To the Stars and Back

Chapter 1

Hazel

"Hazel!"

My head jerks up from my desk.

"Hazel, did you actually fall asleep this time?" Nyssa asks. Most of our class has cleared out of the room.

"Uh..." I shrug and put on my Airmask. 

"All right, Hazel. What was the last thing Ms. Vega said?" she demands.

"Um... 'Get out your laptops and go to page 172'?"

Nyssa frowns. "First of all, it was page 162, and second, that was, like, eight minutes ago."

"Ouch." I say.

She laughs. "Did you even hear what the homework is?" she asks.

"No." I roll my eyes.

"I'll tell you on the way. Come on! We'll be late!" she picks up my airpack for me, heaving it into the air so it slowly floats off. 

"Hey!" I yelp, grabbing it before it runs into a wall. 

We go across campus as she explains how to do the homework. 

"So should I just use World War 3 for the prompt or something?" I ask.

"Ugh. Everyone's probably going to do that. Use something original." 

"What? The point is to use something in the real world!"

"Come on. You knew what I meant." 

We get to the B wing intersection and say goodbye. 

"See you after MATH." she says, like one day math will kill her. Which is entirely possible.

—————

As I go to meet up with Nyssa after English to have lunch, I think about global climate change (gcc). I've almost never seen rain before, and I haven't seen snow. I know it still snows in some places, but I've never seen it. Moving to different foster families every once in a while until they reject me, because of course they would, I've been to many different states. I was born in Arizona, where it got to about 135 degrees, and then I moved to Utah when I was nine when my mom died. I've been to New Mexico, Texas, New York, Florida, and back to Utah. Now I'm in Colorado, and it gets  around 145 degrees here in the hottest parts of summer.

I finally get to the lunch room where my friends Nyssa, Cat, Rhea, and Scarlett are sitting. 

As usual, we talk about dumb things like our favorite hairstyles and the best types of swim goggles, until an alarm starts to blare. 

"What is that?" It's different than the fire alarm, but something we only hear for very important announcements. 

"Must be the 'proper date' alarm. I forgot to put 2063 on my paper." Rhea jokes. 

"Rhea, it's probably important." Nyssa says.

"It could've just been an accident." I say.

"Yeah, or a joke. People hack in all the time." Cat agrees.

But an announcement pops up on our wristwatches, telling us to go to WorldWideNews. 

It's not a joke. It's real, and it gives me a really bad feeling.

Alyssa

I get on my hoverbike and talk to April as we make our way to science class.

This year, we made it our tradition to talk about baking on our way to science, because we both love to cook at home. My mom runs a bakery, and my sister Dawn and I like to help her in the bakery on Saturdays. It's called Meg's Desserts, and we love talking to mom's baking partners Wren and Sheila, and when we help, I usually help Sheila prepare the croissant and pastry dough while Dawn works with Wren by making and applying the icing on cakes while Wren makes the sponges. Mom usually makes the cookies and cupcakes with the help of Wren's daughter Eliese, who is a year younger than me. Once we've made everything, we lay them out and clean up as we wait for the first customers. April also comes and helps at the bakery some weekends. Her dad was on the baking show Bake It about seven years ago, and since he left it and got a job at Dataworks, she's been determined to be on the show after she graduates from culinary school, which is why she bakes a lot. Usually when one of us comes over to the other's house, all we do the whole time is bake cookies or something. One of our favorites to make is chocolate fry cake, which we half made up, because it's usually made with fruit, and we like to bake them instead of frying them in the doughnut fryer. The way you make them is with cake batter, but with fudge mixed into it. Then you pour them into spherical molds like cupcake molds, and then after it's baked in the oven, it's stuffed with chocolate fluff icing. Then you melt milk chocolate and drizzle it over them. We make them in about an hour and a half, and then we eat about six each until we feel sick.