Beyond Our Stars

by Marie Langager

  “Say what you have to say, I’m not going to wait all day,” Chance said, with his head hanging slightly, arms folded across his chest.

  “I’m still sorry. I just don’t get why you did it, when you know what I want for my life. I’m not going to change my mind when we get down there. You know that, right?”

  He looked up at me. “Yeah, I didn’t expect you to. All I wanted was for us to say that we’re starting out together. I felt like, if I’m sure, if I’m sure it’s you, you’re the one for me, then I should say so.” His face twisted as he said the words and sadness filled his eyes.

  The kind words made me feel like I was awful for not saying yes. “Did you want me to say yes if I didn’t mean it?” I said as carefully as I could.

  “No, but that’s the point,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.

  I shook my head. He closed his eyes tight, then opened them, and said, “You could’ve broken it to me easier, but you were only thinking about you. Only about what’s important to you. And obviously whatever it is…it outweighs how much you care about me.” He was starting to get nasty, his words coming out laced with anger.

  “That’s not true,” I said, “I love you, you know that.” I wanted those words to change the tension between us, but his anger didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  “I don’t care! Hope. I’m always thinking of you, always trying to make sure you’re happy. You treat me like I’ll always be there but you forget that I have options, too.”

  The thought of him with someone else, that he could even think it, hit me like a slap. He was right, I’d never thought about him wanting someone else more than me. And it made me feel sick.

  But he was wrong about one thing, I didn’t want anyone else, and I didn’t care about options being taken away. Not boy options, anyway. The thing was, I had to be able to be myself while we were together, and I had so much to figure out.

  I tried to start, tried to formulate the right thought that would make this all okay, “Chance, this has been one big misunderstanding. If we can just…”

  He cut me off. “You’re not getting it. What happened here. There is no we anymore. I can’t do this. If you don’t know now, how can I be sure you’ll ever know? You don’t get to keep me around just to make yourself feel better. I have things I want to do, too. And they no longer include you.”

  His words hung in the air. I watched him warily. “What does that mean?”

  He turned and slammed his fist into the wall. “It means…I don’t want to see you any more. I don’t want you in my life. As of T.D., we’re done, for good.”

  My throat closed and I choked on a slightly surprised sound that came out of my mouth. He didn’t mean that. He couldn’t mean that. Things couldn’t have gotten so bad, so quickly. We’d been so happy.

  He turned back around to face me and held me in his gaze. He waited for a few seconds, as though he wanted to drive the point home, stick the knife in a little deeper.

  “You’re trying to hurt me,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. There was a beat of silence.

  “No, I never wanted to hurt you.” He said softly, and I was surprised to see sudden tears well in his eyes.

  I moved toward him. He moved back.

  He shook his head, blinking the tears away and replacing them with anger. “You don’t get it. How badly you hurt me. And I don’t want it, Hope, I don’t want less. You have to go.”

  I reached for him and he angrily strode past me and punched his code into the door and held his arm out. I stood still for a second but then, dazed, I went.

  And I wandered, blankly, through the corridors. I kept my eyes down and stared at the cheap blue carpeting and fluorescent track lights lining the ground. I wasn’t going to cry. I didn’t want to cry, then it would be real, and this wasn’t real.

  I found myself in another throng of people, bumping into me in the hallways, and it took me a minute to register that something besides the slamming final was going on.

  Where were they all going? They sounded excited. I let myself be carried along with the crowd, enjoying the feeling of some other force taking over my direction. The crowd took me to the screening room on the main deck, a large arena intended for mass gatherings and informational lectures about our new home. A large screen was lit at the front with a countdown.

  I couldn’t muster the energy to speak so I sat down next to two girls I didn’t know well who were talking. I suddenly felt like crying, and I pulled my knees up to my chest in my seat.

  “I’m thinking a tropical rainforest. Something really magical and beautiful with waterfalls and beaches,” she said in a high trill.

  The blonde one was more wistful, “It doesn’t matter, but I’d really like to see some mountains, like back in Colorado. Hey, I wonder how long it’ll take us to build skis?” They giggled together.

  “Whatever pictures the probe shows, though, that’s my new favorite, for sure. I mean, anything’s better that these freakin’ steel walls.”

  So that was it. There’d been talk of doing this once Haven was within Reflection’s sensory range. There was only this one home, this one chance that we had.

  During the World Space Age, CR-3 was discovered after scientists sent probes out to any potentially viable planets trying to find somewhere, anywhere we could go. They got absolutely nothing until the probe Riggs built managed to travel further than any of the rest. The video system hadn’t remained intact but the probe was able to take readings of the environment and match them to ours. The readings made it back to Earth long after the other probes and just in time, because we had ships ready to go with no destination and a planet that was imploding. There was a lot of rejoicing after the discovery.

  People had built up all kinds of idyllic ideas about it. But now, for the first time, we would have pictures. That was exciting. My emotions calmed as I focused on this new development.

  Chief Up made his way to the front of the auditorium near the screen, to watch with the rest of us. There was a podium out front, making Chief look even taller than his six foot one height because it was so small and squat in front of him. The numbers flashed down, 4…3…2… and then a picture appeared on the screen. Clouds and a beautiful darkening sky. The image shifted down. It was…strangely purple and green. And it sparkled. Not like diamonds, like…health. It looked like a healthy, vital, thriving planet, even in the dark. The crowd cheered.

  There was celebrating as the picture moved closer and closer to the surface. I couldn’t see any stars if they were there, but there were beautiful green, yellow and pink dancing lights waving across the sky and illuminating the land below. It looked like the northern lights back home, but it was everywhere. If this was the sky I’d be going to sleep under each night, then everything couldn’t be that bad.

  The image moved closer and closer to the surface where we would be landing tomorrow.

  People stopped making so much noise as shapes began to take form in the land. It was hard to make them out, but there was a pattern. Straight lines, different patches, like a quilt.

  Then I realized what I was looking at. Crops. Huge, rolling fields of crops. Others realized seconds after I did. Then the image got so close the plants became unmistakable. There was obviously food growing in abundance. There were some isolated excited shouts. Then total silence.

  Because if there were crops, then someone had planted them.

  Chapter Four

  8 HOURS BEFORE T.D.

  When we’d realized the planet was inhabited many of the survivors wanted to stay up where we were. Especially because after we’d gotten the first pictures back, the sensory capabilities on each ship stopped working. All our other systems were fine but no one, including Chief, could fix the sensors. It was up to him to make the final decision.

  You wouldn’t think a seventeen-year-old would be brought in to discuss matters as weighty as these, and you’d be right. It was all adults and lots of the old-erly that the Chief brought in as
consults. But after two days of this, Chief had quietly asked myself and a few others my age to come and talk to him.

  “I want the people, all of them, to feel like they have a voice. That includes our youth. While I don’t plan on turning control of the ship over to you,” he gave a boy named Weeks who I didn’t know that well a long look, eyeing his messy hair and inappropriate grin, “I want to hear what you have to say.”

  This was why Chief was better than the rest. Everyone mattered. And they mattered more than him.

  People looked at me first. Everyone assumed I was a leader so I went with it. I think it was the story of me walking alone through a hundred and fifty miles of destruction that created this myth.

  “I think we land,” I said.

  Chief’s head moved up almost imperceptibly. “Why?”

  “Because they know we’re here. Other than the sensors, there’s been no aggressive action. To me, that means either we have the better tech or they’re peaceful.”

  Legacy was here, too. It was strange to see him after our awkward moment a few days ago. He said his dad was one of the advisors Chief had called on.

  “Oh my fuck,” he said. Chief put his hand up to Legacy in warning. “Whatever. You think we have the better tech? Please, our hunks of junk are practically falling out of the sky!” He rolled his eyes.

  “Exactly!” I retorted. “If they have the better tech, then we stand no chance in a fight in the sky.” I turned to Chief, “You know better than anyone. We should land, now, before we all die a fiery death because these ships finally implode on us. Up here we can’t fight back! The only chance we’d have is on the ground.”

  Chief kept his face neutral so I could only hope I was swaying him.

  Legacy seemed ready to crawl right up my butt. He was looking for a fight, and he’d picked me. “So you think they will attack, then? Two seconds ago you said they were peaceful.”

  “I think they could be peaceful. I will, until I see otherwise.”

  “Hence the name,” Legacy laughed with a smirk.

  I groaned. “Oh, yes, hence the name. Never heard that. And you? Are you the legacy your dad dreamed of?”

  I didn’t know him, knew nothing about him other than our weird interaction, but he looked at me like he wanted me dead.

  “What if we land and they can outman and outgun us?” Chief asked. He directed it to no one in particular, but people looked at me.

  “Then they probably can up here, too,” I answered.

  “Why haven’t they made contact of some kind?” Chief asked.

  “Maybe they don’t know how. But they haven’t blown us out of the sky either. I’m reading more into that than anything else.”

  Chief took a long, weighted sigh. “They must outnumber us, regardless.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “We take our chances. There’s nowhere else to go.”

  Chief met my eyes. He was still impassive, but I knew him well enough to know that he’d already made up his mind. I just wasn’t quite sure what the decision was.

  “If no one else has anything to add, you may go back to what you were doing,” Chief said, dismissing us.

  I stayed behind as everyone else filed out.

  “Hey, Chance didn’t show up for this?” I asked. He would have been called.

  Chief didn’t look up at me. “I didn’t ask him. Not after his request to move from his quarters. Figured I wouldn’t get in the middle right now.”

  I was surprised. That the Chief felt a need to take an interest… was he trying to do me a favor?

  I swallowed hard, and smiled to cover the little stab I felt. “Okay. Good luck deciding the fate of the human race,” I said as I left.

  A hearty laugh erupted from Chief. “Thanks a lot.”

  I walked out and wondered if I was arguing the right thing. I was still wondering when Legacy called out from behind me, “Feel good about damning us all?”

  I turned, ready to fight. But the look on his face stopped me. He looked mad, but also hurt.

  “I’m sorry for what I said about your dad. You have a right to disagree with me. I’m sure he’s very proud.”

  Legacy kicked the empty space in front of him, leaning against the ship corridor. His face softened slightly. “Yeah, well, you’d be wrong about that.”

  He stared at me in silence.

  “Well, I’d better be going and…” I started

  “Yeah, sure,” Legacy said quickly, pushing off the wall and hurrying in the other direction.

  I was totally dumbfounded. His comment about damning us all swam around in my head.

  Someone else said my name.

  “Hope?”

  My pulse quickened even as in the same moment I recognized the voice and knew it wasn’t Chance.

  Weeks was behind me, now. I only knew of him vaguely, he was like the resident ship comedian or something. I walked up to him. “Yes, what can I do ya for?” I tried my best comedic smile. Weeks raised his eyebrows, letting me know my attempt was an epic disaster.

  “I thought I’d bring you this, since I was planning on doing it anyway, but someone told me it was Chance’s birthday. Thought you could give it to him for me.” He handed me a drawing that had different boxes, each chronicling Chance’s step-by-step victory at the slamming final, like a comic book.

  “Wow!” I said, admiring it. I knew it was Chance’s birthday and I had planned something special for tonight. But that was before he’d told me to stay out of his life.

  Most of us hated birthdays now because they were reminders of the years we had spent aboard ship. But of course I’d planned something, and I still wanted to give him his gift. I hadn’t seen him since the finals. Deep down I was hoping he still wanted to spend today together. But I knew it might not happen.

  “It’s awesome, but don’t you want to give it to him yourself?” I said, not wanting Weeks to know of my uncertainty.

  “Nah. I like drawing stuff like that, but kinda weird to say, hey man, I drew you,” he gave me bug eyes.

  “Okay, I’ll get it to him,” I said. I took the paper and rolled it up carefully. “Thanks,” I said, but he turned with me as I moved to go.

  “Hey, about Legacy?” he said.

  “Yeah, what about him?” I asked, surprised.

  Weeks shifted on his feet, his thick arms swinging at his sides. “He acts like that because he likes you.”

  I smiled and coughed, choking on the idea. “No, he most definitely…” I started.

  Weeks put a finger on my lips. “Shhh, darling, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Only telling you so you don’t get caught in his snare again, he’ll likely take no prisoners next time.”

  I gave him a doubtful look.

  He smiled back at me. “Some of them boys, they got a likin’ for you, but not me. No.” He switched from an overblown southern accent to a New York one. “What I know is, that you be wantin’ some of this,” he pulled at his shirt, rolling his shoulders back and puffing up his chest, “But cha can’t have none, girl.” Then he winked at me and left me standing in the corridor with a disbelieving look on my face.

  I wasn’t sure about what Weeks said, but that would have to wait. Right now the day was disappearing fast and I still hadn’t seen Chance.

  I went to his old room, which was still open and just as empty. I went to Billie’s room but no one answered and I didn’t know the code.

  I felt myself getting hungry so I took a break from my search and made my way to the cafeteria hoping dinner would still be out and I could grab something fast.

  I’d been working a few hours here and there at the cafeteria so that I could get paid in food. Chance’s favorites, the junk food that you couldn’t get anymore unless you knew someone who liked you a lot at the cafeteria, were my payment. I’d weaseled a packet of cheese puffs and a box of chocolate-chip cookies out of Winny, the head cook. It had taken me thirty hours of work scrubbing dishes in the back to get them for him. I was carryin
g them in a small sack slung over my back, with Weeks’ commemorative drawing in there now, too.

  I found him at a table in the cafeteria. It was getting really late so the place was close to cleared out, but Chance was at a table with his sister Billie and about twenty of our friends. I walked over, eager to tell him that I hadn’t known he wouldn’t be in the meeting with the Chief. That I’d been looking for him. But I didn’t get the chance. People around Chance began to glare at me.

  So he’s told everyone.

  I walked over to the group anyway. Chance didn’t look at me until I was standing right next to him. I put the bag down in front of him on the table and kissed him on the cheek. He jerked away slightly, and I left.

  Chapter Five

  T.D.

  “We’re entering the atmosphere,” a voice said over the ship intercom. It was six a.m. and I was in my quarters by myself, holding my blanket. Sort of as a comfort and also so I had something in my hands to pull on and try to rip as my nerves threatened to spontaneously combust. Like I thought the ship might do. If we all died I would die alone. Now was one of those times I wished I had some family, somebody to be with me. I wished I had Chance.

  “Make it through, make it through,” I whispered out loud to myself.

  And then there was a jolt, and then a bounce the opposite way. I put my hands on the edges of my bed to keep myself steady. Then a loud rattling that I really didn’t care for. The Reflection was leading the fleet. We would be the first ones to land.

  “It’s okay,” I said out loud as my voice vibrated with the ship. I closed my eyes. It was a good thing my mirror was bolted to the wall. I’d put all my belongings in my drawers under the bed the way Chief had advised us. He knew this would be a bumpy ride.

  He wouldn’t be at the main deck right now. He wouldn’t be standing at the helm. He’d be in the engine room, sweating and working with all the others to make sure we made it down in one piece. I imagined our fleet of ships all descending onto the planet and wondered who or what was watching.