herself back. Okay. She'd just have to stay under the desk until he had to go the bathroom or something. Good plan.

He stretched out his legs.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out. The boy leaped out of the chair, not gracefully, and Kess crawled into the open. The boy—slim and dark-haired with thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes—stood in front of her. He had caught her in deep weirdness. She was so embarrassed she wanted to take a break from being a person. She wanted to be a table for a few hours, or a chair or a rock, then go back to being human once the party was over and slink downstairs in the dark.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"You're forgiven, I guess?" said the boy. "Why are you sorry? What were you doing under there?"