Hourglass

by Pauline C. Harris

  “Really, Jude,” Sylvia says, plopping down in a chair beside me. “Tell me what you did.”

  I laugh. “I put out an ad,” I explain and am just about done spilling my secret when a beep fills the air and I look down at my pockets in surprise. I pull my phone from my pants pocket, tapping the screen and bringing it to my ear. “Hello?” I answer while Sylvia watches me curiously. Suddenly my palm feels sweaty and I lean forward in my chair, finding it surprisingly hard to conjure up words. “What? Um...really?” Laughter echoes through the line. “Okay,” I respond and a few seconds later, I hang up the phone.

  Sylvia’s eyes bore holes through mine, staring at me expectantly and for a few seconds I’m too shocked to answer.

  Slowly, I feel a grin making its way across my features and I make a face at Sylvia. “I,” I taunt, wiggling the phone in front of her face. “Just got myself an engineer.”

  “His name’s Jacob Holden,” I tell Sylvia who’s basically gushing at the seams. I spread my arms out. “And yes, I just got myself my first crewmember.”

  Sylvia jumps up from her chair. “No way,” she says for the hundredth time. “Like seriously? How did you do this?” She punches the air like it’s her victory and not mine while I lean back in my chair and laugh.

  “I’m thinking a minimal crew,” I tell her, studying my nails in feigned nonchalance. “Just a few people. It’s not like this ship really needs a whole lot.”

  Sylvia laughs again and plops back down in her chair. “This is huge,” she declares. “Oh, wait,” she says suddenly, her excitement momentarily quelled. She leans forward, placing a hand on my armrest. “Does he know?” Her eyes grow wide.

  “What?”

  She balks for a moment. “Well, first of all, that you’re seventeen, and second of all, this is a pirate ship.”

  I snort, getting up from my chair and walking down the hallway. “Please,” I say, giving Sylvia a look as she follows me. I walk into the hallway that leads to several crew quarters, shoving the doors open and checking to make sure all the old crew’s things are gone. “Of course he knows I’m seventeen. In the ad, I explained that the captain was young, and it was assumed that all crewmembers would be young too.” Sylvia nods in relief as I grab a rumpled blanket from the bed, fold it under my arm and proceed to the next room. “And of course he doesn’t know that this is a pirate ship.”

  I hear Sylvia groan behind me. “Jude,” she moans.

  “What? It’s not like I could advertise my piracy,” I tell her in my defense. Sometimes I wonder whether she paid any attention to anything that was going on in our childhood, other than our silly games and magical worlds.

  “True,” she admits and helps me continue to fold up blankets.

  “I’ll feel him out when he comes and if he seems...able to stomach it, I’ll tell him and see if he still wants the job.”

  “And how are you going to pay him?” Sylvia asks as if it’s only just occurred to her.

  “The same way everyone always got paid on this ship – through the scraps and ships we find.”

  Sylvia reaches out to grab my arm, stopping me so that I turn around. “You really think you’re going to find stuff?” she asks. “You’re not just dreaming up some fantasy?” She asks the words gently, her eyes imploring mine, but they still hurt.

  “Sylvia,” I say, slightly annoyed. “I’m not just running away here. Dad’s dead,” I tell her and the words hurt more than I could ever imagine coming from my lips. “And I have to do something now. I need a life and a job. And this is the only thing I know how to do. The only thing I can imagine doing.”

  Sylvia looks at me for a long moment and finally nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

  I turn back around, my arms full of blankets as we head down the narrow hallway. “And it’s not like I’m misleading any potential crewmembers. They’ll know the circumstances and if they’re as young as I’m predicting, they’ll be so happy to have any job out in space, they’ll take any pay I offer.”

  I grab my bag, stuff the blankets inside and put it by the exit. I’ll wash them in the machine back at the hotel. “Oh, and...” I turn to look at Sylvia and raise my eyebrows tentatively. “You on board?” Her father was the medic aboard Hourglass when my dad was its captain and Sylvia was her dad’s assistant throughout the years. She’s practically a doctor herself. I’m not going to find any other teenager as equipped as she is.

  Sylvia smiles and rolls her eyes. “Duh, Jude,” she says. “I’m actually a little offended you even needed to ask.” She laughs and throws her bundle of blankets at me. I catch them, smiling, feeling relief flood my stomach. Deep down, I really didn’t know whether she’d agree or not.

  “And besides, you’re going to need help finding the rest of your crew.”

  Chapter Three

  She has blue eyes and dark blonde hair. Her dress is a brownish color that I’m pretty sure used to be pink. I wonder what happened to it to make it that way. She’s pretty. Very pretty, even though she’s only six years old. The kind of pretty you know a kid is going to grow into. She’s going to be gorgeous one day. I’m smiling at her—this little girl. And she’s smiling back at me, her eyes sparkling, her fingers laced with mine and I’m not sure what it is, but I like her.

  And then a hand rests on her shoulder and both of our eyes dart upward. He’s here. He’s smiling that smile of his. The one I liked when I first met him—the one that drew me in. But now I see how sickly it is. I see all the lies hidden in the curve of his lips, the wrinkles around his eyes. And he’s holding onto her like she’s his and only his. And her fingers unclasp from mine.

  * * * *

  An alarm goes off beside my bed and I grope for it, smacking a button and rolling back against the pillow. I rub my eyes. All the lights in the hotel room are blazing. Ever since my last nightmare, I’ve kept them on. I blink, looking around the room and seeing early sunlight peeking hesitantly through the curtains. I sigh, throwing my covers off and sitting up.

  The girl. I’ve dreamt about her for years now. I’m not even sure when it started. She just began popping up in my dreams, smiling and giggling and I’ve never gotten rid of her. She’s here to stay and although it never used to bother me, it unnerves me now. I look at her like I know her, love her even. And that’s weird. Because I’ve never seen her before in my life.

  Suddenly something across the room catches my eye – a blinking light. I recognize it as my phone and head over. There’s a message. I hold it up to my ear as the message replays, my heart slowly sinking all the while.

  “Seriously?” I snap, slamming the phone back onto the counter before hurrying over to my suitcase to pull out pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I grab my phone and my bag, pulling my hair into a ponytail as I head out the door.

  The rush of cold air irritates me as I step out onto the street. Space isn’t like this. The ship is always whatever temperature you want. It’s always predictable. It’s never inconvenient.

  I practically sprint down the sidewalk until I make it to the hangar, flashing the key card and storming inside. I have to physically restrain myself from stomping into the front office and slamming my hands down on the desk. A stout man with rubbery-looking skin and a cool gaze looks up when I walk into the room.

  “I got your message,” I say tartly. He gestures to the chair beside me, but I stay standing. “I’d like you to explain it,” I elaborate.

  He blinks at me. Once. Twice. He clears his throat, folds his hands together on top of his desk and takes a breath. “You’re seventeen,” he says, as if that should be explanation enough.

  “Go on,” I snap when there’s a long pause.

  He sighs exasperatedly. “You can’t fly a ship without a permit and you can’t get a permit until you’re eighteen.”

  “I have a permit,” I spit back at him, rummaging through my bag to pull out a plastic blue card I’ve had for as long as I can remember.

  The man waves it away, already knowing what i
t is. “That permit allows minors to travel on spacecraft, not fly them.”

  I clench my teeth together and give him a long, hard look. “You mean, you won’t let me take my ship out of your hangar?”

  He shakes his head. “Not unless you have a licensed adult to do so.”

  I glare at him, staring him down until the man rolls his eyes and looks down at his desk. “I’m sorry about your circumstance, Miss Sprocket, but I can’t allow you to take the ship. You’ll just have to wait a few more months, get licensed, and then you’re good to go.”

  “You expect me to wait eight months?” I retort in frustration.

  The man obviously doesn’t sympathize with my case. “Yes.”

  I give him one last glower before turning and leaving his office.

  I run out into the ridiculously large area where all the ships are stored and it takes me awhile to finally reach mine. I hurry up the ramp, close it behind me and sit down in the captain’s chair, pulling my knees up to my chest. I clench my teeth together and tell myself not to cry. It’s ridiculous. I won’t. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t stay here eight more months. I can’t. I can’t breathe down here. It’s too small, too cramped, too confining. A planet isn’t big enough for me. I need space and stars and nothing for light-years around. And eight months is too long to wait. It’s long enough to need a job, to get a life, to become stationary.

  I can just about feel the first tear leaking out of the corner of my eye and I try to squeeze my eyes shut when my phone dings from my bag. Surprised, I open my eyes and pull it out. My eyes widen in remembrance as I read the message from Jacob Holden. He’s coming over. Now.

  I suddenly remember how I’d called him back and set up a meeting at the hangar so he’d get a feel for the ship and we could talk. I jump up from the chair, hastily wipe my eyes and head over to open the ramp so he can come up when he gets here.

  Its ten minutes later when he comes sauntering in and by then, the redness has gone from my eyes.

  “Hello,” I greet him, shaking his hand. He smiles back. He looks to be about sixteen. Really young. Really, really young. For one second I rethink what I’m doing. I actually realize I’m hiring a bunch of children to man a spacecraft. After a passing moment of horror, I shake my head, reminding myself that Sylvia and I have been doing it for years, and I lead Holden down the hallway. I open the hatch to the lower deck that’s more like a teeny, tiny basement, than an actual floor, and we climb down the ladder.

  The engine room takes up the small space down here and this is where Holden would spend most of his time.

  “This is it,” I tell him, gesturing around.

  He surveys the area, a neutral look on his face. And then he turns to me. “So you’re seventeen?” he asks. “And a captain?” His eyes sparkle with excitement as if we’re teenagers plotting to steal our parents’ car and take off for the weekend, instead of flying a spaceship into the middle of nowhere.

  I nod. “I inherited the ship.”

  He nods his approval as he looks around again. “Nice.”

  “Just so you know,” I begin to say. “The pay won’t be all that great to begin with. Most likely.”

  He nods as if he expected it. “Yeah, I get it. What...exactly, will we be doing?”

  I balk, my mouth partly open. I hadn’t expected this to come up so early and now I’m at a loss for words. How did Dad find his crew? Without alerting any officials and getting himself in trouble, I mean.

  “Uh...” I trail off, looking around and pulling a strand of loose hair behind my ear. “We get paid on commission,” I explain.

  He nods, but gives me a look imploring me to continue.

  I open my mouth but nothing comes out for a few seconds. “How attached are you to...the law?” I ask, trying to sound casual, but assume I’m failing as I try to rest my hand nonchalantly on my hip. I smile, trying to lessen the weirdness. I think it makes it worse, though.

  He gives me a small grin back. “Obviously not too much, because I happen to know it’s illegal for people underage to pilot, or even work on any spacecraft. And here I am.”

  I suddenly feel relieved and smile for real this time. “We’ll be stripping abandoned ships and ports of all their valuable parts and selling them illegally,” I tell him frankly. “Are you up for it?”

  A huge grin spreads across his face and his eyes light up. “Yeah,” he answers and I have a feeling that the “illegal” part cinched it. I’m not that surprised. Now that I think about it, anyone underage replying to my ad is obviously willing to break a few laws by agreeing to the proposition.

  “So...” I say, suddenly feeling a little giddy, like I’ve just performed my first business transaction, my first act as pilot of my own ship. “You want the job?”

  Holden nods. “Yes.”

  * * * *

  “Jacob Holden,” I say, giving Sylvia a pointed look from across the room, knowing that she never thought I’d get any crewmembers. “Chief Engineer.”

  She smiles and holds up her hands in surrender from across Hourglass’s cockpit.

  I smirk and continue. “Angelica Rivers, Assistant Engineer and Salvager; Gregory Miller, Salvager; Jackson Keith, Salvager. And Sylvia Smith,” I gesture to Sylvia across the room and take an exaggerated bow. “Our lovely Medic.”

  It had taken me about a week, but I've finally gotten together the bare minimum amount of crewmembers and am now itching to get off this planet. Other than the problem of my permit, I have everything under control.

  She rolls her eyes. “And then there’s Jude Sprocket: Captain, Pilot, Helmsman, and basically anything else that needs to get done on this ship.” She laughs. “Are you sure you have enough people?”

  I glance down at my sparse list. Dad’s crew was much bigger—there were probably twenty people aboard at all times. But I don’t have as many resources, such as the money, or really, the need. This operation is going to be smaller than Dad’s was. Much smaller. And that’s okay.

  “I think we’re good,” I tell Sylvia. “Now, we just need to leave.” I run my fingers through my hair, pulling it into a ponytail.

  “Do you have any ideas on when?”

  “I told everybody next week.”

  “Next week?” Sylvia echoes, leaning forward in her chair.

  I shrug. “Yeah. I don’t want to sit around wasting my time here when I could be out there.” I gesture vaguely upward.

  Sylvia sucks in breath through her teeth. “Okay...how did they feel about that?”

  “They didn’t protest.”

  “And what if I protest?”

  “Sylvia,” I moan, knowing she’s just pulling my leg. She’s got family—her dad worked on Hourglass, but Sylvia’s always been independent and he’d known about my ideas right from the start. She doesn’t have anything holding her back.

  She smirks. “And what are you going to do about your permit?” She asks the question almost reluctantly like she knows the permit means nothing to me.

  I laugh. “I have everything under control,” I tell her.

  Its hours later when Sylvia finally goes home and I’m left alone on Hourglass. It’s even later when I look up and see darkness out the window and for a minute, I’m fooled into thinking that everything is normal. That my life never changed. I’m sitting here in the cockpit, Dad’s off talking with some of the other crewmembers and Sylvia is just around the corner. But then I see the gleam of the overhead storage lights kicking in and I’m smashed back to reality.

  I take in a shaky breath and get up, heading into the hallway. I run my fingers along the sides of the wall as I walk, feeling the cool metal beneath my fingertips. I can remember running along these hallways, playing tag with Sylvia, or even Mom and Dad. I stare down at the scuffed metal flooring, wearing away with the years of footprints.

  And suddenly I gasp as an image fills my mind. The blonde girl, a metal hallway like this one, only I know that it’s not on Hourglass. Our hands are clasped like they almost always se
em to be and I’m surprised by the strange surroundings—so gray, so cold, so different. And yet...I feel safe here. There are adults here too, so many of them. I stare up at them and for a moment I wonder, am I a kid too?

  I slip on something and fall to the floor, the image of the blonde girl gone from my mind. I bite back a curse as my foot hits the wall and it takes me a few seconds to realize I’m breathing heavily.

  My hand feels empty. I feel like I’ve forgotten something—something that I just had. I stare down at my fingers—not the prosthetic one, the real ones. They feel cold, like something’s just left them. Something that I need back. The longer I stare at my cold, shaking hand, the more dread forms in the pit of my stomach so I shake my head, clear my throat and force myself up from the ground.

  I’m leaving in a week. I’ll be back in space. Then I’ll be okay. It’s Earth that’s giving me weird dreams and frantic feelings. Everything will be okay again once I get out of here.

  Chapter Four

  Today, I’m going home. The ship is ready, we have everything we need, and we’re leaving tonight. All this pain, all this frustration, everything strange that’s happened to me, will all vanish when the blanket of space envelops us and I’m out in the open like I should be. After three weeks of being on hold, my life will start again.

  Only my heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach as I realize that this time, I’ll be leaving Dad behind.

  Sylvia seems more nervous than I do, even though it’s me running and piloting this ship. She’s been darting around, making sure we have all the supplies, everything we need, emergency rations in case things go wrong. Everyone else seems fine. Holden, Gregory, and Jackson seem excited. I could tell when I met them that the idea of working and living in space was more the clincher than the money ever was. They’ve been practically glued to Hourglass since I gave them the jobs. I doubt they realize how desperate I was for a crew. Since I’ve gotten to know Holden, I see him as having a lot more potential than I had originally assumed. He’s mature and responsible, always taking care of what needs to be done, which seems a huge feat for a sixteen-year-old boy. The other two guys, on the other hand, are as I expected—a little starry-eyed and goofy. I’m sure that will wear off soon, though.