I raise an eyebrow. “Weirdo.”

“Hey. I can smell whatever I want, thank you very much. Here—” She presses the book into my face. “Go on!”

I feel my face redden as I sniff. Back home, I wouldn’t be caught doing this—even alone. It smells odd, a fresh scent.

“It’s called lignin,” Glacia tells me. “The paper is breaking down. I’m addicted to it.”

She grabs her holotab and smudges her nose on the screen, repeating the same huge sniff she made in the book.

“This just doesn’t cut it.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to smell holotabs.”

“Exactly. And that’s why books are better. Now I won’t look ridiculous in public anymore.”

“Wait, you actually—”

She interrupts me with a laugh. “No! That’d be weird. It’s already weird enough when people scan their faces, and sadly, we’ve all done it.”

Glacia looks at me—expecting some sign that I agree—but I give her a blank stare. She gawks in disbelief.

“You’ve never made a hologram of your face?”

I feel the heat return to my cheeks. “Nope.”

She slants her eyebrows and folds her arms.

“One day, mister. One day.”

When the evening rolls around, something happens that never happened in the Embassy: Michael, Ellin, Glacia, and I eat dinner together. The only problem is we aren’t talking. I’m drawing a blank on things to say because I don’t want to start with the awkward, blatantly nondescript ‘how was everyone’s day?’ So I sit there and eat in silence, waiting for a conversation to pick up.

Ellin’s the first to speak. “So are your living quarters as remarkable as Officer Remmit promised?”

“Oh yes,” Michael says, twisting some noodles around his fork.

“Got any cool gadgets?”

Michael lifts the corner of his mouth. “If by ‘cool gadgets’ you mean hologram arrays designed to construct treatises, then yes.”

Ellin seems to be out questions, leaving me and Glacia to come up with a topic. I shovel more pasta into my mouth to keep myself distracted. Glacia says I need to be more interesting. It’s completely true. I’m boring. I don’t have a story to share. I can’t even have a decent conversation with people from my own city.

How am I supposed to change?

Glacia sets her fork down. “Arman and I are going to use the StarPad tomorrow evening so I can teach him some constellations. Maybe we can all hang out?”

Michael nods. “I don’t mind.”

Ellin looks at me, her sky blue eyes crinkled in a smile. “Sounds fun.”

Glacia dips her spoon into her soup and swallows a clump of vegetables. She flicks her eyebrows up when our eyes meet. I grimace back. She invited them to join us, not me. But it should have been me. I need to show I want their friendship.