adjustments to her short blond hair. She picked up a tube of lip gloss and raised the wand to her mouth, spreading the dark pink gloss over her bottom lip in a quick, sweeping motion. She pressed her lips together, then ran the wand over her upper lip and studied her reflection carefully. She caught Reese staring at her in the glass. “What?” Amber said. “Does it look bad?”
“No,” Reese said, smiling slightly. Amber shot her a playful look, and if they weren’t already late, Reese would have kissed all that lip gloss right off. “Let’s go,” Reese said, standing to open the door.
“Okay, I’m ready.” Amber grabbed her hand as they left together.
“I can’t believe we’re finally leaving,” Reese said.
“You’re going to love it. Except there’s no ice cream on Kurra. That is truly tragic.”
“With a zillion years of technological expertise, you guys haven’t engineered ice cream over there?”
The third level corridor was empty; everyone was already downstairs in the dining hall, which had been set up to view the liftoff.
“It’s not the same,” Amber said. “There are no cows.”
“You could import some,” Reese suggested as they waited for the elevator. “Or bring in some cow fetuses and birth them on Kurra.”
Amber shook her head. “It’ll disturb the ecosystem. I made Mom get a few gallons from Mitchell’s but it’s not going to last.”
They entered the elevator, and Amber circled her arms around Reese’s waist. “So you’re staying for the whole year?”
“Yeah. We just confirmed it today.” Reese, David, and Julian had all deferred their freshman year of college to stay on Kurra and learn the language. It had taken months of discussion before their families all agreed, and Reese had pulled a lot of strings to persuade Akiya Deyir that Julian should be permitted to join them. It was Julian’s work for Bin 42 that finally convinced the ambassador, and while Julian was on Kurra, he would continue to report on his experiences for the public back on Earth.
Bringing Julian on board, though, had been less difficult for Reese than navigating the last nine months with David and Amber. It had been complicated from the start, because even if David hadn’t wanted to be jealous, it didn’t mean he wasn’t. Amber presented a whole different set of issues, because although she could touch Reese and know her feelings, she had a hard time understanding David’s struggles. Amber and David mostly avoided being alone together, and though they were polite to each other when they were in larger groups, they weren’t friends. Reese felt as if she was constantly translating for the two of them. In her darker moments, when none of them seemed to understand one another even though they could have practiced
Ultimately, it was going through the experience of having their relationship revealed to the public that brought them closer together. They had managed to keep things quiet until December, when one of Reese’s and David’s classmates—they never knew who—leaked the story to the press. Reese had known it would get out eventually, and she hadn’t wanted to lie about it, but she wished there had been more time for the three of them to work things out in private.
The weekend after the news broke, they met in Amber’s room at the Imrian ship on Angel Island and talked about how to deal with the fallout. There had been so much immediate judgment, so much snide commentary and innuendo—along with disconcertingly vocal support from the tiny polyamorous community—that it felt like being thrust into the center of a tornado. For the first time since they took shelter in Carl Baldwin’s house, being alone together felt safe.
Watching Amber and David face each other in person after months of careful distance, Reese realized she had to stop protecting them. She had been willing—even eager—to be the buffer between them, but now she saw that she had only made things more awkward. Though Amber and David had spent little time together, they knew each other intimately through Reese’s emotions. That created a disconnect that could only be mended by getting to know one another the old-fashioned way. That weekend in December, Reese asked them, for the first time, to talk to each other, and she left them alone to do it.
Things improved after that, little by little. When the possibility of spending a year on Kurra—where plural relationships were normal—was raised, Reese knew they had to go. They might be able to figure it out on their own here on Earth, but it could only be easier if they were in a place where nobody thought their arrangement was unusual.
“I’m glad it worked out,” Amber said, smiling at her as the elevator descended.
Reese leaned in, the tip of her nose touching Amber’s. “Me too.”
When the door opened, a boy squealed, “Cat sent me to get you!”
Reese pulled away from Amber. “Hi, D.” She bent down to smile at Diego, ruffling his black hair. He was still dressed in his departure ceremony outfit, a kid-sized gray suit with a mini blue necktie.
“Come on, you guys are late,” Diego said, grabbing Reese’s hand to drag her down the corridor.
Amber laughed and followed.
The first time Reese had seen Diego, in the orphanage in Los Angeles, he had been silent and terrified. At first he refused to speak at all, and meeting him had made Reese understand, in a way she never had before, how significant it was that she could touch him and know what scared him. Perhaps because of that, Reese had been the first person Diego had spoken to. He still didn’t allow most people near him, but he liked Reese’s parents, and he had completely latched on to Julian. One day, Reese knew, she would have to tell him about his mother, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to do that. She still remembered Torres’s emotions so clearly—her pain and loss, coupled with the sheer edge of her deadliness—and she saw the soldier’s face in Diego’s. To some degree, she felt responsible for Torres’s death, even though she knew the soldier’s days had been numbered long before she helped Reese, Amber, and David escape. To Reese’s surprise, her mom had recognized that when Reese brought up the possibility of adopting Diego.
“Taking care of her son won’t bring her back,” her mom said.
“I can’t leave him there without any sort of connection to her,” Reese insisted. She was stuck, though. If her mom didn’t agree to help with the adoption, Diego would have to stay at the Children’s Home for now. The state of California would never allow an unemployed teenager to adopt a kid.
A few days later, her mom told her that she and Reese’s dad had decided to try to adopt Diego. That was how Reese learned that her parents were back together.
“I’m willing to give him another chance,” her mom said when they were alone in the kitchen of their home in Noe Valley. The house had new front windows and a new alarm system, and her dad had moved his things into her mom’s room. “I want you to try to give him another chance too.”
“But what if it doesn’t work?” Reese asked, an unsettling mixture of hope and fear sparking inside her.
“Honey, you can never know. I can’t predict the future. I only know that it feels right to try again.”
Reese couldn’t object, because she understood what her mom meant. And even though she had her issues with her dad, she couldn’t deny there was part of her that had always wished they could be together again as a family. With the addition of Diego, it was like a new beginning for all of them.
Diego ran down the corridor, tugging at Reese’s hand so that she had to jog to keep up with him. “Come on!” he urged her.
In the dining hall, the tables were gone and chairs were lined up to face the floor-to-ceiling screens. They showed the view of the eucalyptus trees outside, and to the left, Reese saw the sparkle of the bay. Everyone in the ship except the captain and his assistants had come down for the liftoff. She saw Akiya Deyir, Nura Halba, Eres Tilhar, and Malcolm Todd. She saw the nervous-looking delegates from the newly formed Council of Earth Nations, who would be establishing the first human embassy on Kurra. And she saw Dr. Brand talking to David’s parents, with her own parents nearby. Their families would only be going to Kurra for a month. They would return to Earth on a different ship with another group of Imrian representatives who would continue readying the adaptation procedure while Reese, David, and Julian stayed behind. Up front, in the corner of the room, David waved to her. He was sitting with his sister, Chloe, and Julian.
Diego let go of Reese’s hand so that he could rush over to Julian, yelling, “I found her! Can we go now?” Julian laughed and tackled Diego onto the floor, tickling him until the boy shrieked with laughter.
“You ready?” Reese asked Julian.
