“Life is sweet, isn’t it?” she said.
CHAPTER 6
The ride to Wichita on December 7 was glitteringly cold and bright. Lily, bored, had wanted to come along. She separated from Adri at the Center’s waiting room, but not before telling her she looked like death.
“Lighten up. They love you,” she said. “He’ll sign the contract. Geez, you worry too much.”
Adri rolled her eyes and then went to the front desk to check in.
Lamont met her at the double doors of the secured-access section and led her back, a large coffee in one hand. His office was spacious but decidedly not edgy for someone with so much power. Photos of his family flickered across one wall and there was a nice view of downtown, but otherwise it was a simple, mostly empty space. He gestured to a chair across from him as he sat down and took a sip of his coffee.
“Don’t be nervous, Adri. This meeting is a good thing for both of us. Okay?”
Adri nodded. He pulled a folder toward him, opened it, and looked over the first page. “Your specialty is life systems. You’ve never had a grade lower than an A. You’re a stellar athlete. You’re staying with your cousin, Lily, nearby. No other family, yes?”
Adri nodded.
Lamont sank back in his chair. “I remember reading your application. I fought for you.”
“Fought for me?”
“Well, the board was concerned. As you know, we generally like to recruit people who play well with others. Your records indicate you’re a bit of a loner. You’re the only recruit who hasn’t complained that disabling your devices has made it hard for you to communicate with friends and loved ones.”
“For me, your work ethic, your big brain, and your character won the day.” He closed the notebook. “And it still does. We’re not thrilled that you haven’t connected with the other recruits. The bonds you’re able to form with your teammates matter to us. But you’re respectful, you cooperate, you’re very disciplined. So as far as I’m concerned, we’re happy with you. Ready to sign you.”
Adri stared at the closed book, relieved and confused at the same time.
“That’s it?” she said.
“Well, not quite.”
“Not quite?”
“Well, it’s a two-way street. Are you happy with us? Do you still want to go?”
“Yes.”
Lamont studied her. Apparently, it wasn’t so simple as saying yes.
“Adri, it’s our business to know you a little better than you know yourself, in some ways. Our psychologists know this kind of stuff backward and forward. And to me . . . to us . . . you seem to be holding back.”
“Holding back how?” Adri asked, swallowing, disbelieving.
“I see most recruits come through here, they’re scared, they’re nervous, but they’re engaged. They want to get to know the people they’re going to be living with, potentially for the rest of their lives. Adri, I said it’s fine with me if you keep to yourself generally, but I wonder, is it fine with you? Are you truly excited about all of this? Are you ready to live and work with all these folks? Because you’ll need their support in the challenging times ahead, just as they’ll need yours.”
Adri searched for something to say but came up blank. “I can’t be who I’m not,” she finally said. She didn’t add that she had wanted to, and tried, and given up.
“Look,” Lamont went on. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. But it costs us forty million dollars per person to send you to space. We don’t plan on ever bringing you back. So I want to know you’re in a good place . . .”
“I’m in a good place.”
“Because you don’t have to go. You really don’t.”
It was the first time the thought of not going . . . of her own free will . . . had occurred to her, even as a remote possibility. She thought what the future would look like if she could settle back into what she knew, back into life on Earth. What if she did stay with Lily, made a life in a dead town? It was seductive—the lack of fear that went with that possibility. Even the comfort of knowing Lily would have her. It sounded so easy.
“Tell you what,” Lamont said after studying her. “I’m not going to have you sign a contract today. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in. But if you want to back out, at any time before the launch, you come to me, okay?”
“I’m not backing out,” Adri said. “It’s not going to happen.”
“In the meantime,” Lamont went on, ignoring her, “whatever you need to wrap up to get closure on your life here, I recommend you do it. You need to call your long-lost friend and apologize for something, you do it. If it’s costly, like say, you really want to make Lily’s dreams of seeing the Taj Mahal a reality or whatever, you let me know. That’s no problem for us. You have great value to this mission, and we can do almost anything if it helps you firm up your commitment.”
“There’s nothing,” Adri said. “I don’t need anything.”
“Okay,” Lamont said, but he shuffled his papers and put them away. “We envision the next four weeks as ‘wrapping up’ time. Stay healthy, keep up with your Biphosphonates, wash and sanitize your hands constantly. Even a cold could jeopardize your spot on this particular launch.
“And I’m serious about the closure. The next four weeks are going to go faster than you can imagine. Get your affairs in order. Be good to yourself.”
Lily was on her second cup of hot chocolate when Adri found her in the lounge. “A robot named Jeeves gave it to me,” she said, delighted. “I love it here.” They got into the car.
“How’d it go?”
Adri looked at her. “He says to start wrapping things up.” She didn’t want to go into the rest.
“Like what?”
Adri thought for a long time. “Do you mind if we go to the archives?” Adri said.
“Why?”
“Apparently, people need closure,” she said. “It’s some kind of a thing.”
The Wichita Historical Archives were housed in an enormous, carved marble building that looked out on the river, brand new and elegant and beautiful. Its many quiet, cavernous rooms were divided into two sections: records and exhibits. The exhibits—full of life-size photos, historical artifacts, dioramas—specialized in portions of Kansas’s history, such as the Breadbasket boom, migrant workers, the recession and reboot of the 2020s, the shifting of the space program to Wichita. It didn’t take long to find the exhibit on the Dust Bowl.
Adri and Lily trailed through the room slowly, gazing at the enormous sepia-toned photos of prairie land covered in jackrabbits, herds of skeletal cattle, breathtaking shots of dust clouds dwarfing the tiny towns they were swooping in to envelop. It was eerie—after reading about it in Catherine’s words—to see it so starkly depicted, like a dark fairy tale coming to life. The whole thing was so scary, so beautiful, that it could easily have been make-believe.
“That’s only three decades before I was born,” Lily said, pointing to a photo of a ramshackle old hut, a stoic, embattled family standing on its porch, with June 1935 engraved along the bottom. “They should put me in this museum.”
“I saw a tiger once,” Adri replied. “At this traveling science exhibit in Miami. Even then, they seemed otherworldly. Like, how could they exist? Doesn’t it seem like . . . how could something so powerful and strange exist?”
Tigers didn’t live in the wild now. It seemed like nobody did. She wasn’t being logical, but Lily nodded.
“Isn’t it funny?” Lily finally said.
“What?”
“Well, you don’t like anybody. But you care so much about what happened to these people you’ve never met, that you read about in a pile of papers.”
“I’m just frustrated. I like to finish things.”
But Lily pushed on. “Why do you think that is, that you love these people you don’t know?”
Adri shook her head. “I don’t. I’m just curious.”
Lily shrugged. Offhandedly, as they were leaving the room, she said, �
�Maybe it’s because you’re invisible to them. Maybe that’s why you let them in.” She tapped on the wall on her way out, as if for good luck. “It’s less scary that way.”
“Ugh,” Adri said. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re not, like, an ancient oracle, you just look like one?”
Lily laughed at that.
They made their way down a long hallway to the opposite side of the building, where the records were housed. Adri filled out a long form that specified what she was after:
Your address: 268 Jericho Road, Canaan, KS 67124
Searching for records related to which person(s):
Catherine Godspeed, Beezie Godspeed, Beth Abbott Godspeed
Timeframe: 1934–1940
Last known locality of person(s): Canaan, Kansas
When she brought the paper up to the man behind the front desk, he glanced over it quickly, then smiled.
“All righty. We’ll let you know.”
“You mean I don’t get to see anything today?” Adri was disbelieving, crestfallen.
He shook his head. “Some of the records are housed off-site because there’s just not enough room. We’ll be in touch if we have any success. If you haven’t heard from us in six weeks or so, it means nothing came up related to your criteria. But we’ll send you a slip in the mail to confirm.”
“Six weeks?” She’d be long gone by then. “It’s not like I’m asking for you guys to find Amelia Earhart’s bones, I’m just looking for some records that already belong to this archive.” Lily shot her a look, so she added, “Sir.”
The man was unmoved.
“I’m sorry about my cousin,” Lily said. “She doesn’t have parents. She’s from Florida. She was raised by dolphins.”
Back in the car, Lily looked around, a little disoriented. “Why did we just go there?” she asked.
Adri turned to her, confused. “We were looking for the Godspeeds, remember?”
“Oh, right,” Lily said. But it was clear she was just pretending to remember.
CHAPTER 7
Christmas Eve, Adri found Lily stringing popcorn at the kitchen table, snow falling past the window behind her, looking forlorn. She stood in the doorway, watching her. She tried to picture how different life would look if she stayed—how this might be the next five Christmases, or ten.
“Hey, you wanna hang out tonight?” she asked. It wasn’t that she felt sorry for her, but that she liked Lily and wanted the company.
Lily looked up, surprised, and beamed. “I’d love it.”
They watched old movies. Adri fed the woodstove, and they both curled under the same big blanket.
“It’s a slumber party,” Lily declared, walking back and forth to get a soda, or a bowl of ice cream. She was too excited to sit still.
She made Adri open three Christmas presents early: two were little ceramics she’d painted at a craft class with Carol, and one was just a bundle of Christmas lights.
“You bought me Christmas lights for Christmas,” Adri said. She hadn’t gotten anything for Lily in return.
Lily looked at the lights for a moment and then held her hands out, palms up. “Well, it’s just nice to have something to unwrap, isn’t it?” She took the lights out of Adri’s hands and began to string them along the branches of the tree.
“I don’t know. So much plastic. Stuff like that is a waste.” She couldn’t stop herself.
“You should just say thank you, dummy.”
“You should be less wasteful,” Adri said dryly. But there was a knot in her throat, and they both sat in silence for a while.
“Adri, I love you even when you’re judging me,” Lily said and popped some more popcorn in her mouth.
Adri looked out the window, toward the shed. The word made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t know how Lily felt like she knew her enough to love her.
“I have an awkward question,” she finally said. Lily cocked her head inquisitively, then nibbled a kernel from where she’d placed it on her shoulder as a joke.
“What will really happen to Galapagos?”
“She’ll be fine here with me.”
“But . . . when you’re . . . not here anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I don’t know. I guess whoever took her from the wild should never have taken her in the first place, when you think about it in the long term.”
“Do you think she could ever go back to the wild?”
Lily gazed out the window, her eyebrows descending. “She’s a tough old thing. I’d take her somewhere and set her free if I had the courage . . . a wild animal should be wild. But she’s been in captivity almost her whole life.”
They both stared out the window at the tortoise, who’d poked her head out of the shed to gaze over the pasture.
“I think she’d make it, though.” Lily sighed. “She’ll outlive us all, just watch.”
“Lily? Do you think you’ll remember me? Like, as your dementia gets worse?”
Lily blinked at her. Her mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t know. I wish I could promise you that I’ll remember you to the day I die. But I can’t. This getting old is the pits, Adri. I’m glad you don’t have to worry about it for a long, long time.”
Adri nodded. “Yeah.”
“Don’t fall asleep,” Lily finally said. “I don’t want this to end. If you fall asleep before me, I’ll write something on your forehead. Fart. Something like that.”
But after another twenty minutes it was Lily who was nodding off. At one point she startled awake, yawned and stretched, and said, “It’s a great feeling, isn’t it? When someone in the house stays awake after you?” And then she fell right back asleep.
Adri gazed around the room, at all the old books that had belonged to Lenore, to Beth, then to Catherine. She felt more lonely than she could ever remember feeling, and she didn’t know why. She was thinking about libraries, used gum, bus stops, red lights, convenience stores. All these things she’d never noticed, stupid things, even things she didn’t like. How she’d taken these things for granted, and she was never going to see them again. Dancers glided across the TV screen to old-fashioned music.
“Lily?” she whispered. Lily didn’t move. “Can I tell you something?” Lily breathed deeply, clearly asleep. “I think all my life my heart’s been broken,” Adri whispered, “and I didn’t even notice. And I don’t even know by what.”
It wasn’t because of any one thing—not losing parents she didn’t remember, not growing up in the group home—not the obvious things. It felt more like it had just come from being born, from time existing.
Lily pulled the blanket tighter up under her own chin, the lights of the TV flickering across her face, and snored.
CHAPTER 8
If Lily knew Adri’s birthday was December 27, she’d forgotten, which was the way Adri preferred it. The day came and went without fanfare, and on January 30, she and three other Colonists—Saba, D’Angelo, and Alexa—set off for the East Coast portion of the Expeditions publicity tour.
The first stop was New York, where they were scheduled for three morning shows and then an afternoon packed with functions around the city. A stylist dressed and made them up that morning, working her way through Adri’s tangled, unbrushed hair, and their publicist coached them in the car. Compared to her usual sloppiness Adri’s made-up face and hair felt pasted on and strange.
“Convince the taxpayers and shareholders that they’re making a good investment. Convince them you’re earning your keep. Adri, practice smiling.”
They sipped coffee with the hosts and repeated the same talking points: that Mars was full of mineral exports to justify its costliness, that it had four seasons like Earth and 664 days a year. Adri and Saba offered technical information, while D’Angelo and Alexa won people over with their charm.
Adri had only ever seen Manhattan on TV. That evening, she gazed from their shared hotel suite in Midtown toward the old part of the city, the empty skyscrapers of the financial district glinting a
t sunset. That part of the island was dark, waterlogged, impassable—not viable as a place to live anymore, river water obscuring the streets. Giant electronic banners stood at the top of some of the abandoned towers. Use Ivory Soap! one said.
The others stayed up late to play cards, taking puffs of cigars (there’d be no tobacco at all on Mars, so now was their chance), and drinking tiny bottles of vodka that arrived through the bar via glowing pneumatic tubes. Adri went into her room to read a city travel guide. From her room she could hear them learning things about each other: how Saba had weirdly chubby thumbs, how D’Angelo managed to be both a shameless flirt and socially awkward at the same time, that Alexa was a walking pharmacy, always keeping a bag on her full of cough drops and Band-Aids and hand sanitizer and bottled water.
Around 11:30, D’Angelo appeared in her doorway, pushing it open gingerly.
“Adri? Aren’t you going to watch the ball drop with us?”
“I don’t think so,” Adri said.
But instead of leaving, he pushed farther into her room. He had a weird look on his face, mischievous. “I really think you should.”
“I’m not really into that stuff,” she said.
He leaned down and linked his arm through hers, giving her a big cheesy grin.
“Come on. Everyone insists.”
Adri didn’t know how to keep saying no without being rude, so she stood up and followed him into the living room, where everyone was gathered around a cake, with eighteen candles lit.
“Is that for me?” Adri asked flatly.
“Sorry it’s late,” Alexa said. “Lamont only just told us this morning. He sent us a message.”
The cake said, in glowing yellow words on chocolate icing, Happy Birthday, Minty.
“That’s what we call you behind your back,” Alexa explained, “since you said you’re trying to quit mints.”
Adri was painfully embarrassed and flattered at the same time. And guilty. She couldn’t understand why they’d taken the time to do it. And she liked that she had a nickname, even if it was making fun of her.
Midnight at the Electric Page 12