WE DECIDE TO TALK THINGS OVER in the morning, when I've had time to process and Mom's had time to come down—although we don't say either part out loud.
Mom takes the backseat. I curl up in the passenger seat, but while Mom falls asleep within half an hour, I can't. Two hours later I'm still wide awake and so simultaneously messed up and angry, I could scream. My hair stands upright with every light snore of Mom's, this wet rumble on her exhale that gets worse every time I hear it.
I slip outside, silently close the door, and shuffle across dirt-littered ground. On my far right, engineers are working on the ship, which glows from a hundred lights big and small. The image shimmers like heat over asphalt. We must be right at the edge of the ship's cloak.
I click on my flashlight and swing the beam to get an idea of the surrounding terrain. Funny: it's not even midnight, but it feels like it's easily four a.m., from the darkness outside to the muffled, distant sounds from the Nassau. There's that odd feeling of disorientation, too, like—like when you're trying to find the bathroom in the dark and you're groping for the doorknob, only to remember that, wait, you moved apartments, the bathroom is on the other side of the hall now, and God, how tired is your brain that it just reset like that?
I don't know where I'm going, is what it comes down to, but it feels like I should. I imagine my next move—walking farther away, farther, and then (then I laugh angrily because, Christ, it's here, it's finally happened, I'm standing in the pitch-dark by a destroyed airport and the comet has hit and there's a generation ship in my peripheral vision and Iris is gone), and then I make myself actually take that step, and minutes later I'm inside a building I don't know.
I step around rubble. Keep moving. A gust of air tells me the windows are gone. I keep going, eyes on the few cubic meters lit up ahead of me, revealing broken floor tiles and shards of glass. A massive flowerpot has been flung against one wall, the pot broken and the earth scattered. The plant itself is long dead. It's not the only thing pushed against that wall—most of the glass has accumulated there, and two twisted chairs and a knocked-over table cast shadows double their own size, shadows that tangle and stretch and shudder as I approach. It's like the room turned onto its side before righting itself again.
The table's two metal Y legs stick in the air, brightly reflecting my flashlight. There's a dent in the table surface, the wood cracked. Still, when I turn the table back upright, it feels sturdy. It barely even wobbles as I climb on.
I place both hands by my sides, flat on the table surface, and take a deep breath.
This is better.
An hour later, that's where I'm sitting. Legs slung over the table's edge. The flashlight off and forgotten by my side. My body swaying back and forth, my tab on my lap and its projection hovering in front of me. It's almost like I'm back home, forgetting the time until Iris peeks inside or Dad sees me online and tells me to go to sleep …
Voices.
Within seconds, they're accompanied by footsteps. The bob and glow of a flashlight turns the corner, and I slide off the table, tab now in my hand, just in time for the flashlight to swoop up at me. I squint and raise my hands. Too late. I'm seeing spots.
"Oh." Male voice. "Sorry."
The flashlight lowers. As my eyes adjust, I realize who's approached me. Max and Crowbar Girl from the loading bay. Max is nearly two heads taller than her. They look comical next to each other. They must be returning from the Schiphol raid. They're warmly clothed, hoods drawn up, hair hidden from the dust just like mine.
"Where are the others?" I click my tab around my wrist and kill the projection.
"They went back an hour ago," Max says. The filter around his mouth reflects a glimmer of light. There's a narrow line like an imprint or a shadow where it attaches to his skin, subtle enough to be nearly invisible. The difference between the dirt on his cheeks and the clean skin around his mouth is more pronounced. "Did you miss them? Mirjam mentioned wanting to find you."
I barely have time to wonder why before he continues.
"They give up so fast." Max shakes his head, grins. "Sanne and I win this round, then."
"Nice," Sanne says.
Max clicks off the flashlight, leaving a lightstrip wrapped around his arm as the only illumination. We're close enough not to need the extra strength and focus of the flashlight. "Check out our loot." He lowers one shoulder and slides his backpack around; it's so full, I'm surprised he ever managed to zip it closed.
I'm still at the table, an entire room between us. Does he expect me to cross it? I hunt for something to say, but Sanne beats me to it.
"What're you doing?" She cranes her neck to look at me. She's like a little sprite—wide round eyes, pointy chin, this narrow button nose. Her frown is the only thing that doesn't fit the picture.
"I was reading."
"Out here?"
My mind races. "It's quieter."
A tilt of her head. "What're you reading?"
"Cats. I was reading about cats."
"Why?" Where my words come out overly enunciated, Sanne's are clipped, quiet, as though she wants to keep her talking to a minimum.
"You don't like cats?" Max nudges her with his backpack, except it's so full and she's so tiny, it makes her stumble. She glares at him, but I can practically see her fighting to mask the smile tugging at her lips. Max grins back, not masking it in the slightest. It brightens his face like a Christmas tree. He's cute like that—more in a puppy-dog sort of way than a making-out sort of way, but cute enough to make me wonder if anything is going on between him and Sanne. She might be older than she looks. Even if not, some guys in my class dated girls her age.
Every now and then thoughts like that hit me, and I have to almost physically shake them off. It's just so … automatic. Thoughts about boys, about cats, about asking Mom what's for dinner, about wondering what time Iris will be home.
Normal thoughts. Even if the world isn't normal anymore.
Max didn't get that memo. He hops onto the table I'm standing at. He's not even half a meter away, his gloved fingers curling over the edge of the table, oddly lit in the glow of his lightstrip. The comet hit only yesterday, yet this seems natural to him, the same way his sister, Mirjam, had talked about starting up a soccer team. Maybe they're the kind of people who either fit in anywhere or make a good show of it.
It'll be easier for them, anyway. They get to leave this place.
"So … ," he says, seemingly at a loss for words. "Cats?"
"What's in there?" My eyes are on his backpack, which is good, because then maybe Max and Sanne won't notice the way they suddenly sting with tears. "There isn't any food left in the airport. There can't be."
"Really." Sanne makes a sound I can't identify.
"Oh, there's not." Max nudges his backpack with an outstretched foot. "We've mostly got paper, pens—so people won't have to worry about batteries, you know? We got plastics to repurpose for the three-D printer, a box of sweaters from a security company, books about topics we might not have databases on …"
I'm slowly calming myself, pushing the tears away. It's like an afternoon at school: telling myself Not now and Later and sitting stoically until the bell rings, then ducking into the bathroom until I can breathe.
"No books about cats," Sanne says.
"I don't think we'd have grabbed those anyway," Max says, all seriousness. "Unless you want us to? Denise? What were you reading?"
"A stored article about Savannah cats." Neither of them responds. "I used to work at an animal shelter. We had this Savannah cat last summer. Not a proper purebred, of course, but still unusual looking. It was so sleek, with huge ears"—I hold up a fist to show the size of the cat's head, then form a V shape with two fingers of my other hand to imitate the cat's ear—"and, I don't know, I was interested. I dislike breeding, but it results in gorgeous cats sometimes. It's interesting to read these discussions."
I tell myself, Quiet, that's enough, he's not interested, they never are, and check for the signs, like Iris taught me. Is he trying to say something? Is he looking elsewhere? It's hard to tell in this lighting.
I should stop talking, either way. I gave up on cats after that day at the Way Station months ago—I should never even have saved these files to my tab. Then I realize I'm already talking again. "You see, the original Savannahs were mixes of servals and Siamese cats. They introduced other breeds like Bengals or Egyptian Maus or ocicats, but they've mostly simply been breeding Savannah cats together since establishing the breed standards. Now there are people who want to start from scratch with servals and other cat breeds, though, and establish a different hybrid with really different desired traits—I mean, like I said, I'm against breeding, there are so many great cats already out there, and I really don't like that they're involving wild animals—but it's interesting."
"Oh," Sanne says. "It is?"
My lips tighten. "Something wrong?"
I'm a head taller, but Sanne only raises her eyebrows. That's what I look at. Her eyebrows. It probably makes my glare less effective. She's so damn unimpressed. She's, what, two years younger than I am? Three? But somehow she's got every bit the same effect on me as my classmates used to. A snide comment here, a muffled laugh there, paired with those sly looks and—
"Nothing's wrong with me," Sanne says. "And certainly nothing's wrong with you. There's so little wrong with you that you can spend your time reading about cats." Her voice is even. Perhaps she's so quiet not because she has nothing to say but because she stores up the words. She goes on. "Must be nice. Cats. Were there pictures with the articles? I hope so. Otherwise—ha!—otherwise, that'd just be embarrassing, wasting your time and the ship's energy on articles that don't even have decent pictures, while the rest of us make ourselves useful."
Her eyebrows drop back to their normal position.
Her words take too long to sink in, and no answer is coming.
"Um." Max blinks rapidly. "Sanne, um—"
"Sorry, Max." Sanne doesn't stop staring at me. "Did you want to hit on her some more?"
"Screw you," I say, too late to have any real impact. My voice is thick. I push away from the table before I'm expected to say anything else and shove past Sanne, not at all by accident.
Max calls after me. I ignore him. He'll find me alone if he's really … what? Sorry? Why would he be? He was probably just feigning interest to hit on me, like Sanne said. Of course she was right about that.
She was right about everything else she said, too.
