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.”
I lifted my head again and whined. “Yeah, but what if the results are out?”
“What if they are? You’ll see them when we go back. For now, have another cup of oversweet coffee the way you like since no one is looking, and just relax.”
“Relax?” I finished my latte and pushed the empty mug aside. “I can’t relax. If I don’t start going somewhere, I’m going to go crazy. I want to be important.”
“Don’t we all? But you can’t force something that—”
Both of our phones started buzzing before he could finish his sentence. I immediately tore mine out of my pocket to check the screen as soon as it lit up. A list of students who had been accepted into the internship positions had finally been released. Silence gripped us both as we skimmed over the names. Seven in total littered my screen. I read them so fast, I almost got dizzy.
Then I read them again…
After my third readthrough, Thomas slowly looked up at me and set his phone face down on the table. I could feel his pity in his silence and bitterly shoved my phone into my pocket.
Don’t cry.
Taking a deep breath, I waved the cute waitress over to order another extra sugary, creamy latte with chocolate shavings and then turned back around to pretend I was ok. I couldn’t look at Thomas quite yet, though. When people felt sorry for me, I could see it in their eyes and it usually just made me emotional.
“It’s fine,” I lied. “I guess I know now and I can start getting over it.”
I was prone to self-pity. It was a habit I was trying desperately to kick. Self-pity led to drugs and a slew of other things that wasted a decade of my life. All the time I put into feeling sorry for myself was time I couldn’t fix things.
I just had to try harder.
“Hey,” Thomas comforted, slapping me on the shoulder. “Something is bound to happen. This wasn’t your moment, which means your moment is coming.”
I faked a smile and cleared my throat, gulping down the last of my ice water before the waitress brought my foamy latte.
“Yeah,” I forced. “Yeah, it’ll happen. This is fine.”
We sat in that coffee shop for another couple of hours making up meaningless conversation and talking shit about the recruits chosen for the positions. It was catty and rude, but it made me feel better. Not that I worked harder than anyone or that the people chosen didn’t deserve it as much as I did. I was just being selfish. In the morning, I’d be back to work, drinking black coffee, and finding another path. But in that coffee shop, I was my old, bitchy self and Thomas was happy enough to join.
He was a good friend. Not a replacement for Innifer, but a close second.
By the time we decided to head over to the nearest shopping center and kill some time buying clothes we probably wouldn’t wear, I felt marginally better about my rejection. I could live with it. I’d dealt with worse.
“So, next week is the presentation on the Fellmor Project and some scientists from the Nexus are coming planetside to guest speak,” Thomas said. “I figured we could go together.”
“Obviously. I’d be a wreck without you if I had to see people from the Nexus.”
“You’ll be a wreck anyway, but at least I can hold your arms if you try to storm the stage.”
I laughed at how true that statement was. I really was a walking scene. I was also working on that…
If Thomas didn’t have a boyfriend studying fashion design in Paris, I probably would have made a move on him. Hell, the old me would have done it anyway, but again, I was a big work in progress. He loved his boyfriend. They talked almost every day and their disgustingly cute conversations sometimes made me sick and hopeful at the same time.
Damn, I was lonely. And pathetic. I was lonethetic.
I rolled my eyes at my own inner thoughts as the big silver building cluster came into view. We were back on campus already and I was about to cry myself to sleep.
Until our phones went off again. We both pulled them out with less enthusiasm to see an urgent announcement sprawled across the screen.
Due to personal reasons, Rebecca Yaris will be reassigned to next year’s internship positions. Replacing her will be student, Samantha Worthington.
My jaw dropped. I stopped walking, bags of clothes hanging loosely in my grip.
“Holy shit,” Thomas muttered.
“Holy shit,” I mimicked. “Holy shit!”
“Samantha Worthington will be filling the intern position,” he announced out loud.
“On one of the three ships heading to…” I continued, my words tapering off when I read the rest of the statement. My smile flattened. “To the Centauri system.”
“Holy shit!”
“Space?” I muttered. “Space!”
“That’s amazing!”
“No… no, that’s not amazing. Why can’t I work in a real lab or overseas? Even the Nexus would be better than the Centauri system.”
“Anyone at university would kill to go to space.”
“No one at this university was in that freighter attack.”
“But this is an opportunity that kind of cancels that out, right?”
“It’s not just that. It’s the attempted kidnapping. The near-freezing temperatures in a drifting escape shuttle. The allergies. The aliens. It’s all there.”
“Ok, breathe. Humans haven’t been sent to another solar system since the Nexus was built.” He stopped for a moment, his eyes wandering like he was searching a cloud of thoughts above his head. “Ok, wait. On the news a couple of weeks ago, there was something about a group of humans being granted permission to explore an alien planet. I didn’t think much of it since we’ve explored other planets before. But permission? You think it meant the valerians were giving humans permission to explore within their territory? It would make sense. You and your friend ended up on one of their planets before. You think this could mean—”
“I don’t want to think about it quite yet, Thomas.”
“But you should. The internship starts soon. But either way, this is a huge opportunity.”
“An opportunity that might give me a heart attack. I only stopped taking my meds six months ago and now I’m… I’m…”
Screwed.
“Shit, do you think you’ll have to get medically cleared for this?”
“I don’t know. I thought if I got accepted I’d just be heading to another university or a real lab or something and studying under big names.”
“We should really keep up with the news, huh?”
I rolled my eyes and started speed walking toward my apartment. I was in need of some major self-reflection.