“Cares about me. Right. You see the way that he is.”
But Koen just gave his head a shake, tousling his shaggy hair.
“He talks about you all the time. I know he’s hard on you, but at least he sees you. My parents want me home tonight only because they’re having friends over for dinner. They act so damned perfect when strangers are around, but it’s an act. All they care about is how much they hate each other. I don’t know why they don’t just get divorced. I mean, I know it’s rare, and they’d have no one but old widows to marry. But it’s better to be alone than to be miserable all the time.”
I thought about my parents, about how they were before Momma got sick. When I was little, she giggled and blushed at him over dinner. He’d spin her around the room when she was cooking, and bring home flowers for her when he knew she was working late. And then I thought about the sounds I sometimes heard down the hall at night, and blushed.
“My father loved my mother. He said she was his bashert.” There were stories on the ship, stories of marriages so perfect that it was like being wedded to your second soul. That’s what my father always said he lost. His other half. “Maybe that’s the problem. He hasn’t been the same since she died. I mean, he’s always been strict. All about duty, about doing your job and tikkun olam and all of that. But he used to be nice sometimes. . . . He didn’t used to be like this.”
I felt a lump rising in my throat. I swallowed hard, cast my eyes down at the dark ground in front of us.
“Terra . . .” I was surprised to feel his hand touch my hand. He pried my cold-numbed fingers straight, slipping his palm against mine. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
It was the first time I’d held a boy’s hand. I looked down at his fingers. They were narrow and long, prettier than mine. My nails were caked with dirt. His were clean and trimmed short. When I stopped in the path, his eyes were big with concern.
I saw something in those eyes. Not just flecks of gold, reflecting the growing starlight. I saw how he was open to me—how he wanted me to be happy, how he wanted me to be safe. I found the words tumbling from my lips before I could even stop them.
“I saw them kill Mar Jacobi. It wasn’t an accident. The captain’s guard. They killed him. They slit his throat. Down in the engine rooms. They—”
“Terra!” Koen pulled his hand from mine as though ashamed. I didn’t know why. There was no one here but sheep, and even they slept, hunkered down in their woolen winter coats. Koen gave his head a shake. When he spoke again, his voice was ragged.
“I wish you hadn’t told me that.”
He could have balled his hand into a fist and punched me in the gut. That would have hurt me less.
“I thought . . .,” I began. But the words petered out. I didn’t know what I’d thought. Koen watched me for a moment, his brows knitted up. At last his expression softened.
“Oh, Terra,” he said. “It’s all right.”
To my surprise he pulled me to him in a sudden embrace. He was much taller than me. My face was smashed into the itchy front of his heavy jacket. But it felt good to lean on him like that, to feel his heart beating through his clothes, to feel his arms around me.
“It’ll be okay,” he said again. “As long as you tell no one else, we’ll be safe.”
I found myself nodding. Desperately, frantically nodding. This was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? To trust Koen. To let him keep me safe.
Finally, satisfied, he let me go. His expression was different now—not open, like it once had been, but murky, inscrutable.
“I should go,” he said, his words coming out in almost a whisper. “My parents.”
“Sure,” I said. I stuffed my hands down into my pockets. I didn’t know what to say or how to look. So I just forced a smile. “I’ll see you later, Koen.”
He only gave a small nod, then rushed out ahead of me, disappearing into the dark.
8
Soon the first frost came. On that cold morning I rose early, bundling myself beneath layers and layers of clothes. When I arrived at the lab, I found Mara already buried in her work. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and muttered about cellular damage, while peering through the microscope.
I headed for the bookshelf, ready to grab one of the field guides and head out again. But her cool gaze snapped up at me.
“Hold on, talmid.”
I turned, my hand lingering on the spine of the book.
“I’m meeting with the captain today,” she said. Then she reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a scrap of paper. I took it hesitantly—it was stained with soil and bore her cramped, tiny handwriting. Three titles, each one written in Old American. They’d taught us how to read it in school. Most of the students struggled—the letters had shifted in five hundred years; the vowels had changed, creating the language we now called Asheran. But I’d always been good with dead languages. I read the titles easily: Joy of Cooking. The Essential New York Times Cookbook. Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Cookbooks? What’s this have to do with botany?”
“It has to do with keeping you out of my hair while I meet with Wolff.”
“Oh,” I said. I stared down at Mara’s cramped handwriting as if I could divine some sort of answer from her scratchy print. “What . . . what are you meeting with her about?”
“One of the probes we sent out to Zehava was due to return yesterday. We should be getting soil samples. Atmospheric readings. Five hundred years of building theoretical models of the plants we might sow on that damned planet. It won’t be until we get those probe results that our real work can begin.” She paused, bemused. “And I don’t have time to deal with a talmid scuttling about under my feet.”
“Don’t worry,” I mumbled. “I’d rather not be around for it. Captain Wolff gives me the creeps.” I grimaced, regretting my treasonous words the moment they passed my lips. But Mara only let out a bark of laughter.
“Good. Never trust politicians. They don’t understand the work we do and don’t want to. They twist science to their own ends. If you learn anything from me, I want it to be that.”
“But, Mara,” I said, smiling faintly. “I don’t understand. Cookbooks?”
“Use your brain, girl,” she said. “Figure it out for yourself. Now off with you. Go.” She shooed me toward the door.
The library’s spicy perfume of book glue and leather covers greeted me. It was a familiar smell—the scent of all of those hours spent reading by light filtered through stained glass. The tall, colorful windows depicted scenes from our history: the asteroid’s approach, the boarding of the Asherah, the signing of our contract. From the cracked blue-green globe of Earth, the atrium light came spilling through.
Mara’s list of titles clutched against my palm, I approached the checkout desk. Van Hofstadter was right where I expected him to be, clacking away at the computer terminal. But when I saw he wasn’t alone, the blood drained from my fingers.
Koen was there too, his arms crossed over his chest, loose laughter playing at his lips. I couldn’t believe it. They were whispering to each other like old friends. But as I stepped close, both boys fell silent.
Koen’s expression changed, flattening. I felt a stab of something, a sour feeling in my chest that I couldn’t quite name.
“Hey,” I said to him. Though I’d lowered my voice to library levels, he must have heard me. But Koen only cast his dark eyes toward the ground beneath his feet. He pawed his neck with his hand.