On the Edge of Gone Read online

Captain Van Zand looks from Mom to me. “We can’t just bring anyone on board this late,” he says. “In fact, Els risked expulsion in doing so. In other words . . . you got lucky.”

  “Does that mean—” Mom starts.

  “While you’re on board, you eat your own food, you drink your own water. And once you’re gone, you don’t tell anyone there’s a ship out here. Family, friends, boyfriends.” His eyes linger on me.

  Boyfriends. I wish. If he knew me, he’d know how funny that is. I bite down a nervous laugh. I should be more concerned about something else he said. We’re not even allowed to drink the water? “Can we use the bathroom?”

  “Toilet. No showers.”

  We can’t drink, but we can flush a toilet? What about washing our hands? And how is that different from cupping my hands and—At the last second, I hold my tongue. People get annoyed when I demand details.

  The questions still nag at me like a needy cat batting at my leg. But what if and How come and Then does that mean . . . ? I twist my lips into a smile instead of letting any of those words escape. “OK. Sir.”

  “You can stay two days,” he says. “Then you’re gone.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHEN IRIS KNOCKED ON MY BEDROOM door a few weeks after the announcement—August, maybe early September—it was easily one o’clock in the morning and I was huddled over my tab, in the middle of reading a complicated paragraph. I read it again from the start, pausing after each sentence to let it sink in.

  Another knock. I sat upright. My eyes stayed stuck on the projected text hovering over my desk.

  “Iris?” I asked. Her knock was easy to distinguish from Mom’s.

  “Hey.” Iris creaked open the door. She still had on her makeup and that airy shirt she loved, even the leggings she normally yanked off two seconds after arriving home from a party. She gathered her hair into a loose, curly knot. “It’s late. Whatcha doing?”

  “I’m looking up symptoms. Quasi is sick. He’s not eating at all. And he started wailing today.”

  “Quasi?”

  “Yeah. I told you about him. A cat at the Way Station, the tabby one? He came in two months ago after getting hit by a car. He’s the one with those blue eyes—I definitely told you that—and that scar from the accident that makes him look angry all the time.”

  “I remember. He sounds cute.” Iris held up her hands in surrender. She laughed. “Even on days you’re not working at the shelter, you’re working at the shelter, huh? Don’t they have a vet for this kinda thing?”

  “The vet left.” I tripped over my words to keep talking. I didn’t want to linger on why the vet left, on why there were so many more cats brought in lately. “The volunteers and staff, we’re doing OK looking things up ourselves, and for the surgeries we can bring someone in, but in Quasi’s case—”

  “Denise, whoa. You’re talking way too fast. I know you’re worried about Quasi. But did you do anything else today?”

  I didn’t think she actually knew who I was talking about. I talked about the cats at the Way Station all the time, but I liked Quasi especially. Iris had to remember him. I squelched the urge to keep trying to remind her. “Um. I talked to some friends online. And Grandma called about Dad’s birthday. I think she wants to invite half of Paramaribo.”

  “How was dinner?”

  I bit my lip, thinking back.

  “You didn’t have dinner?”

  “I think I forgot. I just got caught up—I’m really worried about Quasi.” It’s like I saw a chance there: I latched on. “He’s in pain, I think. I’m so nervous about his yowling, and if he doesn’t start to eat . . .”

  Iris let me keep talking this time, about the odds of it being an injury in his mouth we’d missed when we’d checked him that afternoon or maybe a urinary tract blockage, even though he was walking just fine, but I couldn’t tell whether she was listening. “It’s not your fault about dinner,” she said after I had finished. “Why don’t you check the cupboards for anything you like, and I’ll fix it up for you. Give me a minute to talk to Mom.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “When I went to the bathroom earlier, Mom . . .” With my bedroom door open, we both heard the TV yammering in the living room. Mom loved the background noise. Cooking shows, mostly. At that moment, I doubted she even heard a thing. When I saw her earlier, she’d been draped across the couch, eyes staring into nothing. Her mouth had been half open, in awe at something I couldn’t see. “I don’t think that you can talk to her right now.”

  “I thought she’d . . . Never mind. Let’s get you something to eat, ’Nise.”

  Anke, the woman Captain Van Zand called to show us to our cabin, is nervous. Textbook nervous. She keeps swallowing audibly, and she picks at her fingernails as we walk back to the car for our backpacks, pick, pick, pick, until one time she hisses and squeezes her hand into a fist. When she opens it again, there’s a speck of blood.

  I know why she’s nervous.

  It’s been minutes since the first possible time of impact, and we haven’t noticed anything yet.

  She helps us take our backpacks from the car. She pastes a bright smile on her face that I’m not sure is genuine—it fades too quickly. I’m told my own smiles are like that. “I’ll give you a proper tour later,” she says. “Let’s get you a cabin first.”

  Mom is eager to keep up. Her feet smack into the ground with each step, heavy from the backpack. “I had no idea what to expect from these ships,” she says, falling in line with Anke. “It’s huge!”

  I adjust my backpack straps until they feel less like they’re cutting into my shoulders.

  “It’s a small model, if you’ll believe it,” Anke says.

  I watch Anke’s head bob as she walks. I have to look up to do so, since she’s easily a head taller than I am, and I’m on the tall side of average. She’s got red hair, sheet-straight and cut to her shoulders, maybe dyed. I don’t know yet if I like her. She introduced herself as nicely as possible and has mostly ignored me since, but Iris tells me that’s because everything about my manner screams for people to do just that. Don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, don’t touch me.

  Anke is back to picking at her fingernails. She turned the corner into the hallway, which is higher and broader than I’d thought, easily large enough to fit one of those cranes I saw earlier.

  “You’re only here for two days, and we’re all distracted right now, so I won’t keep you long. A lot of these lower levels are for storage or research. Some are administrative. You can go anywhere you like, within limits. I imagine these signs”—she gestures at a door on the right with a sign saying AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY—“are self-explanatory.” For the first time, she glances at me.

  “Right,” I say when I realize she’s waiting for an answer.

  “Let me take you up to the residential levels.” She turns another corner that leads to a set of wide stairs. “Are stairs OK? Or do you need the elevator? We’re minimizing elevator use to save power. We can generate our own once we’re up in the vacuum, but before then we’re dependent on what we have stored.”

  I wonder how wealthy Anke is that she feels the elevator policy needs to be explained. The apartments in my neighborhood installed a pay-or-walk policy years ago. Sometimes my cane-using neighbor would let me sneak a ride with her, but she moved into a nursing home shortly before the announcement. I haven’t used an elevator in months, and haven’t wanted to, anyway. I used the stairs as endurance training: up, down, up, down. The end of the world is no time for weakness.

  I can’t believe it’s actually today. January 29. The date still chills me.

  We jog up several flights of stairs after Anke. She’s walking fast as she takes us into another hallway and steps out through a wide opening. “Ta-da,” she says softly.

  It’s a dome.

  After a few seconds, I dare to follow Anke and Mom out of the hallway and onto the walkway it’s connected to. I stoop as though the ceiling might fall on me. That’d be sill
y, though: I couldn’t even hit the ceiling with a stone if I tried. The dome is so high, you could fit a whole apartment building here. It’s mostly metal, with huge glass plates curved around in ever-expanding bands, revealing the clouded sky. We’re up too high to see the surrounding airport buildings. It’s like we’re flying already.

  I tear my eyes away to focus on what’s in front of us, and see lush leaves wrapped around the railing a few meters away, and beyond that, more green, like bushes or—no—like treetops. The balcony we’re on goes all the way around. Above us are several more identical walkways, and below us, at least two more, with the same vine-wrapped railings. And in the midst of all this is so much space, I could pack in several soccer fields with room to spare. Based on what I could see of it outside, the dome must span at least half the size of the ship.

  My hands tighten on my pack’s straps. They slide up and down, up and down. I take another step forward.

  The space at the bottom of the dome, several stories down, reminds me of a park. Grass, knotted trees, a narrow brook. Benches. Bright patches of flowers. It’s so clean and organized, it’s like it’s from a movie—prettier than any Amsterdam park I’ve seen.

  “People need spaces to relax,” Anke tells us. For the first time, I pick up traces of an Amsterdam accent—higher-pitched and nasal, a dropped n at the end of words. “It looks dark now, but we’ll run the artificial sunlight soon enough.” She picks at her nails again, pick, pick, as if the reminder that we’ll need the artificial sunlight tipped her back over the edge.

  “Are we Dutch, or are we Dutch?” Mom laughs and gestures at the thick blanket of clouds visible beyond the glass. The louder Mom gets, the quieter I get. She prattles on. “I mean, look at that. Artificial sunlight will be a step up.”

  Anke indicates the park, barely seeming to hear Mom. “This is the center of the ship. Several levels ringing the dome on the outside of the ship are reserved for crops. All these plants are real, by the way.” She rubs a vine twined around the balcony railing. “We’re building our own biosphere, and we need green to provide our oxygen. Most of these plants have secondary uses as food, medicine, fuel, and more. Everything on this ship has a practical purpose.

  “Anyway, our water-filtering system and power management are below the storage and research levels, and . . . I’m giving my standard speech. I’ll just show you to your cabin. We can schedule a tour for . . . after.” Pick, pick, pick.

  “We’d love to hear more!” Mom assures her as they walk. “Denise especially. She’s been reading about all of this for months.”

  “After,” I repeat. Any minute now. We’ll get the quakes first, then the air blast, and . . . “Ms. Maasland said the ship was sturdy. Sturdy enough?”

  “Of course.” Anke doesn’t look convinced. She’s still picking at her fingers. “The Nassau is built to survive the vacuum of space for centuries. It can withstand meteoroid hits and all kinds of radiation. It’ll survive some shaking.”

  The impact might be worse than “some shaking,” but I hold my tongue. I eye the park instead.

  Two people lie on the lawn, hands held, eyes aimed skyward. Like they’re soaking in the sight one last time, or waiting, or both. (Any minute now.) The park is empty aside from them. Everyone else must be safely holed up inside their rooms.

  Anke gestures. “You can choose any of these next cabins.”

  We follow her along the curve of the balcony until Mom chooses a door. Anke lets us inside, and while Mom instantly drops her pack to the floor, rolling her shoulders with exaggerated relief, I remove mine more slowly. Instantly, I miss the straps to fuss with. I press my hands flat to my sides, which is a poor replacement. All of a sudden, I’m hyperaware of my hands—of all of me—standing here awkwardly, taking in the room. It’s about as big as our living room: a single bed on each side, two desks, two desk chairs, and a single floppy sofa seat that I already want to curl up on. It has wings beside the head, so you could practically drown in it and block out the world.

  It was true what Mom said, though: I’ve been reading about generation ships. I want to drown Anke in questions. About the shielding, about the biosphere, about the engine, about just how many passengers this ship can support.

  Particularly that last question.

  “The furniture is locked down for now. Are you OK here?” Anke says. “Do you need anything else?”

  “I’m fine,” Mom confirms. “Denise?”

  “I’m—”

  The floor trembles.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  INSTINCTIVELY, I WIDEN MY STANCE, AND—

  Another shake.

  I steady myself against the sofa seat. My backpack falls onto its side, then rattle-shake-slides half under the bed, like something left on the washing machine as it runs.

  “Impact!” I say, as though Mom and Anke haven’t already figured that out.

  Through the open door, I distantly hear people calling to each other, alarmed but not panicked. Something falls. Aside from that, it’s quieter than I expected.

  We wait it out.

  It lasts a few minutes, on and off. Only after it’s been still for thirty seconds do I dare let go of the seat. My hands drop to my sides again. I move them back and forth, my fingertips pressing into my thighs each time.

  “That—that wasn’t so bad.” Mom clears her throat. “My first earthquake.”

  “We don’t know about the damage outside,” I reply. Outside. Our apartment. Iris. “And this is only the beginning.”

  I focus on the way my fingers feel against my thighs, a fraction of a second each time, and the feel of my wrists making those tiny motions. I don’t want to think about outside. Just as I’ve been doing research about generation ships, I’ve been doing research about comet impacts, and I know what’s coming. The tremors are only the first step.

  Stop.

  My fingers are touching my thighs faster and faster until it’s a frantic tapping I can almost lose myself in. My wrists feel hot. A good kind of hot.

  “Denise?”

  Mom is standing right in front of me. I breathe sharply. “What?”

  They were talking, I realize. Something about damage. I don’t know.

  “I’m sorry. What?” I repeat.

  Anke stands near the doorway. “I just said that at least they must’ve been right about the possible impact locations. Eastern Europe–ish. Any closer and—well, you know. We would’ve felt worse.” She breathes a shuddering breath. I can’t tell if it’s relief or lingering anxiety.

  It takes a few moments for her words to register.

  “You OK?” Anke searches my face.

  “OK,” I repeat, and want to bite my tongue because nothing more sensible comes from my mouth. I’ll show her, though. The impact is over. I can ask those questions I wanted to ask. We can even take that tour. I step toward the door, then pause when I envision myself walking through it, following Anke around the rest of the ship with its high ceilings and her voice droning on and . . .

  I hesitate.

  “It’s OK, honey.” Mom steps closer. I mirror her movement and step back. I look at the floor. In my peripheral vision, Mom gives Anke the same look she gave Ms. Maasland.

  My cheeks blaze, and not from the lingering cold.

  “Denise is autistic.” Mom lingers on the last word. As though she revels in this. The explaining, the confiding. “I think it’s too much for her. Our plans changed at the last moment, and this is such a new environment . . . and the impact itself . . .”

  She’s probably right. It is too much. It would’ve been nice if she’d realized that while she was scuttling around the apartment saying, Ten more minutes, honey.

  “The world is ending.” I’m surprised at the spite in my voice. I’m surprised at having said anything at all. “I think I’m doing pretty well.”

  “You are, honey,” Mom says. “Do you want us to leave you for a while? To recharge?”

  I want with all my heart to argue or say something snide. I
nstead, I nod, deflating as I always do. I want this over with.

  “Anke? Is it OK if I come . . . ?” Mom asks.

  As they leave, I hear Mom talking about recognizing the signs of a potential meltdown, and it’s a challenge, but . . .

  I’m glad when the door cuts off her voice.

  I stand in the center of the room and close my eyes. I don’t tap my thighs; I don’t stim at all. I only breathe. I imagine the tension sliding off me. Nothing happened. There’s no comet. Iris isn’t missing. Dad isn’t in a permanent shelter, forever out of reach. It’s just me in this room, and nothing beyond it.

  I’m not sure how long I stand there.

  Then I pull my backpack out from under the bed, sit cross-legged on the floor, and start to repack my things.

  “Denise,” Iris said one morning in late September. “Are you going to the Way Station?”

  “Of course. I have to be there at nine.” I sat on the hallway bench to pull on my shoes.

  “Isn’t it . . .” She sucked in her cheeks. “Isn’t the Way Station different lately?”

  “It’s busier. A lot of people are abandoning their pets.”

  “It’s been a difficult few months.”

  “Duh.” Even if it hadn’t been for all the talk on the Internet and the nonstop informational messages from the government, it’d still have been impossible to miss the changes happening on the streets. Stores and businesses abandoned, houses locked up tight, police presence tripled. Public transport got cut down by more than half. The crashed economy turned the money in my bank account near useless.

  I stood and put on my coat, then realized I didn’t need it with the way the weather had been and took it off again. Iris never interrupted me while I was getting ready. I tossed the coat back onto the rack, irritated, though more with myself than her.

  “Do you still want to keep working?”

  “They need the help. Lots of volunteers have left.”

  Iris carefully retied her bathrobe sash. “Tonight, after dinner, I’d like us to do some research on the comet impact together.”