Sadly, I didn’t have my colored pens along when I did this one.

In mid-air, Tommy Liu realized that he was going to land.

Out on the mining platform, the basketball court was a hundred foot platform made of titanium, which was relatively plentiful out in the asteroids, and it was free-standing, surrounded by a field which could be turned on or off when the court wasn’t in use.

If you went for a ball that was going foul, in crossing the out-of-bounds line you’d leave the area controlled by the feeble, finicky, jerry-rigged gravity-generator that was strapped to the bottom of the basketball court, and you’d end up floating free, generally gently caught by the surrounding field and bounced back into the area of play.

Tommy had been here, on Earth, at this boarding school, for three and a half years, but when a basketball made for the out-of-bounds line he still just… went for it, making a spectacular leap, hooking the ball in mid-air, and flinging it back to one of his teammates, and only then realizing that the blacktop was looming up to say, once again, “Welcome to Earth!”

He had barely come to a scraped, bloody, and bruised halt when the whistle told him that the clandestine game of basketball during what was supposed to be study hall had been discovered. The other boys scattered; whichever Brother had discovered the game in progress had blown his whistle from well off, probably in hopes that the boys would simply run away and that he wouldn’t have to deal with it; but Tommy wasn’t really ready to get to his feet just yet so he just moaned, secretly savoring, just a little, the knowledge that he was somehow making this Brother’s life difficult.

They made his life difficult every day. From the uniform to the five-thirty wakeup call to the services, morning and evening, which bracketed his day, his life was controlled by the ringing of bells and the blowing of whistles in the hands and lips of the Dominican Brothers.

He rolled over onto his back, painfully, and began to sit up, only to realize that Brother Mort was standing over him with his hands on his hips, looking as though he was trying to be disapproving through an amused smirk. Although they’d be the first to tell you that it wasn’t doctrine, the idea that transgression was self-punishing, that breaking the rules would cause you to come to grief automatically and without the need for the likes of Brother Mort to intervene, was still satisfying.

Brother Mort reached down and offered Tommy a hand, which Tommy grasped firmly, letting himself be pulled upright.

“I was looking for you in Study Hall,” said Mort. Great, thought Tommy, so blowing the game does turn out to be my fault. “I’ve got some news, let’s go back to my office.”

They walked across the small, dense urban campus of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Brother Mort going slowly enough for Tommy to limp along beside him. Mort had seemed to take an interest in Tommy since he arrived here, fresh from the Belt, grieving his family: His father’s accidental death and his mother’s total withdrawal into herself, his sudden move from the small, loosely-coupled but somehow tightly-knit community around Kino Platform to this plush if rigidly-structured boy’s school. They talked every so often, and Mort did his best to do most of the listening, though it wasn’t easy with a boy whose sullen silences were his most eloquent feature.

Brother Mort’s office had an actual door, even if it was a tiny closet-sized space, just big enough for him to sit across a small, plain table from a guest or maybe two if they squoze. There was a wooden bookshelf on the back wall, and no window, just a small ventilation fan built into the ceiling that didn’t prevent it from feeling a little bit stuffy.

“So,” said Brother Mort, when they’d found their seats, “I’ve received word this morning that there’s been a judgement on the disposition of your parents’ mining ship.” He leaned forward on his elbows and clasped his hands together; this telegraphed to Tommy that there was bad news coming, for which he should steel himself.

“The Mining Vessel Margaret Wang has been docked at Caruthers Station for almost four years, and your mother hasn’t paid the station keeper any of the fees, or responded to any of his communications; therefore he’s taken the matter to court, and the judge ruled that the ship is to be sold, probably to a breaker’s, the dock fees owing taken out of the proceeds of the sale, and the remainder, if any, put in trust for you, as a minor owner…”

Tommy tuned everything else out. They were going to break up Marge, the ship he’d grown up on, his first home. The last bit of the childhood he’d been waiting patiently to resume as soon as they let him out of this damned prison of a school. What the hell was he going to do now?

He slumped down into the uncomfortable chair.