>“You can’t both leave me,” Eleanor said, threading her fingers together, and then looking up from them to staring first at Li and then at Sam. “Promise me that one of you will be my partner.”

“You know my mom wouldn’t want me doing anything up in the greenhouses but bots,” Li said, “and people who pick their partners up there don’t get to pick their assignments.”

Eleanor looked at Sam. He saw fear in her eyes.

“I promise,” he said.

And that was how he wound up spending his second day in the greenhouses slopping out the recycling bins.

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