Defy the Dark

Beth Revis Night Swimming

We don’t have “night” on a generational spaceship. The solar lamp in the roof of the Feeder Level goes dark, but it’s no more night than the clouds painted on the metal ceiling are sky.

Nevertheless, everything important that has ever happened to me has happened at “night.”

For once, Harley isn’t painting. I lean over his shoulder—he’s doing some sort of math, never my strong point. Never Harley’s, either.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up,” he says genially.

“What is he doing?” I ask Kayleigh. She shrugs and returns to the digital membrane screen she’s reading. Math is her specialty, but she’s reading scientific articles on physics and propulsion. Probably something to do with whatever crazy invention she’s going to work on next.

I resign myself to silence, staring out the window. No one else is in the common room of the Ward. The others have long since gone to their rooms. The solar lamp will be covered soon, washing the Feeder Level of the ship Godspeed in darkness for exactly eight hours, the precise amount of time we are allotted to sleep. My mind plays with words—darkness, sleep, night-that’s-not-night—maybe I can form them into a poem or some song lyrics later. It has been a while since I’ve written anything new, and the urge to create itches me from the inside.

But I can’t think of anything now.

Instead, my mind is filled with the words Doc gave us when it was time for our meds. The blue-and-white pill stuck in my throat as Doc entered the common room. Even the nurses stiffened. We never know what to expect from Doc, but none of us thought that his announcement would be that the Elder of the ship, the boy who will one day grow up to become the leader of us all, was moving into the Ward.

We all know what Elder looks like: thirteen years old, scrawny, with a hollow expression in his eyes and sickening devotion to Eldest, the current leader. Eldest is a kind, old man . . . on the outside. We here at the Ward are loons, marked crazy almost since birth, as far away from normal people as possible. Eldest mostly ignores us, letting us fill up the Recorder Hall with art that no one cares about and spending our days being the only inefficient crew members as the ship crosses the universe.

But sometimes Eldest doesn’t ignore us.

Only last year, Selene, a girl who sang beautifully, was sent away from the Ward. Doc was the one who led her out to the farms. He left her there to spend the rest of her life in dull labor, working on food production for the ship’s crew. But I don’t think any of us doubts that the order really came from Eldest. Selene had been determined a threat to productivity, someone whose art was deemed less valuable than manual work.

I swallow the lump in my throat. Selene wasn’t a friend of mine, not exactly, but we spoke together. I miss her. I miss the sound of her, the way her voice could change the way I saw things.

It’s not right, how Eldest silenced her.

The way he could silence any of us.

“Twenty-four thousand,” Harley says triumphantly, breaking my concentration, “and three hundred eighty-seven frexing days.”

“What’s that?” Kayleigh asks without taking her eyes off the screen she’s reading from.

“That is exactly how long it’ll be before the ship lands.”

She looks up now. We both stare at Harley, gaping.

“Twenty-four thousand days?”

Harley repeats the whole number.

“We’ll be so . . . old,” Kayleigh mutters.

“Just over eighty,” Harley replies. He sounds almost cheerful about it, but the days feel like stones in my stomach, weighing me down.

“Twenty-four thousand three hundred and eighty-seven days,” I repeat, unable to comprehend a number so large.

“Isn’t it great?” Harley asks, jumping up and tossing the screen he’s been working on to the chair.

“Great? That’s forever away!” I snap back.

Harley shrugs.

I’m in the mood to pick a fight, but Kayleigh laughs, stopping me and my argumentative words. “He has a point. It’s a long time from now—but it’s not forever.”

Harley whistles as he meanders away, the sound drifting from the hall and wrapping around the common room for several moments before I hear his door close.

Aroo! Aroo! The sirens blare from the ceiling: the solar lamp is going dark in a matter of minutes.

I stand up. “Come on,” I say to Kayleigh.

“Nah,” she answers, rolling her shoulders and letting the screen she’s been reading drop down on the table beside her chair.

“Time for bed,” I say again, confused at her response.

Kayleigh stands languidly. “No it’s not,” she says.

“But—” My eyes drift to the big windows that line one wall of the common room. There is light now, but once the shade descends, the entire level will be far darker.

“Just because it’s ‘night’ doesn’t mean I have to go to bed,” Kayleigh says. She strolls over to the elevator.

“Where are you—”

“You can come,” she offers, pushing the button. “I don’t care. I just don’t want to be bossed around by some siren.”

By the time the elevator doors open, it’s dark. Kayleigh walks out of the lobby of the Hospital with confidence though, not even slowing as she bounds down the steps and veers toward the path that leads to the garden.

“Where are we going?” I ask. It feels dangerous to be out here, even though there’s no express rule against it. But often, on Godspeed, the most important rules are the unspoken ones.

“I am going to the pond,” Kayleigh says. “You can go wherever you like.”

She doesn’t say this in a mean way: she means simply that she intends to spend this night on her own terms, and she won’t stand in the way of me doing the same.

I follow her anyway. I would follow Kayleigh anywhere.

The path meanders through the garden, twisting chaotically around hydrangea bushes, hulking flowers, and a statue of the first Eldest. Kayleigh doesn’t slow at all, but I start to feel my way around the path, hesitating before each footfall. I wonder how many times Kayleigh has left the Hospital at night, how often she has performed this one tiny form of rebellion against the darkness, against Eldest. Did she reveal her plans to me tonight because I happened to be there when she was ready to go, or had she wanted me to follow her into the dark?

By the time I reach the pond, Kayleigh’s already in the water. Her pants and tunic lie in a heap on the soft ground—I can’t see her clearly from here, but she must only be wearing her tank top and panties. My stomach twists at the thought. We have been living together since we were children; we’ve seen each other naked.

But Kayleigh’s not a child anymore.

And neither am I.

I kick my moccasins off and roll up the cuffs of my trousers, but I don’t dive into the water.

“Come on in!” Kayleigh calls. The water moves around her as she sweeps her arms through it, the sound almost musical.

I shake my head.

“Don’t be a chutz!” she says, laughing self-consciously. She’s more nervous to speak a dirty word than she is to defy the implied curfew and swim at night.

“I’m fine here,” I call back. I stand very still—so still that the koi fish nibble at my toes, their mouths tickling the edges of my feet. I try to stare through the water at their white and orange and gold and red bodies flitting between the roots of the lotus flowers, but my eyes drift up and out.

To Kayleigh.

She’s ignoring me now, caught up in the act of swimming. She’s always loved the water; Harley’s nickname for her is Fish. She glides smoothly, her body lithe and filled with a grace that isn’t present when she’s dry. Her hair swirls around her. The koi, apparently accustomed to her presence, dare to dart close to her, their bright scales flashing next to her dark skin. She takes a deep breath and bends in half, kicking and swimming for the floor of the pond.

I count the seconds, waiting for her to resurface.

I’m about ready to dive in after her and drag her back up when her head bursts from the surface, water arching over her and splashing down. She’s laughing gleefully, excited to be here, now.

And she is beautiful in this moment.

Her skin hidden in shadows, her body highlighted by the white tank top. She swims closer to me, still laughing at her own joke, and I notice the way her top moves with the motion of the water, pulling up and down, giving me tantalizing hints of what the cloth hides. When Kayleigh stands, the fabric sticks to her body, showing me every curve, filling my fantasy with details I’d not dared to think of.

“This,” she says, stepping past me and reaching for her tunic, “is why I swim at night. Because it’s only here, now, that I can be free on this frexing ship.”

She dances away from me then, heading back to the Hospital or somewhere else, I don’t know. I’m left with my feet in the water and fish nibbling my toes and the first important realization of my life:

I am in love with Kayleigh.

The next day, Elder comes.

Doc introduces him at med time, as the blue-and-white pills that are supposed to keep us sane are distributed by the nurses. Elder is tall—already taller than me—and lanky. He looks underfed and scared.

Doc pulls Elder aside and whispers to him privately, then hands him something small. I crane my head around the nurse in front of me, trying to see what it is.

A blue-and-white pill.

My eyes narrow. Interesting. So our future leader is just as crazy as we are. No wonder Eldest had him sent to the Ward.

I swallow my pill dry.

Elder stands near the elevator, watching as people drift past him toward their rooms. Doc’s given him a room near his office—no doubt to keep an eye on him—but Elder doesn’t make a move to go to bed. His big eyes watch us, drinking in everything. It makes me uneasy. I can see how one day this boy will grow into his long arms and legs. I can see Eldest in him.

Eventually the room clears to just us—me and Kayleigh and Harley—and him.

“Right,” Kayleigh announces, cutting through the awkward silence. “Let’s go.”

She jumps up and heads to the elevator.

“Where?” I ask. My eyes shoot to Harley, who’s already following Kayleigh. I don’t want to share night swimming with him, even though I have no claim to it. Or her.

Kayleigh shrugs. “Somewhere.”

The elevator doors slide open, and I bound across the common room to get to them in time. Elder watches me, motionless.

The elevator doors start to shut, but Kayleigh sticks her hand out to stop them. Harley leans forward. “Coming?” he asks Elder.

The kid’s whole face lights up, and he rushes inside.

He’s practically vibrating with joy as the elevator descends. I glower at him. When the doors open, he jumps out, skids to a halt, and waits for Kayleigh to step forward and show him where to go.

We all follow her—Elder bouncing beside her, Harley right beside him, and me in the back.

This was our time.

Something Kayleigh says makes the others laugh. I pick up my pace, eager to hear whatever it is she said. Harley grins back at me.

I shake my head, making the negative thoughts dispel. This was never our time. It was always her time, and she’s free to include whoever she wants.

Kayleigh takes us down the path behind the Hospital and my heart sinks; despite my resolve to not be a chutz over this, I want to keep the water to just us. But instead of veering toward the pond, Kayleigh takes us to the Recorder Hall.

The Recorder Hall is a big brick building, one of the few buildings besides the Hospital and a few remote farmhouses on this side of the ship. Despite its size, only one person lives inside the Hall—Orion, the Recorder, who maintains all the records we have from Sol-Earth, and all the research we’ve done as we—and the generations before us—travel to the new Earth.

Aroo! Aroo! The sirens startle us, making us all jump and then laugh at ourselves.

Elder pauses as Kayleigh strides forward.

“What?” she asks him. There is a challenge in her grin, and I can tell that Elder knows what her smile means: you can defy the dark, defy Eldest, and go with her through the night, or you can run back to the Hospital and never be invited out again.

“Nothing,” Elder says, running to catch up to her.

The solar lamp darkens just as Kayleigh puts her foot on the first step of the Recorder Hall.

Elder pauses again, though no one notices but me.

“Come on,” I say in an undertone. “What’s the big deal? We’re not forbidden to go outside in the dark.”

I can see the whites of Elder’s eyes, huge and staring at me. We’re not forbidden—but we’re not allowed, either. An unspoken rule is still a rule, and Eldest would still look at us as if we had broken it. He would still punish us.

Elder’s jaw sets, and he nods once. He turns on his heel and jumps up the stairs.

Kayleigh has already slipped into the entryway, a vast area at the front of the Hall lined with huge, wall-sized digital membrane screens. She slides her hand across one, bringing it to life. The light from the screen casts shadows behind her, barely illuminating the giant clay sculptures that hang from the ceiling: two globes to represent the two Earths, and a model spaceship flying between them.

Elder’s eyes are on the ship: his future kingdom.

Mine are on the planet.

The planet is the only thing that gives us any hope. It’s the only goal. All of this: Doc’s rules, living in the Ward, hoping to slip past Eldest’s notice for one more day so we can continue living as we like and not be forced to be productive members of the ship. . . . The only hope we have is to one day land on the new Earth.

“Twenty-four thousand three hundred and eighty-six,” Harley whispers in my ear, grinning, and I finally understand that the number is a promise, not a sentence.

“Look at that,” Kayleigh crows triumphantly. Harley shushes her.

“That’s the ship’s diagram,” Elder says, his eyes growing round. “You’re not supposed to be looking at that.”

“Are you going to stop me, little leader?” Kayleigh asks. She bends down, and although there’s a smile twitching up the corners of her lips, her question is serious.

Elder shakes his head no.

“I just wanted to look is all,” Kayleigh says, her eyes scanning the complicated diagram. I can barely make heads or tails of it: there are lines and numbers everywhere. Kayleigh, though, is the inventor: she must know what it means.

The entryway grows silent. Kayleigh reads the diagram with a sort of desperate fierceness. Harley stares at her, wonder in his eyes. I glance at Elder; we’re the outsiders here, watching something neither of us understands.

“What are you doing?” The voice bellows so loudly that I feel as if the giant globes should fall from the ceiling and shatter at our feet.

Orion, the Recorder, strides toward us. Elder takes one look at him and scampers, his feet skidding across the smooth floor. The heavy door slams behind him.

Harley laughs at Elder’s childish flight, but a part of me wants to chase after him. I’ve never seen Orion look so furious before. He’s wearing nothing but trousers and his hair is a mess; clearly he was already in bed. There’s a hardness to his jaw, and I can see the muscles on his chest tightening.

“You frexing idiots! Do you know what you’ve done?”

Even Harley looks cowed now, but Kayleigh dances up to Orion, still laughing. “I was only looking,” she says.

Orion grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her until the smile slips from her face. “There are people in the fields right now who are there for ‘only looking,’” he sneers. “You want to be one of them?”

“Let him try to send me to the fields,” Kayleigh says. No laughter now. Just determination. My heart swells. She’s like a flame burning brightly—a flame almost out of control.

“He can do worse than send you to the fields.” Orion’s voice is low. He means these words to cut down Kayleigh’s challenging posture, but it doesn’t work. On her, anyway. The thought of Kayleigh being punished by Eldest instills within me a heart-thudding sort of terror I’ve never felt for anyone else, even myself.

Harley catches my eye and jerks his head to the door. This is something that Kayleigh has planned, something that Orion’s caught her doing before. We are just witnesses. With enough time and rage, maybe Orion can make her finally see how dangerous her whims can be.

I take the stairs two at a time, already on the path before I notice Harley’s sitting on the steps. “Go without me,” he says. “I’m going to wait on Kayleigh.”

I stop.

I know the way Harley’s been watching Kayleigh—for years now. She’s been just a friend to both of us, never quite willing to take it further. There was a time when I thought they were growing more serious, but that was just before Selene was banished. Once Eldest sent her to the fields, Kayleigh withdrew. She was quicker to smile, but it took longer for the smile to reach her eyes. She was more daring, though, and I worried about that, about what that would mean for her. For us. For them.

“Go on,” Harley says again. His voice is dismissive. He doesn’t even think that I might want to stay behind, that I might want to be the one to comfort Kayleigh after Orion’s chewed her out. He just assumes that it’s him she wants to see.

And, probably, it is.

Acid roils in my stomach.

Who am I kidding?

One night swimming with her in the pond, and I expect her to turn to me? One night realizing that she fills my mind and heart in ways I never thought possible, and suddenly she’s mine?

I plod down the path, away from the Recorder Hall. Away from Kayleigh.

But not all the way. As soon as the garden starts up, I veer left. I don’t stop at the pond. Its still surface mocks me. I keep going, even though there’s nothing out here. Nothing but the wall.

I sit down. Underneath me is dirt and grass. But behind me, pressing against my back, is the curving steel wall of the ship. I let my head fall back, a dull thud of my skull against metal. I’m such a frexing chutz.

I don’t know how long I stay there, staring at nothing but darkness. It gets cooler—the allotted ten degrees cooler dictated by the ship’s program—and I think about going back to my room in the Ward. Before I can move, though, I hear voices.

Kayleigh.

And Harley.

And a splash.

He’s calling to her—he jumped in first. Kayleigh squeals with delight and I see the outline of her body diving into the pond.

She comes up for air, gasping and laughing.

And then there’s no sound. I see his arms around her body and her arms around his and they’re swimming and not swimming and the water slips over their bodies and I hear the flutter of a gasp and I see, I see, I see.

And I know.

This is the second thing I learned in the nighttime:

I may love Kayleigh, but she will never ever love me.

Harley counts the days until the ship will land, one by one.

24,385 . . . 24,384 . . . 24,383 . . .

I count the nights.

On the 24,302nd night, Kayleigh purposefully waited until I (and Elder and everyone else) was gone before she and Harley snuck out. I know. I waited in the corner of the hallway, and I saw them go.

On the 24,287th night, Kayleigh and Harley went outside and didn’t come back until the morning.

On the 24,245th night, Kayleigh didn’t bother going out at all: she stayed in. In Harley’s room.

On the 24,238th day, Harley quits counting down the days. He and Kayleigh quit pretending that there is nothing going on between them.

“Gross,” Elder complains as Kayleigh leans over the couch and gives Harley an upside-down kiss.

I agree but keep my mouth shut.

I’m writing again, and that’s good, at least. Long, rambling, angry poems that amount to nothing, but they’re words. I hunch over my little book—I don’t like writing on the membrane screens, I prefer paper—and scrawl out my latest poems.

I tried not caring. I gave up somewhere around the 24,290th night.

“What’s wrong?” Kayleigh asks.

I immediately smooth down my face: I had not realized that I was scowling at her. At the two of them. She slips down beside me on the couch and wraps her arms around mine. “What is it?” she asks again, so much concern in her voice that I know she’s sincere.

I shake my head.

Kayleigh stares at me a moment longer, then shoots Harley a look. There is a message in her eyes, though, a message that Harley must be able to read, because he jumps up from his seat. “Come on, Elder,” he says. “I’ll show you the art gallery in the Recorder Hall.”

Elder—eager to be included—follows immediately. I wait until the elevator doors close behind him before I dare to look at Kayleigh.

Her eyes are kind, and sad, and knowing.

“You wouldn’t understand,” I say immediately, hoping to stave off her pity. I want nothing of her pity.

“Maybe not,” she concedes. “But you look sad; I don’t want you to be sad.”

She brushes a lock of hair out of my face. Her fingertips barely touch my skin, but I feel as if there’s a trail of fire following her touch.

I don’t mean to, but I find myself staring into her eyes. I can see it then: she loves me. But her love for me is nothing like my love for her. My love eats away at me until I’m hollow inside, filling me with bitterness at every moment she spends with Harley. But her love is kind and good. She loves me as a friend, a true friend, and the purity of her emotion leaves me breathless. In this moment, she wants nothing but to make me happy again. For the past 149 days, I have wanted nothing but for Harley to disappear—and I would have reveled in Kayleigh’s misery.

The selfishness of my feelings makes me ashamed. I swallow hard, and with that, I resign myself to this simple fact: I can love her, and she can never love me back. But what I feel for her is real, even if she doesn’t feel it. And what I feel for her is good, as long as I remember that I care more about keeping the love and light in her eyes, even if it isn’t for me.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell her, and I mean it.

She squeezes my arm and smiles. “Good.”

A shadow passes over her face.

“Now it’s my turn to ask,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

Kayleigh bites her lip. “The way you’ve been sad and grumpy lately—Doc’s noticed.”

This is beyond anything I expected to hear. I don’t try to deny my negative attitude, even though I hadn’t realized she’d been aware of it for so long. What really surprises me is the way she brings up Doc. I swallow again, this time remembering the way the blue-and-white pill I take every day tastes.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Selene,” Kayleigh says. “Before she was sent back to the fields, she was sad, remember?”

“She had every reason to be.” Selene’s story was a miserable one, but it was her story nevertheless.

Kayleigh nods again. “But the thing is . . . do you remember the way Doc switched her meds when she was sad?”

I shake my head.

“He did,” Kayleigh continues. “She showed them to me. And the longer she was on those pills, the more she seemed . . . different.”

“Different?”

“Come on,” Kayleigh says, standing. “I’ll show you.”

We ignore the siren, and neither of us pauses when the solar lamp blinks out. This trek seems different from our other outings. Kayleigh is on a mission here, with a clear goal.

She leads me away from the Hospital, toward the fields. The Feeder Level is ten square acres, most of it taken up with farmlands. Corn and wheat grow closest to the Hospital, but Kayleigh strides down the path between the two with confidence. I wonder how many times she’s visited Selene.

“It was after she was . . . you know, and Eldest decided not to punish her attacker,” Kayleigh says. “That’s when Selene started being depressed. And soon after that, Doc changed her meds.”

“So?”

“When he changed her meds, he changed her.”

“Obviously,” I said. “We’re loons. Without meds, we’d be crazier.”

Kayleigh stops dead. “No. I don’t think that’s true. I think the mental meds are what keep us sane. I think—it’s the others who are different.”

I shake my head. This is crazy, even for Kayleigh.

She doesn’t waste time arguing with me. She grabs my hand—my heart can’t help but race at her touch—and pulls me toward the rabbit farm. She bends the thin wire fence down to climb over it. The rabbits look up, their ears pointed toward us and their noses twitching. A few hop languidly away as we steal across the field to the small house lined with rabbit hutches.

Kayleigh doesn’t bother knocking or announcing her presence. She pokes her head into the door and whispers loudly, “Selene!”

I hear murmuring inside. Kayleigh jerks her head, and I follow her into the little house.

Selene is sitting up in bed. Her quilt pools at her lap. It’s obvious that she just sat up as soon as Kayleigh called for her.

“Selene,” Kayleigh says again.

Selene turns her head to Kayleigh, and in that simple motion, I’m reminded of the girl I used to know. Vivacious but reserved, usually quiet, but when she opened her mouth, music came out.

“Yes?” she says in a dead voice. “I am Selene.”

Air leaves my lungs.

“Selene, are you happy?”

“I am here.”

“But are you happy?”

“It is darktime. Night. I should be sleeping.”

“Selene, do you feel anything at all?” Kayleigh is insistent, her voice rising with each question.

“I feel sleepy. It is time for sleeping.”

“Do you know who I am?” Kayleigh asks.

“You are residents of the Ward. You should be in the Hospital.”

“Yes. We are. And we used to be your friends.”

Selene frowns—the first time she’s shown any emotion at all. Kayleigh seizes on it, leaning forward, her eyes sparkling. “Do you remember us? Do you remember what it was like before? What happened to you? What did Doc do to you to make you like this?”

Selene blinks.

“Doc did nothing,” she says in a hollow voice. “I am sleepy because it is night.”

She leans back down into her pillow. She doesn’t adjust her body or pull the covers up. She just closes her eyes. A moment later, I can see by the even rhythmic rise and fall of her chest that she’s asleep.

I start to leave, but Kayleigh pauses to tuck the quilt over Selene’s shoulders.

We don’t talk until we’re back on the path away from the fields.

“See?” Kayleigh rages. “That is nothing like the way Selene once was.”

“Maybe she’s still depressed.”

“No!” Kayleigh stops. The Recorder Hall is a dark outline to our left, the Hospital to our right. Maybe, if someone squinted and knew where to look, we’d be noticed despite the darkness.

“Don’t you understand?” she asks. “Those blue-and-white pills we take every day. They don’t keep us from being crazy. They keep us sane. There must be some reason Eldest needs at least some of the people on the ship normal, and he uses the label ‘crazy’ to keep us separated. It’s them—the workers—they’re the ones not normal. They don’t feel anything, they don’t think anything. I bet they’re easier to control; that must be why Eldest does it.”

“Does it?” I ask. “Does what?”

“Drugs them! Something! I don’t know, but he’s done something to make the people not be—not be themselves. Even when she was sad and depressed, Selene was never like that.” She spits out the word. “When Eldest had Doc send her away, he made sure there was something else done to her, another drug or something, to make her be like that. Empty. Dead inside.”

Kayleigh words are loons, but . . . I saw Selene with my own eyes. I know the way that pill sticks in my throat, the way Doc and the nurses watch us each swallow one every day. Even Elder, the future leader of the ship. They wouldn’t have Elder be heir to the ship if he was crazy. But if that blue-and-white pill actually kept him sane . . . then of course they’d give it to him.

Kayleigh must see the understanding dawning on my face because she grabs both my hands and leans forward, excited.

“There’s more. Remember the ship diagrams? Orion’s been giving me access—he was mad at first, but he realized that I understood them, understood the schematics. He’s shown me things, things Eldest doesn’t know we know. And I think—”

“Kayleigh!” The voice cuts through the night, and I could curse. Instead, I force a smile on my face.

“Oh! There you are!” Harley strolls up and wraps his arms around Kayleigh. In that simple motion, he claims her.

I step back.

“I’ve been looking for you. Where did you go?”

Earlier, Kayleigh shot Harley a look, and he understood her silently. Now she shoots me one. And I understand. These ideas, these suspicions and accusations—they’re not for Harley. Harley, who counts down the days until he lands, who sees only the happy end result and none of the horror behind dead eyes, the fear of Eldest. Harley, who latched onto Elder as just another kid and never saw him as his future dictator.

Kayleigh saw something dark in me and realized she could share a dark secret. With me. Not him.

As Harley pulls Kayleigh into a kiss, I duck back into the shadows, making my way to my room in the Hospital. It’s twisted, I know, but it fills me with a sort of satisfaction to know that Kayleigh shared something with me that she hasn’t with Harley.

Everything important that has ever happened to me happened at “night.”

But they didn’t find Kayleigh’s body until the next morning.

On the 24,237th day before the ship was scheduled to land, Harley and Elder find Kayleigh in the pond.

Her body is covered in med patches. Doc says she must have plastered them on herself and let the drugs in them lull her into a sleep so deep, she didn’t feel the water fill her lungs as she drowned. Sometime in the night, after I left her, after Harley left her, she went to the pond and killed herself.

Only she didn’t.

Because I know—I know and no one else knows—that Kayleigh’s death was no suicide. She thought of twenty-four thousand days as a promise, just like Harley. And she was piecing together the lies Eldest wove, discovering the truth behind Selene’s dead eyes and forbidden blueprints.

This was no suicide.

And it was no accident.

I watch silently as Doc examines Kayleigh’s body, then orders her to be sent to the stars.

I say nothing as Harley descends into his own spiral of depression. Doc gives him new meds—and I wait for the emptiness I saw in Selene to hollow out Harley, but it seems as if Doc has decided this is a pain Harley must live with.

I avoid Elder. He might be a kid, but he’s the future Eldest.

And whatever Kayleigh died for, it was for a truth that Eldest didn’t want her to find.

I will find that truth. It may take the rest my life to understand what Kayleigh saw in the tangle of lines on the ship’s blueprints, to dredge up some sort of meaning from Selene’s dead eyes, but I will find it.

I don’t care about the truth. I only cared about her. But I will use that truth to destroy Eldest.

I cannot sink into depression like Harley. I’ve seen people look at me—they offer me sympathy for the loss of a friend. None of them know that Kayleigh was more than a friend, at least to me. I cannot mourn her like Harley does. I cannot mourn the love that never was.

I can only scribble in my notebook.

Not poems or lyrics.

Plans.

Revenge.