Page 3 of Crash Landing
“You’re biting your lip. You’re thinking about him. I made you think about him,” he laughed, elbowing my arm. “Thinking about him shirtless?”
I swiped my foot out to kick him and hissed before standing from my seat.
“I need to get to my room. I have to study my ass off if I’m going to get that internship.”
“Good luck,” Thomas called as I marched away. “And don’t forget to write from the heart. Not everything has to be an equation.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
2: Sam
All night study sessions and aspirations were things I never thought I’d do or have. I was the fuck-up. The girl who was always in debt and doing shady things on the streets for credits. I wasn’t the hard worker or the competitive type. At least, I didn’t used to be. There wasn’t one foster family that said I’d amount to anything and if you hear that enough, you believe it. My only rebellion was leaving to amount to nothing somewhere else.
But I guess that wasn’t really a rebellion. It was more like a tantrum. I didn’t prove any of them wrong. I just left so they couldn’t see me prove them right. I left, I got into trouble, I had one friend who accepted my faults… and then she fell in love with an alien and became important.
Me? I wasn’t important. Not yet. But I could be. For once in my life, I thought I could be more and if I could just get through one last night of study, I could be one step closer to being someone.
Of course, pulling an all-nighter the night before a big exam that could make or break my near future was both wise and foolish. I was tired as hell, wired on coffee, and a bit delirious when I sat at my exam terminal to start the process. There were nineteen others in the room with me. It was dark save for the faint glows coming from each individual terminal. There were no windows. Headphones canceled out sound. Despite not being the only one there, it felt lonely.
But I wasn’t there to be comfortable. I was there to be the best so I could get an internship that could change the trajectory of my life.
Hours and hours later, I was the fourteenth candidate to finish the exam and I wasn’t feeling confident at all. The ending essay was the worst. I never knew what to say. I wasn’t sure if that was nerves, fatigue, or a general lack of faith in myself. Either way, I was stressed out of my mind as I lurched out of my seat and walked out.
Deep breaths.
My walk back to my small on-campus apartment felt miles long. I hadn’t seen the city in weeks. My world was a group of too-white buildings, cafeteria food, studying, and dreaming about the things I could accomplish if I tried hard enough.
I watched my feet as I walked on the meticulous white tile of the main overpass. Large windows gave me a good view of the setting sun, but it wasn’t the sun that I looked for when I lifted my head. My gaze found the Nexus so fast, it was like it had a laser target on it. In the late day, it was nothing but a weird, white dot. It showed up just about as much as the moon did that time of afternoon. It was faint but damn did I long to be on it again. The short time I spent up there in space was more fulfilling than all my twenty-eight years on Earth. At least up there I was important and people expected things from me rather than dismissing me. Even if it was all a lie, the feeling was one I wanted to experience again.
But why did it have to take a spaceship to get there?
I pulled my tired shoulders back and continued walking, lifting my chin when my eyes refocused on my faint reflection in the glass. Since coming back to Earth, I’d gotten rid of the girly pink streaks in my hair and covered them up with a caramel brown.
It was the most generic shade I’d ever seen on myself.
My hair had grown just past my shoulders, it was parted down the middle, and I wore a white button-up, black leggings, and slightly healed boots.
I missed my funky hair, skirts, and brightly colored shirts, but if I was serious about my future, I wanted people to look at me like an adult and not like an irresponsible child.
I kept walking with a sigh and finally arrived at my room. The common room was probably serving dinner, but I was too tired to even care. As much as my stomach was rumbling, I needed sleep and I thought I should get it before my brain got a third wind and started flooding my head with anxiety-driven bullshit.
Kicking off my shoes, I fell onto my mattress and stared up at the white ceiling. It was lonely. I was a social queen once upon a time, but striving for something really turned that upside down.
I missed Innifer. I missed my best friend. Deep down, I truly wished she was living her best life, but on the surface, I was pretty damn bitter that she found her way and left me in her dust.
Well… she didn’t leave me in her dust. She asked if I wanted to come with her on her space adventures aka a rescue mission to find missing people from the freighter attack that blew up our lives. I refused. Adventure wasn’t kind to me. I did a lot of complaining when I was up there, but that was only because flying drove me nuts. Sitting in a space city being important was great. Flying around and trying to survive one space attack after another, not so much.
I sighed again and closed my eyes, trying to reason with myself. Innifer adapted to the thrill. The unknown. And she adapted really well to her alien boyfriend. Vahko was a good guy. He was protective, sincere, and hot… in a weird, angelic kind of way.
I replaced my anxious thoughts with humming and tried to be happy for her. Before she got too far for calls to go through, she said her bond with Vahko meant they were working on fertility solutions for his entire race. And I supposed something that important wasn’t worth being jealous over. She found a calling… and the love of her life. With any luck, I’d find something or someone just as important.
Was it supposed to take so long to find out about an exam result? Two weeks seemed like a long time to me. I hadn’t heard of any other students getting the internship, but I was still biting my nails wondering if I’d just been out of the loop. Gregor was insanely gifted in all the ways people in our field were expected to be. Natascha was articulate, brilliant, and had a perfect smile. Hans was younger than everyone in the university and still had top grades.
I groaned and slammed my head down on the table a little too hard. My spoon clanked in my coffee mug.
“I should go check,” I said.
Thomas chuckled. “No, we’re taking a break from that place. You and I both agreed you needed time off campus.”
