Yes. This is what I wanted. Right?
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
Cox laughed and pushed me forward. “You’ll see. Go on home. See you at school tomorrow.”
When I finally found the way back to my living quarters, I could hear mom crying in her room. She was still grieving over dad, though she claimed that the sudden weeping outbursts were due to the artificial days and nights, or the synthetic smell of life in space, or some other lie. Luckily, she didn’t notice me slip in, nor did she complain when I drowned out her moans by blaring music in my cramped room while I struggled to sleep.
The next morning I ate synth-meat for breakfast, rushed out the door before mom could bring up dad, and used my school pass to skip to the school station. My first three periods I drifted off, day-dreaming of skipping, kicking a faceless patrol officer in the teeth, but mostly about the dying planet. In my daydreams I could hear the peoples’ cries. Why hadn’t they left? Surely they weren’t so poor that they couldn’t leave. Who would choose death on a planet over life across the million space stations?
At first I sat by myself at lunch, sure that no one would want a tan Earther sitting with them, but, to my surprise, Cox grabbed my shoulder and gestured over to a table where Todd, Timmet, Trager and a few others from the night before sat.
As I joined them, I heard discussion of last night’s exploits—rehashing, bragging, hyperbolizing. Cox cut in, explaining how heroic I was when I smashed officer piggy’s teeth in. After that the other boys seemed more accepting of me, listening when I spoke, giving the occasional nod.
By the time lunch was dismissed, they had begun planning another show, but this one was something new, not the same dying planet from another angle.
Reluctantly, I ambled to class, a dark boy in a scuffed hallway full of skulking corpses, my mind fixed on skipping, wondering what the new show might be—Cox, Timmet and Trager had kept me out of the loop. In class I sat in a listing chair, impatiently leaning back from my desk, not listening to some teach chew the side of her mouth. Suddenly, I felt a kick on my tailbone, hard enough to sting. I glanced back; it took me a second, but I recognized the girl from last night’s show.
She winked a pale-blue eye. Her hair was dyed darker than my natural color; it shimmered purple if the light caught it just right. She wore a splash of cherry lipstick, and I spotted tattoos swirling up the side of her neck: a few colorful planets, some stylized stars and a spiraling galaxy—not the sort of ink you’d find on Earth.
I raised my eyebrows. Her complexion didn’t seem as grey as the others’. With a quirked smile, she passed me a folded note on synth-paper. It read: u planning on going to the next show? Shit, did I really want to go? I wrote back: sure, sure, what’s your name? And tossed it back to her while the teach wasn’t looking. She responded with: Name’s Lem, next time you better sit next to me. When I looked back at her, I could tell just from her crooked smirk that she was aggressive, cocky, vivacious.
Though I had lived on Earth for fourteen years, and breathed real air, drank real water, and ate real food, she somehow had lived more than me.
I sent back: sure, sure.
After we received the notification to switch classes, Lem followed me to the science hall. I didn’t know what to say, so I awkwardly smiled as she complained about the dearth of girls at last night’s show. I nodded like a fool, bumping into other students in between gawking glances. She must have been late to her next class, because I had hardly entered mine before the tardy notification appeared on the cracked screen of my tablet.
I remembered nothing of the rest of the school-day. I assume I spent it scribbling sketches of dying planets on synth-paper, ignoring teachers. After school I roamed the halls looking for Cox, Todd, Lem, or any of the gang, but those who hadn’t ditched earlier in the day, hadn’t stuck around after school. When I got home, I was already irritated. Mom—her eyes rimmed red—put on a smile for me. That irritated me more.
I left after dinner, ignoring mom’s silent pleas to be comforted.
I paced our sector, subconsciously moving toward the skip station, but without the handy hacker Cox had, I was marooned, unless I wanted to pay.
As I roamed I passed silicon flowers and earthen landscape murals so awful they only could have been painted by someone who’d never stepped foot on Earth’s surface. The bleak, artificial lighting did nothing to uplift my brooding.
Why had they stayed? They were ants on our cosmic threadbare screen, scurrying, helpless. Too poor? After father had died, mom and I were too poor to live anywhere but the stations.
Could it have been different long ago? I asked myself as I studied the awful perspective of a different earthen mural. None of the shadows looked right, and the trees were far too thin. Was Cox’s gang where I should try to fit in? The mountains looked like triangles, completely inorganic, completely wrong. How long could they go ditching school and skip-hacking before a pig bashed them? The sun was a brighter orange than that, the sky more blue—this painting belonged on a wasted planet, full of frantic ants. What happens if I got stranded on some station a billion light years away? Trees don’t grow in concentric rows, and there’s no patterns to the way leaves sprout from branches. Why did they stay? Why didn’t they just leave?
Over the following weeks I grew closer to Cox and his gang; we were vines twisting together, using each other to reach a sunspot, not that any of my new friends would get the metaphor. We poured hours of work into discussing plans over half-eaten synthetic lunch food, spreading the news only by word of mouth to those we knew wouldn’t rat, hunting down potential show sites: the station had to have a powerful telescope that the brothers could hack, and it couldn’t be in a high-traffic area.
I hardly saw Lem in class—I think she ditched more than not—but when I did, her cherry smile brought my thoughts away from indecision. Cox’s gang was the key to the lightshows, and lightshows were the key to her. She was the most attractive space girl I’d seen, and I’d chase her to far-off galaxies if given the chance.
One day between the first show I’d seen and the second, Lem and I ditched before Earth History class. Using a battered old skip-hacker Cox had graciously given me, I took her to stations we’d never seen. We walked through offices—stealing idle hand tablets, synth-papers, and whatever would fit in our pockets, ran through cafeterias—snatching genuine planet-baked cinnamon bread and rolls with real butter, laughed in game rooms as we played VRs with what little money we had. In the cold, bleak expanse of our galaxy, I had found light.
Back home I would lie awake on my thin mattress thinking of Lem’s dark hair with its purple shimmer, wondering if she was thinking of me too. It was a nice change from my brain replaying my father’s babbling death as fast-acting poison ate his body. I never saw it, the leak at his station was far above Earth, but that hadn’t stopped my mind from speculating about his final minutes.
Hell, I was beginning to be able to ignore my mom, too—but it wasn’t all wonderful amongst the bleak stars. I still second-guessed myself. Joining Cox’s cohorts could lead down a strange path. I’d never run with a crowd like that back on Earth. But the stations were different from Earth. To fit in here, I told myself, I had to run with these guys.
On the day we set up the show room, I ditched class entirely. My whole body trembled in anticipation. This room yawned bigger than the last, and I was one of the first to arrive.