Starglass (16 page)

That’s when I knew the truth about your father, how the seeds of discontent grew within him as they did me. He, too, was always looking back—over his shoulder to everything we had left behind, even when we both should have been looking forward.

K
oen and I took to walking together. It was his idea—he said that it was how all the other couples spent their evenings. So we strolled through the districts, past the shops and by the grain and salt silos. We’d see our classmates, many of them paired now like we were. Koen would nod to the boys. I’d blush and look away; the other girls would do the same. That’s how I knew that I was doing the right thing—the ordinary thing. Because I saw everyone else going for walks, red cheeked, exhilarated and a
little embarrassed by the sudden onset of adulthood too.

So far we’d kissed only that once. Sometimes Koen would press his fingers into my palm and I’d feel their icy pressure and wait for the thrill of something, for that rush of lust that I was sure had been promised to me in my dreams. But it never
happened
. It was as if we were standing on the edge of a steep cliff ready to go tumbling over if only someone would give us a push. But neither of us was pushing. In fact, neither of us had budged.

One night I knocked on his door and straightened my shoulders, trying not to be unsettled at the sound of his dog’s high-pitched yelps. By the time Koen’s little sister, Stella, let me in, I managed to force a smile to my face. Standing in the doorway, I watched as he grabbed his knit hat and scarf. His parents’ screams tumbled down from the second story.

It was so weird to stand in his quarters. His home looked just like ours, with the narrow entryway and the long metal table and the rickety electric stove in the galley. But it felt so
different
. Our house was blue gaps of silence punctured by the white light of the arguments my father and I had, while Koen’s house was more like Rachel’s, a constant busy jumble of color and life and sound.

He buttoned his coat, looking at me with a hint of a grim smile. “Come on,” he said as he brushed by me. I followed him out. Then I heard him mutter something under his breath.

“Sorry about that.”

“Why are you always apologizing for them?” As we started down the street, the knuckles of his fingers almost brushed mine. I wondered if it was intentional, but then he stuffed his fists into his pockets. Sighing, I did the same. “It’s not as if my family is perfect.”

“Yeah,” said Koen, “but no matter how crazy your father is, I
respect
him.”

I let out a snort at that. “I don’t see why.”

“Because he’s good at his job. Because he truly believes in the ship’s purpose, in
tikkun olam
. He’s probably the best Asherati I’ve ever met.”

I bit the insides of my cheeks. How could I respond to that? My father was a noble Asherati when it suited him, sure. But only then. In private he could be cutting and cruel, obsessed with rank and with keeping up appearances. Koen knew all of that, but he went on anyway. “Besides, you don’t even know my parents.”

“It’s not like that makes a difference,” I said. I couldn’t bear to look at him as I spoke, timid, hesitant words. “They’re going to be my family soon either way.”

I stole a glance at him. But Koen seemed to be making a point not to look at me, instead gazing off into the distance. There the street narrowed into a cobbled path that ran between the cornfields. He didn’t speak, just blew the warm air of his breath into his bare hands.

As we walked down the path, through the dead, towering cornstalks that bent like dusty bones toward us, I chewed my lip, peeling away the dry skin, tasting blood. If I were Rachel, I’d know what to say. I’d know how to prove myself, to prove that I was worthy of the things he’d asked of me—marriage, a partnership, his trust. Love. But what did I know about love? Only the strange moans of my parents down the hall when I was little, and the dreams I had at night, wrong dreams, embarrassing dreams, dreams where I lay down in the warm dirt and was naked except for the vines that crawled over me and the purple flowers that blossomed over my skin.

And so I did the only thing I could. I let my gloved hand dart out of my pocket and up and grab Koen’s hat from his head. Then I took off running.

“Hey!” he called, and broke out in rough laughter. “Hey!”

I grinned, speeding forward down the brick path. Part of me kind of hated what I was doing—clutching his hat in my fist, blushing as Koen’s footsteps pounded behind me. It seemed cute, sort of coy. Like something Rachel might do. But it was easy to run, much easier than it was to stand by Koen’s side and take tiny, measured steps and feel like I might screw up at any moment. This felt different. Brave. I stepped into a gap in the rows of corn, kicking up loose soil with my boots as I did.

“Terra, where are you
going
?”

More of Koen’s laughter came tumbling toward me, but I just pressed forward through the scratchy, bone-white leaves. Reaching the far end of the field, I spilled out onto another cracked-stone pathway. Soon I came to an overpass, a rusted metal bridge that seemed to rise up out of the soggy ground on iron girders. I went to the edge, touching the cold rail with my free hand. Below, the brambles seemed to form a tangled net. I looked over my shoulder—Koen had just reached the far end of the field, his hair a ruddy smudge amid all that yellow and gray—drew a breath, and launched myself over the side.

It was dramatic even for me. My boots hit the hard soil, and I pitched forward, just barely able to catch myself before I fell face-first in the dirt. The force of impact made my ears ring. But as I gazed up, I knew it was worth it. Koen stared at me over the rail, those brown eyes deep pools of surprise.

“Are you okay?” he called. I flashed my teeth at him to show that I was. Then I watched him do a quick calculation in his head. Between where he stood and the ground below, there was a gap of at least three meters. A look of fear crossed over his brow, so quick that I almost missed it.

“You shouldn’t have looked!” I called, laughing.

“I’ll come around,” he said.

I waited there in the shadowed clearing. At first I stayed where I’d landed, crouched against the ground. But then a minute or two
passed without any sign of Koen, and I started to get anxious again. I walked over to one of the girders that held up the overpass, pressing my spine against it. The metal was so cold that I could feel the bite of it straight through my coat. But I stood with my shoulders square against it anyway, resting my hand first on my hip, then in my pocket, shifting, suddenly hyperaware of what I looked like and trying desperately to look effortless anyway.

“Hey!”

I jumped, dropping Koen’s hat on the ground.

“Shoot.” I stooped over to pick it up. I tried to brush it clean, but the dirt seemed determined to cling to the nubby fibers. Koen came over and took it from me, pulling it down over his ears.

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

He was standing close—so close that I could feel the warmth of his chest through my lifted gloves. His eyelids were down, showing only the smallest sliver of brown beneath his trembling lashes. I could see the slight line of fuzz along his jawline, could smell the sharp odor of his body, a familiar cedar scent that I couldn’t quite place.

Then the clock tower bells rang out, deep and hollow, and I remembered: the floorboards beneath the bells. It was my father’s smell, or another version of it. For a moment I was sure this was it—he was going to bend close and kiss me again, finally.

But instead he drew away, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He
was blushing again, his skin so pink that it was almost purple. But he wouldn’t look at me. “We should go,” he said as he turned his shoulder to me, starting down the shadowed path. “It’s late.”

I let out a gasp of breath, one I hadn’t even realized I was holding, and followed Koen through the darkening forest.

•  •  •

“What do you mean, he’s hiding something from you?”

Rachel stood in the window of her store, holding a pair of straight pins between her lips and speaking out of one side of her mouth. As we talked, she pinned the pleats of a dress around the hips of an old wooden mannequin. She frowned as she spoke, though I think it was mostly because of the way the silky material kept sliding out of her grasp.

“I mean he’s
hiding
something from me,” I said, sitting down on the ledge beside her. “There’s always this silence between us, this weird kind of . . . gap. Like we’re never on the same page.”

The corner of Rachel’s mouth lifted. “And what page are you
supposed
to be on?”

I felt my cheeks heat. “Well, you know. We’re intended. It wouldn’t kill him to kiss me. Stop smiling like that! It’s not like you weren’t making out with Silvan Rafferty in the cornfields all last year.”

My words were a misstep. Something twisted beneath the surface of Rachel’s expression and nearly broke.

“Sorry.”

She took a pin from her mouth and stabbed it into the fabric. “It’s okay,” she said, but I didn’t believe her. “You’re right. It’s okay to want to kiss him.”

“Not if he doesn’t want to kiss me.”

She smoothed the material straight with her palm. “I don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to. He asked for your hand, didn’t he? I mean, I
saw
him kiss you that night.”

“It wasn’t a real kiss,” I said, scrunching up my nose. “It was so fast. Like a kiss your brother might give you.”

Rachel turned to me, frowning. I went on.

“Maybe he asked for my hand because of my job. Because I’ll be making a lot of gelt. Even better once we get to the planet and Mara retires. Two specialists will earn a decent wage.” I was speaking without thinking, and my words were beginning to tumble over themselves. If I’d stopped to consider it, I would have known how ridiculous my words were. What care did Koen, a specialist himself, have about gelt? But I just rambled on. “That would make sense. He’s marrying me for my money. And he doesn’t want to
kiss
me because I’m ugly, of course. But I really can’t blame him.”

Rachel stared at me.

“What?”

“Terra,” she said; her voice was a little soft, and for a moment I
worried she was still offended by what I’d said about Silvan. But then she said something that surprised me. “You’re
not
ugly.”

I let out a laugh. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be nice about it. I’m used to it. It’s how things have always been. You’re the pretty one that the boys like to kiss. I’m the . . . well, the other one. The smart one. Or whatever.”

“Terra!”

“What?”

Rachel let out an exasperated sound. She hopped down from the window, then reached out and took both my hands in hers. She led me to the dressing rooms. Between the two half-open doors hung a mirror, gleaming in the dim track lighting. The last time I’d been here, I’d avoided looking at it. But now she shoved me in front of it.

“Look!” she said, laughing, though her laughter had an edge of disbelief that I didn’t quite like. I glanced at my reflection. My usual self stared back. I shrugged at Rachel.

For a moment she looked me up and down. Then she gathered the fine strands of my hair in her fist and piled them up near the crown of my head.

“You always hide behind your hair,” she said. “But this should help you see a bit.” Lifting an eyebrow, I turned to the mirror.

My first thought was:
Momma
. But of course that was ridiculous. My mother’s eyes had been a mossy green—mine were merely hazel.
Still, the shadow of her was there. Over the past few months my face had changed. My neck was longer, my jaw just a hint less square. My cheeks had filled out, and my lips, too. I’d grown into my nose. And there were other changes: beneath my holey cardigan and stained shirt and the fabric of my lab coat, I could see the slight swelling of my breasts, which I’d done my best to ignore these past few months, and how my hips had widened. I’d probably never be
curvy
, not like Rachel was—instead I was lean and brawny, strong. But I no longer had the stick-straight figure of a boy. I had, apparently, grown up.

“Oh,” was all I said. And then I watched the woman in the mirror smile at herself. “When did that happen?”

“Don’t ask me,” Rachel said, dropping my hair down against my shoulders. Her mouth was twisted into a cockeyed smile. “You just showed up one day in my shop looking all womanly and stuff.”

I angled my chin up, doing my best to look proud and, I don’t know, regal. Like someone who knew she was pretty. But I couldn’t hold up the illusion for long. I exhaled hard, my posture deflating.

“If I’m so good-looking,” I said, turning to Rachel, “then why won’t he
kiss
me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s never been kissed before. Maybe he’s shy. Maybe he’s waiting for you to make your move.” She grinned at me. “Maybe it’s time you asked him.”

•  •  •

It’s not like we didn’t have time enough to talk. Abba had been nudging us together for several weeks now. One night after supper my father pushed himself away from the table with both hands, giving a wink to Koen.

“I’d better get the dishes done,” he said, and then added, entirely too loudly, “Why don’t you go up to Terra’s room? And don’t mind me. I promise I’ll give you kids your privacy.”

Koen and I looked at each other, our complexions blazing bright red, both. It was weird, what my father was suggesting. Crass. I didn’t know anyone who rutted around under their parents’ roof. But what was I supposed to do, fight with him about it? I rose and made my way up the stairwell. I felt my father’s satisfied gaze follow us up the stairs.

“I can’t believe him. I’m so, so sorry,” I said as I sat in my chair and cradled my head in my hands. I heard Koen’s soft chuckle as he closed the door behind me.

“It’s okay.”

Of course it was. For Koen it seemed like everything was always okay, as long as I didn’t look at him for too long or too intently. I dropped my hands, watching as he settled in on the thin throw rug. He held out his hand for Pepper, who was crouched inside the shadows of my desk. The cat sniffed at the air, then came trotting out.