Beyond Our Stars (Excerpt)

Chapter Two

THREE MONTHS AGO

The Reflection was a major vessel. That meant it had more than five thousand people aboard. I was glad to be on it instead of one of the minor vessels. Those people were stuck with the same five hundred to a thousand people for the whole five-year trek to Haven. I was barely keeping boredom in check with this many people. A smaller vessel might’ve caused me to simply eject myself out into space.

What was making us all excited and giving everyone more energy than they’d had in a long time was the approaching landing date. Only five weeks to go and we’d be in our new home, finally.

There would be a lot to do of course. Our classes had reminded us of nothing else for the last five years. But it would also mean that I could go out exploring, go lie in the grass, and smell dirt.

There was nothing I wanted to do more than to smell dirt. It would be a painful reminder of my home, of the home we’d all lost, but it would also mean that we really did have a future. That living might start to be more than surviving.

Everything was a reminder of home anyway, on purpose. Most of the Gov officials had died in the cataclysmic failure of Earth that had come suddenly after twelve years on the precipice. The Gov that remained, who were few, named everything as a way to remind us and make us better next time.

I’d made it onto the Reflection without anyone by my side. Despite my parent’s optimism about Earth’s environmental downturn, they’d only had me. They were being responsible, they said. They died in a fire that sparked from lava flow through Northern California. I was twelve. That smell of sulfur would never leave me, sometimes I woke up at night smelling it.

I’d walked the remaining hundred and fifty six miles from Lassen National Forrest to Reno, Nevada alone. So, now that solitary little girl had grown up on a spacecraft headed toward planet CR-3 to start a new life.

I was on my way to class, Intermediate Agriculture, when I ran into Chance. His hair always looked different under the incredibly bright corridor lights of the ship, turning it from a brown to a bright buttery color.

“Hey, I was looking for you,” he said. “You gonna come over around eight? I borrowed a portable so we can watch a movie. How’s that sound?” He gave me a slow smile.

I sighed and rolled my eyes, returning his smile. “Yeah, fine. See you then.” I knew we’d be doing plenty more than watching a movie and he knew it too. And I won’t lie, it didn’t sound awful.

I wasn’t really solitary anymore, even though that felt kind of strange. I had Chance. We’d met only days after we left Earth behind because the orphans were all housed in the same area. We’d been kids then, we didn’t start dating until last year. But it felt like we’d known each other our whole lives. Everything now revolved around ship life and Chance had been there for all of that. No one wanted to think of the past.

I hadn’t wanted a relationship with anyone. I had no interest in the matching, pairing off process that everyone else our age accepted as normal, now. But Chance won me over. He’d known from the first day he met me, that’s what he said. Me, I was a good deal more standoffish than that. I’d grown used to my independence and I didn’t like the idea of needing anyone. But Chance...he was a natural fit. His laugh, the witty comments he made hoping to impress me, the light in his eyes. That look of complete and total infatuation he had when we kissed. Somehow, I felt like he couldn’t be denied. I started feeling as though he belonged by my side.

I went to class and sat through a lecture on seeds and fertilizer and growing conditions for pumpkins, of all things. Like of every choice I had, all the plant life we’d brought along with us, I would someday think, yes, I want to eat a pumpkin today.