by Temi Oh
‘Sorry.’
‘Get your own spot,’ he said, but his mouth clamped shut mid-sentence as Harry’s voice rumbled on the other side of the door. ‘I know you’re in there,’ he said. The creak of footsteps.
Juno’s heart skipped and she leapt into the shower.
‘I thought you said this game was stupid,’ Jesse said in a whisper.
‘Of course it’s stupid. But I don’t want to lose first.’
Juno knew that they were all trying to be cheerful in the face of Poppy’s melancholy, which was probably why Astrid suggested the first game that came to mind. It had been a while since they had allowed themselves to do something silly.
Both Juno and Jesse swallowed back a gasp when the bathroom door flew open. Juno held her breath, her chest full, her heart skipping.
Harry’s silhouette was projected across the tiled floor, outlined by the illumination from the crew module. Could he see them? Juno peeled open her eyes and glanced sideways. If Harry switched the light on, he would find them straight away.
When she looked up she realized that Jesse had been staring at her the whole time. His pupils were dilated, his face illuminated oddly in the rose light that filtered through the door. His moist lips were half-open, as if in surprise. Their heads were so close that Juno thought she could feel the static buzz off his hair.
‘Hello!’ Harry boomed, trying to startle whoever might be hiding in the bathroom. Adrenaline flooded Juno’s veins, but she bit her tongue and hoped that he would not find the two of them pressed against each other in this small space. There was a long moment of silence, and she wondered if Jesse could feel her heart hammering against her ribs. She held his gaze. Then, finally, the door slammed shut. Light flashed against Jesse’s retinas and then they were in darkness again. They both exhaled involuntarily. Jesse’s breath was warm on the bridge of Juno’s nose, his molars black with chocolate cake. She was painfully aware of the closeness of this other body. She caught the chemical whiff of the plant fertilizer he handled, the scent of birch leaves and sweat and long grass. For a minute, she forgot about the game. Heat radiated through the thin cotton of his shirt and his forehead glistened.
‘Are we okay?’ he asked, trying to smile.
‘I think so,’ Juno whispered, stepping back. But Jesse’s breath was still quick and irregular, Juno’s hands were shaking and, in the unilluminated air between them, there was a shift.
JESSE
29.07.12
THERE WAS SOMETHING BETWEEN them. Was there? even two weeks later, Jesse thought he could feel it. A frisson of nerves whenever she was near or caught his eye across the table.
Could she sense it too?
Everything reminded him of her. That afternoon in the greenhouse it was the freshly watered earth, which was the same dark brown as her lips.
Jesse knew it had something to do with proximity. The fact that he saw Juno every day, in the kitchen measuring out rations, or scratching the nape of her neck with the edge of her pencil during Igor’s classes. But that was nothing new. Jesse had trained with Juno for years at Dalton. Back then, she had simply been the ‘other’ twin. The one who never turned up to parties, and whose grades were so high they were the bar that everyone furtively measured themselves against. The one on the Christian Union’s committee and the debating team. Her name was listed on every other page in the school newsletter. There had been something unattractive to him about this overachiever, the girl he would sometimes spot from his window running laps around the frozen hockey pitch before the bell rang for breakfast.
So why now? Why did he desire her now?
Jesse didn’t want to think that it had anything to do with being pressed up against her body in the shower three weeks earlier at Poppy’s party. That it was something as simple as the fluttering of her heart and the smell of coffee beans and chocolate on her breath that had reminded him what a fine and foreign thing a girl was. So he mustered his self-control and banished the thought of her in order to focus on his chores.
He had a lot of work to do in the greenhouse, which was fine, because he enjoyed it. He loved the huge transparent dome and, beyond it, the conflagration of stars. After fitness checks and scheduled exercise sessions, Jesse spent his free time on his back, lounging under the fluorescent lights between the tall vats of algae and the soil that promised fruit.
A couple of weeks post-launch, he had swapped almost all of his on-ship chores for weeding and watering in the garden. The work was repetitive but it gave him time to think. His only company was Cai, who had a little lab set up in a corner of the greenhouse where he performed experiments and continued his research. He’d explained some of his research to Jesse early on: it involved studying the development of plants in below-Earth gravity. While the ship was provided with 100 per cent gravity by the dromes surrounding the hull, in the greenhouse it was only 60 per cent. Which took some getting used to. The effect made half the crew horribly spacesick and dizzy in the early days, but for Jesse it was magical, like he was walking in water. Fallen leaves drifted across the ground as if skimming over the settled surface of a pond, English ivy curled up around the cords of hanging lamps. Whenever he climbed the ladder and entered through the hatch, his stomach flipped as if in pleasant surprise.
The garden was growing every day. He liked to imagine it in two months, when the foliage would be splashed with the bright reds and blacks of tomatoes and berries. He liked to picture the faces of his crew when he presented them with baskets of runner beans, potatoes and apples, fresh vegetables and fruits that they had not eaten in months.
Most importantly, the greenhouse reminded him of Earth. Under the antiseptic smell of their fertilizer was the familiar scent of leaves and soil, and if he closed his eyes a little, the light from the 20 kilowatt xenon lamps nestled like silver coins of sunlight in his lashes.
‘What is it you’re meant to be doing exactly?’ Jesse was startled by Cai’s voice.
‘Errr . . .’ Jesse scrambled to his feet.
‘That grass is just beginning to grow. The last thing I need is you rolling over it like a puppy.’ Jesse climbed to his feet and dusted some of the soil off his trousers. ‘You’re supposed to be pouring fertilizer into the spires.’
‘Right, I was just about to—’
‘Get on with it. And keep off the grass.’
Cai skulked off, back to whichever corner of the greenhouse he had been lurking in, and Jesse picked up one of the buckets he’d left near the spire, his mind once again occupied with the task at hand.
Arguably, his job was the most important on the ship. While Harry might help pilot the Damocles and Eliot worked with Igor to keep it running, Jesse and Cai took care of the most important part of the ship’s life support system.
During shorter missions, a crew could survive on supplies shipped from Earth, but on a long-haul mission such as theirs, survival was only possible if they created a closed ecosystem – or as closed as possible. Nothing could go to waste and the most important aspect of that was the oxygen supply. Each time Jesse exhaled, he added to the partial pressure of CO2, which was being constantly mopped up by the filters and dissolved into the carbonated water that bubbled through the spires in the greenhouse. The greenhouse was filled with these tall green columns, which were bunched together and ran from floor to ceiling like the interior of a cathedral. The light from the buzzing fluorescent lamps provided energy to their unicellular chlorella, an algae that mopped up the CO2 and pumped out breathable air around the clock. When drained and dried, the algae was also an efficient source of protein, and was part of the reason that their macronutrient broth had a slightly green tinge.
Jesse was always careful to pull on a fresh pair of gloves whenever he poured the foul-smelling fertilizer into the bioreactor, so as to avoid contaminating their algae. But somehow, when he climbed down from the step ladder and tugged the rubber off his fingers, his skin was sometimes stained acid green and smelt like bleach.
He got through
his supply of fertilizer quickly, and still there were two dozen more spires to go. More fertilizer needed to be mixed up from the stock solution, a task that Cai still didn’t trust Jesse to do himself. He was about to call out to the scientist when he spotted Juno on the grass.
The sight of her in his sanctuary sent a jolt through him. She couldn’t see him. He could tell because she was walking differently, leaning down to touch the grass, which stood on end at her fingertips. She took off her shoes and took a few tentative steps. It was early afternoon, but for some reason she was still wearing her pyjamas. Jesse spent a lot of time trying to imagine what Juno wore to bed. How could he not, with only a wall separating their bedrooms, and the girls breathing right next door? He’d seen Poppy in the corridors in her lace camisoles and mini-shorts, and Astrid in her floaty nightdresses, but Juno never walked around in anything other than her navy uniform, the cuffs of her overalls rolled up around her ankles.
It seemed just like her, he supposed, to shrug off the fantasies of men and sleep in an oversized T-shirt and shorts. Jesse could see her bare legs, the golden brown skin, her shins dotted with stubby black hairs. Even her high-arching feet were a thrill.
Jesse kept watching as she took a clumsy step out on the grass, flung an arm up and did a playful pirouette, her laughter ringing through the air as she twirled gracelessly. It was wonderful to see this personal exuberance. He considered revealing himself but thought better of it. How could he face seeing her expression harden, as he knew it would? Her arms fall by her sides, all traces of her careless abandon vanishing in a second?
He slid back a little behind the spire and took a deep breath.
Why was he reacting this way? For five years they had schooled together. She’d hung around with a small group of serious friends who shh-ed students like him in the library.
Juno looked up suddenly and stiffened. She turned her gaze in his direction. To avoid risking the shame of being caught half-crouched behind the leaves, Jesse stepped out and revealed himself.
‘He-y.’ His voice cracked; he had been silent too long. ‘Hey.’
‘What are you doing up here?’ she asked. Jesse swung his empty bucket in answer.
‘Oh right.’ Juno nodded. ‘Of course, you’re Cai’s pupil.’
‘Servant, more like,’ Jesse muttered. But then he felt a flash of annoyance that he’d had to explain himself to her, as if he was the trespasser.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
Juno looked at her feet, a little embarrassed,
‘Oh, I just felt like seeing grass. I was taking a nap before dinner and I had a bad dream about— I mean, it’s just what I do sometimes. Come up here when I feel homesick. When I want something familiar.’
‘You’re not really supposed to stand on the grass,’ Jesse said, and then regretted it as soon as she jumped off the soil and onto the tiled ground. He sounded like Cai.
Impulsively, he kicked off his own shoes and leapt onto the grass. Juno watched him in silent confusion.
‘Actually . . . it’s fine,’ he said, but she didn’t move.
He could feel the weight of her gaze as she examined him, and suddenly he wished he was a little better dressed. The arms of his overalls were tied around his waist, revealing an unwashed Bob Marley T-shirt.
‘You’re up here all the time,’ Juno observed.
‘Yeah.’ Jesse smiled and looked around, at the reservoir just opposite and the lilypads bobbing on the surface, at the English ivy beginning to grow into curved arbours.
‘It’s kind of magical, you know,’ Juno said. ‘You guys are doing a good job.’
Jesse smiled, ducking his head modestly.
Sleep softened her somehow. Her eyes were still far away, not so unnervingly penetrating. A few strands of curly hair were coming loose from the fat braids in which she tied them.
‘It’s pretty lucky that your specialization is the same as Ara’s,’ Juno said.
‘Not lucky, it’s the reason I was picked from the backup crew to take her place.’
‘I mean—’ Juno blushed. ‘I know that. What would you do if you could do anything?’
Pilot the ship, Jesse thought, instantly. Imagining himself in the second-in-command seat next to Sheppard, Harry’s bronze wings pinned to the lapel of his own flight suit. But he banished the thought.
‘I don’t know, but I like it here,’ he said. ‘What about you?’
‘I wanted to be a scientist, actually. Before I was selected for the Beta.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Juno said, and her lips tightened. ‘I wanted to be a biochemist. When I was eleven or something, a man came to our school to tell us about gap proteins. He said memory is a chemical reaction. He told us that the smell of cut grass – my mother’s favourite – was due to hexenol. A bent line with a double bond that he drew on the board and then made – made! –in a test tube. I can still remember the thrill of it. This clear liquid that actually smelt like grass. It was like magic, only better, because it was real. The smell that reminded my mother of her girlhood home and sunning herself out on the lawn by the tennis courts could be made in a test tube. I wish everything was that simple.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I wish we could go, “Oh look, here is regret”, draw it on a board, make it in a test tube. “Fear of the passing of time”. “This is a nightmare, right here in this flask.’ ”
Jesse loved the thought too. He grinned. ‘Maybe one day we will.’
‘We sort of have,’ Juno said. ‘Think of how far we’ve come in understanding already. Take the sun. It’s nuclear fusion. Atoms of hydrogen smashing into each other and making helium and pure energy. It’s the simplest reaction ever, the smallest elements, and yet people worship the sun, have worshiped it for millennia, squinted at and shied away from it as if it was the hand of God. I mean, maybe it is that, as well.
‘So when I picked advanced chemistry in Dalton, I thought I’d spend my life pursuing that kind of order. I’d specialize in neurochemistry. And live my whole life reading loads of books and being an academic at Darwin College, Cambridge – same as my dad was for a bit – punting and thinking about the chemicals that make us us.’
Jesse was transfixed by the peach wrinkle of her bottom lip, so he couldn’t hear the hurt in her reply when he asked, ‘What happened with that?’
‘I came here, obviously.’
‘Why?’
Juno lowered her gaze. ‘You know I ask myself that more often now. I’m scared that . . . that I chose to come because my sister wanted to come. Because I was scared of being the one left behind.’
She came to sit beside him, and then lay back on the grass. Jesse could see right into her dark eyes. The lamps, the vaulted ceiling, her long eyelashes all reflected into them.
‘You said you had a bad dream, and that’s why you came up here,’ he said, leaning back on his elbow next to her. Juno nodded, and closed her eyes. He could tell from the sound of her voice that her tongue was growing thick with tiredness.
‘Not bad exactly. Just, you know, homesickness. Lots of memories . . . me and my sister playing with a hosepipe in the front garden. This day when Ara and I went up to Wandsworth Common and took Polaroids with a camera she got for her birthday. In all the pictures we’re squinting because the sun is in our eyes. That was the last day before our training for the Beta began. Everything is sun-bleached and we’re smiling.’
Jesse guessed she must be quite homesick, because he’d never heard any of the others speak about their dead friend around him.
‘I still have the pictures somewhere. I brought them with me. Most of the photos I have are on my phone, but you know the box we were allowed to put our belongings in?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I kept thinking . . . if I was really brave, that I’d bring nothing at all.’
‘Up here?’
‘Yeah, to Terra-Two. Just leave everything behind.’
When her eyes were closed Jesse couldn’t help staring at her
, the soft slope of her nose, her full brown lips. If he looked carefully he could see a few freckles dotted in the skin just under her eyes.
‘Do you dream of Earth?’ she asked.
‘Course.’
‘What do you dream of?’
‘Silly things, I guess, like gasoline rainbows and mallards and sunburn.’
‘Astrid says she never dreams of Earth. Just Terra-Two and space and grass she’s never seen before and what the sky looks like with two moons and two suns.’ Juno exhaled heavily.
‘Well,’ said Jesse, ‘we can’t all be prophets.’
Juno giggled. ‘It’s nice up here,’ she said, softly.
‘It is?’ Jesse didn’t know why it came out sounding like a question.
He wanted to kiss her. And lying next to her on the grass, with the fresh soapy smell of her, it felt suddenly and wonderfully possible. He sat up a little, leant over her face so that his shadow cast across her flickering eyelids. She didn’t stir, so Jesse bent down and pressed his mouth against hers. Her lips were slightly parted and he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling her body tense up. She didn’t pull away. For just a second, Jesse was sure she was kissing him back, but then he felt something wet and cold seep into the gap between their cheeks, and she was pushing him away with a cry of pain and despair.
When he fell back onto the grass, his heart was pounding. First with excitement, and then with fear. Her face was wet with tears. His stomach dropped, as if he’d just misjudged the depth of freezing water and felt it now lapping over his head as he sank down.
‘Juno . . . ?’
She didn’t say anything. She simply stared at him for half a minute, her eyes shining with hurt. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
It only occurred to him to chase after her a moment later, by which time she was already scrambling down the ladder that led out of the garden.
JESSE
29.08.12
AFTER WHAT HAPPENED IN the greenhouse, Jesse was almost convinced he’d deserved what Harry did to him a month later. They had been alone in the games room, Jesse watching Harry play on the simulator. He watched so long, leaning back on one of the beanbags, that the game took on a pattern, and he really began to notice Harry’s strengths and weaknesses. He was fast – it was a thrill to watch his lightning-quick reflexes as he dived past every obstacle that swung into his path. And he was a quick study, picking up the manoeuvres that the computer taught him with such uncanny ease that Jesse understood why Commander Sheppard had selected him to co-pilot their ship. But Harry’s greatest strength was his determination. Hours of tackling the game had given him a formidable knowledge of the simulation, and he ascended the levels with a practised ease, even at the complex higher levels. There the computer anticipated his next moves and blocked his way, pitched surprises and forced him to combine or alter the various manoeuvres he’d learned on the easier levels.