Ender in Exile (Ender's Saga 1.20)

"I'm not lying to you," said Ender.

She looked at him fiercely. "Did you desire me? At all?"

Ender closed his eyes and nodded.

"Look at me and say it."

"I wanted you," said Ender.

"And now?"

"There are lots of things I want that aren't right for me to have."

"You sound as if your mother taught you to say that."

"If I'd been raised by my mother, maybe she would have," said Ender. "But as it is, I learned that when I decided to go to Battle School, when I decided to live by the rules of that place. There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it's best to know the rules and only break them if you're playing a different game and following those rules."

"Do you think that made sense of some kind?"

"To me it did," said Ender. "I want you. You wanted me. That's a nice thing to know. I had my first kiss."

"It wasn't bad, was it? I wasn't awful?"

"Let's put it this way," said Ender. "I haven't ruled out doing it again. Sometime in the future."

She giggled. The crying had stopped.

"I really do have work to do," said Ender. "And believe me, you woke me right up. Not sleepy at all. Very helpful."

She laughed. "I get it. Time for me to go."

"I think so," he said. "But I'll see you later. As we always do."

"Yes," said Alessandra. "I'll try not to act too giggly and strange."

"Act like yourself," said Ender. "You can't be happy if you're pretending all the time."

"Mother is."

"Which? Pretending? Or happy?"

"Pretending to be happy."

"So maybe you can grow up to be happy without having to pretend."

"Maybe," she said. And then she was gone.

Ender closed the door and sat down. He wanted to scream in frustration at thwarted desire, in rage at a mother who would send her daughter on such an errand, at Admiral Morgan for making all this necessary, at himself for being such a liar. "You can't be happy if you're pretending all the time." Well, his life certainly didn't contradict that statement. He was pretending all the time, and he certainly was not happy.

CHAPTER 15

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