P L A N B E T A

Chapter Fifteen

November 1st, 2042

Wagner

I really miss him now. I really, really miss him now. I look again at the photos of Jack Peter, Ara and I from when we were little. Somehow I had started to forget how P sounded and that really bothered me. I only had videos and pictures on my phone that I could look back at but they only made me sadder.

I came across videos of him doing a summer salt in my living room on Christmas Eve, he had to get five stitches in his shoulder because he hit it on the marble under the fireplace. I looked up at the sky through the bay window and saw the satellite I did every night. I liked to think that it was Jack Peter and he was safe inside of the pod with everything still intact.

The fall leaves were coming down all around Sleepy Hollow and I had spent the recent days walking about the small town, but we weren't going to school, that was still too risky. Instead, we attended online school and get by. It wasn't the high school dream that I had always planned of. I wanted to be a cheerleader and look up at Jack Peter in the stands as he plays for the band during a football game. Then maybe I'd glare playfully over at Ara as she watched the game from the stands bundled in eight hundred layers. Then I'd look at the game to see Orren as one of the best players and it'd all be perfect. But now I just sat at my grandparent's long dining table with Arabella and Orren doing homework most of the day, all while Jack Peter was in space.

I've been starting to feel at a loss for air. Constant nervousness runs like static through my veins and there's a constant need for medicine because of the pounding in my head. It's really hot in my room to me, Arabella is sitting on her bed in a boatload of blankets under her covers on her laptop while I'm standing feeling like my skin is melting off.

I change from jeans and a sweater to leggings and a thin long-sleeved shirt. "What are you doing changing this late?" Arabella asks with an earbud now in her hand instead of her ear.

"I'm going for a run. There is no way that I can just sit in here and melt my skin off. You're already cold, so I can't open the windows to make it colder. I'm just going to run to the bridge, around the oak, and run back, it'll be fine," I respond, lacing up my white Nike runners.

"You shouldn't be alone this late at night, Maia."

"Well, who's gonna go with me? Peter? Because he can't Ara, he's in space."

"Maia I really think that you need to start moving on—" I snapped my head around and looked at her. "Okay well, you don't have to look like you're going to kill me. I'm just saying that there's a really low chance that he's still alive—" Before she could finish I ran out of the door and slammed it behind me. Hearing such a theory as 'Jack Peter might not still be alive' was one that I would never want to hear.

I ran. I didn't comprehend where my feet were taking me because I didn't care, I just wanted the thoughts of P being anywhere but by my side, like he has always been. When I finally slow down I look around, and now I have no idea where I am, I probably wouldn't until the morning time. I check around for my phone just to realize that I left it at home.

I was now alone, without communication, cold, and with dark thoughts laced through my head like long black leeches that wiggle around in the folds of my brain. The air around me still feels like ice to my skin and I'm not used to it yet. The dark thoughts get louder and there is nothing to drown them out, I cover my ears but they only get louder and louder.

Sometimes I wish that It would have been me who was taken, but then I realize I would be doing the same thing because I hate the thought of not being around people. I remember Maxwell and Paisley and how they're in Washington right now in a bunker that's not really a bunker. But at least they're safe. They're under the supervision of only one person and that's the nurse who traveled with them.