I couldn’t listen to any more of this. All thoughts of snack food forgotten, I rushed through the kitchen and out the back door. I clumsily made my way across the small yard, taken up almost entirely by Celeste’s playset and Mom’s vegetable garden and orchard of fruit trees, and vaulted the waist-high fence. My mind was a blur as I stormed down the alley behind our house. I tried to keep it focused on the sound of the rolling waves in the bay, to let it drown out the echoes of the conversation I’d just overheard. The disappointment in my mother’s voice. The crushing guilt that I’d been trying to avoid all day.

Why’d she have to compare me to Dad like that? I was nothing like him. For one thing, I’d never abandon her and Celeste the way he did.

But I was nothing like Erick Gomez, either. Why did all these adults keep trying to stick me into some kind of box, like they couldn’t make sense of me without comparing me to someone else? Why couldn’t they just let me be myself? Make my own choices, do what I want to do? Maybe my grades at the precious Academy wouldn’t have dropped so much if everyone in my life wasn’t hell-bent on giving me so much shit all the time!

My feet unconsciously led me down to the wharf that lined the water’s edge. There were lots of people out tonight, couples on dates and families out to dinner. A large and noisy group of Earth tourists clamored past me to get down the stairs to the beach. They nearly collided with four girls coming up from the ferry docks, and I stepped back to give them some room. The tourists were chattering to themselves about wanting to catch a glimpse of “authentic” Martian life, rather than sticking to the more upscale and artificial areas the northern waterfront had to offer. I snorted. If they wanted to see the real Mars, they should take a tour of the factory district. That would dash their little sci-fi dreams in a nanosecond. The idea was almost funny enough to snap me out of my bad mood.

I was so preoccupied, I didn’t even notice one of the girls detach herself from the group that had just come up the stairs. I nearly jumped out of my skin when Tamara clapped her hand down on my shoulder. “Isaak, what’s the matter?” she asked. “You stomped right past me back there, you didn’t even notice when I said ‘hi.’”

“I’m sorry, Tam. Nothing’s wrong, I was just… thinking.”