Fiction

Here I was again, crouching in a relatively clean bathtub with a taco in one hand and a novel in the other, waiting for rescue. Knowing it would be a while, I decided to settle in and enjoy my food despite the chaos just outside the locked bathroom door.

Which was evidently not locked after all, because I was halfway through the taco when a very drunk someone stumbled inside, humming a Taylor Swift song and chuckling. I could see enough through the plastic shower curtain to ascertain that the invader was large, male, and so impaired that he had neglected to close the door behind him, allowing the roar of ugly music and drunken laughter to follow him inside. Even the sounds of the party, however, could not drown out the most chilling and ominous noise ever to enter my ears- the whirrrr of a descending pants zipper. No. I could only pray that he had consumed nothing but illicit liquids in the past few hours. If he takes a dump here, I will die.

The fragrant smells of pee and beer drifted through the room and assaulted my sinuses. Gagging, I dropped the taco and ducked my head and hands inside of my sweater, creating a scent-proof chamber of respite from the toxic atmosphere. I shot off another S.O.S. text to Nate, dialed his number, and got sent straight to voicemail. When is he going to get here? I counted down slowly from twenty to keep myself sane. Human Niagara Falls was still peeing.

It had definitely been over a minute, and the stream of pee was going strong. It was inhuman. Just when I thought my lungs would give out, my phone buzzed with a text from Nate: here. I indulged in one last safe breath from the inside of my sweater and flung the shower curtain aside, keeping my burning eyes firmly fixed on the doorway, even as the Pantless Wonder strolled away from the toilet towards me. He attempted to greet me, and, failing to form a complete sentence, decided to take up residence in the tub I had just vacated. Kanye blaring on the speakers behind me, I lunged my way up the basement stairs three at a time, reaching for the light above like someone buried alive.

When I emerged into the cool October evening, the first thing I saw was Nate’s baby blue Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up by the curb. Ugly and dinged up as it was, I had never been so happy to see that lump of metal. Nate rolled down a window and smiled.

“Hey, Del. Nice evening, hmm?”

“Let me in, Nate.”

“Not yet. I think some thanks would be in order first, don’t you?” He batted his eyelashes at me. I knew Nate, and I knew we weren’t going anywhere until I played along with his little game.

“I Delilah Thomas, lame and loserly nerd, hereby attest to the boundless and magnificent greatness of Nathan O. Brinkley, the most dazzlingly attractive and intellectually dominant man of all time!” I cried with the zeal of a TV preacher, banging a fist on the hood of the car. “Now let me in, idiot.”

“Beep. Beep. Beep.” Nate shook his head slowly, with the utmost regret. “Terribly sorry, Del, but my sarcasometer is detecting a slight lack of authenticity in your praises. Perhaps if you tried some more flattering adjectives? A salute? An interpretive dance?”

“Nathan O. Brinkley, so athletically stunning!- beep– utterly hilarious! –beep!- unparalled in wit and charm!- beep beep beep– the shining beacon of-,”

“BEEP BEEP BEEP. The sarcasm is off the charts! I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck out there for a very long time if you can’t find it in your heart to-,”

“Nathan, you let me in that ugly tin can of a car this second or I swear I’ll tell your mother about your little…camping incident.” I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was a menacing expression. “I’m sure Susan would be delighted to hear about the creative way you put out the fire.”

Pouting, Nate popped open the lock on the passenger side of his dinged-up Jeep and let me inside. I collapsed into the cracked leather seat, tossing my purple paisley Goodwill tote bag onto the floorboards, where it joined the ranks of a greasy Wendy’s bag, a stained basketball sock, and approximately fifty pages of cello sheet music.

“That was even worse than I thought it was going to be,” I muttered, pressing my flushed forehead against the cool glass of the window. “No one talked. The only time people opened their mouths was to chug Coors. And they were playing Kanye.” The stale warm air trickling from the vents smelled like an Island Breeze Febreze plugin. Susan must’ve bought it. Nate would never have thought of something like that by himself.

“Del, you knew you were gonna hate it. Why do you keep going to these things when you always end up bailing in the first hour?” Nate took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a second to give me his best why-don’t-you-just-listen-to-your-reasonable-best-friend look. His slanted eyes were a warm toasted brown, like a mug of coffee in the morning.

I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve. “I dunno. I think it makes my dad feel better when I go out. Otherwise he thinks he’s a screw-up father raising a screw-up kid who only leaves her room to play FIFA at the neighbor’s house.”

Nate reached over to flick my knee. “You do only leave your room to play FIFA at my house.”

“Not true! I go out. To school. And the library. And Fro-Yo Jo’s.”

He snorted. “Ah, yes, aren’t you just the picture of social competence! Be honest, now- how crazy do you get with those librarians on Friday nights?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say to someone who just saved you from certain death.”

I twisted a few strands of my hair into a braid, noticing for the first time the fraying split ends at the bottom. Mom always used to make my haircut appointments for me. “Sorry. I’m just worried. Dad has been really down lately. He hasn’t eaten anything but Goldfish and orange Fanta in two weeks.”

Nate nodded. His freckles were invisible in the dark, but I knew the one at the corner of his eyebrow would be twitching, the way it does when he’s thinking hard. “Poor guy. But you gotta give him some time, Del. It’s only been a year. It’s normal for people to take that much time to recover, after…you know.”

“It didn’t take me a year. I’m fine.” I stared out the window, catching a glimpse of the one and only street sign for miles: Carver Mountain Road. Nate loved driving back roads, but they freaked me out. No lights, and nothing but pine trees and dead deer lining the street. Creepy.

“Well, you’re not exactly normal, are you? Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Rather than answer him, I turned up the radio. Tim McGraw’s Live Like you were Dying crackled out of the speakers.

“Hey, no playing that country crap in my car!” Nate punched the power button with his pointer finger. I hit it on again, defiant for no other reason than to be annoying. Laughing, he turned it off. I reached for the button again, but he caught my hand in his cello-callused one and lowered it, firmly but gently, to the console between us, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I stared at our hands, mouth suddenly dry.

Nate saw me looking and smiled. “Del. I wasn’t exactly planning on having this conversation tonight. Maybe it’s not the best time, but I’ve been trying to say this for weeks.”

Oh.

I had waited for this moment for so long, had wanted it so badly, but now that it was happening my intestines churned like I might throw up. My knees jiggled madly like that time I drank a Monster and an espresso in the same hour. I swallowed, tried to keep my voice from wobbling.

“Nate, I don’t-,”

He squeezed my hand, cutting me off.

“I want you to think about this before you answer, Del. Really think.” I nodded, mute. I swear I could feel the swirls of his fingerprints on my skin.

“I know this has been a rough year for you. Our families have been through so much together. So if you’re not ready, or you just see me as a neighbor and a best friend, I get it.” His eyes were so brown, his dark eyebrows scrunched so far together they almost touched.

“You can say no, and we can forget this conversation ever happened. But if you want to try, I mean, if you think we can make this work…” He paused, pushed a hand through his too-long black hair, and exhaled. “Well, that would make me really happy.”

I looked down. If I looked him in the eye, I would break. I could feel him staring at me.

YES! screamed a voice inside my head. YES, I’LL DATE YOU! I LOVE YOU, YOU MORON! I’VE LOVED YOU SINCE WE WERE EIGHT!

Shut up, I told the voice. I needed to think about this logically. Nobody ends up with their high-school sweetheart, right? Was I willing to risk a lifetime of friendship for the crappy odds that our relationship would actually work out? I couldn’t afford to lose Nate.

“Del?” But there he was, holding my hand so tightly, looking at me with those annoying, beautiful eyes and smelling like Old Spice shampoo and Susan’s laundry detergent.

If I let this chance go by, would he ever ask again? The air between us seemed to tingle and pop like the air just before a lightning strike. Yes, I tried to say. I felt the word form in my throat, opened my mouth to say it.

I was still looking at our hands when it happened. I never saw the other car.

What I saw instead was the fast glint of headlights on my chipped glitter nail polish.

I saw Nate’s knuckles turn white as his hand tightened in mine.

I saw a thin line of black weep down my pale forearm and pool in my palm, dripping over into Nate’s.

The smell of blood, rich and nauseating, bloomed like a red rose in the humid evening air. Nate was making sounds, tearing, screaming sounds that rattled in the back of his throat with each exhale.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Nate, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.”

I was still saying it when the paramedics arrived. I was still saying it when they took my hand out of Nate’s.

 

 

 

Jessie is a Creative Writing student at Reinhardt University. Her work has appeared in Copia, Sanctuary, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly, as well as onstage in Waleska’s third annual 24-hr Play Festival. She is currently on the editing staff of the James Dickey Review and runs StreetSigns, a faith-based blog.

I knew a girl who listened to space punk.

“What’s that?” I asked her every Monday. She always had a different response. Terry bet that she kept a list of random definitions in that thick notebook I mentioned she had tucked under her arm all the time. “She just wants to mess with you,” Terry assured me. Its cover had a picture of the galaxy taped onto it. She told me it was to remind us that space was always there, whether we could see it or not. Her name was Comet.

“It’s on my birth certificate,” she claimed. I believed her.

Terry asked me why I always talked to Comet. I told him because she reminded me of the stars. He furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head, but his response left me unaffected. He wouldn’t understand; he never met her, anyways. As I laid awake almost every night, thinking of Comet and the galaxy and Terry’s disapproval, I watched the stars and hoped they’d take me to a cloud. Maybe I could sleep there. Melatonin sure never helped.

The next Monday I asked her about space punk again, expecting a different answer. “You can’t hear it?” she questioned. “It’s everywhere.” My heart skipped two beats; she gave me that answer the first day we met on the city bus. She was bobbing her head to the music, each beat hypnotizing her soul and connecting her to the shining solitude of the moon.

“You told me that before,” I remarked.

Comet grinned. “I did.”

Terry was positive she was an escapee from a mental institution, but I wasn’t sure about that speculation. Her mind was Harvard-bound. She spoke of philosophy and abstract mathematics like it was child’s blabber. She told me about the origin of the stars and the moon and the sun with such simplicity a toddler could understand. The Earth is our mother; we get our emotions and human nature from her. “And if they could, Earth and Neptune would become one,” she taught me on our way back home from school. “Nothing is more alluring than something we can only see from a distance.”

One night, on a Tuesday this time, Comet stared at me with a beam on her face. It was as if the moon possessed her lips, its radiance pushing through to challenge the light of the sun. Her straight brown hair was doing gymnastics on her head. Each strand was in a different pose, creating a massive mess above her wrinkled forehead. She was elegantly insane.

“I’m going to the concert,” she announced.

She had never mentioned one to me before. “What concert?”

“Space punk.” She buried her face in her hands, the soft squeals emitting from her mouth and giving me chills.

“I thought space punk is everywhere.”

“Everywhere originates from somewhere. Can you come?”

I reminded her that I don’t sleep. She told me to meet her the next day at midnight near the school. The first minute of Thursday. According to her, I’d meet Saturn and Mars. I wondered what they looked like the rest of the day.

Comet didn’t come to school that Wednesday. She was preparing for the concert, I assumed. I went out and bought myself a galaxy shirt and black shorts the color of the darkest night. That evening, my fingers quivered as I made my way to the school. I was wide awake, about to hear space punk in ten minutes. If only Terry was invited.

Comet sat on the concrete ground ten feet in front of me. She looked so alone as she hummed along to the music. As I approached, she turned her head and acknowledged my presence.

“You’re here,” said Comet. “It’s time. Close your eyes.”

My eyes shut, revealing the pitch black underneath my eyelids. I heard Comet’s soothing voice whispering in my ear. “Feel the coolness of the stars and the heat of the moon. Get to know them and listen to the beat.” I did.

What I heard, in the thickness of my euphoric apprehension, was a sensational array of celestial rhythms and heavenly lyrics. The words were in a tongue only ones connected to the night could understand. Each beat — the ticks and the dits and the zooms — was followed by a different reverberation: meteors crashing, the destruction of supernovas, the loving words of the planets. Melodies striked my eardrums from every direction. Space was everywhere.

“I hear it. Space punk is beautiful,” I told her. There was no response. Comet had disappeared and so did the music. I didn’t realize until I opened my eyes.

Comet never came back to school. Terry guessed she was brought back to the asylum, but I know she was brought back to the stars, her mission of gifting me with the galaxy that cursed me of wakefulness fulfilled. Now when I close my eyes, the cosmic experience vibrates through my body and sends my mind to the skies. Space punk is my method of slumber. And when I lift my eyelids and the harmonies escape me, I admire the neverending galaxy. There, I can see Comet dancing in the sky, entranced by the infectious rhythms. It’s so alluring to watch from afar.

 

 

Worlanyo is a seventeen-year-old cinephile from New Jersey. You can find her absorbed in a classical movie, writing stories on her laptop, or gazing into the night sky long past midnight. She has been published on Voices of Youth.

Alan hadn’t wanted to spend his last free Saturday at an amusement park, but Hui Jie had insisted on it. They would be in different branches of Singapore’s army after conscription next week, after all—Hui Jie would be training for police service and Alan would be in the infantry—and he argued they needed to have one last celebration. Alan didn’t want to start a fight, so he paid for a train ticket and came along.

The amusement park they arrived at had been built by an American company. There was supposed to be Asian food there, but all Alan could see was the neon signs and loud smells of Western restaurants. Not that it mattered: Hui Jie wouldn’t stop to eat, even though Alan had skipped breakfast to catch the train. Instead, he ran straight to the nearest roller coaster, a massive one called Silver Dragon. Alan struggled to catch up with him.

They wove through the long line in front of the coaster slowly, Hui Jie cracking jokes and Alan nodding along while the sun beat down on his neck. The line reminded him of his military medical exam from a few months ago. He’d lined up with countless other teenage boys outside the local doctor’s office, filed into the examination building, then walked out in a half hour with a promise that they’d be conscripted in Singapore’s army. Alan secretly hoped that the doctors would find something wrong with him and he’d be prevented from joining the army’s ranks, but his assignment to basic training came in the mail anyway.

Eventually they made it to the front of the line and got their first glimpse of the coaster cars. Alan had hoped they would look like dragons from Alan’s childhood stories, noble creatures that flew in the sky above the small, petty humans. But they were just old pieces of metal, a dull, earthy gray instead of the silver he had been promised.

The two of them clambered into one of the cars as an employee read through the safety rules. Hui Jie was grinning as the announcer finished and the ride clambered upwards, but Alan stayed straight-faced. He wasn’t a fan of roller coasters, so instead of focusing on the ride, he let his mind get lost in the blue ocean and the buildings on the other side of it. For a moment he thought he had sailed off the rails and was flying across the island, but then he realized they had just stopped at the end of the ride. His safety restraint lifted and he clambered back onto the main platform, disappointed.

After they went on a few more rides, Hui Jie announced he was starving and ran to the food court to buy chicken rice. Alan got a cheap burger, but Hui Jie teased him for it, saying that he should be ashamed to eat food that didn’t come from his Chinese ancestors. “Just because your parents gave you a Western name doesn’t mean you should okay with Western food,” he said between big bites of rice.

“What’s wrong with burgers?” Alan asked. “And you took us to a Western amusement park today, you know.”

Hui Jie waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not what matters. It’s about representing your heritage wherever you are. That’s why want I want to enter police training and become a bureau chief. I’ll make my father and the Yang family name proud!” Hui Jie took on a soldier’s posture and made an exaggerated salute. Alan laughed but didn’t salute with him.

They got back into more lines for more roller coasters, and Alan quickly got sick of them. They were just glorified trains, really: they picked people up, drove them around in a loop, then dropped them off right back where they started. It felt uncomfortably similar to what Alan had heard the military service was like. He’d spend two years doing drills and exercises and learn to shoot a gun he’d never use, just because his country forced him to. And then what?

“And then what?” Hui Jie asked Alan, who was sitting down by a water fountain after asking for a break.

Alan watched the fountain sputter ungracefully and shrugged. “I want to go to college, but my family doesn’t have enough money for it, and I don’t know what I want to study.”

“If I’m police chief by then I can help cover some of your expenses.” Hui Jie laughed loudly, then grabbed Alan by the shoulders and grinned. “I’ll probably have a family to take care of, too, but I’ll help you out.”

As Hui Jie gripped his arm, Alan finally understood that Hui Jie was blustering. He was about to be stuck in the military for two years, so he tried to fight his fear by showing a fake enthusiasm. But at least Hui Jie was bold enough to try to look excited. Alan had stopped bothering to hide his dejection months ago.

Eventually the sky got dark and the park cleared out. Hui Jie was tired, and so was Alan, so they made their way to the train station by the park entrance. But before they left, Alan turned around to look at the first roller coaster they had gone on.

Silver Dragon was still running for its final few passengers. As the metal coaster car slowly climbed up an incline, Alan longed for it to be a real dragon, one that could carry him away from Singapore. He would clamber onto its shimmering back and let it take him to places that didn’t have security threats or conscription or roller coasters.

But that was just fantasy and nothing more. Alan turned back to the station where Hui Jie was waiting, showed the conductor his ticket, then sat down and let the train take him all the way home.

 

 

Chandler Wakefield is an undergraduate at Yale University. His nonfiction has been previously published at Forty-Eight Review. He blogs at thealbedo.wordpress.com and tweets at @WhitenedInk.

Elliot and Bev, that’s short for Beverly by the way, first met where they lived in the same building, on the upper east side of manhattan.I think it was that building on the corner of 92nd and Madison. You know, the one with the ice cream shop on the first floor.The ice cream shop made their home above it all the nicer as the constant hum of all those freezers was a comfort to them both and gave them added warmth. together, they used to like to watch all the kids stop for ice cream on the way home from school.

 

William Pikus is currently a student at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City. He is enrolled in a creative writing course for which this story was written.

Tick.

Painted eyes flutter open. She’s standing upright, balancing on the tips of her toes, one arm raised over her head and the other extended. Her left arm is caked with something—dirt? Dust?

Where is she?

Tick. Tick.

A box. Round and wooden, dim and empty, save for the dust and the two lonesome shafts of moonlight that pry through the gap under the wooden lid. She hears the murmuring of voices from somewhere above her.

Tick.

That sound. She knows that sound. But what-

Tick.

The scarce light skitters across the crack in her watch face.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

But no, the watch is broken; the hands have long ago ceased their spinning dance.

The silver light alights on the bridge of her nose. She tries to bring her arms down to her sides, but—she can’t. Why can’t she?

Tick.

She can’t feel her limbs, she realizes. Something tells her that she should be horrified, but her mind feels clouded, wooden; all she can think to do is laugh.

I can’t do that, either. I can’t feel my face.

A final tick, then a resounding groan, and, slowly, the air around her swells with the steady breath of a simple tune, tinged with dust and infused with moonlight. It weaves in and out of her consciousness, ancient and strangely familiar, a long-lost remnant of a forgotten lifetime. Each lonesome note seems to tempt the darkness, lingering only to pass on the melody before fading into oblivion. Swirling dips, twisting breaths, all infused with a life of their own.

And somehow, all of this — the tune, the moonlight, the musty smell – seems achingly familiar. She struggles to place it, but she can’t; parts of her memory feel blurred, others entirely unreachable. Another groan, and she can feel the platform beneath her tremble, then begin to turn. Ever so gently, it spins her around and around in time to the swirling tune, her partner in eternal dance.

And then it begins to rise. Does the music have wings? Or do I? As it carries her higher and higher, she finds herself wondering. The voices whisper above her, growing louder as she ascends, but she can’t quite make out their words. And yet, she feels as if she’s heard them before…

The lid creaks as it slides to the side, into the wall of the box, and moonlight filters through, shimmering against her skin. The music seems to carry her up, higher and higher, enveloping her in its protective embrace, and through the opening, she can see two blurred, spinning faces peering down at her.

But it’s she that spins, not them, and as she rises through the top of the box, the moonlight traces the sloping curve of her body, casting a soft halo of light on the wood around her. She seems to glow, angelic, yet somehow reminiscent of a demon rising from hell.

The voices. She can hear them more clearly now, a woman and a man, but she can’t see their faces. She’s turned away from them, towards an open window, her small frame drowning in the moonlight.

“My god, is that made of wood, too?”

The lid clicks into place beneath her, and still, still she turns.

“Yes, can you believe the craftsmanship? The hands are so-”

She can almost see them now; still blurry, but she can make out wisps of silvery hair and the edge of a puzzled frown. This, too, feels vaguely familiar…

“That’s funny; I don’t remember there being a watch.”

A watch. Her watch, and the woman, and…the music box. The music box.

A buried memory swells to the front of her mind, a rolling wave of thought, and she has no choice but to let it swallow her.

Her eighth birthday, and a beam of sunlight slips through the window, landing on two unwrapped presents on the carpet, both from her grandmother. The first is a watch, ticking gently, the sunlight dancing with its golden hands and tracing shimmering patterns across its white letter band. The second, a music box.

She puts the watch on first, pausing for a moment to admire it before the box steals her attention. She picks it up. It’s cool and smooth against her palm, and the musty smell of old wood weaves through the air. Round and covered in a thin layer of dust, the wood underneath polished to perfection.

She turns the key in the bottom of the box.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And then, suddenly, the music begins to play. She gasps and stares down at the box, transfixed, as something within it seems to shift, as the lid slides away. She catches a glimpse of the wooden interior, but a platform begins to rise up from the center, blocking her sight. She frowns; no spinning dancer stands on the platform.

And suddenly, it’s as if the music speaks to her soul, and she reaches out to touch the wood. She closes her eyes and has the distinct feeling that the room is growing larger, that she, herself, is spinning. Tries to open them, but she can’t, she can’t…it’s as if her body is made of wood—she moves nothing, feels nothing.

Then, darkness.

And she’s back to reality; the music has stopped now, and she finds herself descending back into the box.

“I hate to part with it; it used to belong to my granddaughter, you know. She went missing four years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

And, slowly, as she spirals out of the reach of the moonlight, she feels her mind hardening, gently solidifying in wood.

Her painted eyes flutter closed.

Tick.

 

 

Prisha Mehta is a student at Millburn High School in New Jersey, and she is very passionate about her writing. She aspires to be a successful author one day, and has won many writing awards, including a Scholastic National Gold Medal. Her work has been published in “Spaceports and Spidersilk” and is forthcoming in “Riggwelter” and “Body Without Organs”. When she isn’t writing, she can often be found scrolling through psychology articles, sketching in her notebook, or of course, reading. You can find out more about her at prishamehta.com

Wilson stared out through the large, expansive window. Having a window was a privilege, but the view from the 34th floor was depressing. Most of the other buildings were old, dating back to the days when they were meant to shelter people from snow and cold. Now the year-round tropical heat and humidity made mold grow over the city and concrete crumble like wet sand. A gray sea mist was coming in, making the buildings look even sadder. Only the new State buildings, all crystal and steel, stood out in the grayness.

As head of recruitment, Wilson had an office all to himself. On the wall adjacent to the window were framed posters featuring the slogan, “A Second Chance.” Sitting at his desk, Wilson reflected on his success. The Ministry of Life’s space program was about to launch yet another colony ship, the Falcon, on the long journey to GY129. The spaceship would lift off in three days, and Wilson just needed one more recruit to fill the ship with 5,000 qualified colonists.

There was a respectful tap on the door, then a pause before it opened and James Wong entered. Fresh out of National Training, the unremarkable-looking young Junior wore the standard black overalls with the insignia of the State.

“James,” Wilson said. “Come in. I presume you know why you’re here.”

“Yes, sir,” was James’s reply. “At least I think I do. I’ve been told I have a chance of being on the Falcon.”

“A great professional opportunity,” Wilson reminded him. “Are you aware that this is quite an honor for a Junior?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” James replied eagerly.

Wilson gave James his usual talk, finishing up with the Falcon’s mission and how lucky James was to be assigned to the colony ship. He was pleased by how humbly and attentively James listened. He was a perfect Junior, Wilson thought. If he stayed on Earth, he would probably rise to become a high-level official in the Ministry. But he was going to the colonies instead, which was a sign of devotion to the State. Still, he would probably do just as well in the colonies and become a high official there.

“Congratulations,” Wilson said as he logged into System and changed James’s status from Junior to Senior. Then he pulled out a set of dark burgundy Senior overalls, wrapped in plastic. They were identical to the Juniors’ uniforms except for the color. He handed it to James and shook the young man’s hand, surprised at himself for feeling a little bit envious. “Now,” Wilson said. “Let’s get you to the spaceport.” That was where James would receive his final training before boarding the Falcon and departing for the colonies.

They were whisked down in a Ministry lifter, one of the few existing in New Ocean City, then took the elevated hyper loop reserved for ministry officials. The hyper loop was a local, stopping at every station. As they passed Central Supermarket, James gasped at its size. “Back home in New Waterline, the State sent food out to us directly,” James explained. “There was no way for us to get any more than the ration.”

New Waterline, Wilson knew, was a much smaller coastal city. Actually, he mentally corrected himself, it had been a coastal city in the province of Pennsylvania until the waters of the Atlantic finally washed over it ten years ago. He did not tell James that most of the shelves in the Central Supermarket were empty. It was probably just a temporary shortage, Wilson reminded himself optimistically… though less land above water meant less food for rations and almost no luxuries. The State’s official position was that rising sea levels were not an issue that people needed to worry about, but the Ministry’s generous funding of the colonization program suggested otherwise. At least half of what had been State land was now covered by water.

“We used to own a two-bedroom house on the beach,” James reminisced. “It was me and two older brothers and our aunt. My parents left when I was only two. They were chosen to go to the colonies, back when they still had conscriptions.” Wilson nodded. When the first colony ships were being launched, fear of the unknown made voluntary recruitment next to impossible. But as the oceans covered more land and life became harsher, more people signed up voluntarily. Wilson had even turned a few away, though they would undoubtedly make it onto the next ship.

James looked hopeful. “That’s one of the reasons why I signed up. To reunite with my brother, up in the stars. He went to the colonies last year. My other brother died in the New Waterline flood, so I have no one else.”

The sadness on James’s face was quickly replaced with excitement as they approached the Spaceport. They passed through security and into the soaring entrance hall, several stories high with magnificent chandeliers dangling down. It was intended to make prospective colonists feel awed, and it worked.

Another lifter ferried them up to the 22nd floor, the Department of Colonial Training. There, Wilson greeted Leo, the training director, and handed James over to him. “Good luck,” he told James. He nodded to Leo and left.

Just as he was about to get back on the lifter, Wilson heard the sound of laughter echoing sharply in the gleaming hallway. It came from a nearby conference room. The door was slightly ajar, and now Wilson could hear pieces of the conversation taking place inside. He recognized one of the voices: it was Ross, head of Colonization. Thinking he should say hello, Wilson started for the door but then stopped, not wanting to interrupt a meeting in progress. Then he heard Ross speak:

“People are desperate enough to believe anything, I guess. Even if we detected a habitable planet in another system, we don’t even have the technology or resources to go any farther than Mars.” Ross sighed. “Sometimes I feel bad for those people, with their dreams of a Second Chance.”

“Maybe they do get a Second Chance,” the other voice said. “I mean, if there’s an afterlife.” There was more laughter. Wilson almost gasped, but he caught himself. He needed to hear more.

“Besides,” continued the other voice, “it’s not like either of us could do anything about it. Step out of line and the Controllers will find you and throw you into one of the maximum-security prisons. Or worse.”

“I know,” Ross said. “Plus, we’re reducing the population, and that means more resources for the lucky ones who survive.”

“Like us,” said the other voice.

“Like us,” agreed Ross.

Wilson felt his blood turn into ice. He could not believe the State was behind this. All that he had been told, and all he had told others was a lie. How much blood did he have on his hands? How many people had he, as Head of Recruitment, sent off to the “Colonies” that didn’t even exist? No wonder the launch site was so heavily guarded. They weren’t sending anybody into space. They were just murdering people. Now he understood why the State didn’t address the issue of rising sea levels. It was because they didn’t need to. Instead, they chose to reduce the population to allow the decreasing amount of resources to be shared among fewer people.

Then he thought of James. James, who thought he was going to reunite with his brother in the stars. At that moment, Wilson knew he had to get James out of there. He charged back towards the Department of Colonial Training and snatched James right out of the room before Leo’s eyes.

“Just trust me. It’s for your own good,” Wilson said as they entered the lifter. Wilson told James all that he had heard. James almost fainted. Wilson thought they had made it out, but when the doors opened on the first floor, they were met by a squadron of Controllers, armed with laser guns and tasers. Wilson swallowed. “The lifter,” he whispered. “It must be monitored by security.” He felt a second of terror before everything went black.

When Wilson woke up, he was in a small barred cell, alone. James was nowhere to be found. His body ached all over and his mind was frantically trying not to think of what would happen next. Would they torture him before killing him? He knew what the State did to people accused of treason, and he did not see how he could talk his way out of the charge.

When the door opened a bit, he scrambled up, hoping to get some information, at least about James. But it was just a hand sliding in a tray with food and water. For two days, Wilson saw nobody, just that hand sliding in the tray.

On the third day, the door finally opened and two silent guards came in. From their gray uniforms with the State’s insignia, Wilson knew immediately that they were Controllers. They would not speak to him, but just handcuffed him and dragged out of the building and into a prison transport elevated hyper loop with neither windows nor a clear destination.

When the transport finally stopped, he was pulled out again. When his silent guards turned him around, Wilson immediately knew what his fate was.

He had only ever seen pictures of the top-secret launch site, but he knew he was looking at the Falcon; the ship that he now knew would never take off. It looked just like all the ships in the posters. “They must paint a new name on it every time,” he thought. “For the publicity pictures.”

The Falcon was waiting for him, its last passenger. This was his Second Chance.

 

Frank Yang is a high school student in New York City whose passions range from reading and writing to science and technology.