Nobody clever enough to be in Battle School needs to be told that the drink game is rigged after doing fifty of it. Bella refrains from telling him anyway. "Why is that funny?" she asks instead, swaying idly with the rhythm in her thoughts.

"Why isn't it?" he counters, glancing up at her to share his wide, cheerful grin. "I just like watching the little guy die horribly!"

"It's like the game was designed for you, then," says Bella, eyeing the boy with amusement. "Since that's all you can do in this section."

"I never heard of one. I quit playing after I heard it's rigged, though, so I haven't seen for myself." She stands on one foot. She does that sometimes. Balancing is easy when you can hold perfectly still solely by wanting to.

"Why'd you quit?" he asks interestedly.

"I don't really think it's that entertaining to watch my avatar die a million times. I'd rather fly around in the practice rooms or read if I have spare time," she shrugs.

"There's a whole rest of the game, though," he says, and he sends his avatar back for another death.

"The rest of it was all right, but any game where there's a part you just can't live through seems, I dunno, mean-spirited, it'd bother me to keep playing now that I know. I like books and stuff better anyway."

"The homework stuff. Classic literature - old stuff that's barely English like we talk now. Sometimes stuff on psychology or modern novels if they're highly recommended or whatever else. I finished Utopia this morning. It wasn't very utopic, though, I was disappointed."

"What was it instead?"

"There was all kinds of pointless stuff in. Like, you had to move houses every ten years. And worse than pointless stuff, like they had slavery. And people weren't allowed to travel, even just within the country, without a passport. I dunno, I think I could do better. But Sir More wrote it a long time ago."

"Weird," the boy concludes, steering his avatar into another grisly death.

"Yeah. I'm Bella. What's your name?"

"Nice to meet you, Bella!" he says brightly, ignoring the question.

"If you won't tell me what to call you it can't be all that nice, can it," she says.

"Don't feel bad," he says amicably, "I'm like that with everybody."

"Why?" She clearly expects there to be an answer and for him to know it. She still expects people to be able to read their own minds, even if they can't read anyone else's.

"Because I hate my name and I don't have a better one."

"Then you should make something up. Half the kids in my launch already have nicknames even if you don't count 'Bella'. And we only got here three weeks ago."

"I guess it's harder if you hate your name that much."

"Yep," he agrees. "You can call me whatever you want, anyway, I figure out all right when people are talking to me."

"Dunno." She peers at his avatar as its bones melt and it collapses into a puddle of flesh. "Suicide Watch, maybe, but that's just as long as the name I'm shortening and not very namey."