Free Team Human by Justine Larbalestier Page A

relying on soulless machines for communication is destroying the delicate interplay of social intercourse!”
    Cathy said the words as if they carried real meaning for her. I barely managed to stop myself from sniggering at the idea of Francis saying intercourse .
    â€œI’m sure he left for a good reason,” Cathy continued. “Or—or he realized that he no longer—felt anything for me, that he’d made a mistake.”
    â€œOr consider again my theory: He’s a jackass!”
    â€œHe’s beautiful, and he’s intelligent, and when he comes into a room, nobody can help but look at him,” Cathy said. “I’m ordinary. It’s perfectly understandable—”
    â€œYou are not ordinary!”
    â€œCompared to him—”
    â€œHe told me you were special,” I burst out.
    Besides vampire, another career I should probably not go in for is spy.
    Luckily for me, Cathy is a trusting soul.
    Her eyes shone for a moment, and I thought she was pleased to hear what Francis had said. Until I saw that her eyes were bright with tears.
    â€œWith him, I felt special,” she whispered. “But I don’t—I don’t feel special anymore.”
    â€œYou still are!” I told her fiercely. “You’re brilliant in school, and you’re going to Oxford, and your friends all love you. You’re awesome and your life is awesome. Your life without that vampire jackass is going to be more awesome.”
    â€œIt’s just that nothing seems to matter much anymore,” Cathy said in that low, wounded voice. “I can’t even write in my diary. Francis and I promised each other that we would both write in our journals every day, for years and years, and learn about each other by reading the entries.”
    â€œSounds like sexy good times,” I said. “When did you, uh, start this diary?”
    â€œLast Tuesday,” Cathy told me. “But it’s become really important to me in a short space of time. It was going to contain years of memories.”
    I knelt down by Cathy’s chair and took her hand.
    â€œEverything else still matters,” I told her. “Except possibly the diary with its five minutes’ worth of memory. Cathy, this was not your life. This was some guy.”
    â€œYes, I know,” said Cathy. She kept staring out the stupid window. “But he was a life-changing kind of guy.”
    I hadn’t known Cathy wanted her life to change so much.
    â€œWhat if,” I asked tentatively, “what if Francis had to go because—because he’d done something wrong, and he couldn’t face you? Maybe he, ah—cheated on his geography quiz.”
    â€œFrancis has traveled all over the world! He’s been to countries I’d never even heard of. Abyssinia! Champa! Prussia! Sikkim! Zanzibar! When he was seventeen, he went on a Grand Tour of Europe. Why would he cheat on his geography quiz?”
    I stared at the carpet, wondering if he’d made those countries up. “You know what I mean, Cathy. What if Francis wasn’t the guy you thought he was?”
    â€œMel,” Cathy said, “Francis is gone. He can’t defend himself. I really don’t want to hear anything against him. I’m sure he left for a good reason. I just wish—I wish he could have told me what it was.”
    But we’d both decided, me and Francis, that she didn’t get to know.
    For her own good.
    â€œI feel like I should tell her the truth,” I told Kristin. “She’s really upset. She hasn’t left her room in three days. I’m not sure she’s left her chair in three days. She can’t sleep.”
    â€œNo wonder, if she’s trying to sleep in a chair,” Kristin said, her voice echoing for a second.
    I lay stretched out on my bed, in tracksuit bottoms and a holey T-shirt with a picture of a saber-toothed tiger that said SABERS: BETTER THAN YOURS that