A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Even though you don’t know how to swim?”

  “Sometimes I would stand at the edge of the water and stare at the horizon. It reminded me how small I was. How I was to the world what a grain of sand was to the beach.” DJ didn’t talk about home often, and I was surprised to hear such a deep sense of loss and need in his voice.

  “I miss my phone.”

  “I miss having music to listen to while I run,” DJ said.

  With a laugh, I said, “You could listen to Jenny Perez’s albums, though I’m not sure they qualify as music.”

  DJ wrinkled his nose. “I tried. Her singing was… not good.”

  “You know what I miss? The lasagna at Machiavelli’s.” My mouth watered as I thought about it. “They’re a tiny restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, so my mom and I would arrive right at opening to make sure we could get a table.”

  “Your lasagna’s pretty good,” DJ said.

  “It’s dog food compared to theirs. There’s something about their sauce, and I could never figure out—”

  “Noa? DJ?” Jenny’s quavering voice spilled into Reactor Control through the speakers. “Is anyone there?”

  “We’re here!” I shouted. “Jenny, are you okay? Are you hurt? We’re trapped in—”

  “We were right,” she said. “There’s a monster on the ship. It almost—” Her voice cracked, and it sounded like she was fighting back sobs.

  “Tell me you’re safe, Jenny. Are you injured?”

  A couple of seconds passed in silence. I threw DJ a worried look. His body was tense like he was going to attempt to stand and pry open the doors with his bare hands.

  “I’m… I’m fine,” Jenny said. “Just my leg. But, Noa, the monster, it’s horrible. You have to help me.”

  “Where is she?” DJ whispered.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in—” Jenny broke off, leaving us hanging on her last word. When she finally returned, she whispered, “It’s here! I have to go. Please hurry!”

  FIVE

  I FELT UTTERLY USELESS. DJ talked me through repairing the magnetic shielding, which prevented more radiation from leaking into the room, but Jenny was out there alone being hunted by a monster and we were still dying of radiation poisoning. I was doing everything I could, but it wasn’t enough.

  “That’s it,” DJ said.

  My mind had been working on autopilot. Following DJ’s commands without actually paying attention to what I was doing. “We still can’t open the doors. Why can’t we open the doors?”

  DJ had me help him to the console. He was looking worse. His skin was pasty, and his eyes were empty hollows. “The radiation cleanup protocols have kicked in. As soon as the levels are low enough, the doors will open on their own.”

  “Meanwhile we just sit here and let it kill us?”

  “I don’t see any way to override them.” DJ shuffled back to sit against the wall. “It’ll be okay, Noa. MediQwik should be able to fix us right up when we get out of here.” I wished I could borrow a little of his confidence. Even a thimbleful would have been better than what I had.

  With nothing left to do but wait, I sat beside DJ and rested my head on his shoulder. “What else do you miss from home?” I asked.

  DJ shifted and cleared his throat. “I don’t know, Noa. Lots of stuff. Why do we have to talk about it?”

  “You always do that when I bring up home,” I said. “Either you change the subject or you shift the focus to me. Anything to avoid talking about your past. Is it your parents? Were they awful to you?”

  “No,” DJ said. “My folks were fine. Kind of clueless, but I think most adults are. Some are just better at pretending than others.”

  “Was it him?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy you told me about,” I said. “Your ex?”

  “Noa—”

  “I’m not jealous.” At least, that’s what I told myself. “How am I supposed to get to know you if you keep parts of yourself locked away?”

  “Because those parts are in the past.”

  “Doesn’t the past make us who we are? Aren’t we just the sum of our memories?” DJ tried to interrupt, but I hushed him. “If he hurt you, I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  DJ said, “He didn’t hurt me. More like the opposite.”

  Sometimes knowing when not to speak is as important as knowing when to speak. I could sense DJ’s trepidation, his fear, but I could also feel that he wanted to talk. That maybe he needed to. And that he would if I gave him some space.

  “He was so stubborn.” DJ began slowly, his voice soft. “When he got an idea in his head, nothing could change his mind. Telling him something couldn’t be done was a sure way to make certain he tried to do it.

  “He never gave up either. Not ever. He could have been the last person on the planet, facing down a horde of bloodthirsty monsters, and he would’ve shrugged and said he liked those odds.”

  Once DJ started, the words poured out of him. I had convinced him to open the floodgates, and I was beginning to regret it.

  “His sense of humor was wicked. I never laughed so much as I did when we were together. But behind the sarcasm and the jokes was someone who was kind and compassionate. He always made sure to laugh with people instead of at them.”

  How could I compete with someone like that? How could I compete with a ghost? I had to wall off the jealousy that seethed within me; I had to remind myself that I had pushed DJ into this conversation.

  “You miss him a lot, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”

  “No,” DJ said. “He’s gone, and I won’t ever get him back.”

  “But if you could,” I asked.

  “Noa—”

  I shifted my body away from DJ. “I mean, he sounds great. I can see why you miss him. What I can’t see is why you’d want anything to do with me.”

  “You’re completely different people, Noa.”

  “That’s obvious,” I shot back. “He’s brave, I’m a coward. He’s funny, I’m basically the human equivalent of Valium. He never gives up, I give up at the first bump in the road.”

  DJ slid his hand into mine and laced our fingers together. “None of that’s true and you know it.”

  “But if you could have him over me, you’d take him, wouldn’t you?” I shook my head. “No need to answer. I already know. Hell, I’d take him over me.”

  “He’s my past, Noa, but you’re my future. I hope.” DJ took my chin in his hand and turned my face toward his. He leaned in to kiss me. His lips barely grazed mine. I wanted to close my eyes and fall into it. I wanted to fall into him. Instead, I flinched. My body seized and I pulled back.

  DJ lowered his eyes. “Sorry—”

  “No, DJ, I didn’t mean—”

  “Noa? DJ? Are you there?”

  I was annoyed at Jenny because now DJ was going to think I had flinched because of him. At the same time, I was grateful to her for saving me from embarrassing myself further. Reluctantly, I let go of DJ’s hand. “Jenny? We’re here. Where are you?”

  Jenny sounded more composed than she had last time. Less consumed with panic as a result of being stalked by something that was going to eat her. But only just barely. “I’m hiding in the shuttle.”

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. “Where’s the monster? Is it a monster?”

  DJ squeezed my knee and threw me a look that was like, Give the girl a chance to answer.

  “It’s definitely a monster.” Jenny was breathing hard. I couldn’t imagine what she’d been going through. “It grabbed my leg and secreted some kind of juice that burned me pretty bad. I can still run, though.”

  My heart dropped. Jenny was out there, hurt and alone, and DJ and I were trapped and couldn’t help her.

  “I don’t know what the hell it is, Noa, but it’s big.”

  “Tentacles?” I asked.

  Jenny stifled a hor
rified laugh. “No. But it’s got teeth. Lots and lots of teeth.”

  “Jenny?” DJ said. “Can you stay in the shuttle? Are you safe there?”

  “I’m safe for now.” Jenny paused. “But I don’t know for how long. It burned through the door to the cargo bay. I only escaped because I’ve searched the ship so many times that I know where every service tunnel is.”

  What the hell could burn through a two-inch-thick pressure door? If the monster got tired of chasing Jenny and tried to get through the door to Reactor Control, it could flood the entire ship with radiation. And also kill us.

  “Any chance I could get some help from you guys?” Jenny asked. “I could really use it.”

  “We’re trapped in Reactor Control,” DJ said. I mentally added, Slowly dying from radiation exposure, but kept it to myself because Jenny had enough problems to deal with.

  “You’re working on escaping, though, right?”

  “Yeah,” DJ said. “We’re doing our best, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take. Just stay—”

  “It’s here!” Jenny’s voice dropped to a whisper again. “I have to go.”

  DJ and I waited for Jenny to come back, but the comms remained silent.

  SIX

  THE SHIP WAS TOO BIG and the room was too small, and Jenny was out there fighting for her life while DJ and I were trapped and unable to do anything to save ourselves except wait. Despite that, despite the desperate circumstances in which we were imprisoned, I couldn’t stop thinking about DJ’s lips as I paced the room. About kissing his lips. About what they would feel like pressed against mine—would they be warm? Would they be dry or soft or smooth?—about what they would taste like, about how it might feel to be touched by someone with the lights on and whose face I could see.

  “How’re you feeling?” I asked.

  It had been maybe an hour since we’d last heard from Jenny, and I imagined a million different scenarios, each worse than the last. In one she was strung up from the ceiling in a web of alien mucus, frantically trying to free herself as the monster crept closer, its jaws widening so that she could see each of its razor-sharp teeth. In another, the alien paralyzed her but left her conscious so that she would remain awake while it slowly devoured and digested her, unable to move. Unable to scream. I tried to turn my thoughts to more productive tasks, but there was little I could do that I hadn’t already done. Thinking about DJ was the only thing that took my mind off Jenny, and I felt guilty as hell about it.

  DJ had managed to stand and was working quietly at the station farthest from where he’d emptied his stomach. “Head still hurts,” he said. “But it’s not too bad.”

  “Maybe you should sit.” I stopped pacing. “My mom told me this story about a guy who hit his head and thought he was fine because he seemed fine, but then he dropped dead a few hours later because it turned out his brain had been bleeding and eventually the pressure built up so much—”

  “My brain’s not bleeding.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  DJ turned around. “You’re right. I don’t.” He returned to his work.

  I peeked over his shoulder and tried to figure out what he was up to, but no matter how much I learned about Qriosity, DJ knew more. “What’re you doing?”

  “Trying to use the ship’s sensors to scan inside Qriosity like you suggested before this mess started,” he said. “We might not be able to reach Jenny, but we might be able to help her stay one step ahead of the monster.”

  “You remind me of my mom,” I said. “In a good way. She’s cool in a crisis and so are you. You could be a firefighter or a nurse or a doctor.” I paused and thought about what I’d said. “Could’ve been, I guess. We don’t need nurses or doctors as long as we have MediQwik, do we?”

  DJ swore under his breath. It was the first time I’d ever heard him cuss, which I took as a sign that things were not going well. He sighed and leaned over the console. “I’m not calm,” he said. “And I’m not good under pressure either.”

  “Then you’re a hell of an actor.”

  “Yeah.” DJ waved at the console. “I can’t scan the ship. I might be able to reroute the systems from Ops, but we can’t get there.” He threw up his hands. “Jenny’s on her own.”

  “She’s resourceful,” I said. “That monster should be scared of her.”

  DJ eased himself back to the floor and leaned his head against the bulkhead, closed his eyes. “I’m not going to sleep,” he said as I was opening my mouth to remind him he shouldn’t.

  I resumed pacing. Back and forth across the room. I couldn’t see the radiation that was poisoning me, but I swore I could feel it invading my cells, killing them slowly. Killing me. And what if MediQwik couldn’t save me this time? What if there was a limit to how many deaths MediQwik could reverse, and I had exceeded mine? Death was how the universe reminded us we were unimportant, but DJ was important to me—he had become important slowly, sneaking into my life one smile and kind word at a time—and I didn’t want to die without letting him know.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The words burst out of me like an accusation rather than an apology.

  “For what?”

  “Being me. For not being him. For pushing you away every time you try to—”

  DJ frowned. “Noa, I don’t want you to be anyone but you. Not ever.” His face softened, and my knees nearly buckled. “As for pushing me away, I’m the one who’s sorry. I made you uncomfortable, and I should’ve been more considerate.”

  I sat across from him, pulling my legs under me. “It’s not you, DJ. It’s him. It’s my past. It’s the memories that I can’t escape.”

  “Hey,” DJ said softly. Gently. “You told me you didn’t want that to be the only story folks told about you, right? Well, memories are just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the past, so don’t let that one memory become the only story you tell about yourself. Who we were isn’t who we are; it doesn’t limit who we can be.”

  I tried to imagine what Becca would’ve said if she were there. Or what advice my mom or Mrs. Blum would’ve given me. Mrs. Blum’s advice was usually something like, Go to the gym. You can’t knead dough with noodles like those. But even she probably would have agreed with DJ. The problem was that it was easier to know what to do than to actually do it.

  “You don’t under—”

  “He died, Noa. He’s gone.” DJ’s expression was solemn, his voice flat. “I watched him die. I watch him die every night when I sleep.”

  “Oh, DJ—”

  DJ held up his hand to stop me. “Watching him die broke me in ways I didn’t know a person could be broken. And now you’re here, and I’ve got these feelings for you because you’re this moody, complicated, selfish, smart, beautiful, weird person that I can’t wait to keep getting to know.” He sat up on his knees, scooted closer to me. “This ship is death, Noa. It feels like every day it comes up with a new way to try to kill us, and I’m terrified it’s going to succeed and that it’ll take you first. That I’ll have to watch someone I care about die again.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered.

  “Because it’s not gonna stop me from having feelings for you. I’m not going to sacrifice one second of the present to my fear of repeating the past.” DJ bit his lip. “We’re the storytellers, Noa.” He pointed from me to him. “And this is the story I want to tell.”

  I trusted DJ, but I had trusted Billy, too. When he had told me he was willing to take it slow, to wait for me, he had been as sincere as DJ was being now. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I can’t just forget what happened.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said.

  I got on my knees and inched closer to DJ. “Do you promise to never hurt me?”

  DJ shook his head. “I promise to never hurt you like he did, and I promise I’ll try to never hurt you, but I’m going to make mistakes.”

  A small laugh bubbled out of me. “I’m sure I will too.”

  �
��I’ll do my best, though,” DJ said.

  I leaned my forehead against his. He rested his arms on my shoulders. One of the last messages Billy had sent to me, one of the last I’d seen anyway, had said, No one will ever love you. You’re going to die alone. It hadn’t been a wish. He hadn’t said he hoped I would die alone. It had been a prediction, and I’d believed it. I had believed I would never be loved. I had believed I didn’t deserve it.

  Maybe he was right. DJ could have been telling me the things he thought I wanted to hear. He could have been lying to me. Preying on my fears. Using me.

  But what if he was wrong? What if I did find love? What if I deserved to find it? What if the opportunity was kneeling right in front of me?

  There was only one way to find out.

  “You can kiss me if you want.”

  DJ said, “What?”

  “I won’t flinch this time.”

  “Noa, I—”

  I didn’t wait for DJ to kiss me. I kissed him. I reached my arm around his neck and pulled him to me and kissed him like the room was filled with radiation and we were going to die. I kissed him in the present and I kissed him in the future, and I left the past behind me.

  We might die. Radiation might kill us, a monster might eat us, the ship might explode and scatter our atoms across the void, but this moment belonged to us. I was lost in DJ, except I wasn’t really lost at all. I had finally been found.

  Just because I had been born with a broken heart didn’t mean I had to die with one.

  DJ and I were so caught up in each other that neither of us heard the door open. Nor did we notice Jenny standing over us, dripping with ichor and blood. Not until she cleared her throat and said, “No, it’s fine. I’ll just do everything myself.”

  SEVEN

  I SAT ON AN EXAM table in medical, a MediQwik cuff around my arm, receiving treatment for acute radiation poisoning. DJ sat on the other table, also receiving treatment. I wished I didn’t have to be so far from him, but another hour and all Jenny would have found when she opened the door to Reactor Control was our corpses.