Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Yes,’ Juno said, and her lips tightened. ‘I wanted to be a biochemist. When I was eleven or something, a man came to our school to tell us about gap proteins. He said memory is a chemical reaction. He told us that the smell of cut grass – my mother’s favourite – was due to hexenol. A bent line with a double bond that he drew on the board and then made – made! –in a test tube. I can still remember the thrill of it. This clear liquid that actually smelt like grass. It was like magic, only better, because it was real. The smell that reminded my mother of her girlhood home and sunning herself out on the lawn by the tennis courts could be made in a test tube. I wish everything was that simple.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I wish we could go, “Oh look, here is regret”, draw it on a board, make it in a test tube. “Fear of the passing of time”. “This is a nightmare, right here in this flask.’ ”

Jesse loved the thought too. He grinned. ‘Maybe one day we will.’

‘We sort of have,’ Juno said. ‘Think of how far we’ve come in understanding already. Take the sun. It’s nuclear fusion. Atoms of hydrogen smashing into each other and making helium and pure energy. It’s the simplest reaction ever, the smallest elements, and yet people worship the sun, have worshiped it for millennia, squinted at and shied away from it as if it was the hand of God. I mean, maybe it is that, as well.

‘So when I picked advanced chemistry in Dalton, I thought I’d spend my life pursuing that kind of order. I’d specialize in neurochemistry. And live my whole life reading loads of books and being an academic at Darwin College, Cambridge – same as my dad was for a bit – punting and thinking about the chemicals that make us us.’

Jesse was transfixed by the peach wrinkle of her bottom lip, so he couldn’t hear the hurt in her reply when he asked, ‘What happened with that?’

‘I came here, obviously.’

‘Why?’

Juno lowered her gaze. ‘You know I ask myself that more often now. I’m scared that… that I chose to come because my sister wanted to come. Because I was scared of being the one left behind.’

She came to sit beside him, and then lay back on the grass. Jesse could see right into her dark eyes. The lamps, the vaulted ceiling, her long eyelashes all reflected into them.

‘You said you had a bad dream, and that’s why you came up here,’ he said, leaning back on his elbow next to her. Juno nodded, and closed her eyes. He could tell from the sound of her voice that her tongue was growing thick with tiredness.

‘Not bad exactly. Just, you know, homesickness. Lots of memories… me and my sister playing with a hosepipe in the front garden. This day when Ara and I went up to Wandsworth Common and took Polaroids with a camera she got for her birthday. In all the pictures we’re squinting because the sun is in our eyes. That was the last day before our training for the Beta began. Everything is sun-bleached and we’re smiling.’

Jesse guessed she must be quite homesick, because he’d never heard any of the others speak about their dead friend around him.

‘I still have the pictures somewhere. I brought them with me. Most of the photos I have are on my phone, but you know the box we were allowed to put our belongings in?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I kept thinking… if I was really brave, that I’d bring nothing at all.’

‘Up here?’

‘Yeah, to Terra-Two. Just leave everything behind.’

When her eyes were closed Jesse couldn’t help staring at her, the soft slope of her nose, her full brown lips. If he looked carefully he could see a few freckles dotted in the skin just under her eyes.

‘Do you dream of Earth?’ she asked.

‘Course.’

‘What do you dream of?’

‘Silly things, I guess, like gasoline rainbows and mallards and sunburn.’

‘Astrid says she never dreams of Earth. Just Terra-Two and space and grass she’s never seen before and what the sky looks like with two moons and two suns.’ Juno exhaled heavily.

‘Well,’ said Jesse, ‘we can’t all be prophets.’

Juno giggled. ‘It’s nice up here,’ she said, softly.

‘It is?’ Jesse didn’t know why it came out sounding like a question.

He wanted to kiss her. And lying next to her on the grass, with the fresh soapy smell of her, it felt suddenly and wonderfully possible. He sat up a little, leant over her face so that his shadow cast across her flickering eyelids. She didn’t stir, so Jesse bent down and pressed his mouth against hers. Her lips were slightly parted and he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling her body tense up. She didn’t pull away. For just a second, Jesse was sure she was kissing him back, but then he felt something wet and cold seep into the gap between their cheeks, and she was pushing him away with a cry of pain and despair.

When he fell back onto the grass, his heart was pounding. First with excitement, and then with fear. Her face was wet with tears. His stomach dropped, as if he’d just misjudged the depth of freezing water and felt it now lapping over his head as he sank down.

‘Juno…?’