He smiled, grateful, and I was glad I’d said yes.
The whoosh of air as he passed me smelled clean and fresh, like he’d just showered. My skin was still remembering the feel of his hands.
That smile of his. It’d brightened his entire face. I wanted to make him smile like that again.
The facility and grounds were completely empty. Once we left the housing wing, only a few lights were on in the halls. We passed through a hallway lined with locked doors on one side and floor-to-ceiling windows on the other. We relied on moonlight through the windows to guide us.
“Do you think we’ll get in trouble?” I whispered, even though there was no one around to hear.
“What will they do, kick us out? We are not children. They have chosen us to go into space; surely they must trust us within the walls of our own enclosure.”
He had a good point.
“Bolshakov said the track was on the south side of the building. There should be an outside door near the café we can use.”
“What if it locks behind us?”
He shot me a mischievous glance. “Then we sleep under the stars. Not like it would be the first time, yes?”
I remembered sleeping beside him in the lean-to and shivered. “I should’ve packed warmer clothes.”
Without warning he reached around me and ran his hands up and down my upper arms, quick, as if to warm me. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Better?”
“Y-yes.” I hadn’t been cold, but now my skin was flushed even warmer.
A turn left, then right, and Luka confidently led us into a large circular common area filled with tables covered with upside-down chairs. A metal grate was closed over an empty food stand, under an unlit seventies-era fluorescent sign reading “Star Café.” The stench of Lysol, with an earthy undertone of mildew, permeated the air.
“Wow, where was this sense of direction when we were lost in the boonies?” I asked.
He smirked. “Come.”
He pushed open a door and a rush of cool night air greeted us. The track was a desolate thing, weeds growing up in cracks between the faded lanes, a lone yellow streetlamp at the far edge of the grass the only light. In the murky distance I could just make out a stretch of empty parking lot. The fresh air was cool and muggy. Not quite fall, but getting there.
He was already circling the track, a slow warm-up jog. I followed suit. We fell into a rhythm and maintained a friendly distance. The night air grew cooler, more damp, but I grew warmer, until my muscles were loose and well used and I felt put back together again.
I waited for Luka to finish, picking out what constellations I could from the light-polluted sky. We walked back inside together, but now our pace was unhurried. The dim interior seemed less forbidding and more cozy, like we were the only two people awake in the entire facility.
A warm, relaxed fuzziness had descended over me like a drug. Maybe I could sleep now.
“So,” I ventured, my voice low as we neared our rooms. “What do you think about . . . all this?”
As I side-eyed him, his jaw locked and then released—lips pressed together, and then relaxed. I had the feeling he didn’t want to share, but then he said, “I assume you mean that they plan to send us four hundred ninety light-years away to rendezvous with extraterrestrials? It still hasn’t quite sunk in, I think.”
My voice lowered further. Now that we were alone, I wanted to ask him something that had been bothering me. “Do you think whoever sabotaged the SLH will try again here?”
His eyes grew dark. “I do not know what happened at Johnson. We are supposed to be the only ones who know this mission’s objective. Perhaps it was nothing more than a disgruntled employee. One hopes that the circle of trust here is smaller.”
“You’re not worried?”
“You can worry about sabotage, or you can worry about the ship exploding on the tarmac. Worry doesn’t do any good. I am cautious, but that is all.”
“Don’t you have reservations, though?”
“Do you?” he asked, giving me a quizzical look.
“A little,” I admitted. “I was just wondering if I was alone in that. Do you think the rest of the crew is worried at all?”
“I think, as it is for either of us, any chance at space is reason enough. The reward is worth the risk.”
I chewed on that awhile. “I suppose you’re right.”
He paused outside my door. “Feel better? No longer . . . what you say, antsy?”
I smiled. “Yeah, I feel better. Thanks.”
He gave a nod, like a miniature bow. “Any time. Thank you for inviting me.”
There was really no reason for us to continue standing there in front of our rooms, but it was like neither of us wanted to walk away. We were standing really close. I could see the pulse jumping in his neck. My eyes focused on his face. His cheeks pink from the run. The arched cupid bow of his lips, slightly chapped.
There was a growing roar in my ears.
“Well, good night,” I said quickly, backing away.
His eyes followed me away; his voice sounded disappointed. “Have a good night, Cassie.”
I escaped into my room, surprised to find how much my heart was racing.
I’d never felt flustered around anyone like this before. I’d always assumed I just wasn’t made that way. But whatever was causing this reaction to Luka, I had to get over it. Now.
I was so close. This was my opportunity, and I wasn’t going to squander it. Not for anything. Not for anyone.
TWENTY-TWO
THE SECOND DAY of class was even more intense than the first. They weren’t expecting Luka and me to be on the same level as the rest of the crew, of course—but Luka seemed to be keeping up just fine. I was the only one floundering.
These were basic, general concepts I needed to know. It’d be irresponsible of NASA to send us unprepared into space. But these were only basic, general concepts for someone who’d already earned a degree or two. Not a rising high school senior.
Now that I was getting to know Luka a little better, I couldn’t blame him for being perfect for this place. Not only did he absorb the information more readily, he even got along more easily with the other astronauts.
My own experience with making friends started and ended with Mitsuko and Emilio. And these four were not only astronauts, but our former instructors. I could hardly remember what words were in their presence, much less talk to them as if we were equal.
At the end of the second day, I was heading back to my room after an unsuccessful attempt to outrun my stress on the track when I intercepted Luka in the quiet hallway off the cafeteria.
He wasn’t dressed for running. But when he saw me, he smiled. And a little knot in my chest started to loosen. “Feeling better yet?”
I swiped a sweaty lock of hair away from my brow. “Actually, no. Running lets me forget a little while, that’s all.”
He cocked his head toward the direction he’d been heading. “Would you like to join me?”
“Where are you headed?”
“Follow and see.”
At the end of an abandoned hall was a carved oak door completely unlike the industrial metal-and-glass ones everywhere else on the compound. He opened the door for me and I stepped inside, not knowing what to expect.
It was a chapel. Small, narrow, barely wider than a janitor’s closet. A few rows of decoratively carved wooden pews led up to an altar, over which a half circle of stained glass bled a rainbow mosaic of color on the floor. It was empty of people and mostly bare of decoration, save for a low cabinet covered by a drape behind the pew. A soft scent of roses and the deep, earthy aroma of polished wood permeated the air.
It was the most aesthetically pleasing place I’d seen in the entire compound. More knots in my chest and stomach began to ease. It somehow felt easier to breathe, like an iron band that had encircled my ribs was now gone. My hand went to the curved spiral decoration carved into the end of the pew, tracing its round shape, feeling t
he slippery-smooth polished wood beneath my fingertips.
Something that sounded suspiciously like Christmas hymns played on an old speaker at such quiet volume that you had to sit completely still to hear it. Had we missed Thanksgiving, or was someone here a little overeager for Christmas?
“I didn’t know we had a chapel,” I whispered. Whispering seemed appropriate in a place like this.
He motioned me into the pew and sat beside me, leaving a polite space between us. “I come here sometimes,” he said, his voice quiet. “It’s calming.”
It struck me as odd that I had never considered Luka being religious. “Catholic?”
“Georgia has its own orthodox church,” he said, a bit of smile in his voice at my ignorance.
“Oh.”
He craned his head a little to smile at me, and then looked up at the stained-glass window. “It’s not all that different. To me. So many names to worship the same God.”
I nodded, my breath catching in my throat. I’d joked about Ganesh and Ram, but in reality I didn’t put much stock in the Hindu pantheon. They were stories from my childhood, little symbols sprinkled through my house, a thread connecting me to my history. Not my present.
“My grandma’s Hindu,” I said, venturing out into the subject like an ice-skater on the rink. “The rest of my family is basically agnostic. We still celebrate Christmas like most people do. My mom puts up a little nativity scene on the fireplace mantel for when her sisters come over. And every year, we catch my grandma sneaking a blue figurine of infant Krishna as a substitute for the baby Jesus.”
Luka smiled. He really was handsome up close, with eyes that looked like they understood everything they saw, a sheen of blond stubble on his square jaw. The soft light from the stained glass gave him an ethereal glow. “So what is it that you believe?”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
I’d never thought too much about it. I figured if there was a God, he was kind of like the moon: up there watching, possibly affecting life on Earth in subtle ways—but otherwise something that I would never fully understand or see up close.
“You miss your family?” I asked, changing the subject.
Luka turned away from me again, bowed his head. For a long time I thought he was going to ignore me. “I’ve never been away from them for so long.”
“Me neither.” Thinking of them was like a physical pain in my stomach.
“It’s odd, isn’t it? To be so far from home, surrounded by strangers. To feel like an outsider.” His eyes went far away and I wondered what he was talking about. He looked like any other white American kid, and he hardly had an accent. What reason could he have to feel like an outsider, either here or back where he came from?
I stayed quiet, unsure if it was ruder to ask him about it or not ask him.
In the quiet that followed, my eyes alighted on the draped cabinet beside the altar. It suddenly hit me, the familiarity of its shape.
Forgetting myself, I jumped to my feet, lifting the drape to see if I was correct. I was rewarded with the polished walnut gleam of an upright piano. It was an old one, and cheap, but when I lifted the lid the expanse of black and white ivories still made my heart dance like fingers on the keys.
The bench had been pushed underneath the key bed. I brought it out a little with my toe and sat, fingertips grazing the cool surface of the keys.
I turned back around to Luka, unable to keep the smile from my face. “I haven’t touched a piano in months. Do you mind?”
He nodded politely. “Please, go ahead.”
I touched the first key experimentally, and a rich, satisfying tenor note broke the solemn silence of the chapel, hanging in the air a few seconds before reverberating into nothing. My fingers, remembering their old patterns, played a few notes in a made-up melody, getting back into the feel of it. I started playing snatches of some melancholy waltz whose name I couldn’t recall. It felt good, and proper, like stretching after a long flight.
I snuck a look over my shoulder at Luka. He’d closed his eyes, leaned forward over his knees, fists against his mouth. Sad? Or tired, maybe? I couldn’t tell if he enjoyed the tune or not.
Then I hit a sour note and pulled my hands into my lap like it had bitten me. “It’s a little out of tune,” I said sheepishly.
He opened his eyes. “Sad melody.”
I shrugged a shoulder. Then I put my hands back onto the keys, because now that they’d had a taste, my fingers were itching for more. I began “Clair de lune,” a sentimental favorite that pretty much everyone in the world recognized.
The familiar calm descended on me. Even though I could play this blindfolded and probably in my sleep, the mental exercise and the music itself always put me in kind of a trance.
I stopped. Luka had been having so much trouble getting into the semiconscious state lately. He hadn’t made any progress. Maybe music could do for him what it did for me. If it could help, even a little, I owed it to him to at least try.
“Hey, come here,” I said.
His eyebrows knitted momentarily, but he complied, getting up from the pew and then sliding onto the narrow bench beside me.
“This is how I get into the right mental state,” I said. “For the EEG tests. I play music in my head—pretend like I’m playing piano. Maybe it could work the same for you. Here.” I grabbed his balled-up hands without thinking, and smoothed his palms out.
“I don’t know how to play,” he protested.
“You can’t get in the right place mentally if you’re tense. Just relax.” My fingers released his and found their former places over the keys. “Close your eyes. Don’t think about anything else. Concentrate on the music.”
I started “Clair de lune” again, taking it half as fast as I normally would and hoping he didn’t notice the sharp, off-key middle C too much. That was a good, generically tranquil piece, at least in the first movement.
I watched his profile as I played. With his eyes closed, he was an open and up-close study. I watched the blond tips of his eyelashes flutter, wondering what was going on behind those eyelids. I felt the air move in and out of his chest in a steady rhythm. Let my eyes take in the finer details of his face: the stubble on his cheek, the texture of his skin, the planes of his cheekbones. It was impossible to tell if my plan was working.
I stopped at the end of the slow first movement, and observed as his eyes opened.
“Well?” I asked.
He took in a long breath and let it out. “It is something I will have to work on. But thank you for trying. I can see how this method works for you.”
“Sure.” My hands slipped from the keys, though my fingers still itched to finish the piece. “What do you say we . . . practice? If you want, I mean. I miss playing, and if it helps you . . .”
I was close enough to see that his smile was more for my benefit; he didn’t think the piano playing would help. “Thank you. That would be nice.”
The silence filled with the distant, generic babbling of Christmas music again.
Luka shook his head, smiling ruefully. “Americans play Christmas music far too early in the season. And the songs are different from those at home. But I like it.”
“Me too.” I nodded, leaned back on my hands. “Even though it’s cheesy. It’s so . . . I don’t know. Hopeful.”
One corner of his mouth perked up in one of the first genuine smiles I’d seen on him. We sat next to each other, our legs touching, listening to the rise and fall of the verses until they faded away.
“Thank you, Cassie,” he said, his voice so low and sweet in my ear that I couldn’t look at him. “I will try your method next time. Perhaps it will help.”
I bit back a smile, savoring the warm glow in my chest that was starting to burn off the chill of loneliness. “It was purely selfish. I just wanted an excuse to show off my musical skills.”
TWENTY-THREE
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” I whispered to Luka, sliding into the chair next to his. I’d s
pent half the night cramming, overslept, and had barely made it in time.
Luka just shook his head.
Our instructor from the last two days was absent. Pierce was an imposing presence at the head of the room, arms crossed like a bouncer. His eyes followed me as I slid into my seat, the last one in.
Instead of our usual instructor, Mr. Crane entered the lecture hall. Everyone shifted in their chairs, sitting up straighter. “A few announcements,” Crane said, without so much as a greeting. “Everyone’s swabs came back clear. Tomorrow morning, all of you will move into quarantine in preparation for launch. Tonight, there will be a short cocktail party for some of our investors. Gupta, Kereselidze, you are excused from this event. In fact, Gupta, directly after this lecture, report to Exam Room 2C for an individual assessment.”
I furrowed my brow at Luka, wondering what new surprise they could possibly have waiting for me. But before Luka could offer any hypothesis, the door opened, and the last person I ever expected to see again walked into the room.
Hanna Schulz looked different than when I’d last seen her, pale and shaking in the locker room. She sported the same sleek ponytail, but now she was wearing makeup and a black blazer over a white button-down and black pants. She faced us serenely—almost defiantly—her shoulders square and chin high. She looked ten years older. Nothing of that defeated girl remained.
“You all remember Hanna Schulz, one of our more promising candidates from the selection phase.” My mouth gaped, but Mr. Crane continued. “I plucked her from the competition because I believed her skills could be put to better use on the ground crew. She’ll be observing you while under quarantine and reporting your progress directly to me. Our accelerated training schedule means we have much to do in little time. It is imperative everyone is performing at their peak in time for launch.”
So she hadn’t been kicked out because of her claustrophobia? What sort of skills could Hanna possibly have that were so valuable to a man like Crane, who could afford the best of the best in every field?
Dare Mighty Things Page 21