A Crash of Fate

by Zoraida Cordova

  Jules chose that moment to return to Izzy’s side. His hair was messy and his skin looked warm. She wanted to shake him. She wanted him to hold her.

  “Sorry I left you alone with my sister,” Jules said. “She’s intense. She’s a surrogate mother to every kid here who doesn’t have one. Where’s Lucky?”

  Izzy didn’t need a surrogate mother, but she needed someone to remind her where she belonged. Wherever home was? That was the Meridian. It was old and chugged fuel, but it was the only place where she felt safe. Being on Batuu was messing with her mind. She had to stop vacillating between nostalgia and dreams and do the job.

  “Izzy?”

  “She flew away,” she said, then walked past him, down a path where the labyrinth of weeds grew unruly and tall, hiding her from sight. She breathed in the sweet smell of grain, of fertilized soil, of grass. Jules.

  She let out a pained laugh at the thought of having made promises to both Rakab siblings. To Jules she’d promised to come back. To Belen she’d promised to stay away. She could keep both of those promises, even if the first one had been thirteen years too late.

  There had been a good rainy season, and it showed in the wildness of the trees, in the lands that lay on the periphery of the farm that gave way to jagged spires. Just as they had when they were kids, they hiked over the crags, keeping balance with their hands. They stopped on a small grass mount enclosed by narrow rock walls, far enough from the farm that no one would notice them.

  Something had upset Izzy, and Jules had a good idea what it could be. “Did Belen say anything to you?”

  “No,” she said, her voice tight.

  “Lie. I think I’ve earned some goodwill from you today.”

  She whirled on him then. The green of her eyes was just as wild as the weeds that towered over them. She ran a hand through her hair and shook her head.

  “You want to talk about lies? Let’s start with you.”

  His heart beat wildly against his ribs. “What about me?”

  “You told me that you didn’t know what was keeping you here,” she said. “That you haven’t found an adventure worth chasing.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  She waved her hands in the air, her voice tense. “Everything. I’m not your adventure, Jules.”

  “I never said you were.” He took a step back. What had Belen said to her?

  “Then why are you still here on Batuu when you could be anywhere else?”

  He’d had enough people in his life asking him the same question. Belen. Haal. Other farmers. Lee. Even Dok. He’d never been able to give a real answer. He understood why Belen believed that Izzy was the sole reason he’d never left the planet.

  One year, when he was around eight years old, there was a bad harvest. There wasn’t a lot of work to go around, and some families were taking off on transports to nearby worlds in search of jobs. All Belen had done was suggest it to her parents. Jules wouldn’t go. He remembered it had been one of the few times he’d thrown a fit. What if Izzy came back? What if he wasn’t there when she did? The Rakab family had stayed put, but it hadn’t been to appease Jules. It was because his parents had found temporary work instead. His father would have put up with Jules’s cries no matter what. He knew that.

  Another time, after he’d gotten the opportunity to enroll in the academy after most of his friends had left the planet, Belen had taken him out to celebrate. It was the first time he’d been drunk. He’d confessed that he’d declined and thrown out his application. He’d never seen her so upset. He remembered saying something about Izzy when Belen asked why. But he couldn’t recall exactly. Maybe it was just her name. That memory was cloudy, blurred by his first time being intoxicated.

  Maybe when he was a boy he’d been heartsick and waiting for a girl to return. But he had been a child then. Children were allowed to have ridiculous dreams. He couldn’t lie to himself though. Even after he’d given up the notion that he’d ever see her again, a tiny part of him still wished. Had that wish embedded in his mind so deeply that even earlier that morning he couldn’t figure out what to do with his life until she’d shown up?

  The answer wasn’t simple. Even if what Belen had said was true, he was his own person. He’d had a good life on Batuu. It didn’t matter why he’d stayed.

  “Why wasn’t it enough that this is my home?” he asked. “I can imagine what my sister said. But, Izzy, everything has changed. Now I have—”

  “Oga offered me a job,” she said quickly. “An audition, really. I’m going to take it.”

  The wind blew around them, cooling as the suns began their descent. He’d been hit by a lot that day, but nothing compared with those words.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because it’s the only thing I have.” Her eyes were glossy. “I was just beginning to think I belonged here, but now I’m not so sure. But I do know one place that has always been constant for me, and that’s my ship. It’s the sky.”

  He wanted to hold her, to tell her that she could have him. She didn’t have to feel she was alone in the galaxy anymore. But he didn’t think she wanted to hear that. “An hour ago you were furious at your mother for leaving you behind. What now? You’re just ready to follow her into the grave?”

  “Do you even know what’s out there, Jules?”

  He scoffed. “You know that I don’t. But please, enlighten your farm boy on the great wide galaxy.”

  “I asked you to come with me,” she said.

  “That wasn’t a real offer and you know it. That was you wanting to be certain that you can’t trust or count on anyone. You set me up to take that fall.”

  “You don’t know me.” She shook her head. “We can do this little tour of the Outpost, but at the end of the day we are virtual strangers.”

  “Lie,” he said again. She was so close to him that if she tilted her head up they would be close enough to kiss. Why did he want her more than it was reasonable to? Why did she have to come back only to keep reminding him that she was leaving again? “I know the galaxy will never be big enough to fill that emptiness in your heart, Izzy, because you don’t want it to. You want to keep running because you wouldn’t know what to do if you had to stop.”

  “And you want to stay here because the second you left atmosphere you’d lose the only safety that you know.”

  He reached for her, to hold her, to tell her that there was nothing wrong with safety. He wished he could make the galaxy safe for all of them, but he was only one person. So he closed his fists around air and put more distance between them until he was leaning against a rock wall.

  “You’re right,” he told her, weary and spent. “It’s best you leave. Chase the memory of your mother or Ana Tolla. Skies, even Oga’s a better option for you than I am. But while you’re chasing that, don’t forget that you had a father, too, and from what you’ve said he wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

  She walked over to him and pressed a finger into his shoulder, hard. “That doesn’t change that I can’t give you what you want.”

  He was so angry with her. But when her jab softened into a touch, some of that anger melted. She pressed the palm of her hand on his shoulder. “What have I asked of you that you can’t give, Izzy? Because I think we’re fighting for the same thing.”

  “Me,” she said. “You were willing to change the course of your life on a whim. That’s too much pressure to put on one person. I don’t know how to be that much to someone.”

  He felt his anger simmering, melting, and reshaping itself the way he’d seen the vendors in the glass market stall do with bags of sand. Breakable. Fragile. He could not afford to be that. Neither of them could.

  Izzy and Jules had a long past and seemingly no future, but as she brought her lips to his, the singular thing in their lives that hadn’t changed was that they had each other.

  She should have kissed him hours before, but it was as difficult to be honest with herself as it was to be with others. Jules grippe
d her softly by the shoulders and pulled her against his chest. Her anchor, solid as the boulders around them.

  When she’d woken up that morning, angry and heartbroken after being left behind, she couldn’t have predicted where she would end up—surrounded by jagged rocks and trees so crooked they looked like they were hitchhiking their way up the cliffside. She pressed herself against him, wished they could take back all the terrible things they’d said to each other. But wasn’t that where they’d gone wrong? Her lying. Him holding back.

  She thought of the little girl she used to be, chasing spiran fireflies across the plain behind their homes, her hair in the two braids her father would make every morning before dropping her off to play with Jules. They skinned their knees when they climbed rock spires. Equipped with rusty screwdrivers, they carved their names into the rock. She wouldn’t be able to find the spire where they’d done that, or the cliff where they’d spent their last day together, but she bet Jules would.

  It was Jules who broke their kiss first. Somehow they’d ended up on the ground. He propped himself on one elbow and they stared at each other. He met her hands with his, farm boy hands. Now that she knew what it was like to kiss him, how was she going to keep her promise to Belen and leave?

  Jules let out a deep chuckle. “Say something, Izzy, because my brain is fried.”

  “I wish I’d come back sooner.”

  He took off his canvas jacket and offered it to her as a pillow. She watched the sky. They had to leave soon to go to the coordinates Dok had given them, and then the strange day would be over. Izzy felt a kind of excitement she hadn’t in so long. The tight knot of anxiety that seemed to always be lodged in her chest had unraveled sometime between leaving Dok’s den early that morning and reaching the farm. Perhaps it was a side effect of being with Julen Rakab.

  “It might not have been the same.” He touched the cluster of freckles along her jaw. “I shaved my head last year on a dare from Volt.”

  “You’re right. I would have just kept walking.” She scrunched her nose.

  He shook his head, grinning. “I mean maybe I was too busy working or running around with my friends and you were with your crew. We’re not done figuring ourselves out. But maybe you came back at the right time.”

  He was right about that, too, she supposed.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” Izzy said. “I’d almost forgotten that my dad brought me to work a couple of times.”

  He bit his bottom lip. “I’m sorry I said that about your father.”

  “You weren’t wrong. My mother might have taught me how to fly and shoot,” she said, “but I always felt like I was chasing after her love. My father just gave it.”

  There were other things her father had taught her: How to be kind when you didn’t always feel it in your heart. How to read star charts, because there was always a way to fly yourself out of anything but a black hole. He’d taught her other things she couldn’t put to use, not if she wanted to pursue a career as a smuggler—like you could love someone even if you didn’t always understand them. It was never an official lesson, but she’d watched and gathered that love was the only reason her father had stayed with a woman who’d been practically married to the stars.

  It was stupid to think of her parents at a time like this, but she couldn’t help it.

  In truth, Izzy felt out of her depth, though she loathed to admit it. “I made a promise to Belen.”

  Jules frowned. “Please tell me it did not involve me.”

  She met his eyes, even though she wanted to look away. It was easier to be honest when she didn’t have to look at him. “She told me that if I was going to leave, not to come back.”

  He groaned. “She shouldn’t have said that to you.”

  “No, she shouldn’t have. But she did, and I agreed.”

  “Then—don’t leave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You asked me to leave with you, and I said no because I thought the only reason you were asking was because you were afraid.”

  She had been. A part of her still was.

  “But I’m not afraid,” Jules said. “I’m not asking you to stay forever. Stay for a couple of days. I bet it’s been hours since you last slept.”

  She turned his offer over in her mind. What would she do in the Outpost? She felt like she’d seen it half a dozen times over that day.

  Be with Jules. The answer came instantly.

  “For a professional liar, you take your promises seriously,” he teased her.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  The Jules she’d been with all day was back. His laughter was contagious as he fell against her. Jules pressed a soft kiss on her jaw.

  “I do want you to stay,” he said. “I’m not done getting to know you.

  Izzy had been so consumed with him that she hadn’t realized the sky was beginning to show the first signs of color, so bare it was like a drop of ink in a glass of clear water. She sat up and handed him his jacket back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Suns are setting,” she said.

  They raced back to the speeder.

  Jules Rakab had kissed girls across Black Spire Outpost, but he had never felt a fraction as elated as he did the moment Izal Garsea pushed up on her toes and reached for him. The wind around them was cold and the ground even colder, but their lips weren’t. The moment felt like it went on forever and was cut too short.

  Whatever they had begun that day, it could continue. She was staying. He was already thinking about how they should celebrate after getting rid of the blasted parcel that had rained chaos on their day.

  “How far are the coordinates?” she asked.

  “We’ll make it,” Jules assured her.

  The worry mark on her forehead was back. “Are you sure?”

  He put everything he had into his speeder engines, and the force of the velocity kept them from being able to speak. He wished he could tell her that he was unsure of so many things—what he wanted to do with his life and where he might be in the next year. He was unsure if he’d ever turn into the man his father wanted him to be. He should have been unsure about his feelings for Izzy, too, because they were irrational. At first it was brought on by her beauty and nostalgia for their youth, but throughout the day he had wanted more of her. Her anger, her fears. He was certain about her.

  When they reached the drop-off location, Jules thought about the day he’d fallen into a cave. He’d been out with his friends searching for the cenotes and came upon a cave covered in roots and crumbling ruins. He’d slipped on the wet rocks and gone through a hole in the ground he hadn’t noticed. Naturally, his friends ran because they were afraid of getting in trouble. Belen had found him on her own. He loathed being so small. But he hadn’t been as terrified as he should have been, because he knew Belen would come for him. She’d been trying to look out for him when she asked Izzy to stay away from him. But he was his own person. He hoped to make her see that.

  “If anything could get me to believe in magic,” Izzy said. “It would be this place.”

  He squeezed her hand. That part of the land was covered in pale gray rock formations and rich green grass fed by the water in the cenotes. Trees grew low, their wispy leaves brushing the ground as if they were bending forward in prayer. There was a stillness there. It was a place of secrets from the time of the ancient ones who once roamed those lands. There was nothing new on Batuu, and nothing about it ever went wasted by new settlers, no matter how long they stayed.

  The suns were bleeding toward the horizon, giving way to two silver moons. He could have stood there watching her until the light went out, but then they heard a clicking noise behind them.

  They whirled around, staying close to each other.

  “Bright suns, travelers,” Jules said.

  The two strangers who approached were dressed in plain trousers and long-sleeved shirts that had seen better days, and they carried blasters at their hips. One was a young Mon
Calamari man, and the other was a woman a little older than Jules. She had dark brown skin and tight curly hair kept short. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “And rising moons,” the Mon Calamari said. “I’m Lejo.”

  “Dok-Ondar sends his regards,” Jules said.

  “May the spires keep him,” Lejo said. His voice carried a heavy weight.

  “Thank you for coming all this way,” the woman said. She didn’t introduce herself, and neither did Izzy and Jules.

  Izzy shook off her pack and knelt to take out the parcel. After everything they had been through that day, she somehow managed to say, “Just doing my job.”

  The other woman flashed a knowing smile. She turned to Jules and watched him carefully. “In that case, thank you both for doing your jobs.”

  It hit him all at once. No one lived in the ruins, not even new settlers. But he realized, if the First Order was a loud display parade in the Outpost, then wouldn’t the side that opposed it be hidden whispers waiting for the right time? Something within him shifted for a second time that day. The first was when Izzy had kissed him. That was possibility. This shift—he couldn’t name yet. But it was bright.

  “I’d heard rumors that the Resistance was on planet, but I didn’t think it was true,” he said.

  Lejo quirked his head to the left. “Why’s that?”

  Jules smiled and lifted a shoulder. “You never know what’s true around these parts.”

  “Dok wouldn’t have sent just anyone out here,” the woman said.

  “How do you know Dok?” Izzy asked.

  “My mother was a botanist on Raysho. She used to procure bulbs for Dok’s gardens.”

  Dok’s gardens? was Jules’s first thought, followed by the realization that Raysho was in the Hosnian system. Before he could say anything, she spoke again.

  “I’ve heard that everyone on Batuu is always either looking for a new life or running from one. Which one are you?”

  Jules thought about that for a moment. Why did she want to know? He had nothing to run from. People always seemed to want more—more credits, more things, more space. But that didn’t mean a new life. And he had never wanted to run from his. When he looked at Izzy, the emotions she kept behind her steel walls, he reconsidered what it would mean for her to have a fresh start. What it would mean for him, if she would have him.