“No.” I pause. “There was a girl.”

“Ohh,” he says, drawing it out. Even with my face covered I can tell he’s grinning. He rubs his hands together. “Was she pretty?”

“She was beautiful,” I say, looking away. “I fell because she—I don’t know. She was, like, watching me. . . .”

“Checking you out. Giving you the eye.”

“Shut up.”

“So a beautiful young thing saw you fall and now you’re embarrassed.”

I have no comeback. When he says it like that, it sounds so juvenile, like something from one of those TV shows where humans in too much makeup mope around and make longing faces at each other. But he’s exactly right.

Sandor gives my shoulder a squeeze.

“’Tis but a minor setback, my young ward,” Sandor opines. “I can tell you one thing for certain. You’re not going to impress your lady by moping around here.”

“Who says I want to impress her?”

He laughs. “Come on. Who doesn’t want to impress beautiful women? Right now, in her mind, you’re just a guy that bit off more than he could chew. If you don’t go back, though, you become that wimp she saw fall off the wall one time. Do you want that?”

I don’t even have to think about my answer.

“I’ll go back tomorrow.”

Chapter Ten

I’m up early again the next morning, back in the Lecture Hall, dodging projectiles and batting drones out of the air with my pipe-staff even though my mind is at the Windy City Wall. Sandor doesn’t take it easy on me, despite knowing that I want to be conserving my energy for a second chance at impressing that girl.

“Keep your head in the game!” he shouts at me after a mechanized tentacle trips me up.

After training, I shower thoroughly, even though I’m just getting ready for another workout. I want to look good. I even run a comb through my tangled thatch of hair. Sandor’s been ragging on me to cut it forever, telling me that I look like a girl, and recommending all kinds of hair products that would give me “maximum hold.” I’ve never paid any attention to his unsolicited style tips.

Only looking at myself in the steamy bathroom mirror, I wish I’d listened to him. I look like a caveman. But it’s too late to do anything about my hair now. Besides, I figure showing up with a fresh haircut glistening with pomade—whatever that is—would look pretty desperate.

“Good luck,” says Sandor knowingly as I head to the elevator.

There are butterflies having a heavy artillery firefight in my stomach as I jog over to the rec center. I breeze in the door and immediately beeline for the equipment rack, grabbing a safety vest as I confidently stride toward the advanced end of the wall. I casually scan the room, looking for the girl.

She’s not there. In fact, the place is nearly empty.

Ugh. It’s a school day. I always forget the humans keep much different schedules than I do.

There are a few college-aged kids working out on the wall, getting envious looks from flabby older guys who are probably here on their lunch break. I join them. Might as well get a few practice runs in.

I spend an hour mastering the wall. This time I listen to the instructor, paying special attention to where the best handholds are. By the time the hour is up, I’ve successfully scaled the wall a half-dozen times. According to the instructor, if I shaved a few seconds off my time I’d have a shot at breaking the local record. I don’t tell him that I haven’t been going all out, that with my Loric strength and speed I could easily smash it.

I’m saving that performance for when the girl shows up.

There’s still about an hour left before school gets out. It’d probably look pretty weird if I was already here when the other kids arrive and I decide I want to make an entrance. I imagine confidently strutting into line, ignoring taunts from the Mikes, then flying up the wall in record-setting time. While the Mikes are busy picking their jaws up off the floor, I’ll stride over to the girl, her adoring smile inviting me to talk to her. And then . . .

Well, I haven’t totally planned out the talking part yet.

I buy a bottle of water from a vending machine and head outside. There’s a small park across the street from the rec center, where I make myself at home on a bench—the perfect spot for a stakeout. I’m comfortable in the cool air and have a good view of the Windy City Wall entrance. I’ll hide out until kids get out of school and then it’ll be time for my redemption.

The thought of a stakeout causes me to make a check of my iMog. An evil red dot appearing nearby is exactly what I don’t need right now. Luckily, the coast is clear.

I spend the next hour trying to think of a good opening line. All the guys in the movies and on TV have them when they approach a girl. I should’ve asked Sandor for one before I left. He probably has whole books filled with pick-up lines.

By the time I see the two Mikes enter the Windy City Wall, I still haven’t come up with anything good. I’m stuck on climbing puns, but they all come off pretty gross, like I want to climb on her.

“Is this seat taken?” A girl’s voice interrupts the conversation I’m having in my head. Distractedly, I wave at the empty space of bench next to me.

The next wall I’d like to climb is the one around your heart. How’s that? Really, really cheesy.

“Hi,” the girl says, sitting down next to me.

And that’s when I realize it isn’t just any girl sitting inches away from me on the bench, it’s the girl. Her cheeks are rosy in the late spring air, her black hair gently blown in the breeze. She’s smiling at me. She’s so beautiful, I suddenly feel like I could throw up. This wasn’t the plan.

“I’m Maddy,” she says, extending her hand.

I just look at her, my mind completely blank.

So much for first lines.

Maddy squints at me. “Sorry, I didn’t meant to interrupt your, um, quiet muttering.”

Was I muttering? I must look like a crazy person. I try to recover.

“No, you’re not interrupting. I was just thinking.”

“Oh,” she says, looking at me expectantly. I realize her hand is still hanging out there between us waiting for me, so I grasp it, squeezing her hand a little too eagerly.

“I’m Stanley.”

“Nice to meet you, Stanley.”

I swallow hard. This meeting is already way off track. She wasn’t supposed to see me again until I’d beaten the wall and restored my pride.

I make a halfhearted gesture toward the rec center, desperately trying to recreate the scenario I’d been envisioning. “I was about to go climb. Do you want to come watch?”

“Watch?” she asks, arching an eyebrow. “Maybe we could race. If you’re up for it,” she adds, teasing me.

I flashed back to my humiliation of the day before, suddenly lost for words. Luckily, she bails me out.

“Anyway,” she says, “I actually can’t stay; I’m on my way home. I just saw you sitting over here by yourself and thought I’d say hey.”

“Oh,” I say, lamely. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she repeats.

And then comes an awkward silence, almost like Maddy’s nervous too. Her gaze bounces away from me and her mouth screws up, as if she’s trying to figure out what to say. I wonder if she plans conversations out in her head too.

When she speaks again, her words are a torrent of nervous energy.

“I saw you yesterday and you were by yourself then too and that’s totally cool, if you like working out alone, but I’m new here and it’s been sort of hard to meet people, so I figured maybe we could, like, team up and fight solitude together.”

I blink at her. I can’t believe my luck.

“Sorry,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m not usually this much of a spaz.”

“You’re not a spaz,” I reply.

“Okay, good. I’ve got you fooled.” She laughs nervously. “Okay. Shut up, Maddy. Here.” She reaches into her bag and hands me a piece of paper with her name and number scribbled on it.

“If I didn’t just totally freak you out, you should call me,” she says, hopping off the bench before my idiot brain can even form a reply.

Chapter Eleven

Wind whips around us as we stand on the roof of the John Hancock building, sending the drone that’s floating above me and Sandor listing momentarily downward. We’re trying out his newest creation, a hollowed-out toaster with steel glider wings protruding where the bread slots should be. I brush my gloved fingers across the drone controls, correcting its course against the wind. Its tiny motor hums sharply in response. We always take Sandor’s new creations for test runs, knowing they might one day be our only allies against a horde of Mogadorians. In the meantime, I’ll most likely end up staring down this latest buzzing contraption in the Lecture Hall.

“So,” says Sandor, “how long has it been since you got her number?”

I keep my eyes on the drone.

“Five days,” I reply.

“The humans have a rule about calling girls,” muses Sandor. “Something like waiting three days unless you want to look desperate.”

I grunt.

“You’re in the clear as far as that goes,” he concludes. “What are you waiting for?”

“What’s the point?” I ask, trying not to sound as sullen as I feel. I don’t think I pull it off.

Ever since our meeting in the park, I’ve done little but train and think about Maddy. We only spoke for a couple of minutes, but I could tell that she’s lonely like me. She’s new in Chicago and, even though I’ve been here for five years, for all the socializing I’ve done I might as well be new too. Admittedly, I’ve fantasized about having a social life that’s more than playing robots with my Cêpan, but I never dreamed that a beautiful girl would come along, much less actually be interested in me.

Now that it’s actually happening, what can I even do about it? Maddy doesn’t have any scars on her ankle. She hasn’t been conscripted into an intergalactic war. She’ll make friends in the city eventually, go off to college, live a normal life. Me? I’ve got to make a race of warmongering monsters accountable for the genocide of my people. It’s nice to think about escaping all that, to daydream about having a girlfriend and going on dates. Except one day the daydream ends and I go to war. How does getting to know a human fit into that—let alone having a girlfriend?

It doesn’t.

Sensing that my mind is elsewhere, Sandor eases the controls out of my hands and brings the drone back to the roof. His puts his hand on my back and we walk over to the edge of the roof and peer down at the city below us.

“You can never escape who you are,” he begins.

“I know that,” I say, wanting to cut short whatever kind of exasperating pep talk he has in mind. I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.

“Listen,” he continues. “Just because you’ve got a destiny doesn’t mean you don’t also have a life to live.”