Mine are on the planet.
The planet is the only thing that gives us any hope. It’s the only goal. All of this: Doc’s rules, living in the Ward, hoping to slip past Eldest’s notice for one more day so we can continue living as we like and not be forced to be productive members of the ship. . . . The only hope we have is to one day land on the new Earth.
“Twenty-four thousand three hundred and eighty-six,” Harley whispers in my ear, grinning, and I finally understand that the number is a promise, not a sentence.
“Look at that,” Kayleigh crows triumphantly. Harley shushes her.
“That’s the ship’s diagram,” Elder says, his eyes growing round. “You’re not supposed to be looking at that.”
“Are you going to stop me, little leader?” Kayleigh asks. She bends down, and although there’s a smile twitching up the corners of her lips, her question is serious.
Elder shakes his head no.
“I just wanted to look is all,” Kayleigh says, her eyes scanning the complicated diagram. I can barely make heads or tails of it: there are lines and numbers everywhere. Kayleigh, though, is the inventor: she must know what it means.
The entryway grows silent. Kayleigh reads the diagram with a sort of desperate fierceness. Harley stares at her, wonder in his eyes. I glance at Elder; we’re the outsiders here, watching something neither of us understands.
“What are you doing?” The voice bellows so loudly that I feel as if the giant globes should fall from the ceiling and shatter at our feet.
Orion, the Recorder, strides toward us. Elder takes one look at him and scampers, his feet skidding across the smooth floor. The heavy door slams behind him.
Harley laughs at Elder’s childish flight, but a part of me wants to chase after him. I’ve never seen Orion look so furious before. He’s wearing nothing but trousers and his hair is a mess; clearly he was already in bed. There’s a hardness to his jaw, and I can see the muscles on his chest tightening.
“You frexing idiots! Do you know what you’ve done?”
Even Harley looks cowed now, but Kayleigh dances up to Orion, still laughing. “I was only looking,” she says.
Orion grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her until the smile slips from her face. “There are people in the fields right now who are there for ‘only looking,’” he sneers. “You want to be one of them?”
“Let him try to send me to the fields,” Kayleigh says. No laughter now. Just determination. My heart swells. She’s like a flame burning brightly—a flame almost out of control.
“He can do worse than send you to the fields.” Orion’s voice is low. He means these words to cut down Kayleigh’s challenging posture, but it doesn’t work. On her, anyway. The thought of Kayleigh being punished by Eldest instills within me a heart-thudding sort of terror I’ve never felt for anyone else, even myself.
Harley catches my eye and jerks his head to the door. This is something that Kayleigh has planned, something that Orion’s caught her doing before. We are just witnesses. With enough time and rage, maybe Orion can make her finally see how dangerous her whims can be.
I take the stairs two at a time, already on the path before I notice Harley’s sitting on the steps. “Go without me,” he says. “I’m going to wait on Kayleigh.”
I stop.
I know the way Harley’s been watching Kayleigh—for years now. She’s been just a friend to both of us, never quite willing to take it further. There was a time when I thought they were growing more serious, but that was just before Selene was banished. Once Eldest sent her to the fields, Kayleigh withdrew. She was quicker to smile, but it took longer for the smile to reach her eyes. She was more daring, though, and I worried about that, about what that would mean for her. For us. For them.
“Go on,” Harley says again. His voice is dismissive. He doesn’t even think that I might want to stay behind, that I might want to be the one to comfort Kayleigh after Orion’s chewed her out. He just assumes that it’s him she wants to see.
And, probably, it is.
Acid roils in my stomach.
Who am I kidding?
One night swimming with her in the pond, and I expect her to turn to me? One night realizing that she fills my mind and heart in ways I never thought possible, and suddenly she’s mine?
I plod down the path, away from the Recorder Hall. Away from Kayleigh.
But not all the way. As soon as the garden starts up, I veer left. I don’t stop at the pond. Its still surface mocks me. I keep going, even though there’s nothing out here. Nothing but the wall.
I sit down. Underneath me is dirt and grass. But behind me, pressing against my back, is the curving steel wall of the ship. I let my head fall back, a dull thud of my skull against metal. I’m such a frexing chutz.
I don’t know how long I stay there, staring at nothing but darkness. It gets cooler—the allotted ten degrees cooler dictated by the ship’s program—and I think about going back to my room in the Ward. Before I can move, though, I hear voices.
Kayleigh.
And Harley.
And a splash.
He’s calling to her—he jumped in first. Kayleigh squeals with delight and I see the outline of her body diving into the pond.
She comes up for air, gasping and laughing.
And then there’s no sound. I see his arms around her body and her arms around his and they’re swimming and not swimming and the water slips over their bodies and I hear the flutter of a gasp and I see, I see, I see.
And I know.
This is the second thing I learned in the nighttime:
I may love Kayleigh, but she will never ever love me.
Harley counts the days until the ship will land, one by one.
24,385 . . . 24,384 . . . 24,383 . . .
I count the nights.
On the 24,302nd night, Kayleigh purposefully waited until I (and Elder and everyone else) was gone before she and Harley snuck out. I know. I waited in the corner of the hallway, and I saw them go.
On the 24,287th night, Kayleigh and Harley went outside and didn’t come back until the morning.
On the 24,245th night, Kayleigh didn’t bother going out at alclass="underline" she stayed in. In Harley’s room.
On the 24,238th day, Harley quits counting down the days. He and Kayleigh quit pretending that there is nothing going on between them.
“Gross,” Elder complains as Kayleigh leans over the couch and gives Harley an upside-down kiss.
I agree but keep my mouth shut.
I’m writing again, and that’s good, at least. Long, rambling, angry poems that amount to nothing, but they’re words. I hunch over my little book—I don’t like writing on the membrane screens, I prefer paper—and scrawl out my latest poems.
I tried not caring. I gave up somewhere around the 24,290th night.
“What’s wrong?” Kayleigh asks.
I immediately smooth down my face: I had not realized that I was scowling at her. At the two of them. She slips down beside me on the couch and wraps her arms around mine. “What is it?” she asks again, so much concern in her voice that I know she’s sincere.
I shake my head.
Kayleigh stares at me a moment longer, then shoots Harley a look. There is a message in her eyes, though, a message that Harley must be able to read, because he jumps up from his seat. “Come on, Elder,” he says. “I’ll show you the art gallery in the Recorder Hall.”
Elder—eager to be included—follows immediately. I wait until the elevator doors close behind him before I dare to look at Kayleigh.
Her eyes are kind, and sad, and knowing.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I say immediately, hoping to stave off her pity. I want nothing of her pity.
“Maybe not,” she concedes. “But you look sad; I don’t want you to be sad.”