A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “What? No. DJ doesn’t stand for anything. I think they just liked the name.”

  “Okay, but ‘DJ Storm’ sounds like they expected you to grow up to be either a B-movie action hero or a literal deejay.” I motioned at the front of the gym, where a Teacher stood behind a soundboard, spinning what I supposed passed for music in this part of the galaxy. The song playing had a generic but infectious beat that tugged at my brand-new dancing shoes.

  And I wasn’t the only one itching to move. Though it was still early, twenty or thirty students were on the floor dancing like no one was watching. The rest were seated at tables or clustered in impenetrable cliques.

  Teachers were situated at the edges of the gym, their menacing red eyes seeming to look everywhere at once.

  “I count eleven Teachers,” DJ said. “We’ll wait until more students get here before we try to find somewhere more private.”

  I grunted to let him know I understood. While there were no Teachers immediately nearby, they were robots and we had no way of knowing if they could hear us. We had to be careful what we said. It was why I hadn’t yet told DJ about Ty and my promise that we’d take him with us.

  “Did I tell you I thought I saw Kayla?” That topic seemed safe.

  DJ stopped and threw me a strange look. “Impossible.”

  “Obviously, but I was so sure it was her that I chased her across campus. It wasn’t her, but you wouldn’t believe how similar they looked. Identical almost.” I craned my neck to see if I could spot her so I could point her out to DJ.

  “It’s probably guilt making your brain play tricks on you,” DJ said.

  “Guilt?”

  “I mean, not guilt exactly, but something.” He squeezed my hand. “You watched a girl die. A girl who’d been locked in a room on our ship for weeks.”

  There was still a voice in my head insisting that the girl I’d seen was Kayla, even though I knew it couldn’t have been. “Whatever. If I see her, I’ll show you.”

  DJ just shrugged.

  “What now?” I asked.

  DJ raised my hand to his lips, kissed it, and bowed. “Noa North, would you dance with me?”

  It was so corny that I nearly laughed, but it was also straight out of a fairy tale. I really did feel like a princess. In that moment, I belonged to DJ. I would have gone anywhere with him and done anything for him. I had been born with a broken heart, and Billy had shattered the pieces into tiny fragments, but DJ seemed determined to put it back together.

  I let DJ lead me to the dance floor, slipping between the other students. Just as we reached the center, the hyper pop song that had been playing faded into a romantic ballad. I draped my arms around DJ’s waist and rested my forehead against his as we swayed to the unfamiliar music. I dissolved into him. Nothing else mattered. Not Jenny, not Teachers, not Ty. Not Qriosity or Jenny Perez or finding a way home.

  During that song, I realized something. The universe was vast and cold and empty and would try to kill me if given the chance. But it would never succeed. With DJ near, I would never be cold; with him holding my hand, I would never be alone; with him, the universe was wherever we were together. That was my story. Our story. A love story, set in space.

  “What do you think?” DJ asked.

  “It’s magical,” I said. “I mean, the gym reeks, the music is crap, and I have no idea who any of these people are, but I’m here with you.”

  DJ opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t want him to. Not yet.

  “I thought, after Billy, that’s just the way things were. I thought every guy I met would be like him, and I was afraid to get close to you. I gave it a shot, though, because I figured if I was going to get screwed again, I could at least do it with my eyes open.

  “But you’re not him. You’re you, and you’re the kindest, bravest, most wonderful person I’ve met.”

  DJ shook his head.

  “You are,” I said, “and I love that you won’t even admit it. I love the way you look in this tux; I love the way you think you can sing even though you really, really can’t. I love every second I get to spend with you, and I never want it to end.”

  By the time I finished pouring my heart out, DJ’s cheeks were crimson and he was sweating. “Right, but I was asking… I mean, I meant to ask what you thought about the plan? Which door do you think will be easiest to sneak out of unnoticed?”

  “Oh. Right. The door by the corner that leads to the locker room.” I backed away, horrified. “Ignore everything else I said.”

  DJ grabbed my wrist to keep me from leaving. He kissed me softly but quickly because the moment our lips touched, a dozen red eyes turned our way. He leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I would jump out of a thousand spaceships for you.”

  “I really hope you don’t have to.”

  The music changed to something faster and frenetic, but DJ and I ignored it. We were dancing to our own music, and aside from my momentary mortification, everything was perfect. I was with someone who genuinely cared about me, no one was trying to kill us that I knew of, and nothing was threatening to explode. If I were ever going to be trapped in another time loop, this was the moment I would have chosen. This would have been my happily ever after.

  But this wasn’t the end. Of us or our story.

  NOW

  JENNY FAKED A FIGHT WITH Ty, though I’m not sure he knew it wasn’t real, providing DJ and me the distraction we needed to slip out of the gym through the locker rooms and make our way to the main building.

  The hall lights were dim, giving the school a creepy vibe that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. And it was too quiet. There should have been students shouting over one another as they moved in herds from one class to the next. The lack of chaos was unnerving.

  “Where do you think the students go when school is out?” I asked.

  DJ and I checked classrooms on opposite sides of the hall. We were looking for a computer with network access that DJ could use, though I was worried we weren’t going to find one. What use were computers to Teachers? They were computers.

  “No idea,” he said. “Let’s stay focused, okay?”

  I said “Sure,” but I couldn’t stop my mind from picking away at the problem of the impossible school. “It’s weird, though, right? They’ve got an underground mall. Maybe there’s another level below that with houses. And how come all the adults are robots? Where are the actual adults? Where are the parents?”

  “Got something!” DJ ducked into a classroom containing a dozen workstations organized into two neat rows. He slipped into a seat behind the nearest computer and got to work.

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” I said, remaining near the door. “But maybe hurry up. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  DJ’s fingers danced across the keyboard; his eyes were fixed on the screen. My only real regret about the time I’d spent looping through the same day is that I hadn’t become a computer genius. I suppose I was lucky I had DJ.

  “I’m really glad you were on board Qriosity when I woke up,” I said. “Jenny too, but you especially.”

  “Same,” DJ said.

  “Think of all the people I could’ve been stuck with. My French teacher, Mr. Hoosier? What a dickbag. Gerald, my neighbor who moved away when I was ten. He used to throw rocks at me because he thought it was hilarious, and I’m ninety-nine percent certain he’s going to grow up to be a serial killer. Could you imagine being trapped on the ship with a psycho killer? The only thing worse would have been waking up alone.”

  “Isn’t being stuck with Jenny bad enough?” DJ asked, quickly flashing his dimples.

  I snapped my fingers as a thought occurred to me. “I couldn’t tell you before, but when Ty and I were shopping, he barged into my fitting room and begged me to take him with us on the shuttle when we left.”

  DJ glanced at me with pursed lips. “What was he doing in the fitting room with you?”

  “You’re cute when you’re jealous,” I said. “Kidding. Jealo
usy is gross. It wasn’t like that. But you should have seen him. There was a moment when he became a totally different person.”

  “Weird,” DJ said, his attention back on the computer.

  “I told him he could come because I didn’t have a choice.” I bit my lip. “But we’re not going to do it, are we? Take Ty, I mean. It would change our whole dynamic.”

  “If he wants to leave, and you promised he could come, we have to take him.”

  “What if everyone wants off this rock? We can’t take them all.” There were easily a few hundred students at Beta Cephei High, and while we probably had space for a hundred if we crammed them into the cargo bay, we’d quickly run out of food and water. But the bigger problem was that we only had space for four on the shuttle. With more time—

  “I think I got it,” DJ said.

  “Our coordinates?”

  “Access to their network.”

  DJ sounded excited about it, but before I could congratulate him, Klaxons began to blare. Red lights in the hallway flashed like lights on a fire truck. “Alert! Intrusion detected! Alert!”

  “That’s bad, right?” I asked.

  “Damn!” DJ slammed his fist on the keyboard and then stood so quickly his chair fell backward. “They locked me out.” Fear was etched onto his face. He looked more scared than when we’d been waiting to die from radiation exposure. “They know I was trying to penetrate their system.”

  Whatever else happened, we needed to return to Qriosity before the fold drive engaged. “Forget it, then. It’s time to go.”

  DJ shook his head, undeterred. “I can still get in. We just have to find a computer connected directly to—”

  I took DJ’s hand and smiled. “Hey. It’s all right. We’ll find another way home. This isn’t the end of the world.”

  “I’m sorry, Noa.”

  I kissed his palm and I kissed his cheek and I kissed his lips, and I wished I could keep kissing him until the end of time. But the alarms were incredibly distracting. “Come on. Let’s find Jenny and get the hell out of here.”

  DJ and I dashed into the hallway. He was looking the wrong way and didn’t see the three Teachers blocking the path we needed to take to reach the gym. The Teacher in the middle raised one of its appendages, and a bright flash of light erupted from the center. Time moved like honey. My brain registered the threat before I did. The middle Teacher had fired a weapon at us. At DJ. With every ounce of strength I possessed, I shoved him to the linoleum. The blast from the Teacher struck my thigh, and the pain was blinding. I screamed as DJ dragged me down the hallway and away from the Teachers.

  My leg was on fire. It was molten lead.

  “What were you thinking?” DJ asked. He had pulled me into a classroom and was kneeling beside me.

  “Must not have been.”

  DJ tore open the hole in my trousers, which caused me more pain than actually being shot, and said, “It’s not too bad. You’re not bleeding.” Tears streamed down his cheeks, though he was trying to hide them.

  “Hey,” I said. “What is it?”

  “You’re not supposed to do that!” he said. “You’re not supposed to risk your life for me. You said you’d never do it, and I… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I thought back to the day I had told DJ I wouldn’t have put myself in danger to save him the way he’d done for me. So much had changed since then. “I’m fine, DJ. You said so yourself. And I still don’t know if I’d have the courage to jump out of a spaceship for you, but I’m not about to lose you either.”

  DJ sniffled and wiped his tears with his sleeve. When he’d pulled it together, he peeked out the door. “Three Teachers are still blocking the path, but they’re not coming for us.”

  “There has to be a way out,” I said. “But I’m not sure about walking.” Just the idea of standing sent a surge of pain through my leg.

  DJ ran to the other side of the classroom. He returned with a first aid kit and set about applying some type of bandage to my thigh. A cool sensation spread through my leg, and the pain grew distant.

  “Do you think you can walk now?” he asked.

  With DJ’s help, I stood and slowly put weight on my injured leg. It hurt, but I could manage it. “I won’t be running.”

  “You didn’t do much running before,” DJ said with a smirk.

  I gave him the finger and then kissed him.

  DJ’s face grew sober. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to run for it. Distract the Teachers. Then you find Jenny, and the two of you get to the shuttle.”

  “Nope,” I said. “We are not splitting up.”

  DJ cupped my chin in his hand. “They’ll never catch me.”

  “We go together.”

  “I can do this,” he said. “And we’ll be together back on the shuttle. I promise.”

  There had to be a better plan. Something that didn’t require DJ to put his life in danger so that I could escape. I even tried to think of what Anastasia Darling would’ve done, but she would have marched into the hallway and given the Teachers a long-winded speech that would have somehow reprogrammed them to be her friend or caused their robot brains to explode. I doubted that would work for me. I lacked Anastasia Darling’s oratorical prowess and her writers.

  I had to trust DJ. I did trust him.

  “Be careful,” I said.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “But I’m going to need you to do a hell of a lot more than try.”

  DJ kissed me, and then he was gone.

  NOW

  I COUNTED TO TEN AFTER DJ left before peeking my head out of the classroom. All three Teachers were gone. The hallway was empty. Over the sound of the alarms, DJ’s footsteps echoed as he led the Teachers, who seemed to have no qualms about shooting students with lasers, away from my hiding place.

  Not wanting to waste a single second DJ had bought me, I limped back to the gym. The throbbing in my thigh grew more intense with every step, but I forced it out of my mind. My only goal was to reach Jenny and get to the shuttle.

  When I emerged from the locker rooms into the gym, the scene made me stop and wonder if I’d slipped and fallen into a vat of hallucinogens at some point in the evening. Everyone was dancing. Everyone but the Teachers. The tables were empty; there were no groups hugging the walls. Every single student was in the center of the gym, dancing. It was like some seriously weird choreographed routine that I did not have the time or patience to deal with.

  I scanned the crowd for Jenny and found her in a small group, dancing with Ty and trying valiantly to keep up. She clearly had no idea what she was doing, but she was doing it pretty well. The girl had moves.

  The second the song ended, the students splintered off, and I darted toward Jenny.

  Jenny’s brow was damp with sweat, and she looked a little frazzled, but she smiled when she saw me. “Did you see that?” Her smile flipped. “How did you tear your pants? What’s wrong with your leg?”

  I held out my hand. “We have to go.”

  “Did you find—”

  “Now, Jenny.”

  Thankfully, she realized the seriousness of our situation because she didn’t argue. Jenny turned to Ty. “This was fun. Deeply, deeply weird. But fun.” She grabbed his face and kissed him. It looked and sounded sloppy, and it was awkward to watch, but I also couldn’t look away. When she finished, she said, “Later!”

  Jenny tried to pull me toward the door, but Ty was pleading with me with his eyes to keep my promise. I wasn’t sure I felt bound by what I’d said, seeing as he hadn’t given me a choice, but I thought about what DJ would do.

  “You need me,” he said.

  “Oh, Ty,” Jenny said. “We had a nice night, but I’m just not that into you.”

  “I told him he could come with us, Jenny.”

  Ty leaned in and held out his hand. He was holding a device that looked like a cell phone. “I can help. You won’t make it to your shuttle w
ithout me.”

  “What is that?” Jenny asked.

  “I’ve been planning my escape for quite some time,” Ty said. “The only piece missing was a ride.”

  We didn’t have time for this. DJ had said he would meet us at the shuttle, and I was going to get there no matter what. “He’s coming.”

  Jenny eyed Ty up and down and finally shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  The second we headed toward the exit, the nearest Teachers turned their red eyes our way. We walked faster, as fast as I could on my injured leg. The Teachers advanced, moving quickly enough to keep up with but not overtake us.

  “Keep calm,” Ty said.

  “Just so you know,” I warned them, “those things have lasers.”

  Jenny dug her nails into my arm, which actually did a fair job of taking my mind off my leg. “Say what now?”

  “They’re no matter.” Now that Ty had dropped his goofy jock routine, he was more secret agent than frat boy. He held the door open for me and Jenny, but a Teacher was waiting for us outside.

  “The Equinox Formal does not end for another fifty-seven minutes,” Teacher said. “Please return inside and continue to dance.” Its eye smoldered, pulsing like a heartbeat.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m all danced out.” I limped forward. Teacher rolled back but didn’t move out of my way. Three more Teachers emerged from the gym and formed a ring around us.

  “You will dance and make merry,” the Teachers said in unison, “or you will be punished.”

  Jenny let out a loud cackle. “I’m so scared. What’re you going to do? Give us detention?”

  “Did you miss the part where I said they have lasers?”

  Ty, Jenny, and I crowded together as the Teachers tightened their circle. “Whatever you’re going to do,” I said to Ty, “now would be a good time.”

  “On it.” Ty held up the device so the Teachers could see it, and pressed a button on the side. “School’s out. Forever.”

  All four Teachers collapsed as if they were puppets and Ty had snipped their strings. Even the light of their red eyes died.