“Never seen you run away from something before, Linds,” he calls from where I left him behind. It’s almost enough to make me stop. “You’re not alone in this, okay? We’ll get through it.”
“Not running away,” I reply, eyes trained straight ahead. “Just running.”
Because here, on the station, there is no away.
23
STARDUST
WHEN I WAS younger, and my mother still told me bedtime stories, I always imagined stardust like this: sparkles made of glittering gold, the tail of a shooting star, never fading, full of bright-burning magic. She’d tell stories of being back on Earth, of sitting in the backyard with her father, cold nights spent wrapped up in warm blankets, eyes wide and locked on the sky. The meteor showers were incredible, she said. Like fireworks, only even more wondrous, because no human had set them in motion.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first learned that shooting stars are not, in fact, actual stars. Rather, they are stone and mineral, catching fire once they enter Earth’s atmosphere, not inherently bright or blazing. They’re glorified rocks.
It never bothered my mother that what she’d seen from Earth was, in fact, only an illusion.The change in perspective makes thingsmorebeautiful, she insisted.Even a glorified rock can be beautiful given the right circumstances.
In all the ways we were similar, this was not one of them.I saw her point, sure. But for me, the change in perspective worked the other way. Shooting stars were not magical, or made of gold, or glitter, or embers, or sparks. They were rocks in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dust, and only dust.
I inherited so much from her, a thousand things that make me feel the smallest bit capable of filling up the void she left when she died. But this thing with Cameron and Mikko—how quickly things could have spiraled out of my control, and what then?—I feel shaken by it. Unnerved.
What if I’ve inherited a thousand things from my mother, who was gold and glitter in her own way, but I’m missing the one crucial thing that will determine whether I can pull this off?
What then?
24
A GASH IN THE GALAXY
NATALIN’S WAITING OUTSIDE my door when I get home a while later, arms crossed. Angry.
No surprise there. I blew off our meeting and didn’t bother to let her know.
“You were supposed to meet me half an hour ago,” she says, blocking me when I try to slip past her. “What, you’ve got nothing to say?”
“Can wenottalk about this in the corridor?”
“At this point, I’m about to tell the entire blastedstationabout this food crisis, Lindley. I hope someone overhears! They deserve to know the truth, and they deserve to know who’s doing everything they can to keep us alive.”
And everyone who’s not, her narrowed eyes say.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Nat. I accepted a slightly delayed shipment that will be better for us in the long run—”
“Howslightly delayed are we talking about here?”
“A couple of days,” I say. “It’s not like I declined their help altogether.”
“Well, you may as well have,” she shoots back.
“That isn’t fair and you know it.” I meet her glare, hold it. “Nowstep.Aside. I’m not talking about this unless we’re behind closed doors.”
For a fraction of a second, I fear I will have to physically remove her if I want to access my entry panel. Finally, though, she shifts. I open the door, gesture inside. “After you.”
I walk straight over to the window, stand with my toes right up to the edge of it. Incredible, how we’ve come this far: that humanity has made incomprehensible advancements in space exploration, yet humanity itself never seems to change. For better or worse, we remain passionate, and disagreeable, and prone to making innumerable mistakes. Has anyone in history ever wanted blame placed upon her head like a crown of fire?
“Look, Lindley, I know you’re probably only suffering a major guilt complex about opting to deprive our station of a quicker shipment, but I never expected you to no-show our meeting. That isn’t like you. It isn’t something I expect—”
“We will work. Something. Out.” My breath fogs the glass. “And you can stop being so melodramatic. While you’re at it, you can also stop with the accusations.”
“It would help if you weren’t so worthy of them.”
