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And then—oh—I strrrrretch. My muscles burn. I can feel them all tightening, the muscles at the small of my back, the ones running along the sides of my calves, the slender muscles wrapped around my elbows.
The blanket slips down my legs. I sit up, my abdominal muscles pulling me forward with relish. I am bare from the tops of my thighs down, and above that all I am wearing is a blue-green hospital gown, the kind that doesn’t close in the back.
A boy sits beside my bed, breathing in a slow steady way that drifts in and out of snoring. I pull the blanket all the way up to my shoulders. He fell asleep while sitting in the chair and is slouched over in a way that looks uncomfortable. He must have been watching me. I hate the idea that he was there, awake and conscious, while I slept. It creeps me out.
It’s the same boy who was there when I first woke up inside the glass coffin. His face is soft but has an edge to it that belies the innocent appearance he has while sleeping. I’m not sure what race he is—not black, but not white; neither Hispanic nor Asian. It’s a nice color, though—dark in a creamy sort of way that compliments his almost-black hair. The high cut of his cheekbones and the strong curve of his forehead make him look instantly trustworthy, maybe even kind.
“Who are you?” I say loudly. For the first time since I woke from my centuries-long slumber, my voice does not crack. They must have done something to my throat. A dull, throbbing ache fills my body.
The boy jumps, a look of guilt or wariness on his face when his eyes focus on me. He looks around as if he’s surprised I’m talking to him, but he’s the only other person in the room.
“I’m uh. . . I’m Elder. I’m the future, um, leader. Of the ship. Um. ” He stands up, but I don’t, so he sits down again awkwardly.
Future leader of the ship? Why does the ship need a future leader?
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the Ward,” he says, but I can barely understand him. There’s a strange clipped quality to his words, and they’re inflected with a singsongy intonation. His short speech sounds like this: “Yar in-tha Wart,” with a lilt at the end of each word.
“Where’s the Ward?” I ask.
“The Hospital. ” (“Thas pital. ”)
I look around. This isn’t what I expected. “Why am I in a hospital? What are you doing here?”
I’m not fully concentrating on what he’s saying, and I don’t really catch everything he says in reply. The room suddenly feels colder, and I clutch the blanket tighter to me. Something about being a future leader, again, like that has any weight to it. Future leader of the ship. Well, of course he is. I inspect him closer. He’s got wide, broad shoulders with just enough muscle that it isn’t too obvious under his shirt-tunic thing, although I can see the hard corners of his biceps. Tall—much taller than me, but a few inches taller than most people, even though he’s probably about my age. He slouches, though. His face is narrow but inviting, with almond-shaped eyes that pierce. All of this adds up to a certain something that makes him just look like the kind of guy who could lead a ship. It’s almost as if God had known Elder was going to be some sort of leader or whatever, so He gave him the right face and body for it.
I turn in the bed so that my feet touch the floor. The floor’s cold, though, so I raise my knees to my chin—under the blanket, of course, since the hospital gown does little to cover me. “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?” (“Waz-wa lick?”)
“The new planet. ” And even though I didn’t want to come here in the first place, and even though I hated every moment of my frozen years to get here, there is a little awe in my voice that even I cannot hide. A new planet. We are finally on a new planet. A planet no human being has ever been on before.
The boy stands up. He’s so tall, it doesn’t feel fair to call him a boy, but at the same time, he’s got a bit of a baby face, as if he’s never seen or done anything to make him grow up, to make the angles of his face sharpen with the harshness of age. He walks to the far wall, his back to me. He is towering in this small room; it can barely contain him. He reminds me, in a small way, of Jason. Not in how he looks—this boy is darker and more muscular than Jason—but in the way he stands and walks, as if he knows his place in the world with absolute certainty. He leans against the wall, facing a rectangular piece of metal hanging there. Light peeps out from around the edges of the metal. It must be some sort of window covering.
“Ware na onnda plant yeah,” he says. I had not realized how confusing his accent was until he was facing away from me, unintentionally shielding his lips from my view.
“What?” I ask.
He turns to me; this time when he speaks, I am able to decipher his words. “We’re not on the planet yet. ”
“What. . . do you mean?” Cold, the coldness of ice and hell, fills my empty stomach.
“We’ve still got about fifty years before we land. ”
“What?”
“I’m sorry; 49 years and 266 days. I’m sorry. ”
“Why did you wake me up early?”
“I didn’t!” the boy protests, flushing deeply. “It wasn’t me! Why did you accuse me?”
“I just want to know why we were all woken up 49 years and 200-some days early! And where are my parents?”
The boy lowers his eyes. Something in his look makes the ice pit in my belly churn.
“You weren’t all woken up early,” he says. His eyes beg me to understand what he means, to quit asking questions.
