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Dad steps back.
I look into Mom’s glistening eyes. I think about the words I have to say to her, the way I have to break her heart. I reach to my neck,
pulling out the little gold cross that, three months ago, I took from her cargo box. “This is yours,” I say. “I’m sorry I took it. ” I start to undo the latch.
She touches the cross, pressing it into the skin on my chest. “Keep it,” she says. “I’ve known you had it since you passed out from the flowers. It’s yours now. My mother gave it to me, and now I’m giving it to you. ”
“Mom, I can’t—”
She nods, and I think she understands what I cannot say.
What I cannot do.
She steps away from me, smiling, her eyes watery. Then Dad straps her into the transport box and seals it shut.
He turns to me.
“I’m not going,” I say.
I take a step back—toward the crowd, toward Elder.
“What did you say?” Dad already sounds angry.
“I’m not going. ” I don’t leave any room in my voice for doubt.
Dad strides forward, twin infernos in his eyes. “For him?” he asks furiously, pointing over my shoulder to Elder. “Are you throwing away your family for him?”
“No,” I say, and the answer is enough to shock my father from his rage. “I’m not staying for him. But I’m not going to go for you. ”
“I will make you go,” Dad says, grabbing my arm. He yanks me a few paces closer to the auto-shuttle before I have a chance to jerk my arm free.
“You can try,” I say, retreating several steps. “But I will fight you every step, and I will find a way to come back here. ”
“You’re going back to Earth!” Dad shouts. “You’re going where it’s safe!”
I laugh, a bitter bark sound that sounds ugly. “It isn’t safe anywhere. You want to know what I learned in the three months I was awake and you weren’t? That’s pretty much it. ”
Dad looks as if I’ve slapped him across the face. “You’re going,” he says. “We all are. I’ll go up as soon as the mission is done here. We’re going to be a family. Together. ”
“You were willing to give me up once before,” I say.
“And what? Now you’re willing to give us up?”
The words cut into me, make my heart bleed. But I step back again, farther away from the auto-shuttle. I glance over Dad’s shoulder, at Mom in her transport box. She smiles at me again and mouths three words. Even though I can’t hear them, I know what she’s saying—I love you. I touch the gold cross around my neck and mouth the words back to her.
Then I turn from my father and walk away.
I stand beside Elder. I don’t look at him, I don’t look at the crowd of people behind us. I watch my father. I wait.
He’s madder now than I’ve ever seen him before.
But he turns to the controls in the asphalt and starts the process of launching the auto-shuttle. Without me.
I watch Mom, who stares at me with sad, forgiving eyes. A whoosh comes from the pipes plugged into all the boxes—oxygen for their journey to the space station in orbit over Centauri-Earth.
Something in Mom’s face changes.
A small red light starts flashing on the control box at Dad’s hand.
