Attention: SECOND SHIFT
Subject: New Evening Delivery Options
Entrees: Crispy tofu and microgreens wrap, four bean burrito
Sides: Tortilla chips and salsa, tangerines
*Dessert* Lemon cupcakes
Every time Viveca was right and my parents’ crowd was wrong, it gave me chills. It felt like my sister’s halo of clarity had passed over to Viveca, and I was the lucky one allowed to bask in that glow all over again.
I’d been on the outside of big decisions and happenings since I could remember. Even before my sister stole the world’s heart, my parents’ dinner table conversations had become the next semester’s coursework for the stringy-haired students who babysat on Saturday nights. Their vacation chats turned into books in the bookstore.
As the listener, and interrupter, of those conversations, I knew my place.
Now, here came Viveca, sharing with me. Being on the inside was exhilarating.
When I found my parents waiting for me again the next day, I was buoyed by Viveca’s faith in me. She made sure I knew my help, in both the hunt for the leak and the now-official holiday prep, was invaluable. I practically floated onto a chair.
Andrek plodded in and perched on the chair’s arm, looking more run-down than yesterday. He passed me a weak-tea smile and nodded along to my parents’ even weaker good morning platitudes.
I tuned them out aside from occasionally ticking off another “Viveca said so” box. They droned on about necessary decisions, as if they didn’t say the same nonsense yesterday, while I ran my fingertips absently over the vial labels in my bubble case.
When Mom finally got to the part where she urged me to come straight to our quarters, I outright refused without feeling the least bit sorry.
“I’m going on with normal life, like you wanted. I’ve got grief group and work then memorial planning. You know, for your daughter? Who was murdered by the people you think we can hide from?”
Mom gasped, and Dad jumped to her defense. “That’s not fair, Lane!”
“Are we only worried about things that are fair now?” I asked. “I thought that was something that died with Faraday.”
“You are so out of line, I don’t know how to talk to you,” Mom said. “But I’ll say this. Nobody wants to beg or hide or surrender. Nobody. But unless military aid arrives in time, our only other option is complete isolation in the subbasement. If we run out of food and water, what would you have us do? Die? We’re a community, not a suicide cult. We have to be prepared for the worst, even while hoping it never comes.”
“But by planning how to surrender, you’re psyching yourselves up to do it!”
“That’s because supplies keep vanishing!” Mom screamed. “With every crate that gets stolen, surrender becomes more likely!”
I screamed right back. “Why are you yelling at me about it? I’m not the thief!”
Andrek went so tense beside me, I was afraid I might knock him off the chair with a word.
“We understand your anger,” my dad said slowly. “We’re angry too. None of us wanted things to happen this way.”
“Not enough to stop it.”
“What do you mean?” Dad pressed.
“You’ve never been angry enough. That’s why Faraday had to be so bright and cheerful all the time, because it was the only way to make you people listen.”
“You people? What are you on about?” Mom’s face was stone.
I aimed to crack it open.
“We’re giving her a holiday, so you know. To honor who she was, what she really wanted for us. Equality, transparency, and all that. She never wanted to be president. She just couldn’t trust anyone else to follow through with the promises the collective made in the first place. So even if you give her dreams away to the RC, others can remember. Maybe some of them might be angry enough to protect what matters.” The words tripped over themselves on their way out, and I vibrated with the force of them, with how close they were to my true plans.
If they would listen, they’d know everything.
But they wouldn’t.
So they didn’t.
Dad’s cheeks puffed and flattened rapidly. He looked like an owl. “Lane!”
Such a bizarre reversal this morning had brought. Them doing the yelling, while I rejected them.
“That’s what you wanted, right, to remind everyone of her? I’m only sorry I wasn’t fast enough to make any difference before you agreed to sell us all out.”
Mom couldn’t look at me anymore. I hoped she felt ashamed. She should have.
She said, “That’s never what we meant, and you know—”
I snapped my bubble case closed as loud as I could then talked over her to Andrek. “I have to go. Are you coming with me?”
Andrek trailed after me to breakfast, and I did feel the teensiest bit guilty for putting him in the middle, especially since he had to be with my parents the rest of the day at work.
“You couldn’t tell them, I take it?” I asked, once we were far enough down the hallway. I thought I already knew the answer from his mood.
He slumped against the wall, dragging me with him. “I really tried. I started to at least four times, but—” he held me close. I could feel the words swirling inside him, trying to land.
“Too hard?”
“Maybe?” His bangs fell loose. “More like… It’s not theirs to know, and it’ll only complicate things between us. If I had more time to explain, it wouldn’t be so risky, but Brand’s in our orbit now. Time’s up.”
I let my gaze drift with the trustees passing by, wanting to say we had more time. Today was not the end of the dream; it still breathed, and so did we. But I couldn’t tell him that, not convincingly, without explaining how I knew.
“Plus,” he whispered only to me, “if I don’t tell anyone, I might be able to use it to protect us. It’s not like I burned bridges with the RC. I just left. I could at least try to keep our family safe.”
I saw the delusion of hope pulling over his ice blue eyes. Even if I did tell him, he wouldn’t believe me, because his fear erased what he knew about Brand and the RC, convincing him that working with Brand would save him from the truth.
Shaking hands with a monster wouldn’t turn the monster into a man.
During grief group after breakfast, we were in a conference room inside the medical department. Dr. Fromme led a discussion about trauma responses—what was normal, what wasn’t, and when to be concerned and seek more help. Apparently, my reaction during the moon quake was totally normal, but if it happened again, I might need medicine or some other treatment.
I didn’t mention that I relived the day of my sister’s death every time I was alone when I fell asleep. I did, however, casually drop to Dr. Fromme that I’d be stopping by her office soon. She must have been very good at her job, because all she did was change the subject while making a note on her tablet.
The idea of taking medicine sat uncomfortably in my head as the others kept talking. There was something itchy about it that nagged at me. It was silly, I told myself, because I wouldn’t hesitate to get a cast if I broke a bone or to pop an ibuprofen for a headache. What had happened to my sister, in front of me—why should that affect me any less?
When President Marshall’s voice blared from the speakers, it was an accidental victory. I got pulled out of my head so abruptly that I probably looked as surprised as the rest of the group.
The RC had attacked our allies at the Blackstone Base, our most fiercely defended ally on the moon, and more security measures would be implemented at once to ensure our safety. We were advised to pack a crate per person for pickup and storage in case we had to shelter below. Blah blah blah, death, doom, and gloom was what I heard, and I sank into my seat to let everyone else react.
Dr. Fromme looked agitated, her professional reserve of calm pushed to its limit, but she stuck with us. Milo ugly cried, saying they had family on Blackstone, and Cheese held their hand. Danny pulled on her braid and stared wordlessly at the wall. Ty said little, her hands balled into fists atop the table. Ira hugged himself, rocking, mumbling his worries aloud, and because his worries were all of ours—were we next, was the dream over, what could we do, would we have to go back to Earth, on and on. Dr. Fromme gently responded to each question well enough for the rest of us to take some comfort.
I watched, wringing my hands, tracing over Viveca’s words for reassurance. I wanted to go to her, right now, to feel like I was doing something, but she’d warned me last night not to. I was to “keep my eyes open” and stay on track, because once the trust all knew the RC was on the moon, the spy might say or do something to draw attention. But as my group’s energy built and swayed, I became more certain than ever that none of them was the spy.
It was so easy to see they were innocent that it set off another worm of worry in my thoughts. Was this busy work? My tutors used to do that—when they’d tired of my questions, they’d assign tasks simply meant to occupy my time. While I stayed busy looking at people who couldn’t be the spy, what was Viveca doing? She’d told me finding the spy was “Plan A,” but why hadn’t she said anything about her “Plan B?” Who was she sharing that with, if not me? Halle, for sure, maybe Joule?
Grief group fizzled out, with Milo, Cheese, and Danny following Dr. Fromme out of the conference room, and Ty and me taking our sweet time as we wound through the hallway. A heavy sort of quiet hung around us and everyone we passed, as though we were all afraid we might summon the RC by talking too much. Once we reached the doors to the cafeteria, I lingered while Ty went inside.
I didn’t want to be at work. Or in my quarters. Everyone knew the RC was coming, soon-ish if not today, and nobody was going to be acting “normal,” so why should I? I’d rather be doing something, anything, to make sure surrender never happened. I felt so discouraged that we hadn’t found the spy yet, and I was starting to think we never would. Not unless they walked up and introduced themselves anyway. I had to get Viveca to level with me about the rest of her plans, because spinning my wheels in this search of ours felt worse than useless.
Eventually I mustered the courage to go ask Chef for the day off, and I was shocked when she refused me.
“It isn’t a good day for anyone,” Chef explained. “But we still need to eat, and I’m counting on you to do your part. We need your sweetness more than ever.”
It was pointless to argue with her, because I could see that the kitchen was barely half staffed already. She must have let a lot of people leave after the announcement. Even Stephan had begged off, which I didn’t think was in his vocabulary, so I tried to stuff my feelings away and picked up the slack with lunch prep.
I baked cakes—nothing difficult, really, just iced sheet cakes. I’d had elaborate decorations planned when I pitched the idea to Chef, but now that felt wrong. I mixed the icing with navy blue and purple food coloring, leaving the colors swirled and not fully blended. The end results were vaguely space-like squares. I thought they looked sad, but Chef approved them and let me hang up my apron before lunch service began.
“Don’t forget to eat,” she said, handing me a couple packaged meals. “For you and your lovely friend.”
I headed straight to Viveca’s office. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her all of a sudden. If anything, today’s announcement confirmed she was trustworthy three times over.
But seeing Andrek deny what he knew to be true simply because it hurt him too much not to had me scratching at my own brain, looking for curtains that might need to be peeled back. I didn’t want to trust Viveca merely because I was afraid of the alternative, of having no one to trust. Or because if she didn’t have the answer, there wasn’t one.
Too much was riding on finding the saboteur and getting our leaders to go on the offensive for me to leave any question unanswered.
I also wanted to be trusted too. I didn’t want to waste precious time flailing around with pointless projects, even if we were headed toward failure and the end of everything no matter what—hell, especially if that was what we were headed for. If these were my last days, I wanted to live them with my eyes wide open, doing things that mattered. I refused to be played or left out anymore.
“I need to know the whole plan, and whatever else you’re keeping from me,” I announced, bursting into Viveca’s office. “I want—”
I broke off when I noticed someone sitting in the bubble tub. President Marshall. She wore a black slip, a matching eye mask, and a mechanical medical bracelet, the kind used for monitoring vitals. She jolted, rising unsteadily and removing her mask.
“Can’t I have ten minutes to myself?” she yelled, and Viveca rushed to her side, helping her sit back down. The water beads whirled clockwise, tumbling over her legs. I didn’t know the tub could do that.
“I’m so sorry, excuse me! I’m sorry.” I backed out of the office and flung myself against the wall outside the door. Once I caught my breath, I slunk down the hall to the waiting room. There were no empty seats, and at least five others standing. Milo was one of them, their eyes red-rimmed and hollow, like the life had been sucked right out.
And it smelled.
Really bad. Like nobody had bothered to shower for days.
I kicked myself for being annoyed with Chef for making me stay at work earlier. I forgave her now, in my head. She must have seen I was okay “enough” to get the trust fed when others weren’t. We were all in this mess basket together. I opened my lunch sack and offered it to the people closest to me before handing Milo the extra. The contents disappeared in less than a minute.
The nurse clocked me and waved me closer. “Have you checked in yet? Do you know who you’re here to see?”
“Yes, I—” Too many answers crowded my tongue. “You should call Chef to get more lunches delivered. People are hungry. Viveca. President Marshall was with her.”
“You can wait here for Dr. Osborne or have us call your quarters when she’s free,” he said.
“Sorry, I’ll—I’ll—”
“Lane.” Viveca appeared in the waiting room. The only sign that she was flustered was a slight flutter in her fingers atop her tablet. She met my gaze and ticked her head to the side, indicating the outer hallway. Her lips shined like raspberry jelly. To the nurse, she said, “I’m taking thirty.”
President Marshall skirted around behind her, pausing only to shake a few hands on her way out of the medical department. She scanned me with recognition and a large helping of annoyance.
“I’m really sorry,” I ventured, but she didn’t respond. An angry cloud hovered in the air after she left.
Guilt locked my knees in place. Had the president been pushed out of her sensory appointment for me? My cheeks heated, and I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or elation that I mattered that much to Viveca. Others might wait hours for her time, but she gave it to me freely.
Viveca stopped to talk to several patients, issuing quick, three-word statements, settling them as she worked across the room. I stammered something else to the nurse about lunch getting sent, then blushed harder when Viveca looped her arm around the crook of my elbow. I told myself that this was what friends did, but it had been a while since I’d had a “just a friend” and this felt like so much more.
Milo quirked a rainbow-jeweled eyebrow at me as we passed them.
Maybe this wasn’t how “just friends” walked. I needed to get my head in order and focus on why I came to talk, but it was so hard when her long hair smelled so good and whispered like silk when it swept over my arm.
“Not here,” she said quietly. “Too crowded. Everyone’s freaking out. Understandably.” It wasn’t quite a whisper, but it had the same effect on me, the way she leaned lower to speak only to me. It was crowded outside Medical too, as if everyone in the trust had left work to aimlessly wander the halls.
We went to her quarters—they was closest—which put me in the awkward position of choosing whether to follow Viveca to her room or wait for her in the living room with the I-love-Faraday wallpaper. I picked the chair facing away from the collage. Easier to concentrate.
“So I need to know what your real plan is, the other one, because—and I’m sorry I crashed into your session—it’s just, in group, when the announcement came, everyone was so surprised and upset. I know I already said Ty can’t be the spy, but Danny really can’t be, and I don’t think I’m going to have any luck watching people in the lunch line. We don’t have time to waste on dead ends.”
She returned with a hairbrush and stood in her doorway. “Maybe the focus group will be more helpful. Don’t you start that tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but…” I’d forgotten the tastings already, and I thought I must have left my bubble case in the kitchen. “President Marshall is your patient. You didn’t tell me you’re a doctor now! That’s so big! Congratulations, seriously. But like, what am I going to learn from a few minutes with someone that you won’t from an actual session?”
“Maybe nothing. Or everything. We won’t know unless we listen.” She kicked off her boots. “Can you braid? Would you mind? I have a patient that talks so slow I end up fidgeting with my hair, and then it becomes a whole thing.”
I could braid—I’d done Faraday’s hair whenever she let me—but that was the opposite of concentrating. “I guess. Sure.”
Viveca sat on the carpet and scooted between my legs.
“Thanks,” she said, handing me the brush. “And my doctorate just happened. I haven’t been able to think about it, so I haven’t told anyone yet. Don’t sweat it. Are you asking why I don’t make appointments with everyone I suspect to be the spy?”
I rolled the brush over her hair pointlessly. There weren’t any tangles. “Yeah. Why not do that?”
“I basically have. Not basically. I have. At least with everyone it wouldn’t draw suspicion to call in. I only gave you half my list.”
“Oh.” I started the braid high on her crown. She held very still, even when I pulled the strands tight. “Who else is on your list?”
She didn’t answer. Her fingers twisted through the carpet like she was mimicking my movements. I wondered if she was ever going to respond. Her neck was tight as a drum. Even her hair seemed to resist me, slipping out of my grasp so I had to braid faster and faster or risk loosing it all.
“Viveca?”
She sighed, her breath catching. “I believe it’s best to keep—”
“Why don’t you want to tell me?” I tied off the braid with considerably less care than I’d taken so far. “Don’t you trust me?”
Viveca pulled the braid and hung her head. With another sigh, she planted her hands on the carpet and turned around, her coal-black lashes making half-moons above her cheeks.
“I do… as much as I can trust anyone,” she said, each word a bitter scratch. “You can’t understand. After my mom, there was only one person I felt safe sharing everything with, and she—even she...”
“Even she let you down.” I knew it was fucked up to think of my sister this way. Severely fucked up. It wasn’t like Faraday wanted to be wrong about the RC. She definitely hadn’t wanted to die.
But I understood. I felt let down too.
I grabbed the brush again for something to hold. “What about Halle? Or Joule?”
“No, no,” she said. “I could, but I don’t risk saying more than they need to know.”
“I didn’t realize it was so hard.” I rubbed the brush over my thigh. “And you hardly know me, so of course you wouldn’t be ready to…”
She lifted those bottomless brown eyes. “It’s not that. If you knew who else I was looking into, you’d probably never talk to me again.”
She said that like it was someone I knew. Someone I cared about.
“Is it my parents?” I couldn’t let this go, because doubt will creep into my head the moment she was out of sight. I have to know. “Andrek? It’s Andrek, isn’t it?”
“Please drop it.” A single bead of sweat built above her mouth. “I have to get back to the office anyway.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” The brush clattered to the floor. “Andrek would never betray the trust. Believe what you want about my parents—I hate them right now—but Andrek has nothing to do with the spy. He’s on our side, I swear it.”
“Lane.” She looked deeply at me, her head shaking. “He has secrets. I don’t know what they are, but—”
I put my hands on her shoulders, wishing I could stop her suspicion with my certainty. I was so glad I’d covered for her with my parents now, because she definitely would have pointed right at Andrek. “But I do! I know them, and you don’t have to trust him. Trust me.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked, and it was like she was asking about more than Andrek, about more than right now. She wanted to know how to believe in anyone or anything when monsters were so good at hiding.
“I just am,” I answered, but it had me reeling. Being certain about Andrek was one thing, because he was my boyfriend, and I knew his secrets. But I felt certain about Ty, about my whole grief group too. I knew any one of them would help us in a heartbeat. All we’d have to do was ask. “Maybe we should be looking for allies instead of enemies? The spy is what? One person or two, while there are a thousand more trustees who want the same thing as us.”
She took my hands from her shoulders and stared up at me, her gaze soft and wet. “You truly are extraordinary.”
I knew many things at once. I knew it was the wrong time to catch feelings. We had a trust to save from her father first. And I knew everything was messed up with both our families, even both our boyfriends.
But I also knew her lips were raspberry pink, and her hands rose petal soft, and absolutely nothing I said to myself could stop me from pressing my mouth to hers.
She tasted of sugared oranges, like summer sunshine. A strong, spicy taste that made me feel at once fearless and fierce, wild and weak.
I drew back, astonished by myself, and terrified I’d gone too far. Too fast.
“Viveca,” I started, and she smiled wide.
“Verona,” she whispered, touching my fingers to her heart. “But please call me V.”
And she returned my kiss. Deeply and without a flicker of hesitation.
Verona. Verona. Verona. She was breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I was starving.
It may have been the wrong time, but this was a rocket that had already launched. And I was in it, not strapped tight but set loose and free-floating. Every slip of her tongue and brush of her fingers sent me spinning, weightless.
My tongue parted her lips, and we shared a long, buzzing breath, testing and falling. Our eyes drank in each other’s as we moved closer. Somehow I was off the couch, kneeling over her legs, and our hands had found new ways to hold tight—hers on my waist and back, mine on her jaw and neck. Her work sweater pooled around us, and she tugged me down.
Kissing had never felt so much like swimming.
When her tablet sang an alarm, we broke apart. Our fingers tangled in each other’s clothes and hair, and we laughed for no reason besides adrenaline. Her braid had fallen out, so I scrambled to find the brush one of us had kicked under the couch. Her masks faded into place, and the mood shifted. We walked arm in arm to the medical department, slackening our pace as we approached.
I wanted to kiss her again already, but I didn’t know if that was who we were yet. Or how to ask.
A patient came out of Medical and threw a not-so-subtle look of disapproval at us, muttering something about “not having more time to wait around.” V didn’t respond, but I cringed and felt guilty all over again for taking her away from work, especially since my reasons unraveled into a make out session. I needed to redeem myself somehow.
Under my breath, I said, “I can’t tell you how I know, but Andrek, and my parents, they aren’t who you’re looking for.”
She smoothed her hair once more, tucking it into her sweater, then cupped my cheek gently. “For all our sake, I hope that’s true.”
And I felt floaty and wonderful for a whole minute until I realized she’d completely avoided my question about what else she was plotting.