Page 10 of Until the Stars Fall

“Something even more powerful than science is running this ship, Gemma. Besides, all five of us knew what we were getting into.”

“But you didn’t bother to tell your sister, the sixth?”

“I’m sorry, but at least you’re here now to tell us all what to do,” she said in a huff, jerking the cart over the high threshold.

“Uh…you begged me to come!” I spluttered. “Guilted me into coming! Made me think you’d float off into space without me!”

I stepped into my suite, my home for the next two months until we all died in a horrific fireball that, judging by the size of the ship, would take out a small country when it crashed. Unless we were shot out of the sky first. Or would breaking apart in a wormhole be preferable? I didn’t know anymore.

The corners of her mouth turned down. “Gemma, I’m really sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Her penitent pout deflated my frustration, and everything I’d been through in the past few days rushed out in tears. “I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

She rushed in to hug me. “It’s okay, Gem, don’t cry!”

“It’s not you.” I sniffed. “It’s just…this is all a lot. Losing my job, leaving the planet, and I didn’t expect the ship to be this bad off.”

Hannah pulled me toward a wooden farmhouse table near the door and sat me down beside her in mismatched chairs. “You remember what Mom used to say?”

I nodded and pulled back, my face and nose a running mess. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the table. “‘It’s just something else we have to get through.’”

She put her head against mine. “Sometimes life feels like one thing to get through after another. But things’ll get better. Gaia will be better. I have to believe it. And look, if you’re worried about the wormhole and entry, you can work with Summer and Beck on it. I’m sure they’ll be glad for your help.”

I wiped at my face, nodding. “I’ll help.” A long, jagged scar along her forearm caught my attention. I grabbed her arm and turned it into the light. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing. I wiped out on my bike last year at Christmas. I shouldn’t have been riding through the junkyard. Oops!” She jumped up to grab the hovercart, which, although I’d disengaged it, was drifting across the room. While she grabbed its handle and set the kickstand down, I stood up to look around my room.

It must’ve been freshened up in the updates, because it had the same bamboo floor and similar wallpaper to the lobby. A kitchenette opened off to the right of the open foyer, a lounge area was just ahead, and around the right-hand corner, a big bed. A darkened doorway beyond led to a bathroom. Someone had set a devil’s ivy on the counter height farmhouse table I was sitting at. The table didn’t quite go with the rest of the decor, but I loved it. I ran my fingertips across the warm, comforting grain of the wood.

“None of the hotel’s furniture survived,” Hannah explained, “which is a shame because it was all art nouveau revival. So we brought our homes with us and decorated our own rooms. Beck made you a table, and we moved a bunch of your old things in from the house. All heirlooms and baby pictures are accounted for.”

“He’s a carpenter?” My eyes snagged on a sofa in my room’s sitting area that I’d last seen in my parents’ sunroom. I used to love to curl up on it to read. In the bedroom area, my own king-sized bed from my parents’ house sat, dressed in the plush, pink velvet comforter I had as a teenager. It brought no good memories, only a twist in my stomach, and a past I’d do anything to forget.

“Yes, he’s very talented in a variety of things. It’s disgusting. We took pretty much everything from the house. We’re not only traveling in the ship but living in it too, at least until we get settled. The rest we furnished from scavenging abandoned houses.”

The ditsy floral pattern on the worn throw pillows broke a dam in my mind. A rush of memories poured out, happy ones painted over with guilt and anguish churning at the edges of my defenses like the gulf on the other side of the levees. I pressed my knuckles to my lips, curling into myself.

“It’s almost only the dead who are still in New Orleans.”

I turned at the wistful sound of her voice. Bright tears tracked down her pink cheeks. She wasn’t talking about the vast, ancient cities of the dead at the base of Canal Street. She meant Mom and Dad. Each time I thought of them was like entering a new nightmare. I’d give anything to wake up and find them alive and well.

Hannah rubbed her whole face with both hands and took a big breath. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” I said, pulling boxes off the hovercart. She joined me, and we worked in silence unloading the meager belongings I’d packed the night I’d left.

“You never answered me. What do you think of Beck?” she asked with a grin.

“Nannapie, don’t you start with him again.”

“Okay, but I wasn’t lying when I said he was gorgeous, right?”

I sighed. Heavily. “He might be, if he ever smiled once in a while.”

She eyed me like I’d grown a second head. “Almost all he ever does is smile.”

“Then he just doesn’t like me. All I got was fussed at for blowing out candles.”

Her eyes went round. “You blew out candles?”

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