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Sing Down The Stars. Nerine Dorman
Читать онлайн.Название Sing Down The Stars
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780624087496
Автор произведения Nerine Dorman
Жанр Учебная литература
Издательство Ingram
Nuri tried not to concern herself too much with the others, but since she’d arrived at the base so late, and didn’t exactly look like anyone else, she feared she’d become a natural target. She’d seen this at the barrens, so she made herself ready, just in case.
The comments started in tea break during the late afternoon. Two of the Nasty Girls, whispering and giggling in a way that was meant to be overheard but not challenged.
There was nothing new about “space trash”, but the comments were about her looking like she was diseased, with the faint spattering of scales on her cheeks and arms. This led to “Snake-girl” or “Fish-face”. And her eyes – that her pupils shrank into slits whenever the light was particularly bright. “Goblin” was another name that cropped up, or “Goblin-ears”, because few races had pointed ears like hers. Nuri tried to avoid this one by pulling her coveralls’ hood low.
“Just ignore them,” F’Thr muttered. “They’ll stop if they don’t get a rise out of you. I get called ‘squidface’ and ‘wormy’ often enough.”
“We’ll get them back,” Opna said, with a wicked grin. “No one calls me ‘the lump’ anymore.”
“What they said,” Mei added, nodding. “They’ll get bored once the novelty wears off. They were weird with me too, because I’m from Old Terra. No one’s from Old Terra much these days. ‘Museum specimen’ was the kindest one, but I got ‘chink’ and ‘gook’ too.”
Yet when Nuri was taking a shower late that afternoon before dinner, her towel was yanked out of her cubicle. And when she crossed the floor of the busy female bathroom, horribly conscious of being naked, she discovered her clean clothes had mysteriously vanished. Amid nasty titters, she had to pull on her dirty coveralls and return to her dorm. What got her the most was the fact that most of the other girls merely wouldn’t look at her or even acknowledge that she’d had this prank pulled on her. Their gazes slid past her, and that stung.
Next time she’d take her clothes into the shower stall with her, even if it meant they got wet from the spray.
Those awful females didn’t know what it was like to sleep hungry. They didn’t know what it was like to be chased by knife-wielding gangsters. None of them had had to break into a place to steal things and then run for their lives when the bots caught them on their sensors.
They could do nothing to her. This was all temporary.
And yet their words were little splinters that wriggled beneath her skin. When the lights were turned off, these tiny jabs multiplied, so that she lay awake most of the night, staring at the bunk above her bed until the shadows seem to pool and swarm about like living things in her vision.
It’d worked for her in the Den, to keep her head down. And it had helped that she’d been a good runner; Vadith might punish her with bathroom duty from time to time, but he’d never tolerate the other runners being too mean. Besides, they’d been a team – for all their faults, they’d been pack.
Here. Well. She had her new friends, but they couldn’t always shield her. And neither could she expect them to.
So what if she didn’t have the right genes or enough education. Ancestors, if it ever should get out that she’d been little more than a common criminal, there was no telling what would happen. Nuri made sure to keep that part of her past close to her heart.
What was wrong with people?
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