Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘My bookshelf…’ He pointed the camera towards three fitted shelves, with a couple of fat textbooks. ‘We had to buy all of these books. Most of mine are second-hand. We started lectures a week ago and it’s not so hard… Mostly A-level stuff. I’ve probably covered half of the content at Dalton already but I kinda can’t wait for it to start getting harder. Oh also, this is the view from my window –’ he pointed the camera towards a courtyard that reminded Juno a little of the space centre, only there was a group of people slouching under a smoking shelter – ‘and all my photos…’ Stuck to the pin-board, mainly photos of the two of them, a school trip to Devon, their Leavers’ Ball, Juno giving a dorky thumbs-up in the first spacesuit she ever wore.

The camera wobbled again and Noah held it close to his face, so that his eyes filled her screen. Juno had forgotten the details so quickly – forgotten how striking his eyes were. The frosty lines in his iris sparkled like cut glass. ‘I still love you Juno. I know you’re not coming back, but sometimes I wish you were here with me. Also… I’m sorry about what I said. You know… Please forgive me?’ The screen went blank too soon.

Juno re-watched it, and each time the video seemed shorter. Only two minutes. Juno felt as if it was only the window of her computer screen separating them. She could be in university too, reading fat expensive textbooks and wondering what to do with the abundant free time she was trusted to organize herself. University would be filled with new, exciting people, and Juno took a moment to imagine what they would be like. What she would be like. As she did, she saw, all too clearly, a different avenue her life could have taken. Why did it hurt? She had chosen this path and yet she was distracted by the distant ache of injustice. The notion that she’d been robbed of something too soon.

She flopped back on the bed, clutching her stomach. When the others asked what was wrong she’d tell them she was spacesick.

Chapter 32 POPPY

^25.12.12

SOMEHOW, BY DECEMBER, HER mind had changed. Poppy would never know if it was the antidepressants Fae had given her or finally getting used to the new rhythm of her life on the Damocles or Juno’s determination to pursue order, but by Christmas Poppy found it easier to keep from being mired in hopelessness. On Christmas morning, she awoke with a hard knot of excitement unspooling in her stomach. She looked around in the darkness at the sleeping heaps of Astrid and Juno in their bunks and smiled. For years, at Christmas, Poppy had woken alone in her bedroom and longed for sisters.

The crew module was festooned with the decorations she and Astrid had made the night before, delicate snowflakes cut out of silver and grey crepe paper and sellotaped to the windows. Paper chains, and a sign Jesse had drawn that said ‘Happy Christmas’, so that the ‘I’ of Christmas looked like mistletoe.

‘Hey.’ When Poppy turned, Harry was leaning against the door of the boys’ cabin, his eyes still half-lidded from sleep, his hair tousled and flopping into his eyes. Cute and dewy-skinned.

‘I have a present for you,’ she blurted out.

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, I made it.’

‘I have a present for you too,’ he said, flicking his hair out of his eyes. Poppy’s stomach flipped with excitement. This was the day. She replayed a familiar fantasy in her head: Harry, handing her a powder-blue box crowned in a white ribbon, she pulling out a silver charm bracelet or a rose gold pendant, his eyes twinkling with adoration.

‘Don’t you find it a little weird?’ Poppy asked. ‘Christmas without family?’

‘Only a little.’ Harry shrugged. ‘Meet me in the engine room and I’ll give it to you.’

‘Okay!’ Poppy chirped, and she headed back into her room to fetch his gift.

For Poppy, Christmas had never been a joyful time. Over the years they had fallen into a tradition of watching reruns of ER on satellite, bingeing on ready meals and chocolate in the fizzy light of the television. Sometimes, Poppy would take the old tree out of the cleaning cupboard, set it up by the window with fairy-lights. Every year the decorations were fewer and fewer, dusted baubles from Pound-Stretcher that dropped off and cracked like eggs underfoot. When she was young Poppy would push her face right into the plastic pine needles of their tree and breathe in the smell of dust and PVC. She would stare at the lights nestled in it and imagine a happy world bathed in the golden glow of Christmas-tree-light.