Page 195 of Every Almost

Options. Charlie almost laughed to herself. She knew what people meant by 'options' after the principal route had failed. These alternatives, workarounds, dare she say, damage control. They were pointless. Filler for those that didn't want to admit yet that there was no recourse.

The bottom line was that any 'options' offered her did not mean home.

"That was thoughtful," Charlie remarked. She had meant it to sound normal. But instead, it came out with enough distance that Reyna's face changed.

"Charlie," Kess said, "I know this is substantial."

Substantial. Charlie actually let out a dry, demeaning laugh. That was a good word choice. Useful. But not large enough for this.

"No," Charlie finally said. She'd had enough. Her pulse beat in her throat and her wrist, right beneath Katie's bracelet where Helen's double-knot rested against her skin. "No, don't do that.Please don't tell me I'm healthy and then tell me I'm evidence. Don't tell me there's nothing wrong with me and then explain, very carefully, how I can never go home because my body is now a diplomatic incident for the fucking Coalition of deep space."

Reyna's hand lifted slightly at her side, but she didn't reach. Charlie saw it anyway, and she hated that she saw it. She couldn't bear it any longer.

"Thank you, Kess." She made her voice even. She was proud of that.

"Charlie, if you need?—"

"I know." Her words cut this time, she heard it. She'd tried to pull it back because she knew, in the back of her mind, this wasn't Kess's fault, or Reyna's, for that matter. "I know. Thank you." This time, she said it a bit more evenly. But it was too little too late.

She stood up and began walking to the door. For one terrible second, she thought Reyna might step into her path to make herself visible enough that Charlie would have to decide whether to walk around her or stand directly in front of her to stop her, talk to her. Something.

But instead, Reyna just stayed by the door, still and silent.

Charlie walked past her without making eye contact. If she so much as looked at Reyna right now, really looked, she would see the entire Emberkind reflected at her. The engines, the galley, the bench, Tavi's laugh, Reyna saying 'hi' the day Charlie landed in an alien kitchen and realized she was in space.

She would see the life she had started to want.

But now, that life had teeth.

So Charlie walked out, and she did not look back.

She madeit to her quarters, seeing no one. Or maybe she did. She remembered only the hum in the walls, the turn she made into the quarters ward, and then finally arriving at her door. She did not remember anyone's faces.

Her room was exactly as she'd left it. Frank's jacket slung over the chair by her personal workstation with the half-disassembled stabilizer component, the one Cael had called nonessential maintenance and Charlie had taken that personally. Katie's 1979 mixtape was next to her Walkman on the station table, rewound to the start and ready to be played the next time she'd want to listen.

She looked at everything in her small space on this massive spaceship in the middle of the universe so far away from Earth that it was still going to take two months for her to even get there. Would she even get there now? Would she ever see Earth again?

She stood inside the door and waited. Nothing changed. Answers did not appear from the stabilizer on the table or through a phantom hiss of the engine within the wires. In fact, the universe continued demonstrating a spectacular lack of manners.

"Okay," she said, trying to center herself. But her voice sounded so wrong in this room right here, right now.

Frank and Helen's letters were in the inner pocket, where they'd been since she stored them there the night she spent alone, bound with a rubber band that had gone soft at the edges. She touched the top envelope but stopped. The idea of paper and ink paired with the terrible human habit of trusting thingsto survive only because they mattered. Charlie squeezed her fist, the one not holding the envelope.

She didn't open them.

Charlie realized she didn't need to read them to know they were still true. She just needed to remember they were still there.

When she set them back, her fingers brushed the cassette case holding the most recent mixtape Katie had made for her, shipped to California while Katie handled Helen's estate. That's when she noticed the photo tucked behind it.

She pulled on it gently, unfolding it to expose Katie's UCLA graduation, taken on a disposable camera that mimicked all the confidence of a drunk man aiming a dart. Katie in her cap and gown, grinning so hard the smile pushed her cheeks up under her eyes. Charlie beside her in sunglasses on an overcast day, one arm slung around Katie's shoulders. This picture was taken just last Spring. Katie's graduation cohort was secured, and Charlie had started at JPL. There were no obstacles yet. No losing Helen, no separation for the holidays, no PERS accident.

Charlie turned it over and noted, as usual, nothing was written on the back. Helen had always meant to label photographs and never did, insisting she'd remember everything important.

Charlie set the photo beside the datapad, face up. It made Katie look as though she was smiling at the ceiling.

She pulled the datapad back over, tapped the Notes field one more time, and typed a single, additional line before she could talk herself out of it.

There is no both.