7

“Are we dead?”

Ari’s voice. I open one eye, then another, and watch as Becka tugs hard on Ari’s Einsteinish hair. He snaps his own eyes open and takes his hands off his ears. He looks dizzy, probably from some combination of whatever we just went through and Becka touching him.

“Nope, not dead,” Becka answers, bracing herself against the glass walls as if she’s woozy. “But not perfect either.”

“You guys feel weird too?” I ask, rubbing my temples. I have a massive headache. My vision’s a little blurry.

They nod and I’m glad I’m not the only one. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like, for a tiny moment, life itself went dark. And it was pretty nauseating.

“You ever been to Six Flags Io?” Ari asks Becka.

She glares at him. “Nah. I hate amusement parks.”

“Um, yeah,” Ari says back. “Me too. For sure.”

I shake my head in disapproval. Ari’s family has season passes to Six Flags Io. He had his bar mitzvah party there this year. Which Becka would know if she had bothered to read the invitation he gave her.

“But right now,” Ari adds, “I feel kind of like I do after riding some of the Mach-II coasters. I mean, if I’d ever ridden one.”

Becka’s barely even listening to him. “So what happened? Are we quarantined? Or did you . . . do something?”

I look around. The engines are back up and running and the displays around the room seem to have gone back to normal.

“I don’t know,” I say, pressing a hand to the glass. “Ship?” No answer. “Hello? Ship?”

Nothing.

“Hey,” Ari calls out. “Look at this.”

The hologram of the solar system is as bright as it was before. All of the planets and moons are perfectly positioned. Any kindergartener could label it.

“What?” I ask, leaning in.

But now I see that the map is different in two ways.

“We’re gone,” Ari says flatly. “The dot that shows where we are. It’s gone.”

The text underneath the map is also changed: “Current Location: Unknown.”

***

We’re all freaking out at this point, though none of us will admit it out loud. Becka wants to get back to the cafeteria to check on Diana, and since there’s nothing left for us to do in the engine room, we retrace our steps. We walk in silence, lost in our own heads. But as we step through the second hatch and round the last corner, Ari stops short.

“Shhh,” he snaps, putting a finger to his lips, even though no one said anything.

“What?” I ask. “We’re almost there.”

“You didn’t hear that?”

Ari’s eyes are scanning the floor near the edge of the wall.

“Hear what?” Becka and I ask at the same time.

“There!” Ari points. “No, there!” His head jolts back and forth, like he’s following something darting around in front of him.

“What are you looking at?” Becka yells.

But for the first time since Ari learned to crawl, he ignores her. Instead, grinning from ear to ear, he bolts down the hallway past the entrance to the cafeteria.

As Becka and I watch, Ari’s feet screech against the floor. He leaps into the air and, with hands stretched out in front of him, does a belly flop onto the ground, landing flat on his stomach.

“Oof,” he grunts, flipping over and holding up his hands in triumph. I see a tiny flapping creature wiggling between his closed fingers.

“You’re kidding me,” I say.

“It’s Doctor Shrew!” Ari yells.

He lifts a few fingers, just enough to show off a small furry head.

“Your hamster?” I ask. “I thought Principal Lochner took him away.”

Ari frowns. “No thanks to you.”

So here’s what happened: A few weeks after my dad got fired, I was in a bad place. I stopped studying and doing homework. And, for the first time in my life, I cheated on a test. I mean, it wasn’t a super important test or anything. Just some random pop quiz. But I guess the no-cheating policy pretty much applies across the board. I got caught copying off Diego. And while Principal Lochner was yelling at me in his office, I let slip that Ari had snuck a hamster onboard after Thanksgiving break. I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe I was just looking for a diversion. Maybe I thought that he’d get so mad about the unauthorized pet that he’d forget about my misbehavior.

No such luck. Instead, Doctor Shrew was taken away and kept in Principal Lochner’s office, and I had to retake the test.

“Like I’ve said a hundred times already, I’m sorry for ratting you out, okay?”

I really wanted to say, “I’m sorry for hamstering you out.” But I’ve used the joke before and Ari isn’t a fan.

“Whatever,” Ari says, peeking into his hands. “His cage must’ve gotten knocked over when we were attacked. And he bolted his way to freedom!”

Becka moves closer to Ari. “He’s so cute!” she says, petting the Doctor’s back. Ari’s in heaven.

Doctor Shrew jumps out of Ari’s hands, landing on Becka’s shoulder. “And I think he likes me!” she squeals.

Ari sighs like a balloon losing air.

“Why don’t we talk more about the hamster after we’ve figured out what’s going on?” I suggest.

“Right,” Ari says. “Good idea.” He grabs Doctor Shrew and tucks him into his front shirt pocket.

It’s no use trying to sneak back into the cafeteria unnoticed. We either saved the day somehow (which means that leaving without permission will probably be forgiven) or we didn’t save anything (which means that we’ve probably got bigger problems). So we just walk up to the doors, wait for them to slide open automatically, and step through.

Becka gasps.

Everyone’s gone. The students, the teachers. Everyone.

Ari’s eyes are wide. “They left us,” he says to me. “You were right. We never should have wandered off.”

Which doesn’t make me feel any better.

I try to be mad at Ari for not listening to me earlier, but I only end up feeling mad at myself. I didn’t have to let Ari convince me to go to the engine room.

So I try being mad at Becka for pressuring me into engaging the protocol, but that doesn’t work either. I made the call, in the end. And not even because I thought it would save us. Mainly because it had felt so good, for a split second, to believe my dad was looking out for me. Thinking about me. Protecting me.

Which was stupid. Kid stuff. And that’s on me.

We walk into the center of the quiet room. The lighting is back to normal, so we can see that everything’s still a mess, with tables and chairs and juice boxes scattered all over the floor.

“Relax,” says Becka in a shaky, anything-but-relaxed voice. She opens her palm and tries to use her ring to “Text Diana,” but the ring glows red. No service.

I try my ring too. Nothing.

“They probably evacuated before the countdown ran out,” Ari says. He’s panicking, talking faster and faster. “Who even knows where they are now? Who even knows where we are? With comms down? And they would’ve taken all the shuttles—we’re trapped here by ourselves . . .”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I say, trying to convince myself that everything’s going to be okay, even though it’s not. “Maybe they’re somewhere else on the ship.”

“Should we go check?” Becka asks hopefully. “Go see if the shuttles are still here?”

I nod. “Good idea. Maybe they only headed down to the hangar bay but haven’t actually left yet, and we can still catch them.”

Of course, if five minutes is enough time for us to go to the engine room and come back, it’s enough time for everyone else to have evacuated the ship. I may not want to believe it, but I’m not delusional. We’ve been left all alone.

“Don’t . . . move . . .”

Almost.

The unfamiliar voice is raspy, like an old man’s. It came from behind me. A red laser bolt—a warning shot, I think—darts past us, inches to the left of Ari’s sleeve. It strikes the wall on the opposite end of the room and burns a hole straight through to the other side.

“Put your finger-bunches in the air,” the stranger says, “or be fired upon.”

We do as we’re told despite the fact that this guy just called hands “finger-bunches.” But as Ari lifts up his arms, Doctor Shrew—who’s always had trouble staying in one place for long—starts clawing his way up and out of Ari’s pocket. Ari’s short, but for the tiny hamster, a four-foot jump would be like me diving off a four-story building. So—on an understandable but totally idiotic instinct—Ari jerks his hand down to push Doctor Shrew back into his pocket, violating the “don’t move” order.

And we hear what sounds like the charge-up of a gun echo around the room.

“Whoops,” is all Ari has time to say, before the gun fires three shots—one for Ari, the second for Becka, the third for me.

A sizzling pain hits me in the back, just underneath my shoulders. It spills outward, up my neck, down my legs, out to my fingers. My whole body goes numb as I slump down to the floor, twisted into a pretzel. And my vision explodes with bright colors—purple, pink—before fading to black.

The last thing I see is Doctor Shrew scampering off, bolting his way to freedom.