***
We reached the launch site with exactly seven hours to go until the event. In order not to be caught in the middle of it, the ship would be departing Earth with two hours left until the great blast.
The launch site was something to witness, believe me. It reminded me of a tailgate party, though one with slightly more frightened-looking party-goers. Cars, trucks, vans, buses, and even one tractor trailer were parked on the hard desert ground, stretching back as far as my eyes could see. Alice and I watched as people meandered through the rows upon rows of cars, talking in different languages and carrying their bags.
“This would make for a cool essay, wouldn’t it? ‘Different cultures at the end of the world?’” I suggested to Alice, who just wrapped her arm around my back as we started walking.
“Even if you bring a charger, there isn’t going to be electricity, you moron!” One man snapped at another man.
A man was gesturing to the ship in the distance while trying to communicate with a group of Americans who were obviously very confused at his ramblings in a language they didn't know. One man opened the door of his car and pulled out two small dog carriers.
“All pets are being kept in the east side of the ship through lift-off.” A man in an unidentifiable uniform told him. “Did you bring their sedatives?”
The man nodded and started to explain, but our feet were carrying us forward still.
“This is going to be so much fun, sweetheart. It’s going to be like a ride at Six Flags!” A woman was telling her crying daughter as she hugged her tightly.
“This is crazy, Quinn.” Alice commented as she looked around.
“I know. It’s like every country has at least a few people here.” I replied, “I think that’s a good thing. It would be no fun if we got to Pangaea and there was no diversity, right?”
“I don’t think it really matters.” Alice replied, “I know you’re trying to keep things positive. But diversity on Pangaea should be the least of our worries.”
“What should we be worrying about?”
“Getting there in one piece. Remember what they said this ship’s nickname is?”
“How could I forget the comic book reference?”
“Of course; silly me.” She said, with a slight roll of her eyes, “‘The Flash’ is going to take us hurtling through space at a ridiculous speed. We’re going to cover an unthinkable amount of ground in two weeks. I just don’t think that if spaceflight travel was that advanced we never would have heard about it. It seems dangerous to me.”
“Do you remember what they said at the meeting? They kept this a secret, because it was all going to be unveiled in a big ceremony. But now they have no choice but to tell us. We’re all making this ship’s first journey with them. There’s something I forgot to tell you, by the way.”
“What?”
“They’re sedating everyone.”
She stopped walking and looked at me, her eyes blazing.
“How could you not have told me that?!” She exclaimed in fury, “No! Quinn, I am not being sedated! For all we know, they’re sedating us because we have to travel for like, one hundred years!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, wrinkling my eyebrows in confusion and stifling a bemused grin.
“Don’t give me that look like I’m being so dumb! Quinn, hello?! You’re the space nerd! Hyper-sleep!”
“This is not hyper-sleep! They're sedating us so we don’t all freak out while we’re taking off into space at thousands of miles per hour. I don’t want to be awake for that. Plus, they said it’s more like a cruise ship on-board than anything. Why would they make it look so nice on the inside if we were going to be asleep for so long? We’re only going to be out for the take-off. Allie, I promise, no one is trying to trick you into sleeping for one hundred years.” I grasped her hands, trying not to laugh. After a minute, she rolled her eyes and groaned in aggravation.
“Quinn, if I wake up, and my boobs are down to my knees…”
I couldn’t help it; I cracked up at that.
“You think it’s funny. But you’re the one who said you wanted to be with me forever. So, you have to deal with them.”
“I meant that, when I said it. So you’re right. See? Now I wouldn’t lie to you about this, because that would be unpleasant for both of us.”
“Yeah, it would.” She punched me lightly in the stomach. “Keeping secrets from me… Hyper-sleep with one eye open!”
She was trying to maintain the façade of being genuinely angry, but I could see the faintest trace of a smile as she turned away from me. I was laughing even harder now as I walked behind her, ignoring the irritated glances of the people I walked past. I’m sure they thought I was just a stupid kid who was too immature to understand the gravity of the situation. But I wasn’t just laughing because what she had said was funny. I was laughing because she was starting to show stronger signs of returning to the way she had been before the end had begun. In my heart, I knew that both of us were starting to grasp at a faint, distant hope that we were going to survive. We were going to have the life we had always dreamed of having. Whether it was on Earth, Pangaea or Pluto (the non-planet, so obviously, I’m kidding), we were going to be alright.
Violet
Brynna was frustrated. She was shaking her head slightly, taking long drags on her cigarette, and rolling her eyes. Maura, Penny, and I were standing on the cracked desert ground, watching her and James try to change the tire that had exploded as we drove. If James hadn’t had sufficient reflexes, the car would have swerved off the road.
“Well, maybe you should have checked them before we left! Aren’t men supposed to be the ones who possess all the expertise on automobiles? That is a fallacy, obviously!”
“Will you just be quiet?!” He snapped at her loudly, clearly beyond frustrated, “At this point, listening to you talk is like having a spiteful, condescending banshee screeching nonstop in my ear. If you’re going to stand there and complain at me, please, for the sake of all of us, be a little quieter about it.”
“I feel no need to mutter when I’m irritated, James.”
“Clearly.”
“Alright!” I snapped finally and jogged over to them, “Brynna, stop being…” I shook my head slightly, coming up short on a word to properly describe her behavior, so I settled on:
“...you. James, you have to hurry up. We’re running out of time.”
“I know. I’m getting there, Violet.” He hiked the car up further on the jack, and I knelt down beside him to screw in the bolts. “Thanks. Oh, look; someone else has brains in the family.”
“You are the most insufferable annoyance I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, James Maxwell.” Brynna snapped as she flicked the ember off of her cigarette.
The jack started to give beneath the weight of the car, but James, in an impossible show of strength and quick response, got below it before it fell. He knelt with almost half the weight of the car on his shoulders.
“Yeah?” He hissed as the exertion of forcing the car up rendered him hardly able to talk. “Right back at ya, sweetheart.”
“Would you two just stop it?!” I stood up after fixing the jack. “One minute, you’re arguing like ridiculous tweens who want to wear the same shirt. Then, you’re babbling at each other about the most stupid, ridiculous things. Bottom line: You two never shut up!”
“Excuse you, if you overheard the conversation that we had in the car earlier, you only heard it because we were operating under the assumption that you were asleep. I can also assure you that the aforementioned conversation was neither stupid nor ridiculous. Furthermore, please let me remind you, that if something is stupid, it is more than likely also ridiculous, so your statement has been rendered moot by redundancy. Finally, even if our conversation was meaningless or mindless, it was also none of your business.”
“We were in the same car. What was I supposed to do?”
“Listen to your iPod. Plug your ears. I
don’t know!” She snapped, and clearly, her exhaustion was beginning to get the best of her. Maura and Penny came over to see what was holding us up. Brynna scooped Penny up and walked around to the back of the car where the trunk was open. I heard her pull open the cooler we had brought, talking softly to Penny all the while. Normally, her gentle nature was not exposed to strangers or even to Maura and me. Now that she was slowing, her body weighed down heavily with exhaustion and hunger, she couldn't hide it.
“Are you sleepy?” She was saying softly as she came back around where we could see her. Penny was eating a cheese stick while her head was rested against Brynna’s chest. “We are going over here to lie down while you figure out a solution to our little conundrum. You got us into it, James, though I have little faith that you can get us out of it as well.”
“Maura, make her stop.” James grunted as he pulled the bolts with all the strength he could muster in his own exhausted state.
“That’s enough, Brynna.” Maura replied dismissively.
Brynna was opening a cheese stick of her own carefully.
“I will walk away now. If I do not, I will surely throw this cheese-stick at his head.”
“She’s just being funny at this point.” Maura explained to James quietly as Brynna started to walk away.
“Really? I didn’t know she was capable of being funny. I thought she was only capable of foaming at the mouth.”
Maura and I both gasped when Brynna's half-eaten cheese stick flew through the air and hit James squarely in the side of the face. I snorted, trying to stifle my laughter. Though I was expecting him to jump up and start shouting at her, I couldn’t deny how funny it was that she had just used a dairy product as a weapon. Instead, of shouting, though, he turned his head and watched her walk away, grinning to himself before starting to laugh with me. The cheese stick had landed in his lap, so he picked it up and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.
“She’s something else, I’m telling you.”
“She is.” Maura replied with a sigh, “That’s kind, actually. She’s a right pain in the ass. But she is, as they say, my pain in the ass.”
When the car was finally running again, Brynna came over with Penny bundled up in her jacket. When I looked into my younger sister's face, I found that she had fallen asleep again.
“You need to wake her up, Brynna. If she sleeps now, she won’t sleep on the ship.” Maura told me.
“I will get her to sleep.”
“How? Are you going to knock her unconscious?” Maura asked impatiently.
“Do not make jokes with me. I am not in the mood. I will get her to sleep by simply...”
“They’re giving out sedatives for the lift-off.” James interrupted her, “It will wear off sometime after we’re in space.”
“Sedatives?!” Brynna snapped at him as she laid Penny in the backseat against me. “That’s not happening, James! I don’t even let her have non-organic juice! You think I’m going to let them drug her?!”
“What is the alternative?” James closed the door to block out the rest of the conversation. She was pointing at him, her eyes widened, clearly infuriated that he had kept that little secret from her. Finally, she threw her hands up and huffed to the car door which she opened and closed with gusto.
“Well, at least I know one thing for sure.” Maura spoke up after Brynna had sat back in her seat. “You two will never date.”
“What even made you think that was a possibility in the first place, Maura?” Brynna snapped irritably. A cigarette was burning away between the fingers of the hand she had rested on her face.
“I don’t know.” Maura replied calmly, “You’ve never fancied boys your own age. I thought you had decided to try someone a little older.”
“No. If I were going to date an older man, it would certainly not be that one. If one forces her gaze past his good looks, all one would see is a vexatious, arrogant plague.”
“I think that's a little harsh, darling.” Maura reasoned, still in that calm and cool tone. Her Zen attitude was obviously grating on Brynna's frayed nerves.
“No. It really is not. Please, by all means, forgive me if this is too harsh, but I think he is just about the most aggravating presence I have ever encountered.”
“I think you’re just tired and cranky.” I chimed in casually but with a condescending scorn to my voice that one would use when disciplining a very rambunctious, sneering child.
“I do apologize if the memory of the occurrence has slipped my mind, but did I ask you what you thought?”
“No, but I’m going to tell you anyway!” I shot at her after crossing my arms over my chest defensively. “This is a free country!”
“If on Pangaea we decide to split into countries, remind me to make ours a tyrannical regime so that I never have to hear that irksome sentence ever again. God or Gods, I hate when people say that.”
I watched her blue eyes find me in the mirror she had pulled down from the car's ceiling. I was shaking my head in disgust at how nasty she could be. It wasn’t just a matter of being intelligent. She wasn’t satisfied unless everyone was clear on the fact that she was smarter than they were. If they doubted her, she would tear them to pieces by reminding them that not only was she more intelligent in the present but that she was always going to be. It was how she kept everyone in their places.
There was a long moment of silence when James got back into the car and started it up.
“Do not talk to me.” Brynna snapped at him without any provocation.
“I wasn’t going to.” James replied calmly, but I saw him roll his eyes. Already, he was tired of her ridiculous personality quirks. He had to have sympathized with me; I had been forced to be in her company for seventeen years.
I shouldn’t say all of that. I did love Brynna dearly. She was my sister, after all. However, I can't lie and say that I didn’t contemplate holding her head under water for several minutes to stop one of her rants.
If I am going to be completely honest, I would say that I owed her. She helped raise me. When Maura had left us briefly, all of the responsibility fell on Brynna’s young, fragile shoulders. She never threw that time that she had cared for us selflessly in my face or used it to manipulate me. She just pretended it had never happened.
That was with me, at least. With Penny, she never stopped taking care of her. In fact, Penny spent more time at Brynna’s than she did at home with my mother, father, and me. I will never pretend that Brynna's influence on either of us wasn't what shaped our personalities for the better. Anyone who truly knew our family would be able to tell you that if we were left to be raised completely by our parents or even Maura, we would be in much worse shape, perhaps even irreparably damaged; I would go so far as to say that if it came down to being raised by our mom and dad or wild animals, the animals were the better option, hands down.
“Is your clock right?” Brynna asked James suddenly.
“Why wouldn't it be?”
“Because Daylight Savings Time was yesterday, and people tend to forget about it.”
“What?!” James looked at the clock, “Well, that's great. Why didn't you tell me that before?”
“I'm sorry, I assumed that you were in the ninety-nine point nine percent of the population that remembered something as simple as turning your clock back an hour.”
“That is enough!” Maura exclaimed from behind her hands. When she covered her face, we knew that her impatience with our annoying shenanigans was reaching a dangerous level.
“Well, we now have only three hours to get there.”
“Before they take off?!” I exclaimed in horror. Neither replied, so I knew that we were officially at risk of being left behind. I bent forward to rest my face on my knees, feeling a sharp jolt in my chest that I was all too familiar with. My heart was pounding like the drums carried by soldiers of some ancient war fought with swords and shields in the shadows of towering mountains. My chest constricted to smother my lungs before I could draw
the breath that was needed to protest. My anxiety that had always been like an extra being I was painfully conscious of and incapable of exorcizing was rearing its head, and there was no worse time for it than right then.
“Do not have a panic attack right now, Violet! We do not have time!” Brynna snapped, but she turned around in her seat to check on me.
“I will handle this.” Maura told her irritably, “Just turn around and be quiet.”
“This is positively the worst night of my life!” Brynna put her sunglasses down and laid her head back against the headrest. “James, make haste.”
“I'm on it, darling.”
“Do not refer to me by a condescending pet name ever again.”
“Yes, dear.”
“I swear to you, James Maxwell, on every Bible, Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, and L. Ron Hubbard book ever printed that if you so much as look in my direction, I will reach over and smash your head against the steering wheel until you are...”
“James! Brynna! That is enough!” Maura shouted over them. They both fell silent, but Brynna continued to scowl as she laid back with her eyes closed.
I kept my face on my legs, trying to steady my breathing the way Maura was instructing me to. She stroked my hair which soothed me slightly until finally, the worst of the attack had passed, and I was consumed by a sudden exhaustion. I turned slightly so that I could lay my head on Maura's lap.
God was merciful, because I dropped off to sleep again. My mind remained blank, lost deep in some vast expanse of nothingness so peaceful, I could have cried with joy. In that swirling blank space, I escaped the horror I felt at being left behind to burn on the earth with the unlucky.