by Temi Oh
‘Serotonin?’ Eliot guessed.
‘These are the only things that really make you happy.’
Eliot glanced up at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘People will try to tell you that it was some misalignment of the stars, or that she had some sickness in her soul. Some blackness that, if you had fathomed it earlier, you could have called her out of and made her whole again.’ Eliot felt a lump rise in his throat. ‘But that’s not true. It’s just bad chemistry, mixed-up biology. Not enough monoamines to make her happy. Ara was a sick person. My dad was a sick person. There is nothing I could have done to save him.’
Eliot frowned.
‘I realized that when I was twenty-four,’ Cai said, ‘and it freed me. So I’m telling you.’
‘But what about the way I feel right now?’ Eliot said quietly, lowering his gaze. ‘That I loved her? Where does that all go?’
Cai pointed to the sketches on his wrist.
‘It’s just chemicals,’ he said. ‘Infatuation, love: oxytocin, dopamine and adrenaline.’ He pushed his green finger hard against Eliot’s temple. ‘One day we’ll know the molecular formula for disappointment, for despair, for grief . . . it all happens in here.’ He pushed harder. ‘Chemical reactions. Nothing more.’
Eliot swallowed, noticing that his heart had stopped pounding, although his fingers were still trembling, the sunless skin over his arms raised up in goosebumps. ‘But,’ he said, feeling a little ungrateful, ‘I don’t understand how that makes it any less important?’
2001
HE HAD LOVED HER with everything he had. They’d met for the first time in the playground at their primary school when she had been talking to the wind. She convinced the other girls that she was a witch and that when she called the wind came rushing. They’d believed her, of course they had. Ara had been like the Pied Piper.
She’d said she was magic and for a while Eliot, too, had believed it. She’d raised an arm, and a second later a breeze kicked up, scattering leaves. But Eliot spotted the glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes, the moment of doubt that crumbled the entire illusion, like a curtain drawn back, the glimpse of the old man behind the wizard. He could not un-see it, even if he wanted to.
‘I don’t believe in witches,’ he’d told her.
‘Then I don’t believe in eleven-year-old boys,’ she’d said.
‘You lied.’
‘No.’
‘You told us that you could control the wind.’
‘That’s not what I said,’ she insisted, letting her arms fall to her sides. ‘They just choose to believe me.’ She glanced at the girls in the corners of the playground, giggling, braced against the gusting wind.
That was all anyone saw, Ara breezing through life, swallowing up whole days in her manic search for glee. Looking everywhere.
When they were teenagers, she wore glitter under her eyes every Friday night, even after it was cool, even before. They went to a club night called ‘How does it feel to be loved?’ and she’d danced like a firecracker across the floor, the only one. He alone had caught up with her at the bus stop, and she’d been crying so hard, for no reason at all, that glitter dripped off her lips, her whole face spangled like a disco ball. ‘Everything hurts,’ she said, clutching her chest as if she’d been shot.
And yet he loved her like she’d lived, as if she wouldn’t be around for long. Loved her to the marrow of his bones, the only way a teenager can. Hysterically, electrically, with everything he could give.
Could he have saved her?
Maybe it was a miracle that she’d ever existed at all. She had been the love child of a seventeen-year-old Indian girl and her middle-aged boyfriend. They were only together for five weeks and, seven months later, Ara was born, bringing with her nothing but shame. She’d been in the intensive-care unit for six weeks, working all day just to draw air into her underdeveloped lungs, her skin so paper-thin that her mother’s touch could burn.
In Dalton, Ara had been like the best kind of soul friend. Something like a sister, but also something like a special dispensation from the universe, some creature who had entered this world solely to make it a better place for Eliot Liston to live.
They’d discovered sex early, before anybody else had even heard of it. The very first time had happened at sunset in Battersea Park, in the subtropical garden – a little fenced-off area where unlikely plants grew, giant reeds and dwarf palms, banana trees. They’d stayed out all night and the next morning the dew-covered earth was a little different.
‘I feel the same,’ Ara said, rolling over to him after, her cheek plastered with grass.
‘Me too,’ Eliot had lied. He’d kissed her before she crossed the road and took the bus in the opposite direction, her school tights scrunched up in her rucksack.
He slept until noon the next day. And, in the dream he had, he and Ara were in the subtropical garden again, snapping exotic fruits off vines that were heavy with them. In his dream, Eliot bit right into a mango and, when he opened his eyes to the kind 1 p.m. light, he felt as if his body and his heart had come alive at the exact same time.
JESSE
30.06.12
THE LONELINESS WAS BEGINNING to sting. It was the end of June, and after seven weeks on the Damocles, the elation of the launch had finally evaporated for Jesse. The flurry of emails, well-wishes and congratulations from friends and family members on Earth had subsided and Jesse’s life on the ship had naturally settled into the ebb and flow of their routine. Waking up to Commander Sheppard’s recording of Coltrane’s Interstellar Space, queuing for the bathroom, breakfast, which happened quickly, everyone rushing about the kitchen reading the news on their tablets and squabbling over the coffee machine before they settled down for morning briefing. Then they’d disperse into their different areas of the ship to attend to their own chores and tutorials. During the week, that meant that Jesse was alone for three hours in the greenhouse, weeding and fertilizing, logging notes on the ship’s computer using an arcane system of Cai’s devising or reading about the biochemistry behind hydroponics. After lunch, there were medical checks and their group lessons, then dinner. Whole days sometimes went by without anyone speaking to him directly. The semi-playful banter between the seniors and the Beta never included him, and sometimes he walked past the five other junior astronauts in the crew module, huddled up on one of the sofas watching a movie, Harry’s hand buried in Poppy’s hair, Juno’s head on Astrid’s lap, Eliot nearby, all of them enjoying the cosy comfort of friendship. If they didn’t fall completely silent when Jesse approached, then they lowered their gaze or greeted him with brittle formality. ‘They’re still grieving over Ara,’ Fae had explained to him during one of their counselling sessions. ‘They’ll warm up to you.’ But almost two months into their journey, Jesse became less and less hopeful.
That weekend, he somehow managed to sleep through the ecstatic tenor saxophone solos of ‘Mars’ and ‘Venus’ that burst through the speakers every morning, and by the time he trudged into the kitchen, breakfast was over. Poppy was watching a comedy on her laptop, the canned laughter ringing obnoxiously even through her headphones. Juno was absorbed in some task that involved poring over notes she had made during the previous day’s lesson. They didn’t greet him.
Jesse had been pouring sweetener into the morning’s first milky cup of coffee when he heard Poppy’s scream. He jolted and the hot liquid splashed over his hand.
Poppy, still attached to her laptop by her headphones, reeled backwards, knocking a plate onto the floor.
‘What is it?’ He turned to her in alarm and noticed that her grey eyes were wide with fear. She pointed a trembling finger towards the counter, and turned away in disgust.
‘What is it?’ Jesse asked again, taking a step back.
‘Look . . .’ she urged. Her voice had turned up an octave into a whine.
Jesse walked tentatively to the counter, edging into the shadowed corner to which Poppy was pointing.
Whe
n he spotted what had frightened her, he let out a laugh of relief and surprise. It was a spider, about the size of the base of a cup, a black thing with sharp legs, kicking at its silvery web.
‘I’ve seen bigger,’ Jesse said.
‘Where?’ said Poppy. ‘In Mombasa?’ She had calmed down a little; her mouth was twisted up in disgust, but she was no longer shaking.
‘What is it?’ Juno looked up from her notes.
‘Just a spider. Just a little—’
‘Don’t touch it!’ Poppy shrieked, jumping back again and rubbing her arms. ‘Kill it. Oh please kill it.’
‘No way.’ Jesse searched around his vicinity for a cup. Killing spiders had been a crime in his household, and this was the first living, moving thing – aside from his crewmates – that he had seen for almost two months. His heart jumped with the same excitement and surprise he’d experienced the first morning he’d climbed up the ladder to the greenhouse and noticed the little green heads of his seedlings bursting through the soil.
‘Hey, buddy,’ he said, placing a cup over it, trying his best not to squash any of its spindly legs. Poppy moaned in horror. ‘Stop being such a wimp,’ he hissed.
‘Don’t be rude,’ Juno said. ‘It’s a phobia.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re scared of spiders too?’ Jesse’s mouth twitched into a smile as he caught sight of Juno in the corner of his eye, hanging back by the breakfast table.
‘Spiders are scary,’ Poppy said.
‘I’m not scared.’ Juno shuddered. ‘Just disgusted. There’s something about them. The legs maybe . . .’
‘And their bodies,’ said Poppy, ‘and their webs.’
‘It’s the way they move.’ Juno shivered again. ‘I’m disgusted just thinking about it. That fast, silent way they scuttle. It’s almost inherent, a quality in their step, it’s repulsive. It’s unnatural.’
‘Nonsense.’ Jesse had managed to loose it from its web and it tumbled down the smooth sides of the cup, which he covered quickly with a sheet of paper. ‘There’s nothing unnatural about it. You don’t have to be embarrassed about saying you’re just scared, you know. I read somewhere that arachnophobia may have an evolutionary advantage.’
‘Yeah, because people who run away from spiders live,’ Juno said. ‘Spiders are predatory. They eat their sexual partners. They strangle their prey with silk, vomit digestive fluids into them so that they liquify before they’re eaten.’
‘Spiders are just misunderstood. They’re survivors,’ Jesse said. ‘Found on every continent except Antarctica. They can establish a habitat basically anywhere. I mean – look at this.’ He gestured to the glass, and the spider at the bottom of it.
‘What are you going to do, name it?’ Poppy was edging towards the doorway.
‘Maybe,’ Jesse said. ‘Now I have a pet.’
‘Charming.’ Juno grimaced. ‘So long as you keep it away from me.’
Poppy backed out the door. In the silence that followed, Jesse returned to his work, wiping up the hot water he’d spilled on the counter. He was almost finished when Juno looked up. ‘Oh Jesse,’ she said. When he turned her face was full of concern. ‘You burned yourself.’
‘Yeah . . .’ Jesse looked down at the reddening patch on the back of his hand. It was only now beginning to sting.
‘You have to put it under hot water,’ Juno said, standing up. ‘I mean, cold water.’ She took his wrist and held his hand under the tap, examining it, the cool stream catching on the little hairs behind his fingers. The cold was a relief. So was her touch. Jesse noticed that her nails were chopped short, dotted with flecks of turquoise nail varnish. Her fingers were lightly calloused, and she ran her fingertips along the sensitive skin on the back of his hand. The constant ache of his loneliness felt like a fever that had only just broken. How wonderful, the nearness of Juno. She was like the other girls, busy and mysterious, but how many of them would have come to his aid like this?
He closed his eyes, hoping to hold onto this moment. But Juno let go suddenly. Jesse opened them again and noticed that she was peering at him quizzically. She stepped back. ‘It um . . . doesn’t look too bad.’
‘Thank you,’ Jesse said. Juno sat back down, brushing stray coils of her springy hair behind her small ears.
‘It’s my job,’ she said. ‘You know, Fae’s training me to be the ship’s medical officer.’
‘Oh, right, yeah.’ A flash of disappointment.
Juno looked back down at her notes, wielding a highlighter. ‘We’ve just covered first aid and minor injuries again.’
‘Right.’ Jesse held his hand under the tap for a few moments longer until the numbness began to prickle up his fingers. Juno was already far away, absorbed in her notes again, her pen locked between her lips.
By then, his coffee was the sort of lukewarm he liked, and he finished it in slow drags, leaning against the counter.
‘Hey.’ Juno looked up at him again. ‘Jess . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘I forgot to tell you . . . thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For saving my life that time. During the solar storm.’
Already that night felt like a year ago. While it had been terrifying at the time, Jesse could no longer remember it without a twinge of embarrassment. ‘Well,’ he told her, ‘you weren’t really going to die. None of us were.’
‘You didn’t know that,’ Juno said, ‘and you barely knew me at the time. You could have stayed in the radiation shelter, but you didn’t.’
‘Yeah . . .’ In retrospect, he probably should have. Flouting orders on his first day had by no means endeared him to their commander.
Jesse thought about the day ahead of him, another day of bracing himself against the coolness of the rest of the crew, against homesickness.
‘You know,’ he took his cup to the sink to rinse it, turning his back to her, ‘this is the most anyone’s spoken to me since I got here.’
‘Really?’
From the corner of his eye, he saw Juno flinch at his words.
‘I mean, I know what it is. It’s not like I don’t understand it. If I had a really good friend who I thought I’d spend my life with, and then some other guy comes in at the last minute and takes her place, I guess I wouldn’t be too fond of him either. But I . . . I thought it would have stopped by now. It’s been almost two months since the launch and I feel as if it’s getting worse.’
‘I don’t know.’ Juno leant back in her chair. ‘It’s not just you. None of them talk about Ara, either. Or what happened, or why it happened. Not since the launch. And I know we all think about it. You’re kind of a reminder.’
Jesse hung his mug on the rack and thought for a moment. The silence was growing heavy again.
‘You know . . . I feel guilty about it. But sometimes I feel . . . grateful. Like, this is the way it was meant to be.’ He regretted it as soon as he said it. The words hadn’t come out quite right. What he’d meant to say was that when he looked out at his life, he liked to think that some silent power in the universe or the shining hand of destiny had brought him to the gates of Dalton, on the eve of the launch, at just the right moment. Yes, a girl he’d never really known had died, and, yes, that was tragic. But the fact remained, as inescapable as plain subtraction: if she had made it, then he wouldn’t have. Was it wrong to be glad?
When Juno looked up her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘Meant to be? Meant to be that my friend jumped into a river? Meant to be that she died alone and helpless and our teachers leapt over her grave to find a replacement?’
A knife-twist of guilt. Jesse shuddered, tripping over to take back his words.
‘No, I didn’t mean – I didn’t mean . . .’
‘Save it . . .’ Juno slammed her laptop shut and left the room.
LATER ON, WHEN HE was in the greenhouse, Jesse replayed the words in his head and groaned. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ he said out loud, although there was no one to hear. He let the
spider crawl up his arm and stayed there for a long while before he heard footsteps clambering up the ladder. For just a second his heart jumped, and he was sure it was Juno, come to rescue him from himself. He had already practised his apology.
Only, when he saw the blond head of hair, his spirits sank further.
‘Hey,’ Harry said. Jesse sat up.
‘Hey.’ From his vantage point, Harry looked frighteningly tall.
‘I hear you want to be one of us. Part of the team.’
‘I was picked. Just like you,’ Jesse said. ‘I am part of the team . . . now.’
‘Okay.’ Harry smiled. ‘I think it’s time for you to try and prove it.’
HARRY
IN HARRY’S EARLIEST MEMORY, he is playing chess opposite his father in the dining room. He’s so small that his feet do not yet touch the marble floor. His father is teaching him how the knight captures – in an L shape, two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or vice versa. To demonstrate this principle, his father arranges every pawn on the board in a circle around the knight and asks Harry which pieces he can capture. Each time he reaches his hand to touch the wrong one, his father smacks it back, resulting in a hideous stalemate. Harry is terrified and tired, and even when he picks the correct one, his father, rightly, accuses him of ‘just guessing’.
Harry’s eyes roll with sleepiness. ‘I don’t care anymore,’ he whispers, realizing as he says it that it’s true. ‘Please, can I just go to bed?’ The weight of his exhaustion like a millstone around him. ‘Why is this important?’
Harry can’t remember the exact words but his father told him then, and kept telling him, that chess was everything. That if he understood chess he’d understand life. A notion so gorgeously simple that, even now, Harry hopes it is true.
At thirteen years and eleven months, his father had been the youngest chess grandmaster in the world, a title finally snatched from him in 1999 by Bu Xiangzhi. Harry never reached anything close to his father’s formidable mastery, but those early lessons in logic and strategic thinking had almost certainly contributed to his eventual success at Dalton. Harry had learned from his father about the importance of constant practice, a principle he applied even before he was streamed into Command School as a possible contender for the position of pilot of the Damocles. Competition had been tough, but Harry excelled because he had practised flying every day of his life from age twelve, logging hours in the winter-pale skies above the Bellgrave estate, or, when the weather did not permit, in a dank basement simulation room, VR goggles strapped to his face so long that the skin on the bridge of his nose began to peel. For Harry, it had become something of a cosy ritual, waking up in the morning, a run before breakfast, a practice flight after. One he continued throughout Dalton.