Starglass

down and bellowed, “Enough!” In those days it hadn’t been scary. Not with Momma there. When she rolled her eyes, we all just giggled. Abba gave her a withering look. Until his expression lost its icy edge and he smiled too.

It wasn’t the same place, not anymore. It no longer had the same heart. The people I loved were gone, and they’d taken my home with them.

I went to my room. There was a basket under my bed where I kept my old school papers, notes from Rachel, a certificate I’d gotten when I was seven, for the highest marks in math, the only school honor I’d ever received. I dumped them all onto my blankets and then, working in silence, began to fill the woven container again.

I took my pencils, of course. And my sketchbook. My work uniforms. The few sweaters that still fit me. Momma’s dress. And then I peeled the case from one of my pillows and got down on my hands and knees. Pepper was hunched up beneath the bed, his shoulders big and craggy, tensed in anticipation of my grasp.

“Come on,” I said. The sound of my voice against the empty walls seemed to startle him. Pepper flinched, his tail arching up, and scrambled along the wall. I let out a sigh. Fetching Pepper would have to wait. Instead I slipped my hand between the mattress and rusted bed frame and pulled out the journal.

My father had been looking for it just this morning. When he was alive. Now he was gone, and all that was left was the stupid book and the lie I’d told about not taking it.

Black thoughts. My mind was flooded with black thoughts. They blotted out everything else like clouds of ink spreading across damp paper. I don’t remember falling to the ground, setting my head on the cold floor, and crying into my hair. But it must have happened. Because later, much later, I picked myself up, my face a snot-slick mess, dirty-blond tendrils sticking to my cheeks and my lips.

I put the book in my basket. And I reached under the bed and grabbed my cat, ignoring the way his claws flexed as I stuffed him down into the pillowcase. I tied it closed behind him. Then I gathered my things and left the only home I’d ever known.

* * *

It was nearly dawn. The streets were dark and cold but not quite empty. Mar Schneider, dressed as he always was in a woolen tunic and a dusty tweed cap, sat on his front steps.

He must have seen me, how my tears shone in the streetlights, how my hair was a tangled knot. Because I saw him. I braced myself, waiting for his apology. “So sorry about your father,” that sort of thing. But none came. He only touched two of his wrinkled fingers to his heart, saluting me. Then he turned away.

I walked briskly. Not forward, to where Rachel and her parents lived in a bright home full of fashionable wall hangings and warm conversation. Not to the starboard district, where Koen and his parents fought over their galley table. Or aft, where Ronen and Hannah were probably pacing while Alyana screamed and screamed. No, instead I walked down the straight, narrow roads of my own district, the port district, the place where the specialists and teachers and librarians and lab workers lived. My feet found the path easily, though I hadn’t ever visited the quarters of this particular specialist before.

I’d forgotten my gloves. When I pounded the heel of my hand against the door, the cold metal bit at my skin. Pepper let out a meow through the fabric of his pillowcase. But no one answered us. I knocked again, and this time I didn’t stop at three. I pounded and pounded and pounded, until at last the door swung open.

In the dim light from the streetlamp, dressed in her pajamas and a too-big robe that had to be her husband’s, Mara Stone’s face seemed to be carved out of concrete. Her skin was gray and pebbled from lack of sleep. She just stood there, blinking at me.

I opened my mouth, drew in a breath, and readied myself for my own sob story: I was alone now. I had nowhere else to go, not really, not anywhere with anyone who understood.

“I need—” was all I managed. Mara held up a hand. She spared me that, simply motioning for me to come inside.

Then she closed the door behind me.

Autumn, 464 YTL

Dearest Terra,

We weren’t alone in our nostalgia, your father and me. By the time you were a child, I noticed how the ship’s passengers had begun to pepper their speech with snippets of Yiddish and Hebrew—the language of our parents and their parents before them. It was a comfort to recall our baby names and the songs our grandmothers had sung to us. Our nostalgia tied us more firmly to Earth than any decree ever could. Even I found myself guilty of this, singing as I combed the snarls from your hair: “Shaina, shaina maideleh.”

The Council would tell you that this was natural and right—the perfect execution of the contract we had signed. We were preserving our culture, saving these ancient tongues from certain death.

But I wonder if we shouldn’t have been more vigilant, if we shouldn’t have kept our minds on the future and our words circumspect. The past is a distraction—the Earth we left behind, kaput. All we have now is the present and the bleak, endless journey ahead.

Early winter, 462 YTL

My Terra,

Perhaps the world within these walls won’t kill you like it does me.

On Earth, even before we knew of the asteroid’s approach, there were several closed biomes. The TeraDome. The Arcosphere. BIOS-6. Experiments, populated with earnest students who were certain that their contributions would someday have a tremendous impact on the world at large.

Little did they know that the world at large would soon no longer exist.

I was asked to join one of these communities when I was in college. The ArcLab II. They needed psychologists—the first ArcLab project dissolved because of discord among its inhabitants—and offered me a scholarship in exchange for my services. I accepted, but then a few weeks later I met Annie. I dropped out. I couldn’t stand the idea of being apart from her for eight months. I thought that I had abandoned life under a dome forever.

Will you laugh when, grown, you read of that? Clearly, we both know better now.

Perhaps if I had lived in the ArcLab II, I would have never boarded our ship. I would have known the claustrophobia that presses down on me whenever I let my gaze drift up above the treetops, the way that I have to swallow the water quickly here before I can think of how many times it’s been recycled, the way that even the air smells overused—stale. But I knew none of these things until we launched, and by then it was too late.

I’ll be honest: There were times when I wanted nothing more than to hijack a shuttle, to trade this small space for another even smaller space. Times when I wanted to throw myself out of an air lock and go swimming in the airless stars.

But I had you to worry about—my child. And your brother, too. Perhaps that’s why the Council demanded that we all be parents. Perhaps they knew how our children would tether us to this place.

I’ve fulfilled my duties. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve grown obedient.

Seven years into our journey I noticed how listless and sad the other citizens were becoming. Purposeless. I petitioned the Council to let us use animal DNA from storage.

At first they denied my request. “What need do we have for pets?” they asked. They called the idea frivolous. I explained to them all the ways that animals could be therapeutic—how caring for creatures has long been known to lead to longer life spans, better health. They denied me again. I was enraged. This was my