by Kate Moretti
I understand; I do. She had to make a living. She was already becoming famous for her Intrepid broadcasts, and she couldn’t very well give that up. And Aunt Ramana was right here to take care of me.
And it’s not like she never came back. She’s visited plenty of times—every year on my birthday for the first six years of my life and every few years after that. This has been the longest time she’s been gone between visits, but she’s been touring the Outer Planets, so it’s understandable. She sends plenty of messages, and we have the occasional galactic-chat, though they’re always garbled.
Still, she’s here now. That’s what matters.
We have lunch together, and then Aunt Ramana goes back to Compound Twenty-four. Mom hooks her arm through mine and grins. “We need a chance for a little alone time, baby girl.”
I follow Mom into Aunt Ramana’s bedroom, where she’s staying. She rummages through a suitcase and hands me a rolled-up piece of fabric. “It’s a simu,” she says as I unroll it. “They’re very fashionable on Brinch.”
It’s a dress, or at least I think it’s a dress. There are an awful lot of dangly bits.
“Come on, try it on,” Mom says.
I get undressed, and she helps me into the simu. I’ve never worn a more confusing article of clothing in my life. The dangling strips go this way and that, under my arms and around my shoulders, then tie behind my back. I feel like I’m gift wrapped.
“There!” Mom says triumphantly. “You’d be the belle of Brinch.”
The mirror in Aunt Ramana’s room is small, and I can’t see the full effect, but I smile anyway. I can’t imagine ever walking out of the house like this in Amal, but Mom has still made me feel beautiful.
She pats the bed beside her, and I sit down, though it makes the strips on my chest feel funny, as though someone’s hugging me a little too tightly.
Mom takes my hand. “So I can only stay through next week, but when I go… you’re coming with me!”
I hear her words, but I have trouble pinning them down so that they make sense. Even though I’ve thought of the possibility, hearing it come from her lips is a whole different thing.
She keeps talking. “It’ll be so much fun, Zaylie! We’re going to Grenan next. You’ll love it there, all the sunshine and mountains. You can be part of the broadcast. Won’t that be wonderful? And the producers aren’t certain what will happen after that, but they’re thinking Castyr, which would be phenomenal. I’ll teach you to low-gravity ski. You’ll love it!”
Her words keep coming, waves of them, and I’m drowning. The strips around my chest are like snakes squeezing the life out of me.
“Zaylie? Sweetie? Are you okay?”
Mom’s voice reminds me to breathe. I suck in air and nod.
“No need to pack much. We can get you new clothes on the way to Grenan. Maybe a shopping trip on Astley. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“The apprenticeships get announced next week,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“The apprenticeships. Remember I told you I applied for the spot at Compound Nine?” My brain is starting to work again, but it feels like Veronica’s tug-of-war rope. I’m being pulled apart: travel, adventure, and Mom on one side; Compound Nine, Veronica, and Dr. Kavindra on the other.
Mom’s eyebrows draw closer together, creating a deep crevice in her forehead. She never frowns like that on the netbox screen. “But, babe, you’ve spent your whole life here. It’s time for you to get out and see the galaxy a little. There’s so much out there besides rain and laboratories!”
She has a point, but it doesn’t make the tug-of-war lessen. “There’s a lot to see in the lab, too,” I say.
Mom’s frown grows deeper. “So if you get the apprenticeship, you won’t come with me?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “What did Aunt Ramana have to say about this?”
“I didn’t tell her yet. I wanted to talk to you first.” She leans over and puts an arm around my shoulder. “I don’t need Ramana’s permission. You’re my baby girl. You belong with your mother.”
Have I not belonged with her for the past fifteen years? The question is buried beneath the warm pressure of her arm. I lean in to her and breathe in her scent. Maybe it smells like all the places she’s ever been, all the places I could go.
Mom sticks tightly to me for three days. We don’t talk about whether I’m going with her or not. I get the feeling she assumes I am, but I don’t ask. I just want to enjoy her for a few days without thinking about the future.
On the first day, she shows me pictures from her travels, hundreds and hundreds of them until my vision blurs and I have to go lie down with a headache. When I close my eyes, all those beautiful places continue to flash through my head. All that sunshine.
The next day, she takes me out to the sanctuary, which she claims is the only place worth visiting on Amal. She’s wrong, but the sanctuary is still pretty awesome, especially when you have someone as enthusiastic as Mom to share it with. We go to all the habitats, have a picnic in the greenhouse, and spend a long time feeding the bundchens.
The third day, she goes through my clothes with me, which is not fun and also doesn’t take very long. My wardrobe is pretty utilitarian. I’d like to say that’s because I couldn’t see what I was wearing until recently, but honestly, I have no desire to change it now that I can see it. Clothes on Amal need to keep you warm and dry; beyond that, no one cares what you wear. I attempt to tell Mom this, but she clucks her tongue and drags me back to the netbox to show me the latest fashions on Astley and Xiul.
On the fourth day, Mom’s getting interviewed on Amal’s audiocast talk feed. Amal banned video recordings on the planet around the time AIGS took over—Aunt Ramana refers to it as the anti-Intrepid law, though not in front of Mom—but the audiocast station is pretty popular, not just on Amal but with researchers around the galaxy. They don’t interview just anyone, so Mom’s super-psyched to be asked. She leaves after breakfast to go to the broadcast station in Compound Thirty-three, and I head over to Compound Nine.
“Hey, stranger,” Jarek says when I come in. Veronica circles me with increasing speed, as if she’s trying to decide if it’s really me.
“Hey,” I say, scooping up Veronica and taking a deep breath. I’ve enjoyed the past three days with Mom—well, mostly—but I haven’t had much time to think. It’s like my mind is suddenly clear when I step into the lab, but there are so many things to think about, I don’t know where to begin.
Had Jarek felt this torn when he was applying for his apprenticeship? I try to remember what planet he’s from, one of the N planets—Nixt or Nguyen, somewhere that’s never been featured on an Intrepid broadcast.
“Do you ever miss it?” I blurt out. “Where you’re from, I mean.”
He shrugs, not looking at me. “Sure. You get used to Amal after a while, all the rain and everything, and of course, everyone’s so nice here, but… I think I cried every night the first month I was here.”
“Seriously?”
He gives me a half smile. “Maybe the first two months.”
“And now? Do you still miss it?”
“Yeah, but it’s a different kind of missing. I don’t think about it as much. Amal’s my home now. I know I’m staying here.”
If I travel with Mom, will I always know I’m coming back here? Will that help?
“Your family’s okay with that?” It dawns on me that I’ve never really heard Jarek talk about his family before, and I’ve never asked. Jarek’s just Jarek, someone to goof around with in the here-and-now. It’s hard to think of him as a kid my age, growing up on another planet.
“Yeah, they’re fine with it. They don’t care,” he says, busying himself with the macroscope. At first, I think he’s lying, but then I realize maybe he’s not. Maybe his par
ents really don’t care, or he thinks they don’t.
Sometimes, it’s easy to think that.
He glances over at me again. “You remember my first day here? When you showed me around the lab?”
“Yeah,” I say, grinning. I was eleven, all puffed up with the pride of being the one to give him the tour. Dr. Kavindra always knew how to make me feel important.
“My first night here, before I came to the lab, I really thought I might not be able to do this. And then I got here, and I figured I might be okay. I mean, it was still hard, but I looked at how happy you were at the lab, and I figured if this little girl could be so excited about the place, I could be, too.”
“Little girl,” I scoff.
“You were tiny!” he insists. “Not to mention a real little know-it-all. I didn’t know half of what you were talking about. That was my motivation to study hard—I didn’t want to be upstaged by an eleven-year-old.”
I laugh. “Well, you ended up doing all right for yourself.”
“Thanks.”
I turn on my netbox and pull up the audio feed for Mom’s interview. The screen features links to some recent articles about her, and I click on the first one, figuring I might as well practice my reading skills. I’m still a little slow—after all, I couldn’t see the letters till six months ago—but I’m getting better.
The host introduces Mom, and I half-listen as I read.
Intrepid star Wenda Hyderhahl will be getting some on-screen company soon with the addition of her daughter, Zaylie. Mother and daughter have lived apart for most of the fifteen years of Zaylie’s life, with the girl being raised by an aunt. Zaylie, a micro-preemie born on Amal, was considered too weak to survive her mother’s Intrepid lifestyle, but recent surgeries by Amal’s top doctors have left the teen strong enough to travel.
The mother-daughter reunion is sure to pique the interest of viewers across the galaxy, which will be a boon to the broadcast’s sinking ratings. Hyderhahl’s Intrepid adventures, which have been broadcast regularly for the past fourteen years, and as occasional special broadcasts for three years before that, have recently seen a decrease in viewers, and producers suggested the reunion as a way to boost ratings…
I stop reading and go back to the beginning. Maybe I misunderstood. I read even more slowly, each word dropping into my head like a heavy stone.
I didn’t misunderstand.
I’ll be good for Mom’s ratings.
That’s why she asked me to come.
The words shimmy and dance on the screen, the way they do when I’ve overtaxed my eyes. I look away, but the sick feeling doesn’t leave me. Mom didn’t ask me to come because she wanted me to. She did it because her producers wanted her to. The whole galaxy wants to see our reunion. To them, I’m not a scientist with a promising career ahead of her. I’m just Wenda’s sickly daughter, finally well enough to travel.
That, I realize with the suddenness of a blow to the stomach, is exactly how Mom sees me.
“Zay? You all right?”
I hear Jarek’s voice, but it seems to come from far, far away. I hear Mom’s voice, too, spouting out of the netbox, all bubbly and pleased, but I can’t make out the words.
“I have to go,” I manage to choke out, and I don’t wait for a response. I bolt.
I don’t know where I’m going. It’s just nice to have the rain on my face so I don’t have to know whether I’m crying or not.
I don’t realize how far I’ve walked until I almost trip on the first step up to Compound Twenty-four. All of Amal is perpetually soggy, but Aunt Ramana’s workplace is at the edge of the marshes and had to be built way above ground level. I pause at the bottom step, but there’s really nowhere else I can think of to go. So I climb.
I haven’t been to Compound Twenty-four all that many times, but the receptionist knows who I am and buzzes for Aunt Ramana, who tells him to send me to her lab.
She frowns when she sees me, but she finds a towel. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t want to tell her. I have a feeling Aunt Ramana won’t understand, that she’ll say, “Who cares why your mother’s doing it? If you want to go, then go. If you want to stay, then stay.” Or maybe just, “Well, this will certainly make your decision easier if you get the apprenticeship.”
“Wenda’s done something to put you in a tizzy,” Aunt Ramana says. It’s not a question.
“You know?” I say.
“Not the specifics, no. But I know my sister.” She pulls a box of cocoa out of a cabinet and starts heating water on a piece of equipment that looks as though it has a much more important purpose. “She turned your world upside down the minute she said she wanted you to come back with her, didn’t she? And I don’t think she’s considered that for an instant.”
“This article on the netbox says Mom only wants me because her producers told her it would be good for ratings.” The words exit my mouth in a rush, falling like hard rain.
Aunt Ramana dumps the cocoa into the hot water. “Well, that’s their version. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but you might want to ask your mother about it. Wenda’s pretty good at spinning things her own way, but if you ask her the right question, she’s usually pretty truthful.”
Aunt Ramana hands me the mug. I blow the steam away and wish that somebody else doesn’t have to tell me what my own mother is like.
“It’s a hard choice for anyone to have to make,” Aunt Ramana says, returning to her work. “No matter the circumstances, you’re giving something up either way. You should talk to your mother about that, too. I think she’s forgetting how hard it was for her.”
The cocoa calms my insides a little. “Mom left home when she was my age, too?”
“No, no. I was talking about when she left here.”
When she left me.
Aunt Ramana keeps talking. “It was a heartbreaking choice for her. She was torn up inside, just like you are now.”
I don’t know whether I believe that or not, whether I want to ask Mom about it.
“What about you?” I ask Aunt Ramana after another sip of cocoa. “Have you ever had to leave someone behind?”
“Well, I was hardly born on Amal, was I?”
Aunt Ramana and Mom are from Klorz. I know this, yet I don’t remember which of them told me. I can’t recall either of them ever talking about it.
“Was it hard?” I ask.
“It’s always hard to leave,” she says, manipulating a diagram on the screen of her netbox. “I don’t think I could’ve done it without Wenda. But once I got to Amal, my love for this place was so strong—a place where I could do work I’d always dreamed of, be around other people as passionate about science as I am—this was home as soon as I got here, Zay.”
Home. That’s how I feel about Amal, too. But what if that’s just because I’ve never been anywhere else? And if it’s not, if Amal really is my home, how do I get Mom to understand that?
Aunt Ramana looks over at me as if she knows what I’m thinking. “That audiocast ended five minutes before you walked in. Your mother’s probably back at the house by now.”
I down the last of the cocoa and nod. I have a conversation to start.
Mom looks happy to see me. She even nods agreeably when I say we need to talk. I sit down across from her and try not to feel angry, sad, or really anything. That’s hard. When Veronica gets agitated, she’ll race around the room, shrieking and bouncing off cabinets, tables, and things until she calms down. I would like to do that now, but I am not a lemling. So I sit there and try to remind myself that I’ve only heard one version of the story.
“Why do you want me to come with you?” I ask. Under the table, I run my palms over my knees, back and forth, back and forth.
“What a silly question,” Mom says with a half-smile, as if she’s uncer
tain if I’m joking. When I just look at her, she says, “Because you’re my daughter, and I want to show you the galaxy now that you can finally see it.”
“But maybe I don’t want to see it. Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll travel someday, but maybe right now, I want to stay here and enjoy Amal. I like it here.” As I talk, Mom shakes her head as if I’m still being silly, as if I’m a tiny child who doesn’t know any better. So I ask, “If I decide to stay, will you understand?”
“Is that what you’ve decided?” Her voice takes on an I-can’t-believe-you tone, and I feel tears forming somewhere deep behind my eyes. I blink.
“That’s not what I said.” I pause a little after each word so my voice holds steady. “I said would you understand?”
“No,” Mom says, giving me a sad smile. “I wouldn’t understand. I’m giving you the opportunity of a lifetime. Why don’t you want it?”
“Getting the apprenticeship would be the opportunity of a lifetime, too,” I say quietly. “Getting to work with Dr. Kavindra all these years has been a pretty great opportunity.”
She shakes her head again. “You need to get off this mudhole and see what you’re missing.”
“Because you really think that? Or because it will help your broadcast?” My hands stop moving and hold fast to my knees, as though I need to keep myself firmly planted.
Mom just looks at me. When tears start falling, at first, I think they’re my own. But no, my own tears stay scratchy behind my eyes, still wobbly but not ready to fall. These are Mom’s tears, falling freely and quietly like raindrops on the window.
“Because I love you, Zaylie,” she says.
I should want to hear that. And I do—of course I do. But something’s not right.
It’s not that I don’t think she means it, exactly. It’s just that whenever she says “I love you,” it sounds so new to my ears, so foreign. No one on Amal ever tells me they love me, not because they don’t but because they’re not the kind of people who go around saying it. Aunt Ramana’s love is in the mugs of cocoa she always gives me at precisely the right time and in the way she’s always there, really there, when I need her to be, even though she works a lot and claims she doesn’t like people. Dr. Kavindra’s love is not only in the precious gift she gave me—my sight—but also in the way she always talks to me as if I’m worthwhile and listens to me as if she genuinely believes I have something to say. I never feel like a patient with her, just a fellow scientist. And Jarek… well, the word love would never come out of his mouth, but he knows me, really knows me. Like the way he will instantly turn off the netbox if “Anger Stew” is being broadcast because he not only knows how much I despise that song, he also knows that it gets stuck in my head and that I will drive myself crazy trying to get it out. I don’t know if there’s a lemling version of love, but I’m the one Veronica always runs to when she gets scared, and I can feel her relax in my arms as if she knows I won’t let anything hurt her, and if trust isn’t a form of love, I don’t know what is.
