Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Juno, quick,’ came a voice from the shadows. Juno strained her eyes in the gloom, searching for the source, but, as Eliot slammed the door to the boys’ cabin, she remembered that time was running out. If she didn’t find a place to hide, she’d risk the embarrassment of being caught first, standing gormlessly in the middle of the crew module.

‘Ten seconds,’ Harry said. Juno’s heart quickened and she looked around for a place to hide. She could crouch in one of the darkened alcoves, but as soon as Harry flicked the light on he was sure to find her. The girls’ cabin struck her as an obvious choice, but she had no time now to run across the crew module. So she lunged in the opposite direction, to the bathroom, tore open the door and dived in. As it closed behind her, she heard Harry count down, ‘…six, five…’

The room smelt of damp and detergent. Juno’s eyes were not accustomed to the darkness so she groped around for a few seconds to get her bearings. It was a decent place to hide, she supposed, surely the last place Harry might look. Fumbling for the latch, Juno pulled the shower door open and stepped in.

‘What the—’

Her hands flew to her mouth too late to catch a startled whimper.

‘Shh,’ Jesse hissed savagely. He was standing in the shower too, only a shadow in the gloom.

‘Sorry.’

‘Get your own spot,’ he said, but his mouth clamped shut mid-sentence as Harry’s voice rumbled on the other side of the door. ‘I know you’re in there,’ he said. The creak of footsteps.

Juno’s heart skipped and she leapt into the shower.

‘I thought you said this game was stupid,’ Jesse said in a whisper.

‘Of course it’s stupid. But I don’t want to lose first.’

Juno knew that they were all trying to be cheerful in the face of Poppy’s melancholy, which was probably why Astrid suggested the first game that came to mind. It had been a while since they had allowed themselves to do something silly.

Both Juno and Jesse swallowed back a gasp when the bathroom door flew open. Juno held her breath, her chest full, her heart skipping.

Harry’s silhouette was projected across the tiled floor, outlined by the illumination from the crew module. Could he see them? Juno peeled open her eyes and glanced sideways. If Harry switched the light on, he would find them straight away.

When she looked up she realized that Jesse had been staring at her the whole time. His pupils were dilated, his face illuminated oddly in the rose light that filtered through the door. His moist lips were half-open, as if in surprise. Their heads were so close that Juno thought she could feel the static buzz off his hair.

‘Hello!’ Harry boomed, trying to startle whoever might be hiding in the bathroom. Adrenaline flooded Juno’s veins, but she bit her tongue and hoped that he would not find the two of them pressed against each other in this small space. There was a long moment of silence, and she wondered if Jesse could feel her heart hammering against her ribs. She held his gaze. Then, finally, the door slammed shut. Light flashed against Jesse’s retinas and then they were in darkness again. They both exhaled involuntarily. Jesse’s breath was warm on the bridge of Juno’s nose, his molars black with chocolate cake. She was painfully aware of the closeness of this other body. She caught the chemical whiff of the plant fertilizer he handled, the scent of birch leaves and sweat and long grass. For a minute, she forgot about the game. Heat radiated through the thin cotton of his shirt and his forehead glistened.

‘Are we okay?’ he asked, trying to smile.

‘I think so,’ Juno whispered, stepping back. But Jesse’s breath was still quick and irregular, Juno’s hands were shaking and, in the unilluminated air between them, there was a shift.

Chapter 24 JESSE

^29.07.12

THERE WAS SOMETHING BETWEEN them. Was there? even two weeks later, Jesse thought he could feel it. A frisson of nerves whenever she was near or caught his eye across the table.

Could she sense it too?

Everything reminded him of her. That afternoon in the greenhouse it was the freshly watered earth, which was the same dark brown as her lips.

Jesse knew it had something to do with proximity. The fact that he saw Juno every day, in the kitchen measuring out rations, or scratching the nape of her neck with the edge of her pencil during Igor’s classes. But that was nothing new. Jesse had trained with Juno for years at Dalton. Back then, she had simply been the ‘other’ twin. The one who never turned up to parties, and whose grades were so high they were the bar that everyone furtively measured themselves against. The one on the Christian Union’s committee and the debating team. Her name was listed on every other page in the school newsletter. There had been something unattractive to him about this overachiever, the girl he would sometimes spot from his window running laps around the frozen hockey pitch before the bell rang for breakfast.

So why now? Why did he desire her now?