alyashka: переводы

→When I reach my father’s classroom, my eyes flit to the nameplate on the wall outside his door. Without thinking, I place my hand on it, tracing the engraved grooves. Ben Preston. The name is solid, sturdy, just like my father.

→I bite my lip to hide my smile. Destiny is Chaz’s beat-up old cruiser. “I’ll be so fast you won’t even realize you’re waiting for me.” I pick up the pace and turn down another hall as Chaz keeps going straight, headed for the parking lot.

→“Meet me at my car?” When I nod, he adds, “Don’t take long, okay? You know how Destiny doesn’t like to hang around school any longer than she has to.”

→How can I possibly argue with that kind of logic? Especially when it comes from my best and only friend? “Let me run by my dad’s room and tell him I’m riding home with you.”

→“I’ll make you a deal,” he says. “Come over after school. I’ll help you with your homework, and then we can watch Return to Space. It’s a win-win.”

→I slug him in the shoulder and take off down the hall in the opposite direction of Rayne & Crew. Chaz hurries to catch up.

→Sighing, I turn back to Chaz, whose eyes have also followed Rayne and her friends down the hall. “Dang,” he says. “That sight never gets old.”

→Case in point: Rayne Williams and her entourage of perfect human specimens. I watch as they stride past, their legs long and endless, their hair perfect, their teeth straight, and their clothes tight and curving in all the right places. These are girls who never smell and probably never even sweat, whereas I’m like an overworked sweat gland factory. How can I ever compete with that perfection? I can’t. Therefore, I don’t try to.

→I guess you could say we’re lucky—or cursed, depending on how you look at it—to have fathers who are professors at the school. It affords us free tuition and automatic acceptance. But for Chaz, the only boy in a sea of perfect GM girls—thanks to our segregated schools policy—life is good. Unfortunately, just because we go to this school, it doesn’t mean we belong.

→Chaz and I are the only ones at the Genetically and Intellectually Gifted Academy—GIGA for short—who aren’t genetically gifted. Which is probably the reason we bonded in the first place. At least Chaz has the intellectually gifted thing going for him. Me? Not so much.

→Chaz snorts. “Oh, you mean the two of us who aren’t?”

→Once we make it to the top, I stop and face him. “I am. And once was enough for me.” I shift my backpack on my shoulder. “Besides, I have a ton of homework to do. I think the professors forget that not all of us are blessed with enhanced genetics.”

→A group of girls glides onto the Stairway to Heaven—as they call it. I like to call them the Stairs from Hell. I avoid the see-through moving contraption of death and take the normal stairs instead. Mainly because that thing scares me, but partly because I know I’d collapse by the time I made it to the top. I watch as the girls’ long legs work their way up the moving stairs—kind of like a mini-workout just getting around school. “Haven’t we already watched all the episodes, like, three times?”

→Chaz shrugs. “I dunno. Who’s counting?”

→“I’m going to Chaz’s house. He offered to help me with some of my homework.”

→“Hey, Sienna, you coming over to my house tonight?” He smiles, his dark round face giving way to a row of white teeth. “We still need to watch the final season of Return to Space.”

→When the bell rings, I escape into the hall. Chaz is already waiting for me.

→Is it too much to ask for one good test grade?

→Professor Armstrong continues down the aisle, and I groan inwardly, swiping the screen off.

→I avoid his gaze and focus on my desk-screen, dreading my latest calculus test score. The screen lights up, a digital device that displays my name, the date, and my test grade.