It Gets Even Better

by Isabela Oliveira

  “Ren,” Song Jian says, voice still scratchy with sleep. He hates being woken in the night with how difficult he finds getting to sleep, but Ren can tell he’s making an effort to keep his tone soft. Elliot is standing beside him, hovering anxiously. “I’ve got the antibiotics, can you sit up for me?”

  The antibiotics are Song Jian’s own, pilfered from the hospital. Ren lets him pull them upright and feed them medicine and then water to wash it down.

  Song Jian sits down on the couch beside them when they’re done with a heavy sigh of exhaustion and pats at Ren’s hair awkwardly. “You want painkillers, too? Something for the nausea? Elliot said —”

  “Levi already gave me something for the pain, it’s getting better,” Ren lies. They worry a little at their bottom lip, looking at Song Jian. The dark circles beneath his eyes are huge; his pajamas hang too loosely off his frame. He’s been starting to look better now after they’d gotten him away from the hospital a few days ago to prepare for the journey and Elliot’s said that he’d been sleeping fine in his guest bedroom, but at the same time, the train lacks the proper facilities to take care of him in the way that he needs during and after an episode. They’ve all been worried, even though his most recent medication’s been working well so far with few side effects. “Sorry for waking you.”

  “Nonsense,” Song Jian says dismissively, but sags on the couch. “Although — Elliot, you may need to carry me back to bed.”

  Elliot just nods. “Ren, since you’re already here, do you just want to sleep with us?”

  “Sure,” Ren says without thinking about it. They’ve stayed over at Elliot’s place so many times before on Earth. Just because they’re on a train in space now doesn’t mean that such simple things need to change. “But I don’t want to sleep on the couch alone.”

  “Brat,” Song Jian says half-heartedly. He reaches out for Elliot. “Come on, then.”

  Elliot reaches out, too. Together, the three of them stagger into the master bedroom, supporting each other. Elliot and Song Jian don’t have a bunk bed like the rest of them; instead, there’s a fluffy, size-adjustable mattress. Elliot carefully lowers first Song Jian — who groans and rolls onto his side — and then Ren onto the bed before going to fiddle with the settings on the panel. The bed slowly expands enough to fit all three of them comfortably.

  Ren lies down, too. They press their bad ear into a pillow that smells like Song Jian and feel immediately better.

  “Goodnight, Ren,” Elliot murmurs sleepily, settling in. “Wake us if you need anything. Song Jian, if you’re sick in the night —”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Song Jian mutters, sounding already half asleep.

  Ren closes their eyes and tries to follow suit, but their mind is restless. They open their eyes again to find that they’ve adjusted to the darkness, and stare up at the ceiling. Instead of the plain white of the compartments at the back of the train, there is an intricate series of carvings that run all along the ceiling of the room. Still not exactly the height of luxury back on Earth, but here in space, where everything, everything is valuable —

  Objectively, Ren thinks, Elliot had the most to leave behind on Earth. Maybe he didn’t really have a family, or people he loved outside of the four of them, but he had a life. A job. A future. Money, a means of survival, more secure than everyone else. If the rest of them had nothing, then Elliot had enough to give everyone a little something. Asa said if they hadn’t gotten tickets, they’d have continued being unhappy on Earth, but Ren doesn’t know that that’s true. They don’t know that Elliot was unhappy on Earth.

  Song Jian’s soft, rumbling snores have filled the room. Elliot whispers, “Ren, you’re thinking so hard I can’t sleep.”

  Ren turns over. They look up the perfect slope of Elliot’s nose to his serious eyebrows, his dark eyes, and say, very quietly, “Elliot, why did you get us tickets here?”

  Elliot looks back at them. “What?” he asks, in a tone of voice that means he’s understood the question but not what Ren wants him to say.

  Ren says, “Were you unhappy on Earth?”

  “Ren,” Elliot says.

  “Do you miss it?”

  Elliot sighs.

  “It’s okay if you think I won’t like the answer,” Ren says, as earnestly as they can. “I just want to know what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s not that,” Elliot begins, and then pauses, like he’s wondering himself. After a moment, he says carefully, “None of us had reasons to stay. Or, reason enough to stop us, anyway. It’s not that there isn’t anything to miss, it’s like — no matter how bad it might get on the new colonies, it wouldn’t be worse than what we were already living with. And in some ways, we already knew it was going to be better. We were going to be together.”

  “No,” Ren says. “That’s not true. Maybe for the rest of us, yes, but you had reasons to stay. You had so much more than this, on Earth.”

  Elliot says quietly, “The things I had aren’t important. You guys are. And if you weren’t happy and wanted to leave, then I was going to be the one leading the way.”

  Just over a year ago, they snuck Song Jian out of his hospital room for his birthday. They found an empty recreation room, where they could sit and be together. Asa, draped over Levi’s lap, reached up to the ceiling and said, “I wish we could be up there, and not down here.”

  They were found by hospital security and chased away before anything could come of that conversation. But barely three weeks after that, Elliot got them all tickets onto this train in space. And now, in just a short few Earth days —

  Song Jian rolls over with a soft wince; Ren knows his muscles get stiff easily. He stopped snoring a while ago, although Ren was still thinking too loudly to notice. He says, “You did lead the way, Elliot. Without you, none of this would’ve been possible.”

  There’s a brief silence, like maybe Elliot was thinking too loud as well to notice Song Jian’s been awake and listening in. Ren doesn’t know if it counts as eavesdropping when this is technically Song Jian’s bed too, and they like that Song Jian listened even when Ren didn’t ask him to.

  Elliot says, “That’s unexpectedly sweet of you, Song Jian,” in that strange, dry way they have with each other that Ren knows means affection.

  “I meant it literally, actually,” Song Jian says, also sounding strange and dry. Elliot laughs.

  “But, still,” Ren says. “Were you two happy, on Earth?”

  “No,” Song Jian says immediately and absolutely, but that was to be expected. What is it like, to know things in such black and white? Ren supposes Song Jian would know surest, out of all of them. He spent his whole childhood in and out of hospitals, and then after he turned fifteen, stopped coming out of them. They said it was for his own good, but Ren visited dutifully with books and flowers every weekend, watched Song Jian become paler and thinner and not the least bit better, so they don’t know. They don’t know.

  “Do you think you’re going to be happier, where we’re going?” Ren asks.

  Song Jian says, “That’s not really what it’s about, Ren.”

  “Happiness isn’t a place,” Elliot says. “If you’re unhappy and go somewhere else looking for it, that’s still not guaranteed. It’s not a sock you lost in the laundry, or a coin the vending machine ate, or anything else like that, anything you can lose and find again. It’s more a thing you make. For yourself, for someone else. You have to try for it. And I thought, if it’s easier for everyone to try out here, without all those things on Earth you all wanted to get away from, then I thought we should do that. We should try, at least.”

  Ren remembers what Asa said. They say, “That’s the best any of us can do, to try.”

  “Yes,” Song Jian agrees. He’s quiet for a moment, then he adds, “People don’t listen when I say these things, so I don’t really say them anymore. But, Ren, they told me if I insisted on leaving, I was putting myself in twice the danger. I don’t think that leaving was the wisest decision, and I don’
t think I’d advise anyone else to do the same. But for me, I thought I was going to die twice as fast if I stayed in that hospital.”

  “Song Jian,” Elliot says, horrified, half-rising from the bed to look around Ren.

  “It’s true,” Song Jian says steadily. “There are some decisions you have to make yourself, for yourself. I don’t know if I miss Earth, but I do know this is a decision I made for myself.”

  Song Jian turned twenty-one two weeks ago. He was able to sign his own discharge papers then. Ren still isn’t sure his parents know, even now, that he’s on a train in space. They’re not sure Song Jian bothered to tell them, or if he was too scared. But Song Jian’s right, that no one has ever listened to the things he wanted before. There’s only so far to run on Earth, but space is limitless. That’s the point.

  “We’re on a train in space,” Elliot says, determined. “You’re going to get better. The new medication’s been working fine for months. The hospital wasn’t doing anything else for you, anyway.”

  But that’s not the point, Ren thinks. The point is that Song Jian was able to make his own choice. That’s already something more than what they used to have.

  Song Jian yawns so wide his jaw cracks. He says, “Anyway. I don’t know about you, Elliot, but I’ve never once found again a coin the vending machine ate.”

  Elliot laughs, surprised. “Ah, Song Jian,” he sighs, but nothing else.

  The silence settles. Ren blinks up at the dark ceiling, then closes their eyes against it. Song Jian’s snuffling breathing has started up again; on their other side, Elliot crowds in on them, warm and giving.

  A spark of green lights up the space behind Ren’s eyelids. When they drag them open, they see that a hologram is being projected from the bedside table on Elliot’s side, an image of Asa’s narrow face and Levi’s sharp one, from their identification papers. A scroll of text appears just above it, and a flat, robotic voice reads it out for them: ASA TENOR and LEVI COSTEL here for ELLIOT RHODES.

  Song Jian makes an aggravated noise. “Why?” Elliot groans, swatting at the hologram. His hand only passes right through.

  “We could just ignore them,” Song Jian suggests.

  “I can get the door,” Ren offers, but all of them end up going anyway.

  * * *

  The suite doors open to Asa and Levi tumbling in, one after the other. Elliot yawns as he leads the way into the room, squinting disapprovingly down at the tangle of limbs on the floor. “Why is everyone here? It’s sleep time. This is not where all of you sleep.”

  “We were looking for Ren,” Levi says, frowning, at the same time Asa exclaims, “Levi came to the viewing pavilion, and I told him Ren had been there but left an hour ago, and they weren’t in either of our compartments, so we got worried.”

  “I’m here,” Ren says helpfully, peering out from where they’re holding Song Jian’s elbow to help keep him upright.

  “Well, obviously,” Levi says. “But we didn’t know that. We thought something bad happened, maybe.” He glances around the room and whistles a little. “So this is how the one percent live, huh.”

  Elliot raises his eyes to the ceiling for a moment. “Song Jian, go back to bed. Everyone else — go sit on the couch, I guess. I’ll make hot chocolate if everyone’s staying.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep again tonight,” Song Jian says, and staggers over to collapse on the couch. Levi and Asa immediately look guilty, starting towards him, but Song Jian waves them off.

  “Can I help make the chocolate?” Ren asks eagerly, drifting over to where Elliot’s standing at the long bar counter along the edge of the living room.

  “Could you get the mugs out? They’re in the bottom cabinet.”

  So Ren stands next to Elliot while he puts the stove on and warms milk and breaks in chunks of real chocolate to melt, and Ren gets to help add in spoonfuls of sugar and stir it all together. Elliot ladles it out into the waiting mugs, and Ren puts theirs beneath their nose immediately to breathe it in. When they bring it all over to the couch, there’s just enough space for everyone to cram together, shoulders pressing against knees pressing against ankles.

  “How’s the ear infection, Ren?” Asa asks, both hands cupped against the warmth of his mug.

  “Better,” Ren says, drawing their legs up on the couch, and finds themselves surprised that it’s become true. They aren’t sure if that’s due to the painkillers or the antibiotics or something else entirely. “I think it’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

  “You need to finish the course of antibiotics anyway,” Song Jian mumbles. “To make sure.”

  Elliot says, “The couch spins around to face the windows. Does anyone want to watch the stars?”

  Levi shudders and shrinks back into the cushions. “Why do you all like looking outside so much?”

  “What’s wrong with space?” Elliot asks, sounding genuinely curious.

  Levi darts a look at Ren. “Well, it’s — it reminds us of everything we’ve left behind, doesn’t it, and we don’t know what might happen from here on. If this was the right decision. Isn’t that scary?”

  “We all agreed —” Song Jian begins, mouth set argumentatively.

  Ren interrupts, “That’s why we’re here in the first place. Isn’t it?”

  Ren had very few things on Earth that they thought of as worthy of missing, of regretting leaving behind. Like Elliot, their family never really bothered with them. Like Song Jian, they’ve always liked the idea of going where they wanted and doing things for themselves. Like Asa, they’ve spent a lot of time being wary of asking for more, wary of things changing, because even if things weren’t good, they were at least good enough. Like Levi, they’ve stared constantly out the window thinking what if.

  They’ve spent a very long time content with feeling invisible in their home and wanting to be invisible at school. They’ve spent a very long time just existing, and being unhappy. Their family had never really had anything, so they had even less for Ren. But Ren thinks about being allowed to miss things, even when those things were objectively terrible — when they had to hide constantly at school, when they always took the long way home, when they were never allowed to be only themselves in front of anyone else. But just because something hadn’t been good doesn’t mean that you can’t miss it anyway. And just because you miss the way things used to be doesn’t mean that you can’t look forward to the way things could someday be. So, in the end:

  “Levi, it isn’t all for nothing. We’re all trying. We’re all here. You told me earlier that there was no more point in thinking about the things left behind. But I also think… we’re allowed to miss them.”

  Levi swallows. “Yes,” he says.

  Ren hums. They wind a finger beneath the hem of their sleep pants and tug at them. They’re not as soft as the ones that Elliot and Song Jian have, these ones mass-produced and uniform-issued when they’d been assigned compartments on the train. But they’re still better than what they used to have. They miss a lot of things on Earth, but that doesn’t mean things won’t get better here if they just allow themselves to try.

  “I think it’s okay to miss things and have regrets and wish to turn back time, even if none of that’s possible,” Ren says. “I just think you have to let yourself look forward too, because change can be good if you try. I can’t say if this is the right decision, but it’s one we made for ourselves. Aren’t things already better, with the five of us?”

  “Ah, Ren,” Asa sighs. Elliot’s smiling.

  “You have to make happiness for yourself, if you want it, but the nice thing about that is you can make it anywhere you like,” Ren says. “And, you know, space is vast.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Song Jian says, after a moment, “I’m very glad I’m on this train with all of you.”

  Ren says, “Me too.” And because it’s something they mean, “It’s easier to try with the people you want to try with.”

  Levi’s tipped over so that his
head is in Ren’s lap, legs stretched over Asa’s. Asa has begun to massage Levi’s calves without being asked, even though he’s pulling a face as he does it. The blackness outside no longer feels so all-consuming when Ren’s surrounded so completely on all sides with warmth. Song Jian drops his head between Elliot’s shoulder blades, and appears to instantly fall asleep there despite his earlier protests.

  “Is this a party now?” Elliot asks, sounding amused.

  “Well,” says Ren, smiling, “since we’re here tonight.”

  Xu Ran grew up moving between multiple countries and therefore has a lot of feelings about the idea of home. She enjoys drinking black coffee instead of water, eating cake instead of actual meals, and spends most of her free time putting things into online shopping carts before taking them out again.

  Content notes can be found at the end of the book.

  I’ll Have You Know

  by Charlie Jane Anders

  What do you get yourself on your hundredth birthday? New shoes? Cake? A season pass to the 0p3rA for their V#rd! retrospective? To hell with all that. El puts on a nice shirt, scrolls on down to the Endocrinthology Center, and tells Dr. Webbo, “I wanna do it. Today is the day.”

  Dr. Webbo refocuses her view from enhanced scan to actual, which means she’s staring right at El. “Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s a big step, especially at your age.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. I’ve had a hundred years to think about it, right? I want to start hormones and nano-therapy. I wanna transition from male to female.”

  El only squirms a little, on the medical bench inside Dr. Webbo’s private office, which looks just like a secluded meadow full of wildflowers.

  Dr. Webbo asks El more questions, but meanwhile the doctor’s already using her left index finger to click “yes” on a bunch of boxes. El produces a hologram of her therapist, Dr. Russell, winking and giving a big thumbs-up, but luckily, the process of gender transition has gotten easier and less gatekeeper-y since the last time El looked into it.