P L A N B E T A

Chapter Ten

August 3rd, 2042

Baker-Crane

I wake up in a sudden breath on August third. The bright lights of the hospital room are shining down on me and I feel excessively sweaty. I look down, I'm only wearing a black sports bra and my side is wrapped in a thick bandage. A sharp pain shoots through my stomach and I groan.

My mother rushes into the room, her expression turns from worried to extremely happy within moments. "Welcome back to earth, honey."

"Where's Orren? Jack Peter? Maia? Is everyone alright? What happened?" I ask quickly and feel more pain shoot through my stomach.

"Don't stress, Dear, don't stress. It's a matter of time before you heal and I need you to take it easy. Heal, heal. Maia and Orren are just fine, I can send them in here to talk to you if you'd like—"

"What about Jack Peter, Mom? What about him? What's happening to him? Mom!" The worst pain I've ever felt shoots through my entire body. I feel it in my veins and rushing through each atom in my body.

"Arabella! Calm! He was sent into space by ACA we're working on getting him back... now calm down. Please, baby, calm down," she hushes. I lay my head back and feel myself faint for a second but then come back to life.

Jack Peter is the only guy in my life I truly believed would never leave. I thought that my dad would retire, Orren would marry some blonde bartender in Alabama, Jameson would move in with his Spanish boyfriend in Philadelphia and then move to South Korea with the nurse's son. I thought that Max would go somewhere and travel the world, even, but Jack Peter couldn't go anywhere. He loved this, us, too much. We loved him more than he could ever fathom.

Although, I was always secretly sure that Maia loved him more. I wanted to win but she wanted him to be happy, no matter who he was with. Maia's love for him was unbreakable. There was no way that she could take the yarn made of pure gold and cut it to finish a sewing piece. Their bond was like no other, whether I liked it or not.

The day that Jameson came out, it was an accident. We caught him when we got home looking at some... not very age appropriate things through the search history. At first, it was something that I almost vomited at, but now, it was something that I actively made fun of him for, he didn't like it very much.

One thing that my parents actively taught us was that it is always okay to be yourself. You don't have to come out if you are attracted to the same sex, come home with them and we will open our arms to them, then take them in as our own. It was difficult to believe that, in my parent's time, this was somewhat rare.

I am flashed back to reality. Somehow, Orren and Maia are now standing in the room with me. "What drugs are you on?" Orren asks. "You've been sitting here laughing hysterically for the passed four minutes for no reason and you refuse to tell us why."

"Yeah, that sounds like something I'd do. I was think about the time that—" I started.

"Oh, the time that Jameson—and you caught him? Yeah that was pretty funny," Maia laughs. I can tell that she's on the edge of a breaking point, though. She looks sick. Her eyes are red, her face is paler than normal, and the has black ink all over her hands and arms.

"Maia," I say. "You don't have to be in here, you can go back to our room and do whatever you were doing, that's okay." She looks up from the ground and shakes her head.

"Ara, no. I haven't been out in two days. And you're being let out soon, after that, we're being shipped off to Sleepy Hollow."

"Wait, what?" I asked, surprised. "Wait like that place your grandparents live? In New York?" Maia nods. "Why? Are all of us?"

"No," Orren chimes in. "It's just you, Maia, and I. The others are being shipped off to bunker in Washington. The one that smells constantly of firewood and hose water." I nod, knowing already what he had meant and thinking it kind of cute that he kept explaining it to me.

August 6th, 2042

I am let out of the hospital and we all walk up to the landing pad. Unless it was through tinted windows, I hadn't seen the sun. I had been in the rainforest of GZU a lot, but there was thick tinted glass between me and the actual sunlight.

GZU had been modelled carefully after Biosphere 1 in Arizona, but our parents were very insistent on keeping GZU its own thing, but still being able to sustain many lives without leaving, meaning they had to create their own world inside of this enormous building.

The light shines in my eyes. Normally I would take a deep breath and enjoy everything around me, but now, I had to fly to New York and then take an hour and forty-three minute drive to Sleepy Hollow. Then I remember that Jack Peter is out there somewhere in our earth's orbit, not having the sunshine in his eyes and the warm blanket that it gives you hovering over your skin. He was somewhere in the dark, so I took in enough sun for the both of us. I knew that Maia would do the same, but that just meant he had a warm blanket as he was stuck in the cold.

We had to say goodbye to our families on the landing pad. I hugged Jameson and Ashlynn, even Gwendolyn, Paisley, and Max who were all taking this extremely hard. Although Gwen was taking it like no other. She was hurt right along with Maia, but she was taking it a lot better.

I was standing next to Orren when he said goodbye to Jameson. But it wasn't just a goodbye and a handshake, Jameson handed him a small, thin, aluminum object and whispered, "Be safe." As if he thought I couldn't hear it.

I looked over at Orren, he was still holding it in plain sight, a condom. My mouth fell agape and I made eye contact with Jameson, he started laughing. "Jameson Eugene Baker-Crane! Oh when I get back I'm gonna beat your ass!" He only laughed harder.

"Why beat my ass when you could beat his—" Jameson started to say. I slapped him upside the head but he still got out, "...meat." I slapped him again.

I looked at Orren and held out my hand for him to give me the... holder. However, he didn't, he just smiled his crooked smile like any hot guy and wouldn't give it to me. I attempted in grabbing it from him but he just raised his arm up to the sky. Unfortunately for me, he was the one person besides most of our parents that was taller than me. He looked down the two inches he had to and smiled.

"Sorry, Ara," he said. "I just might need this someday."

"Doubt it," said Maia, who was now standing in between us. "Now, we need to board or else we won't get to Grandma Elle's by dinner." I laughed at Maia's remark and said my final goodbyes. As much as I hated Jameson most of the time, I hated to say that there was a chance I wouldn't see him for a long, long time.