Beyond Our Stars

by Marie Langager

  Chance had been really moody ever since that night. Nothing I said or did seemed to make him happy.

  I’d explained, I’d told him that I loved him, of course I loved him, but that marriage just wasn’t what was right for me right now. Or for him. I’d even tried to laugh about it a little at first, but that had made him madder. I’d really managed to hurt him. And I felt absolutely terrible.

  He’d asked me to leave that night, and after hugging him and giving him unreturned kisses I obliged. But the next day Chance skipped classes and when I went to go bang on his door no one answered. I even entered in his code and it was changed. I had no idea if he was there and ignoring me or off hiding in some other part of the ship. I left.

  I didn’t want to lose him. I tried not to think about what the proposal might’ve meant. I tried to think that the impeding T.D. was making him nervous that I’d start a new life without him once we weren’t confined to the ship. But I had no intention of doing that. Always, in my mind, I pictured Chance as a part of my life.

  After a few days he’d started letting me see him a little. But it was like he only saw me so that he could either ignore me or be rude to me. And I never saw him at night, I didn’t even ask.

  But tonight I knew exactly where he’d be. The slamming final was this evening, after classes.

  I’d made it through the early morning and was almost to the door for Repopulation when a boy stopped me in my tracks by standing in my way.

  “You enjoying our last day of classes?” he asked me in a pleasant voice.

  I wondered if I should know him. He had shiny, jet black hair that he let grow long around his face. His eyes were strange, and …I thought he must have been wearing eyeliner or something. The sweetness in his voice didn’t match.

  “Yes, I guess.” I didn’t know this kid. I didn’t like the way he blocked my path, standing too close.

  His expression wavered. He frowned. “I’m Legacy, we talked last year in Probes and Shuttles.”

  I couldn’t help the raise of my eyebrows. “Oh, I’m sorry, okay,” I waited to see if there was something else he wanted to tell me. Though, honestly, I had no idea who he was and if we’d exchanged more than a few words I was sure I’d remember.

  He kept standing in my way and looking at me. It was starting to get weird so I moved to the side so I could walk into class.

  He moved in front of me again.

  “I have to get to class, is there something I can help you with?”

  Suddenly Legacy looked defeated and he moved to the side.

  I walked into the room and tried to put the look in his eyes out of my head.

  I made it through the rest of classes and sent up a hallelujah that it was over! The icing on top of my sweet, sweet cake was the slamming finals tonight. I’d been feeling too horribly guilty, I needed some excitement.

  Since Chance had turned me down for practice I went to his room to see if he was trying to get some rest beforehand. He’d never told me the new code, but I could still knock.

  When I got to his quarters the door was already open. I peeked in and saw that the room was cleared out of any personal belongings. My mind swirled.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Chance’s half-sister, Billie. Her full name was Possibility but understandably she preferred something simpler and less meaningful. Her brown eyes were icy and she kept turning her head to the side like she was infuriated with me.

  “He moved in with me ‘til T.D.” she said in her little girl voice. She was only thirteen.

  “He did? Why would he do that?” I was stunned. When we first boarded there had been a little mix-up and ship officials hadn’t known that Chance and Billie were related, so they each got separate quarters instead of bunk beds. Chance had enjoyed his privacy and being able to have me over, so we hadn’t had it corrected and no one bothered about it.

  Billie scowled at me like I was disgusting. “He reported that we were family to Chief Up and moved in with me,” she said, like that was all she needed to tell me and I should understand everything.

  “Are you mad at me because you don’t have your own room anymore?” I asked.

  She threw her hands up. “No! I don’t mind having Chance around. I like my brother,” she raised her eyebrows meaningfully. She looked a lot like him right then.

  “I like him, too,” I said, my words halting.

  She gave me another icy look and swiveled around and stalked away down the hall.

  Chance moved in with Billie? No more late nights, no more visiting to talk. He was cutting me off.

  I shook my head. This couldn’t be. Was he punishing me? It wasn’t fair to hide behind his sister and just never talk to me again. I made a note in my head to talk to Chief Up and have him save Chance’s room. This was a momentary melodramatic moment he was having, trying to hurt me. But he’d want his quarters back once we figured this out.

  It was time for the slamming finals. I made my way to the bottom deck, wading through the spectators, trying to figure out where he was.

  The ship’s hallways were already lined with eager fans, squatting in the corridors they thought the slammers would use. Slamming was something that came of being trapped and walking the same halls day after day. Eventually you started to go a little crazy and look for places to explore. It helped that even though we had gravity aboard our ships, it was slightly less powerful than what we were used to on Earth. Your feet stayed on the ground, but we could jump higher than would have been possible back home.

  There was a kid, Boston, who took credit for creating it, and maybe he started it, but it had evolved and grown into something much larger than its humble beginnings. I remembered years ago seeing some of the older teens running through the hallways and then taking steps up the walls. The higher up the wall you got the better.

  It caught on fast. Running up walls became climbing when you couldn’t run any higher. It turned into jumping off of anything to get up to something new. It was basically one long run, climb, swing, and roll, using any surface other than the ground. Once we had it mastered, we started to race.

  And the rules were anything goes. The best slammers were the ones who could climb the best. Anyone could take a running leap but not everyone could hold on and then jump to a higher point from there. It was extreme climbing for sure, especially because your opponents could try to knock you down using any means necessary. More fun that way.

  When it had started, older folks had been pretty irritated. Jumping off of metal crates and such when you were first learning could get pretty loud and some people lodged complaints with Chief Up about kids slamming into walls on board the ship and making a racket.

  The name kind of stuck. It was an ode to the complainers, a tip of the hat, thanking them for giving us a name for our new sport.

  Slamming was only people around my age at first. But even though there were always complaints, people of all ages started to take notice, to watch us, as we developed some skill.

  I was an avid slammer but I’d had slippery hands during the last pre-qualifier and didn’t make the cut. Chance did. He was probably the second best guy at this, on a good day.

  I wanted him to see me before the final started. It seemed important that he know I was there to support him, whatever was going on with us.

  I finally spotted him, dully shuffling his feet off to the side of the crowd of competitors. He looked…forlorn. I’d thought this might bring his spirits up. Especially if he did well. He’d be hailed as a champion if he made it into the top three finishers.

  I weaved between people, trying to get him to catch my eye. I waved. He never looked in my direction, just kept staring at the ground.

  I heard the horn that meant ten minutes till start. I took off running to the upper decks to sit among the spectators watching the screen in one of the auditoriums. The hallway squatters liked to be in the mix, to see them crawling overhead like spiders, but there was no guaranteeing you’d choose the right spot
and I didn’t want to miss anything.

  I made it to a seat with a few minutes to spare and as I watched the giant screen, I noted happily that Chance’s jaw was locked, his eyes focused and determined. Maybe the thrill of competition had finally forced him out of his funk.

  The slammers would begin in the bowels of the ship, in a huge cavernous area called the tanks that smelled of fuel and stale air. Our ships had a core engine capable of manipulating space to achieve faster-than-light-speeds, but we required coolant, fuel for the machinery on board and other ship functions, and housing for water. We had enough to sustain us for the five years it took to get to Haven, but not much more, and the ships were deteriorating fast.

  During the final the twenty slammers would make their way up the walls or the massive tanks.

  I noticed that the twin girls I’d been up against in a qualifying round had made it into the finals. Faith and Gaia were formidable. Each had their long black hair tied into a thick braid and they were stretching and slapping powder onto their hands.

  A boy walked out in front of the competitors and raised a flowing red flag. The crowd in the auditorium hushed. The boy dropped it as a horn blared and the racers took off.

  Chance, of course, took the tank route. He had to shimmy up the giant cylinder all the way to the ceiling. I was confident. His fingers had a way of clinging, they were always dry when we touched. He had thighs like an acrobat, all slender muscle.

  I watched him with pride, still hoping maybe he could have a shot at the title. He’d taken a running leap, now he had to start moving. One hand up, a foot, another hand up. He was wearing the short-sleeved shirt and I could see every muscle harden as he gripped, suctioning his body to the tank.

  I probably would’ve gone the way of the walls. The twins did. I didn’t have the upper body strength that Chance had even though slamming had made me pretty athletic. If you went that way there were handholds and pipes to grip but it took a lot longer because you had to spider-crawl the ceiling.

  Three other boys had made it to the top of the tanks and the shaft above them seconds before Chance. They all started climbing the ladder up, shoving and kicking and pulling to be first. The ones who’d chosen the wall were a full minute behind, at least.

  The camera shifted and started scanning areas of the ship. The front competitors were in the shafts now and those weren’t covered by surveillance. There were a hundred different ways to go, this ship was one big maze. I imagined them in some of the routes I’d taken, but there was no way to know for sure. If you were an awesome climber you went one way, awesome at jumping high you might go another. Slammers were always scouting for the fastest route up-ship.

  The camera went from the deserted cafeteria to a few storage bays, also empty. When the camera went to the corridors to show the fans, cheering and yelling erupted. Then a fast cut brought us back to the action.

  Chance was still trailing a second behind the lead three boys. I knew them, Elijah, Tennessee, and a boy that had ditched whatever name his parents had given him and called himself Clark. They’d come up through a drainage pipe into one of the group shower stalls. But there was no floor walking allowed. That’s probably why they chose to come up there. Fastest route, with a low ceiling. The stalls had metal pipes running the length of the ceiling over the cold yellow tile that I tried not to touch every time I showered.

  Tennessee was trying to jump, but the others held him back.

  “Just let him go!” I shouted, as did some others in the crowd. If they fought over who went first for too long the others were going to catch up.

  Tennessee disappeared, pulled back down by the collar of his shirt. Chance was the one who reappeared. He started to jump to a pipe, but hands grabbed him again. He raised his leg and kicked out hard, his foot probably making contact with someone’s head.

  Some people laughed. When Chance jumped this time no one stopped him. People cheered. I stared at the screen in confusion. That was so not like the boy I knew. There were no rules, it was anything goes, but he’d always been more of a gentleman. He played to win but wanted to win clean.

  I shook my head, reminding myself that this was the finals. Other slammers did that stuff all the time, why not him?

  Chance and the other three made their way across a few feet of the ceiling and into a vent. There was a lot of clanging around. I didn’t need to see it to picture the boys wrestling and trying to squeeze past one another in the tiny space. The cameras went back to the other contestants, who were moving fast but I doubted they could catch the front. I couldn’t see Faith, though. She and her sister were often climbing together, and there was only one long dark braid among those climbing the ceiling in the bathroom.

  The cameras went to the fans in the halls again. This time the squatters had nailed it. The boys came out suddenly on top of some elated fans and began the intense spider crawl along the ceiling of the corridor. They were fast now. The pipes in the corridors were plentiful and easy to grip, so as long as you kept your placement sure and your hands steady.

  People screamed and clapped and pointed as the slammers went over their heads. They reached another shaft, a much larger one, and they disappeared into what I knew was a main storage area with lots of big crates, piled high. This was a favorite area for slamming, and they’d reached it more quickly than I’d seen anyone do before.

  The camera image moved to the storage bay and the boys reappeared, grabbing each other’s clothes and shoving and tripping and trying to push each other down. Elijah pulled Chance down with him and punched him in the face. I winced. Chance’s mouth looked bloody but he recovered quickly and took off after Clark, who had taken the lead.

  In this particular storage bay there was farming equipment and crates piled high in the back. I’d been schooled on how to use each piece of machinery. There was a big old tractor, a harvester, a baler, and a combine. The boys balanced on the tops of these machines, walking along slim metal bars and jumping from the metal loader with its sharp teeth as they made their way swiftly to the back and the stacks of crates built up eighty feet into the air. Once they made it to the crates they took wide jumps, landing deftly. In the beginning, I’m sure the slamming name was deserved. We must’ve been really loud, but now we knew how to make a landing fast and fluid. The boys landed gracefully and took off in the same beat. Up and up and up the crates.

  Some of the giant boxes were metal and welded shut. They had stuff in them we were trying to preserve but wouldn’t need for a while until we re-established our lives. Different pieces of technology, scientific textbooks, I’d heard there was one whole crate somewhere full of memory sticks with data encrypted on them. So that we wouldn’t be starting over as cavemen. There were wooden crates with medical supplies, and some empty crates that had held our provisions, the five years worth of food. The ones that were empty swung from side to side as the boys jumped on them, and the crowd let out collective gasps as each slammer jumped on the precarious crates. Chance landed on one and jumped from it just in time as it crashed down behind him. The crowd exhaled. Now that the crate was gone Elijah was forced to take some more time getting up the boxes.

  Chance was really moving fast and my heart started to thump in my chest. He reached Tennessee and Clark ahead of him and I thought, this is it, he’s going to take the lead. But both of those boys were already gathering speed as they jumped to make it to the top crate and the last shaft up. He wouldn’t make it. Then Chance leapt from a lower crate onto a far wall, not nearly close enough to the vent. I knew what he was going to attempt before he did it, and I wondered how he could be so stupid. He always did this. He’d do something risky and impossible as though there was no way he’d really get hurt. But he’d never make it. He jumped from the wall, up into the air, and I waited for the crash and the medics rushing in.

  But I heard screams, the excited kind, coming from the crowd. I opened my eyes. Chance was clinging by his fingertips to the ladder inside the shaft. I exhaled.

&n
bsp; “You’re not invincible,” I mumbled out loud. The girl next to me gave me a funny look.

  Elijah jumped up too, on top of Chance, reaching for a rung above the one Chance held. But Chance grabbed the kid’s leg and pulled, using him to climb. He grabbed a fistful of Elijah’s hair and used his shoulder as leverage, climbing right over him. Chance continued up, reaching the opening that led to the main deck where the winner had to grab the slam trophy.

  The scene changed again, just in time to capture Chance sprinting across the screen. His face was red and angry, and a little blood trickled from his cheek as he grabbed the Trophy with relish.

  The auditorium and the corridors erupted in thundering applause and cheers. Elijah still placed second and he seemed pleased with that. He slapped Chance on the back as the third place finisher, Faith, arrived. She must have made up for lost time somewhere, she appeared out of nowhere. I’d have to ask her what her secret was.

  There were no hard feelings between any of them, this was sport, and there were no rules. This was how the game was played. But it wasn’t like Chance. And it bothered me. The cameras followed his face, and now he looked stunned. He forced a smile.

  I got up. He’d be surrounded by people wanting to congratulate him for at least an hour. It wasn’t about the actual trophy, that thing was an ugly twisted bar. It was supposed to represent an arm with a hand, but we’d had it made out of a piece of car hood from the scrap metal pile and it hadn’t come out that great. No one cared. The trophy meant nothing, it was all about the conquest. The fight to the top.

  I decided to go to his room, his new room with Billie, and wait. He was going to have to try harder to get rid of me.

  He surprised me by showing up shortly after I arrived. He strode over to me confidently, like he’d been expecting to see me. Good, then he wanted to talk, too.

  “Can we talk?” I asked quietly as he approached.

  He didn’t answer, but stabbed his fingers across the keyboard to open the door and left it open for me to follow him in. He closed the doors, threw his trophy on the bottom bed, and leaned against the wall. I looked at the bunk beds that must have been moved in just so he could stay here. They crowded the room, and it felt like the air got thick with the tension between us. It didn’t feel right to sit. Maybe this wasn’t the best place to talk.