A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “What happened to me?”

  On the far wall, an image appeared of someone wearing one of those hideous spacesuits. I recognized the airlock. “I’m coming for you, Noa.” That sounded like DJ; it had to be him.

  He opened the outer airlock door, attached the tether to his belt, crouched down, and then jumped. Out of the airlock. The video skipped forward a minute. DJ returned, and he wasn’t alone. The recording lurched ahead again. There was a body on the floor. The body was me. Someone—DJ, I assumed—had stripped me out of my spacesuit, and I was spread on the floor in nothing but a gray bodysuit. It hardly looked like me. Waxy skin, eyes wide but empty. I couldn’t see DJ, but I could see his hands, one on top of the other, pushing on my chest as fast as he could.

  “Please don’t die, Noa. Please don’t leave me here alone. I need you, Noa. Please.” The recording paused and then vanished.

  But DJ’s urgent pleas lingered; the plaintive sound haunting me. He’d been so desperate to save me, so lost and afraid. My heart hurt for him. I remembered what it felt like to need something that badly. I wanted to crawl into the recording and tell that boy that his efforts hadn’t been for nothing. That he wasn’t alone. Instead, I’d have to settle for finding DJ and thanking him now. If the stupid MediQwik thing ever let me go.

  “How much longer is this going to take?”

  An irritating three-note chime sounded from the cuff as it popped open and hung loosely around my arm. “Congratulations! MediQwik has completed treating you for cracked ribs and hypoxia-related brain injury. Please avoid oxygen-deficient environments in the future. Additionally, drink three liters of water over the next twenty-four hours, and return to the medical suite if your urine luminesces for longer than seventy-two hours. MediQwik, health redefined. MediQwik is a trademark of Prestwich Enterprises, a subsidiary of Gleeson Foods.”

  There was nothing funny about the situation, but I laughed anyway. I’d done the same thing during Grandpa Andy’s funeral. Busted out laughing right during Father Diaz’s opening prayer. I apologized to Gamma Evelyn afterward, and she told me it was okay. That life was ridiculous and absurd, and sometimes the only way to keep it from overwhelming us was to laugh right in its face.

  In the last few hours, I had woken up on a spaceship—no, not even on the ship. I had woken up outside a ship. A ship named Qriosity that was in danger of exploding. With the help of a boy named DJ, whom I’d never met, I’d repaired the ship, and then been blown into space for my trouble, where I’d apparently died.

  It was absurd. It was the most absurd series of events that had ever happened to me, and if I hadn’t laughed at them, I would have screamed and screamed and kept screaming forever.

  “Your treatment is complete,” MediQwik said. “You may exit the medical suite at your leisure.”

  When the laughter faded and my body stopped shaking, I said, “Are you programmed to diagnose mental disorders?”

  “Yes,” MediQwik replied.

  My mom and I hadn’t discussed it, but the fear that I had inherited my father’s mental illness had hovered over our lives. I had to face the possibility that this was all happening in my head. “Am I sane? Have I had some kind of break with reality?”

  The lights in the medical suite dimmed slightly for a moment. “According to your most recent brain scan, MediQwik has detected no physiological abnormalities that would indicate the presence of a psychiatric illness.”

  That should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. Not entirely. If this wasn’t a delusion, then I’d died and been brought back to life and was still stuck on a spaceship. But if it was a delusion, then all I’d accomplished was having my delusion tell me that I wasn’t deluded.

  It was a rabbit hole I couldn’t go down, or I would second-guess myself until the end of time.

  “What would Mom tell me to do?”

  “Your mother is not on board Qriosity,” MediQwik replied. “Therefore I am unsure how to respond to your inquiry.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” I muttered.

  I knew exactly what my mom would say; I could practically hear her voice. She would tell me to take it one step at a time. First step: get dressed.

  My legs were wobbly and the floor was cold. It took me a few seconds to find my balance before I was able to cross the room to the pile of clothes, which turned out to be a revolting tan onesie with the name “Nico” stitched across the chest. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have considered wearing it, but these were not normal circumstances. Besides, step two was to find DJ, and I wasn’t about to explore the ship in my underwear. I doubted they were even my underwear. I never would have deliberately chosen to wear a pair of dingy white briefs with a saggy ass. The whole outfit was sad with an I-dressed-myself-from-the-lost-and-found-box vibe, but it was better than nothing.

  I approached the door, expecting it to slide open, but it remained firmly shut, forcing me to open it manually. “Seriously, what kind of spaceship doesn’t have automatic doors?” No one replied.

  Harsh yellow-tinged lights cast the corridor outside medical with a sickly glow. One of the guys my mom had dated for a while had tried to score points with me by taking me to the Naval Undersea Museum when I was nine. It hadn’t worked; the guy had smelled like sauerkraut and thought “Pull my finger” was the funniest joke ever invented. Anyway, Qriosity reminded me of those submarines I’d toured. The steel beams, the rivets, the pipes running overhead. And whoever had chosen the color scheme should’ve been tossed out the airlock without a suit. The tan and green were dire and depressing.

  For my first spaceship, it was disappointing.

  “DJ?” I stood at the junction of three corridors, unsure which way to go. I wanted to find DJ and thank him for saving me, but I also didn’t want to wander around the ship looking for him while he was wandering around the ship looking for me. The smart choice would have been to return to the medical suite and wait for DJ, but a pounding sound caught my attention, and I decided to follow it.

  The thumping grew louder as I walked, and I thought I heard a voice as well. I paused and turned my ear to listen. Yeah, someone was definitely shouting, “Let me out of here!” at the top of their lungs.

  I picked up the pace, not paying attention to where I was going, and when I finally reached the source of the noise, it was coming from behind a door with the word “Head” stenciled on it. I pulled the lever and opened the door.

  “Let me—” A young woman spilled out and punched me in the shoulder. We tumbled into the wall and hit the floor in a tangle of arms and legs and profanity, not all of it mine. The girl seemed to take a second to realize she was free, and then she scrambled to her feet, stepping on my hand in the process, and backed away from me.

  “Who are you, and why did you lock me in the toilet?” The girl was shorter than me, which most people were, with shoulder-length rust-red hair, a haphazard dusting of freckles across her fair nose and cheeks, and wide, dreamy eyes. She was wearing black pants, a gray shirt, a fitted, high-waisted black jacket, thigh-high boots, and a murderous scowl. She also looked to be about my age.

  “Hello?” she said, snapping her fingers in the air. “What were you planning to do to me? It better not have been sex stuff. I know Krav Maga.” She held her fists out in front of her in a manner that made me suspect she absolutely did not know Krav Maga.

  “Ew, no,” I said. “I didn’t lock you in there, and I wasn’t planning to do anything to you.” I was feeling a bit abused by my treatment so far, but she had been locked in a restroom, so I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. “I heard you banging for help and opened the door. That’s all.”

  She relaxed slightly but kept her fists up. “Oh. Well, I hope you don’t need to use the toilet. There’s no paper and the sink doesn’t work.”

  “I’m good,” I said. “How long have you been in there?”

  The girl shrugged. “Long enough that I was beginning to weigh the pros and cons of drinking toilet water.”
/>   “Gross.” I stuck out my hand. “I’m Noa.”

  “Jenny.” She ignored my hand and twisted her hair around her finger. “Are you sure this isn’t a sex thing?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then where am I and what is going on?”

  I wasn’t sure how Jenny was going to take the knowledge that she was on a ship called Qriosity, or how I could explain it without her laughing in my face. The only reason I’d accepted that I was in space so quickly was because I’d been floating in it.

  “Noa?” I heard DJ’s voice a moment before he jogged around the corner. I recognized it because it had been all I’d had to cling to in the darkness, and I felt dizzy with emotions that crashed into me too quickly to process.

  DJ looked nothing like I expected. He was thick, with broad shoulders, wavy blond hair, ruddy cheeks, and blue eyes brighter than any star. I knew we’d never met before, and yet he had one of those faces that seemed instantly familiar. It was like remembering someone from a past life. “Noa!” DJ broke into a goofy, toothy smile that was flanked by these impossible dimples before he rushed me and wrapped me in a strong embrace, squeezing the air from my lungs and throwing me further off guard. I tensed and stood motionless with my arms pinned to my sides. I wanted to hug him back, to relax into his chest, but I also wanted to shove this stranger who was touching me away. Instead, I froze and waited for DJ to let go.

  I cleared my throat. “So, I guess that answers whether you’re a hugger.” I tried to back away and put some distance between us without it looking obvious. DJ had saved my life, and I owed him more than I could ever repay, but I didn’t want to risk remaining within reach of another impromptu hug.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up,” DJ said. The spaces between his words were practically nonexistent. “MediQwik said you were going to live, and I figured I might as well try fixing the ship while the ship was busy fixing you.”

  DJ’s neutral expression seemed to be stuck on shame. Like he was waiting to be scolded for doing something wrong even if he didn’t know what he’d done. But he also possessed a sincerity that was so visceral and real it must have hurt. He didn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve; he held it in his hands and presented it to anyone he thought might willingly take it. Right at that moment, he seemed to be offering it to me. I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want it. And if DJ had known me, he wouldn’t have considered letting me anywhere near it.

  “Hi. I’m Jenny.” Jenny wedged herself between us. “I was locked in the toilet.”

  I coughed as DJ frowned. “She doesn’t know where we are,” I said.

  “Like, she doesn’t know—”

  “Anything,” I finished.

  “What don’t I know?” Jenny asked. “Someone needs to tell me where I am right now. I’m starting to get violent, though that might just be low blood sugar.”

  “We’re on a spaceship, Jenny.” No one had eased me gently into the knowledge. Why should Jenny’s introduction be any different?

  Jenny pursed her lips, her eyes darting between me and DJ like she was waiting for one or both of us to laugh and tell her we were joking. When neither of us did, she folded her arms over her chest and said, “Yeah, I’m going to need to see that to believe it.”

  I was about to tell her where she could find a spacesuit and the airlock, but DJ spoke first, which was probably for the best.

  “We should go to Ops. You can check out everything from there.”

  “Maybe we can finally get some answers,” I muttered.

  But DJ glanced at me with that sad puppy-dog look and said, “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

  TWO

  DJ WAS WEARING JEANS THAT showed off his butt and a gray T-shirt that highlighted his broad shoulders. It wasn’t fair that DJ was forced to wear jeans and a T-shirt and Jenny woke up in that gorgeous jacket, while I woke up in an ugly tan onesie with someone else’s name on it. And of all the things to be bothered by, not looking cute was a weird one to fixate on, but the more I thought about it, the more it infuriated me.

  Plus, as if being ugly and unfashionable wasn’t bad enough, the stupid jumpsuit didn’t even fit properly. It was too short and kept riding up and giving me a wedgie.

  These were the thoughts that occupied my brain as DJ led me and Jenny through Qriosity. I had no idea where DJ was taking us, nor did I care. The only place I wanted to go was home.

  “How’re you holding up?” DJ walked beside me, but he’d maintained a respectable distance since his surprise hug earlier. Clearly I hadn’t hidden my discomfort as well as I thought I had.

  “Fine, considering I died.” I wasn’t sure whether it was talking about dying that was making me nervous or talking to DJ. Our conversation had flowed so much easier when he’d been a voice in my helmet rather than an actual person who gave me the most inconvenient stomach flutters when he glanced shyly my way. “Thanks for making sure I didn’t stay dead.”

  “It was nothing,” he said. “I only did it for the cake.” DJ tried to hold a straight face, but he broke into a laugh almost immediately, then kept laughing like he didn’t realize it wasn’t that funny. But he had a cute laugh, so I let it go.

  “Well, I don’t care why you did it. I’m glad you did.”

  “Me too.” DJ’s smile was so earnest it hurt, and I finally had to look away.

  “I can’t wait to get home so that I can have the total breakdown I deserve. There’ll be ugly crying and ice cream for days.”

  “Yeah,” DJ said. “Home. Sounds good.” He stopped at the bottom of a set of steps that led to a door labeled with the word “Ops.” “We’re here.”

  Ops—which was like the bridge or the command deck or the place where qualified people would have flown the ship from if there had been any of those on board—was separated into three distinct stations. Each had its own console covered with screens and knobs and blinking buttons, and each had its own chair. The equipment looked both technologically advanced and antiquated. Rundown and shabby in a way that didn’t inspire confidence. The consoles were worn at the edges, and the chairs’ cushions looked lumpy—one even had stuffing poking out of the side where the stitching had come undone. It totally figured that my first spaceship would be a dump.

  “Whoa! Are you seeing this? Look at all those stars!” Jenny shoved past me and made her way to the enormous wraparound viewport that dominated the front of Ops.

  “Oh, I’ve seen them,” I said, averting my eyes so that I didn’t have to see them again.

  Jenny pressed her face and hands to the glass. “Is this real?”

  “It’s real,” DJ said. “We’re on a spaceship called Qriosity.”

  “Supposedly,” I added.

  “You don’t think we’re actually on a ship?” DJ asked.

  I took a seat at the nearest station and ran my hands over the console, looking for a convenient button marked “Home.” There was not one. “I’m not saying we’re not on a ship.” I leaned back in the chair, which was more comfortable than it looked. “But I don’t think we should take it for granted that we are either.”

  DJ’s eyebrows knit together while he tried to work through what I’d said. Mostly, I was just trying to sound confident because it was better than sounding afraid.

  “Why is nothing working?” Jenny had finally gotten bored of the stars, though she’d left prints of her face and hands smudged across the glass, and joined the conversation in progress. She motioned at the consoles, which did appear mostly powered down.

  “We shut off the reactor,” I said.

  Jenny frowned at DJ and me like we’d admitted to eating rocks. “Why would you do something ridiculous like that?”

  “Well…,” DJ began. I feared he was going to recap what we’d been through in excruciating detail, and I wasn’t in the mood to relive dying, so I cut him off.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “The short version is that the ship was going to explode and we stopped it. No thanks necessary.”
<
br />   DJ hiked his thumb at me. “Yeah. That.”

  “Great,” she said. “That explains literally nothing.”

  DJ rested his hand on my arm, and I jerked away. “Noa, maybe we should—”

  “We shut off the reactor; what more is there to explain? Should we draw a cartoon? Maybe perform an interpretive dance?”

  Jenny squeezed her eyes shut and flapped her hands in the air. “I just want someone to tell me what’s going on!”

  Brightly colored lights swarmed into Ops from vents near the ceiling like an army of tiny fairies and began to coalesce in the center of the room. They were beautiful because they were sparkly, and terrifying because I had no idea what they were going to do to us.

  “They look like fireflies.” Jenny moved toward them like she was going to try to catch one, but DJ pulled her back. “What are they?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” DJ said.

  “They could be anything,” I said. “A security system that’s going to irradiate us and then leave us to die as our skin slowly sloughs off.”

  Jenny laughed. It was a sharper sound than DJ’s laugh, and it made me wince. “Oh, I get it. You’re an optimist, aren’t you.”

  “I’m optimistic that we’re probably going to die.”

  The lights did not, thankfully, attempt to kill us. Less than a minute after appearing, the tiny stars solidified into a surprisingly well-defined hologram of a middle-aged woman wearing a fashionable periwinkle suit. Her perfectly styled wavy auburn hair hung to her shoulders, and her smile, which remained fixed in place until each dazzling photon reached its position, was both beautiful and predatory. It was the kind of smile that said, I’m so happy you’re here! I’m dying to murder you and sew your skins into an oversize tunic.

  I looked at DJ to see if he had any idea what was happening, but he was staring at the hologram with a slack-jawed expression that said he was just as clueless as me. I nudged his arm, but before he could speak, the hologram woke up.

  “Hi! I’m your host, Jenny Perez, whom you probably remember as the precocious kid detective and bestselling author Anastasia Darling on the award-winning mystery entertainment program Murder Your Darlings.”