Girl's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Girl stood on a crate in the market square and shouted her pitch for the ninth time that day. She wanted to build a rocket and fly off Hardpan into orbit. She had drawings, a scavenged fuel plan, and a jar of savings. What she didn't have was a single person who believed her. The crowd walked past. A woman laughed. Girl pushed her purple hair from her eyes and tried again anyway. "Real ships need welders," she called out. "Wire folks. I'll split the sky with anybody brave enough!" A man spat in the dust. "Kid, this rock eats dreamers. Go home." Girl's throat went tight. She had no home worth the name, only a lean-to and a plan too big for one pair of hands. She couldn't cut steel. She couldn't wire an engine. Alone, her rocket was just chalk lines on scrap. Her jar of coins felt very small. Then a girl stepped out of the crowd. She was younger than most workers, dark hair pinned under a red bandana, a yellow skull on her shirt. Grease stained her gloves. She carried a welding torch on her belt like other people carried keys. Girl knew the face. Everyone did. Raze, the scrapyard prodigy who could fix anything and got hired by nobody. Too young, they said. Too strange. Raze circled the crate. She studied Girl's drawings without asking. "Your fin angle's wrong," she said flatly. "You'd flip on launch and burn." "So fix it," Girl said. Raze looked up. Her brown eyes were sharp and bored at the same time. "Why should I? Everybody here already told you no." Girl climbed down. Her heart hammered. This was the only person who'd stopped walking. "Because they told you no too," she said. "Nobody gives you work. Nobody takes me serious. We're the same kind of trash to them." She held out her jar of coins. "It's not much. But it's real, and I mean it, and I will build this thing with or without help. I'd just rather have you." Raze didn't take the jar. She stared at it a long moment. The market noise rolled on around them. Then she pushed the jar back toward Girl's chest. "Keep your money," Raze said. "You'll need it for parts." She spat on her palm and stuck out her hand. "I'm in. But we do it my way. Your rocket's ugly and it'll kill us both the way you drew it." Girl grabbed the hand and shook hard, grinning so wide it hurt. "Deal," she said. Raze rolled up the drawings and tucked them under her arm. "Come on. My scrapyard's got fins that won't flip." She was already walking. "And we're gonna need way more than two hands." Girl followed her out of the square. She had a welder now. She also had a new problem, and it walked ahead of her, listing every part they didn't have.