Star-Crossed

by Pintip Dunn

  And yet, he’s as inaccessible to me now as he was all those years ago. I can’t reach him any more with a kiss than I could with a plate of worms.

  “Declare a tie.” I don’t give up, as a rule. But I’ve failed with gifts and words and touch. I’m not sure what else is left. “I’m not getting anything more from this candidate.”

  …

  An hour later, I walk along the edge of the bubble, on my way to visit Astana at the medical facility. It’s raining outside, in the real planet, and colored ribbons of water sluice down the side of the energy shield.

  I watch the red rain fall from the sky. When the drops hit the bubble, they burst into other colors—the smaller, lighter dribbles into blues and greens, and the larger, heavier plops into yellows and oranges. The colors streak downward, growing fainter and bluer as the energy dissipates.

  It doesn’t rain like that in here. Inside the bubble, the color’s been filtered along with the bacteria, so it rains clear and boring and only at night. There’s no energy field for the water to hit, so no pretty sunbursts of color, either. If I close my eyes, I can pretend there isn’t a shield between the water and me. Squeeze them even tighter, and I can almost feel the splatters against my skin, leaving rainbow splotches like a paintbrush flicked against a canvas.

  Silly. If I were really in the rain, the bacteria would make me sick. Even sicker than I feel now.

  I catch sight of the medical building and cut toward the center of the bubble. I still see the rain, high overhead, but it’s not the same as the brilliant streaks coming down beside me. The drops that fall on top of the shield are like the single pinprick of a distant star compared to the sunflower explosion of a nebula.

  What could have possessed me to kiss Carr like that? And how exactly am I supposed to explain this to Astana? Um, I kissed your brother, and it might’ve been the best experience of my life, but don’t worry. It will probably never happen again.

  Right. That will go over well.

  As I reach the entrance of the building, Miss Sydney walks out, carrying a basket of her caramel cricket crunch. After she tests her recipes on me, she generally tries them out with the patients at the medical facility.

  “Miss Sydney, hi!” I perk up, as I always do, at the sight of her blue sash. “Do the patients love the cricket crunch as much as I do?”

  But she doesn’t smile at me the way she usually does. She doesn’t offer me a sample of the crickets, either. “They didn’t give me any dinner last night. Instead, I had a nutrition pill and that was all.” She slits her eyes like the serpent’s. “They told me you were responsible.”

  I wince. I meant to go to each of the Fittest families and tell them personally, but I’ve had so much on my mind. I guess I forgot.

  I reach for her wrist, but she twists away, so I end up with her sleeve. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain. You see, there are some colonists who are unable to absorb nutrition—”

  “Yes, they told me.” She’s shorter than me, but her stiff anger elongates her, so she seems to tower over me. “And of course, these patients need to eat. But what we don’t understand is why you’re taking our food away. Surely there are extra stores somewhere else.”

  “There really aren’t,” I say helplessly. “Other than the gen-mods, the Fittest families are the only people who eat. You know I wouldn’t have decreased any part of your reward if I had another choice.”

  “Do I?” Her eyebrows disappear under the blue sash. “Because some of the Fittest families are questioning your motives, Princess. Clearly you would do anything to save your best friend—even at our expense. We’re beginning to wonder if you still value what we gave your father. If you’ve ever valued us at all.”

  “Of course I value you! I’d give up my own meals, but I need to eat to produce pills.” I grab her sleeve, too hard, too much, but if all I get is a square inch of fabric, I’ll take it. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise I’ll find a way to make this right.”

  She tugs her shirt, and even that small inch falls away. “If I held my breath every time I heard someone say that, Princess, I’d have joined my son years ago.”

  “I don’t suppose you would consider giving up your evening meal permanently?” My voice is weak and faded, like a ghost who’s overstayed its time in the physical realm. Try harder. Try. Harder. I force some life into my words. “You want my friend Astana to live, don’t you? She’ll die without food.”

  “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you broke the law.” She adjusts her basket and stalks away.

  My insides feel like someone’s whipped the very life out of them. But instead of fluffing like coconut cream, they’re wilted and flat.

  The King was right. It won’t be easy to convince the Fittest families to relinquish their rights. But I’m not giving up. Not now, not ever. Not when the stakes are so high. Not when those stakes include my best friend’s life.

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  When I enter Astana’s wing, a mother and daughter are in the corridor. The little girl is about two years old, with flaxen pigtails and dimples as deep as chasms. She scampers across a stretcher as though it is playground equipment, and her mother, who is hardly more than a girl herself, follows close behind, holding onto a metal stand.

  “Brooklyn! How many times do I have to tell you? Stay still or the tube’s going to fall out,” the woman says.

  The girl grins at me with her whole face—with her too-thin cheeks and her long eyelashes. “Catch you!” she says and leaps off the stretcher, directly at me.

  Oomph. She lands in my arms. My knees buckle, but I manage to remain standing.

  “Oh Dion, I’m sorry.” The woman hurries to us, holding the now-detached and dripping intravenous tube. “She’s just so excited to be out of bed. To be detached from the feeding tube for a few minutes. You wouldn’t believe it, but two days ago she couldn’t even sit up. It’s amazing what a difference food can make.” Her voice is equal parts relief, wonder—and hope. As though she resigned herself to the worst and can’t believe her baby’s being given a second chance.

  I swallow hard. This must be the little girl Hanoi mentioned. The one who’s as sick as her and Astana.

  I lower the girl to the ground, and she scurries onto the stretcher once again.

  “Catch you?” I ask.

  “Brooklyn is still learning her pronouns, and she thinks ‘you’ is her name.” The woman makes an exasperated sound, but I can tell from her soft smile that she thinks it’s the most adorable thing on Dion. “So all day long, it’s ‘catch you,’ ‘hold you,’ ‘give you.’” She snags the back of her daughter’s gown as the girl runs past and reattaches the IV.

  Brooklyn beams at me. “See you.”

  “Hey, that was right!” I smile back. I can’t help it. “See you later.”

  I continue walking down the hallway, the confrontation with Miss Sydney leaking from my heart. I helped this little girl out of bed. I gave this young mother hope. If I had to do it over again? I’d decide the same way, every time.

  As I approach Astana’s room, I hear raised voices. Shouts. Maybe even an object being thrown.

  The hair on my neck stands up, and I rush inside.

  “He’s doing what?” Astana paces in the small space in front of her bed, the metal stand dragging behind her.

  Denver reaches out to pat her arm, but she swishes away before he can reach it.

  “Vela.” She pounces on me, her voice cracking like too-dry cake. “How could you do this to me? How could you let Carr compete in the Fittest Trials?”

  Oh. That he. And that what. I guess my cousin has been whispering more than sweet nothings in her ear.

  “The Fittest is the, um, the most revered person in our colony.” I stumble over the words. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this a secret forever. I don’t even know why I tried. “He’ll be remembered forever as a hero.”

  “Yeah, but he’ll also be dead. I don’t want a C-trunk in your s
illy memorial copse, okay? I want my brother alive and next to me.”

  This is why I tried. My best friend’s anger fills the room, suffocating me. It makes Miss Sydney’s annoyance look like a single, colored drop in a torrential downpour.

  I shrink back. “I don’t want him to die, either, Astana.”

  “Then kick him out. Denver tells me you’re in charge of the Trials, just as Blanca is in charge of me. Disqualify him. Right now.”

  “It’s not that simple.” I blink rapidly at Denver. The fluttering of eyelashes is our old distress signal. The one we’d shoot each other when we were cornered by an obnoxious classmate. Even now, when he was the one who got me into this mess, I still expect him to rescue me. The trust must come from building all those forts together. Mud forges a bond that’s thicker than blood.

  Denver snags Astana’s hand. When she stops pacing, he pulls her to him and brushes a kiss across her lips. The gesture is so tender, so intimate, I move to the side window and look out.

  The view here is not nearly as majestic. Instead of brilliant streams of color, I see one of the generator towers that spear up like tent poles all over our colony. The towers are black, metal structures connected at the top by a series of scaffolding. They may be necessary—without the generators perched at the apex, we’d have no shield—but they’re certainly not pretty.

  Ugly or not, the tower keeps me from intruding on someone else’s kiss.

  “I’m sorry, Astana,” Denver says. “It was wrong of me to spring the news on you. Let me give you and Vela time to talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk—”

  I stare as hard as I can at the bolts in the tower. I really don’t want to think about what they’re doing. Really don’t want to know what those little smacks mean.

  “Please,” my cousin says, sixty long seconds later. “I feel awful for telling you in such a crude way. Talk to Vela. We’ll all feel better. Besides, I need to speak to the King. He’s approved my new azalea as the royal flower.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Astana’s voice is as pure and open as a bud unfurling in the new season. As pure and open as she is.

  My heart thumps. This is just like Astana, to fall in love so quickly and so hard. She doesn’t know how to crack open a seam and let a person in bit by bit. When she loves, she does so irrevocably, without holding anything in reserve.

  Her capacity to love is one of the reasons she’s my best friend. But it’s also the reason she could get hurt. Badly.

  Denver comes to my side. “Let’s give her a few minutes,” he whispers. “Come with me.”

  I nod, and we walk out of the room.

  “Sorry, V. I didn’t realize she didn’t know,” he says when we’re in the corridor. Brooklyn and her mother are gone, and a puddle of fluid sits on the floor in front of the stretcher.

  “Really?” My voice takes on an unfamiliar edge. One I don’t often use and certainly not with my cousin. “I could’ve sworn I told you I was keeping Carr’s participation a secret. In the spectator box, during the first challenge. You even advised me not to tell her. Remember?”

  He winces. “I guess I forgot.” He holds up his wrist. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

  I sigh. I can never stay mad at my cousin for long. But even as I press my wrist against his, I know the conversation isn’t finished.

  “What are you doing with my friend, Denver?”

  He scuffs his foot against the stone floor, where the treads of bots have worn slight grooves. “I really like her, V. This thing with Astana… I’ve never felt this way before.”

  I want to believe him. Because if there’s anything my cousin deserves, it’s love. The last couple years haven’t been easy for him, with his father dead and his mother depressed. If the romance between him and Astana is real, I’ll be their biggest supporter. But if it isn’t…we’ll see just how strong those mud bonds are.

  “Forgive me for not taking you at your word. But Essex wouldn’t eat for three days after you lost interest in her. My stomach still hurts thinking about the extra food the rest of us had to eat to make up for her quota.”

  “You’ll see. With time, you’ll see how sincere I’m being.”

  “I hope so. I really do.” Because if we all come out of this alive, with our hearts unscathed, it would be a fairy tale from Earth.

  Even if we have to eat poisoned apples and be baked alive before we reach our happy ending.

  …

  Once the details start spilling out of me, they won’t stop. I start from the beginning and tell Astana the whole story. Not just for her sake, but also for mine.

  With each word, a water balloon pops in my chest. I tell her how Carr confessed he rescued me and called in his death debt. Pop. How I found the perfect candidate in Zelo, even though he’s lacking in physical skills. Pop. How neither boy would get off his stone, no matter what incentives we offered. Pop, pop, pop.

  And yes, the kiss. I even told her about that.

  Her eyes get big and bulging. She looks like the test mole that burrowed under our energy shields and emerged in an air too rich with carbon dioxide. “You kissed him? You made the first move?”

  I sit at the foot of the bed. If I’m going to come clean, I might as well confess the whole truth. “I like him, Astana.”

  “Well, of course you do,” she says, as if I told her the sky was purple. “All the girls love Carr. Even Hanoi confessed that she thought he was cute. He’s never had time for any of them, that’s all.”

  She cocks her head. “Did he kiss you back? How was—” She snaps her mouth shut and flops against the stack of pillows. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. If you’re going to get involved with my brother, don’t tell me any of the specifics. Okay?”

  “I don’t know if we’re involved.” I look at my hands. The same ones that intertwined with his. The same fingers that touched a ray of light. “He seemed to think I was only kissing him to get him off the stone.”

  “Were you?”

  “No! I’ve liked him ever since we were…we were…” My voice falters, as I realize this is one more secret I never told her.

  “You can’t possibly want him to win.”

  Fine tremors run up her arms. I grab the solar blanket off the recharging rack and hand it to her. “I’m doing everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t.”

  I tell her about cheering for Zelo, about choosing a trial suited for his particular strengths. Either my words reassure her, or the newly heated blanket warms her up. The trembling stops. But her anger doesn’t.

  “You’re not trying hard enough. We’re halfway through the trials, and Carr’s won both challenges.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” The dread seeps through my veins, watery and cold. Like Astana’s intravenous fluids but worse. Because no blanket, no matter how warm, can take the edge off. “I knew Zelo would excel at the incentive trial. How was I supposed to know Carr would be as good?”

  “You can’t just tailor a trial to suit another candidate and hope for the best. You have to go out of your way to stack the odds against Carr.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admits. “What’s the next challenge?”

  “The Orange Temptation.” I drop my head, and my hair swings forward to cover my face. I can’t bear to look at my friend. This challenge is further proof of how spectacularly I’ve failed at protecting her brother. “The candidates will be placed in a room filled with oranges. The fruit will be sprayed with a fragrance that will make them virtually impossible to resist. We expect every candidate to succumb to a bite eventually. It’s only a question of when.”

  Taking a quick breath, I hurry on before Astana can protest. “This is a challenge that’s traditionally been part of the Fittest Trials, before we knew that a bite of food could trigger the intolerance to the pills. But you don’t have to worry. We’ve tested all of the candidates, and none of them have the predisposition, so they aren’t at risk. I
never would’ve allowed the challenge otherwise.”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” Astana says. “I mean, yes. I’m glad your challenge won’t produce more patients like me. But what’s more pressing is that Carr’s been in and out of glasshouses, resisting food, half his life.”

  “I know.” My voice is a pebble in an infinitely expanding universe. I attacked the challenge from every angle, but Master Somjing insisted it had to be included. In the end, I couldn’t dispute his logic. The Fittest will live in the shuttle for months before the transplant. He’ll be surrounded by food, day and night, and yet, he can never succumb to a bite or he’ll risk damaging his organs. We have to know he’ll be able to resist the temptation.

  Astana drums her fingers against her cheek. “What if you changed the temptation from oranges to apples? Is there still time to make the switch?”

  “I guess. What difference would it make?”

  “Carr would be able to abstain from oranges all day. But apples…not so much.”

  I shake my head. “Not following.”

  My friend pushes herself off the bed. The attached tubing limits her movements, so she grabs the stand and takes it with her. “I overheard Blanca talking to the medics. She said once you’ve had a bite of a particular food, it becomes harder to resist. And you can’t tell anybody this, but, well…Carr’s tried an apple before.”

  My mouth drops. Carr, the disciplined one, the one with the iron-nickel will, has tasted food? I don’t believe it.

  “It wasn’t his fault.” The words rush from her mouth. “You know how he always has nightmares?”

  I didn’t. I would’ve thought he was too sensible for nightmares.

  “This one night, the dream was especially bad.” She opens and closes her hand, as if to increase the flow of fluids. As if she knows she’ll need the extra medication for this story. “He was shaking and moaning. I couldn’t get him to stop. I couldn’t wake him up. And then he started to cry. I’ve never heard my brother cry before.”