To The Stars And Back - Jack Dawson

Chapter 2 - Befriending the Enemy

I was lying in bed in my nightgown when my new roommate came in. Luna. I mentally groaned. The rooms had light green walls and dark wood floors with two nightstands that had a lamp on each. Two dressers sat at the end of each bed and there was a window that rested in the gap in between both nightstands.

I scanned the pages of my book but couldn't keep my eyes off of the short dark haired girl that wrote in her journal. She finally sat on the edge of her bed and bore her eyes into mine. They were dark.

"What?" I asked.

"Are you always this uptight and boring?" She asked. I scoffed and placed my bookmark in the pages and shut the hardcover. I placed the book on my nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to lean too far forward because I wasn't wearing a corset.

"You're no picnic either." I said. She laughed. "So what are your, as Ms. DuPont puts it, 'special abilities?'"

"I can sense people's emotions if I put my hand on them. If I weren't on pills right now and I touched you, I would know exactly what you're feeling and why." She said.

"Oh wow. That's actually really amazing." I said.

"What are your 'special abilities?'"

"If I hold someone's object in my hand and focus really hard, I can see their life. Traumas, loves, secrets, anything like that."

"Oh my god. You're even cooler than me." She said. I laughed. "You know what we should do tomorrow? We should throw up after we take the pills and then show eachother our powers."

I scoffed but then realized that she was serious. "Are you crazy? No way!"

"Come on, you haven't practiced in ten years. Don't you miss it?" She asked. It's true. I missed it so much. I sighed.

"Okay fine. I'll do it." She smiled and clapped quietly.

--

We were in our room the next night, ready to show each other our abilities. "You go first Ellie." She said. I shot her a look. "Okay fine, Elizabeth." She threw up her hands in defense.

"Give me an object." I said. She nodded and handed me a small green marble. I gave her a weird look. "Where did you get this?"

"It's mine from my childhood. Now go do your thing and tell me what you see." She said. I pressed the object in my palm. I hadn't done this in a while but it felt surprisingly unrusty. The image formulated.

"I see you as a little girl. You're in a small apartment and you have a white dress on with a tiny pink bow in your hair... There's music playing and... I think... I see a couple dancing. A woman who looks like you and a man with reddish brown hair. They're in love...your parents?"

"Yes that's mom and dad." Luna said, sounding sentimental.

"Okay the scene changed. The apartment looks...charred, the walls are covered with soot. You're sitting at the kitchen table, crying. Oh did your parents-"

"They died in an apartment fire when I was twelve. Keep going." She said. I pressed further and the scene changed again.

"You're even older now, your current age I think. You...um....you're at a bar. There are a few other people there but I can't see their faces. It's blurry. Um I think I can see two men and a young woman with black hair. I still can't see any faces but... I think I can see a young man with a sketchpad and another one next to him with dark brown hair." I said. I tried to press further but couldn't and was snapped out of the image. I studied Luna's face, she looked overjoyed.

She wrapped her arms around me. "My god, that's incredible." She said. I laughed and she pulled away, snatching the marble from my hand.

"Alright, your turn." I said. She nodded and put her warm hand on my arm. She closed her eyes.

"You're happy. This is the only time that you've felt genuine happiness in here." She said. She took her hand off of me. "Okay not super impressive, but that's just an obvious feeling. The more fun ones are when you figure out when someone's lusting after another person. Causes a lot of embarrassment." I laughed.

"So I saw your friends in the vision. Who are they?" I asked, curious to hear about anything that had to do with the outside world.

"Well, the woman that you saw, that's Priscilla. She's the sweetest. And the other man with dark hair, that's William. He likes to call himself a ladies man or whatever. Then the other one is a Titanic survivor." She said. I tilted my head, I didn't know what that was. "You know, the ship that sank last year. Over one thousand dead." I was still searching her eyes. "Whatever, anyways, the one with the sketchpad, that's Jack. He lost the love of his life on the titanic and hasn't been the same since they crashed." She said.

She sighed, obviously not happy with her friend's grief. "Oh did his love die?" I asked.

"No. Jack told her that it was okay to leave him and get on a lifeboat, so she did and she left him. Then he was in the water, survived on a piece of driftwood, and was rescued. Then he was in an almost comatose state of sleep on the Carpathia, so he couldn't find her. He searched for her all over the country last year but sort of gave up. Now he's just really depressed and sad, and threw himself completely into his artwork." She said. I gave a sympathetic look.

"Do you miss him?" I asked.

"Here, I miss all of my friends. But in the long run I guess I really do miss my old friend."

"You goofy for him?"

She burst out into laughter when I asked that. "Oh god no. I love him but not that way. And even so, he hasn't been with anyone since that girl who's name he won't tell us. He doesn't talk about her."

"That sucks, I'm gonna go to sleep." I said, clicking off the lamp and hopping in the bed. I could see Luna's amused expression in the pale moonlight that bathed the room. "What?"

"You're so numb to other people. It's fun to watch."

"Why should I absorb other people's emotions? I can be comforting without being completely involved in other people's issues. So yes, what's happening to your friend sucks, it really does, but it's not like I can do anything to help. I'm just a skinny little nobody." I said in a completely monotone voice. She laughed.

"Jack would've liked you."