"I guess so. Beats sitting in my dorm room."

"Easily bored?" The other girl drawled the words in her growling voice. "Then maybe you should have a surf sometimes."

"A surf?" Aya swallowed. "You mean I can ride with you?"

A few grumbles came from the darkness.

"But she's only fifteen," the girl holding the flashlight said.

"Are you still back in the Prettytime?" said the growly-voiced girl. "Who cares how old she is?

She crashed Prettyville and came down here all alone. Got more guts than most of you, probably."

"What about the hovercam?" Eden said. "If she kicks a story, we'll have wardens all over us."

"She could still call the wardens if she wants to." The mean-voiced girl slid closer on her board, until her nose was only a few centimeters from Aya's. "So we either leave her down here for good, or get her on our side."

Aya swallowed, glancing down at the shimmering black lake.

"Um, do I get a vote?"

"No one but me gets a vote," the girl said, then smiled. "But how about this? You do get to make a choice."

"Oh?"

The girl held Moggie at arm's length, and Aya saw the lock-down clamp against its skin. It was frozen, brain-dead until someone removed the clamp.

"You can either take your hovercam and go away. Or I drop it right now, and you get to come surfing with us."

Aya blinked, listening to the cold water still trickling from her robe. Ren claimed he'd made Moggie waterproof, but could she find her way back to this exact spot?

"How important is it to you, getting out of that boring little dorm room?"

Aya swallowed. "Very."

"Then choosing should be easy, right?"

"It's just…that cam cost me a lot of merits."

"It's a toy. Like face ranks and merits, it doesn't mean anything if you don't let it."

Face rank didn't mean anything? This girl was brain-missing. But she was right about one thing: Nothing was more important than getting out of boring, pathetic Akira Hall.