On the Edge of Gone Page 21

  “What is it?” Iris grabs two glasses of juice—since my injured arm means I can’t carry my own—and keeps her plate balanced between both hands as she walks to the nearest table.

  “It’s not important. Farther back?”

  We sit at the back of the room, Iris sliding the second glass of juice my way. I glimpse the woman out of the corner of my eye. She’s not following.

  Relieved, I say, “OK. So check out your tab!”

  Iris fires up the public system. “Where to?”

  “Anywhere.”

  She opens the map of the ship with a twist of her hand, then goes back one level and brings up information about buffet hours. Not a single spark of realization.

  “You really don’t see it? I reorganized the information. See? It’s all under different headers. I separated out the information about our private rooms and the public spaces, and put the information about allergies and accessibility in the same section, and . . .” I’m losing her. “And there was important information buried in old announcements that needed to be integrated into permanent sections, and—it’s better now.”

  “Ohhh. I get what you mean.” She sips her juice, glancing at me over the rim of the glass. “Sorry. Us mere mortals don’t always see these things.”

  Apparently not, I think. I prod at the small container of peanut butter I brought with me. I’d meant it for the bread I never took. “Can you open your rolls?”

  “It’s not a bad thing.”

  “Your rolls?” I repeat.

  “I’m just . . . I’m tired.”

  I get it. There are more important things than streamlined information. I look at Iris’s plate, hot with embarrassment. “Your rolls.”

  Iris cuts them open and displays the insides. Seeds and raisins. “You can pick them out,” she suggests. “Or I could, if you want.”

  I shake my head. I can pick things off my plate, or pluck larger seeds from a slice of bread whenever Mom gets the wrong kind of loaf. Rolls are too . . . three-dimensional. You have to yank out entire chunks of bread to be sure, or cut itty-bitty pieces, and even then I’d be hyperalert with every bite. And raisins leave residue. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. Instead, I pick up an apple crisp and sneak another look at the frizzy-haired woman.

  “What’s with her? Does she need some kind of stern talking-to? I’m your girl.”

  I try and fail to smother a smirk. I tell Iris about the morning’s encounter and Els’s objections.

  “So that’s what all the chatter is about. I heard people talking about printing rafts like yours.”

  “I feel bad about saying no.”

  “Maybe you should say yes.”

  “I just told you all the reasons I shouldn’t.”

  “You told me Els’s reasons,” Iris corrects.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to the scooter.” I shrug. “First everybody wants on the ship, now they want off.”

  “They’re just worried. It’s about their families.”

  “I know.” I dip my spoon into the peanut butter and twist it in my mouth. I should see what else the buffet has. I don’t get up yet, though. What Iris says is true. It’s about their families.

  It’s about our family.

  “We should smuggle in Mom.” I hunch in on myself, letting my hair spill on both sides of my face.

  “What changed?”

  “If people are so eager to leave, management will start monitoring the exits.” I’ve lowered my voice, but almost wish someone would overhear us. They could tell us it’s a dumb idea. We’ll change our minds. “If we don’t get Mom on board now, we won’t get the chance later.”

  The real reasons don’t pass my lips. All my euphoria over work is gone. All I did was reorganize some stupid information—Iris made it clear how much that was worth. Els’s reassurances suddenly don’t mean much. Not with a productivity war going on. Every engineer, doctor, and farmer on this ship has relatives on the waiting list, too, and those relatives won’t be drug addicts.

  Mom’s right: no one would pick her from a waiting list.

  No one would’ve picked me, either.

  Usefulness or death can’t be her only options. If being picked from the waiting list isn’t feasible, then the one choice left is to smuggle her in. The back of my mind keeps whispering about the risk, about She’d only be a drain, but I shut it up. There’s a difference between leaving Mom and leaving Mom to die.

  “I’m glad you agree,” Iris says. “I know it’s not easy.”

  That’s what I hate. She’s right. It’s not. I still don’t want to break the rules, even if it’s to help Mom. But people on TV never abandon their family; they risk their own lives. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

  On TV, people just never feel this twisted about it.

  “Four this afternoon,” I say. “Let’s talk.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “I LOOKED AT THE LOCATIONS YOU SUGGESTED.” Iris drags her tab’s projection to hover between the exercise bikes we’re sitting on. The image flickers so far removed from her tab, the angles skewed, but it’s easy to see the areas she highlighted on the ship’s map.

  I have my legs drawn up with my soles against the bike frame. Iris’s mop and cleaning spray rest on the floor against her bike, forgotten. She reaches through the translucent walls of the ship projection and taps two rooms to deselect them. “These storage closets are too small. Mom needs more space if she’s going to last several days.”

  I nod. I’d told Iris the same thing when I slipped her the list of possible locations.

  “This . . .” She holds one finger against the lit-up shape of an unused loading bay. “Too risky. They might put it into use. And”—she deselects the loading bay and moves on to a set of bathrooms on an empty deck—“the bathrooms are smart, since there’s no monitoring equipment, but this deck isn’t as empty as we thought. Some engineers sneak up during breaks for sexy times. Today alone, that big bald white guy went up there twice with a cleaning girl.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously! You and Max ought to check it out.”

  “We’re not—it’s just—”

  “I mean,” she says, grinning, “I’d be wooing Fatima if I were you, but I suppose you’re set on being straight. And I see the appeal. I like my guys skinnier normally, but Max is pretty cute.”

  “I noticed that.” I laugh and adjust my position on the bike. I’ve barely thought of Max. Should I have? Is that normal? For all his lazy friendliness and self-conscious smiles, he hasn’t once flinched at a brusque comment of mine, or lost his patience as I struggled to come up with words. “Just, um, this doesn’t seem like the right time.”

  Iris points at me through the projection. “We need to take the good where we can get it. Especially now. But all right.”

  “I also liked the kitchens,” I say, feigning normalcy.

  “Yeah. That was my top pick.” She brings up one of the kitchens on a lower deck and enlarges it. “Are you sure these are unused?”

  “Yes.” I remember what Max said on his tour: “They won’t need that area until the ship’s population grows.”

  “Well.” Iris’s half smile grows into a full one. It still reminds me of Mom’s, but—but Mom’s just on my mind, that’s all. “Let’s plan.”

  It’s not right. It’s not allowed. We shouldn’t do this.

  Those thoughts have been with me all that day, during work and even afterward. I ended up in the exercise room at half past four, as Els’s latest requests took longer than I expected.

  Iris turns so she’s sitting sideways on the bike. We lean over the projection, pointing out paths to the kitchen from various entrances, situating where the repairs outside are taking place. For half an hour, I lose myself in the planning, pointing out risks and nodding slowly at Iris’s suggestions, or the other way around.

  It’s almost fun.

  Almost, since at the end of it, we still have to put the plan into action.


  Iris hunches before the couch. “This’ll be quick.”

  “You’re sure I’ll be able to walk better this way?” Mom leans back against the stained couch, her bare feet awkwardly extended in front of her. They’re white as paper in the too-close glow of my flashlight.

  “That’s what Dr. Meijer said.” I’d been in and out of her office, eyeing the ground as I explained Mom’s injuries and asked for supplies, but she either didn’t notice my awkwardness or didn’t care. She’d been just as casually friendly as yesterday.

  Iris’s smile is gone as she deals with Mom. She rubs the ointment on with a clean cloth, making sure it coats every one of yesterday’s cuts. The skin is red at the edges, but less swollen or filthy than it would be without our intervention. “It’ll feel numb, but once you find your balance, it’ll be easier than the pain.”

  She’s not joking. After she applies new bandages and wiggles Mom’s feet into unlaced boots, Mom tries to stand and promptly stumbles. She grabs my shoulder to steady herself. Iris swoops in to act as support, letting me sidestep and shrug off Mom’s hand without guilt.

  “Here,” I say. I take off a huge coat I borrowed from the loading bay. Underneath is my own coat. I miss my old one, which got destroyed in my near drowning. The sleeves were the perfect length rather than constantly flopping over my hands and needing to be scrunched up; the pockets were safely zippered and within easy reach rather than dangling somewhere near my hips.

  Mom switches coats. I recoil at the stink released from the old one. She might have soap, but without showers or clean clothes, that gets you only so far. Mom doesn’t seem to notice my reaction. She pulls on the new coat almost reverently, zipping it up to her chin. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  The three of us creep through the airport. Mom takes careful, unsteady steps, wobbling on each foot before daring to put her weight on it. Finally, we reach the canoe and scooter we’d dragged onto the debris. Mom starts toward them. “Not yet,” I say. “Let’s wait thirty minutes. Most of the engineers will be at dinner then.”

  Mom’s flashlight sweeps back toward us. “I feel like I’m in a spy thriller.”

  “The way you walked just now, it’s more like a spy comedy.” Iris gives me a sideways smile—Mom’s—that I try to ignore. With Iris’s hair too short, her coughs too loud, and a look in her eyes that sometimes makes me wonder if she’s even less OK than I am, a smile like Mom’s should be the least of my concerns.

  The ceiling has completely collapsed here, revealing the black sky overhead. I sink onto a semi-smooth part of the floor. Mom and Iris follow my lead.

  “You know what I think is so bizarre?” Mom aims her flashlight up. It illuminates only dust, the light scattering into nothing. I brace myself for one of her drug-fueled musings—she is clean, right? We would’ve noticed otherwise—while Iris just turns her head, interested. “Tens of thousands of people are up there right now. Tens of thousands, hundreds—more? Denise, I’m sure you know how many, after all that reading you did.” She laughs softly.

  I feel guilty for suspecting the worst. For being so tense when she’s all right for once and she and Iris are laughing almost like we used to. All we need is Dad.

  “They’re already on their way.” Mom runs a hand over her cheeks, streaking the dirt. “And they don’t even know we’re still scrambling to join them.”

  “It is bizarre,” Iris muses. She’s tucked her head in, her pupils wide as she studies the air. “What about the people down here, though? They think the ships have already gone, and the permanent shelters are locked up tight . . . They think they’ve already been abandoned.”

  We’re all silent.

  A moment later, Iris, laughs softly. “Sorry. That killed the mood. All right, you know what’s more bizarre than either of those? That we’re going to be up there, too.”

  “I didn’t ever expect to live out life in space,” Mom agrees.

  “I did,” I joke. It’s a little forced, but it’s enough to make them laugh. “I just expected to graduate first.”

  “Me, I expected to get a luxury apartment downtown.” Iris extends one hand and splays her fingers, as though she’s seeing the apartment right in front of her. “I’d have a rich, politically conscious spouse—gorgeous, too, naturally—and three or four cats that Denise talked me into adopting from her shelter. Which she owns, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” I slouch against the wall until I’m almost horizontal. “It’s a cat-only shelter. Happiest cats in the entire country. I sleep on a couch in the office, as do approximately ten cats. They all have ear tufts.”

  “Sounds comfortable,” Mom says.

  “They keep me warm.” I smile slyly at Iris. “As does my exceptionally pretty, animal-loving husband. It’s a big couch.”

  She holds up a hand for a gloved high five over Mom’s legs.

  “I’ve missed you two,” Mom says. “I’ve missed my girls.”

  I thump back against the wall after the high five. You did? I want to say. Then why were you passed out half the time? Why did you let Iris stay out all night and me stay in my room all day?

  “I’ve missed this, too,” Iris says, choosing the more diplomatic route. “And the sun. The stars. I miss those.”

  “You won’t need to for long,” I say. “The Nassau leaves in four days.” I finally follow Mom’s and Iris’s gaze upward.

  The sun should be right there, already setting.

  The sky is darker than I’ve ever seen.

  I’ll be able to do this from the Nassau as well. I can lie under the dome, watching through thick glass, immersed and lifted high. I’ll have my mother and sister by my side, same as now. I’ll feel grass blades tickle my cheeks and twine into my hair, like every time I lay down in the park at Iris’s festivals.

  But there’ll be no water sloshing nearby, no smell of decay and rot. I won’t have these tiles underneath, and these tiles, they won’t belong to the building, all mortar and stone and bugs and rats; that building won’t dive deep below and into water and into ground. I won’t have land that remembers being a lake. I won’t have the same earth that Dad’s feet walked on, the same earth Grandma died on, that my childhood cat got buried in, that Mom pushed a grocery cart on with me tucked among her purchases; I won’t have the same earth Iris and I built sand castles with and napped on at the beach—the same earth that everyone, everywhere, always, has evolved and lived and died on.

  There are skeletons in this earth.

  I press my hand flat to the tiles and reach. I think of the cobblestones I already miss. The Suriname I’ll never see again. I think of all the people on the Nassau and what my grandchildren will look like, my great-grandchildren, and if anything of me will be left inside them at all.

  I look at the sky and the dust that separates us from the stars that will be my home. I breathe in the night air, the rotten night air, and I miss,

  I miss,

  I miss.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  AFTER VISITING MOM, I NORMALLY GO straight into town, past the ship and into the open waters beyond. Now I let the scooter hover at the loading dock with the most engineers nearby.

  “Not going into the city today?” Matthijs calls when he sees me. He’s crouched on a platform that’s supported partly by the floats underneath, partly by the way it’s roped onto the ship. It looks precarious, but he’s all smiles.

  “Dinner first,” I call back.

  “Planning on bringing back more barrels, after?” Engine Room Guy asks.

  Normally I toss back a smart comment and move on, eager to get inside. Now, the longer I have their attention, the more time Iris and Mom have to sneak in. So I laugh, say, “As many as I can fit on this thing,” and slap the back of the scooter like Iris might.

  I linger near the ship like that, responding in full sentences instead of few-word phrases, smiling where I think I’m supposed to, and fighting my every impulse to turn or scan the water for signs of Iris’s canoe.

  I ma
nage to pass a good few minutes before I don’t know how to push the conversation further. “Can I leave my scooter? You can use it if you want. I’ll be back within the hour.”

  The Surinamese engineer, whose name I still haven’t gotten, practically snatches it; she promises she’ll take good care of it, and when I walk up the loading dock, she whoops and calls to one of the men that she beat him to it.

  When I’m out of sight, I yank down my hood, unwind my scarf, and bring up my tab. Iris has sent a map with one hallway—not far from here—highlighted. Her location. I memorize the quickest route and speed up, not quite walking and not quite jogging, through the loading bay, a left turn, up those stairs . . .

  There.

  Iris has given Mom her tab. They walk across the hall, Mom’s arm raised so they can study a motherboard projection. Mom is talking animatedly—nervously—and Iris nods along.

  I step into the hallway proper. “The kitchen’s just a minute away.”

  Iris jogs at me. “Your suggestion worked. Between the engineers’ coat and the projection, nobody even looked at her twice.”

  “OK. You go ahead.” I nod in the right direction. We discussed this: anyone likely to run into them between here and the kitchen will be coming from this hallway, so I’ll stay and stall anyone passing by to give Iris time to hide Mom.

  I have a hundred questions on my tongue, what ifs and will yous and you shoulds, but I hold them in. Mom tries to meet my eyes as she passes. I let her for a fraction of a second, even smiling weakly, hoping it’ll make her move on faster.

  It does the opposite. “Denise, I . . .”

  Go, I want to tell her. The word doesn’t pass my lips. Someone’s coming. I whirl to face them, running through the half-dozen stories Iris and I concocted to help me stall.