Glow

Laura Martin raised her skinny arm and cleared her throat. Waverly thought how absurd it was that already the girls were acting as though this were a normal class and this woman a normal teacher. They were badly shaken and willing to cling to any bit of normalcy. “This was a rescue mission? Rescue from what?”

  “You didn’t know?” the woman said, her voice full of love. “Sweethearts, there was an air lock malfunction that caused an explosive decompression. We tried to fix it from the outside, but when that failed, we knew we had to get you girls off the ship as fast as we could!”

  Waverly saw that some of the girls were eating this up. Finally, here was a trustworthy adult who would put everything to rights. But it didn’t work on everyone. Samantha seethed at the woman, looking capable of choking her to death. Sarah Hodges, a short, athletic girl whose favorite sport was tormenting teachers, shook her head in open defiance.

  “As soon as we know that the Empyrean is safe for you,” the woman said, “we’ll return you to your parents.”

  “I saw the whole thing,” Waverly said as loudly as she could, but only the girls nearby heard. “They fell down so fast. Like they were dead.”

  The woman put a clammy palm to Waverly’s cheek. Her eyes were dove-wing blue, her smile gentle and loving, her skin milky despite her age, her gray hair thick and silky looking. Waverly wanted to like her. She wanted to believe her. She almost did, except for the slow, determined way the woman spoke. “Dear, we injected them with a powerful drug that acted very quickly. It must have frightened you to see them fall down that way, but I assure you, they’ll be fine, as long as they can repair the Empyrean.”

  “But why did you shoot them?” It was Sarah who had spoken. Stubborn Sarah, who always had to challenge teachers, slowing down lessons and making things difficult. But here, in this terrifying setting, Waverly liked Sarah’s defiance. “Why did you drug them?”

  “There was a panic,” the woman explained. “The people were trying to board the shuttle, but we had to keep them off. This shuttle has a specific capacity, girls. Too many aboard this ship would have meant death for us all.”

  “Why did you take only the girls?” Waverly asked, barely able to make herself heard. She was getting weaker by the minute.

  “We wanted to get the boys aboard a second shuttle,” the woman said regretfully. “But after the riot in the shuttle bay, we can’t risk more of our crew. It seems safer for everyone to avoid a mob, don’t you think?”

  Only the youngest girls seemed satisfied by this. The older ones seemed merely shocked into silence. Sarah and Samantha stared angrily at the floor. Sarah looked pale beneath her many brown freckles, and her reddish hair hung in her eyes. Samantha’s expression was murderous. Felicity’s gaze had gone blank. She sat ramrod straight, as though she were being evaluated for poise, her eyes on her graceful fingers, which were woven in her lap. She’d retreated to a haven inside herself. But many of the girls looked relieved. The woman had come in with a comforting story, and they were clinging to it, hoping, willing it to be true.

  “Girls, I’m needed in the cockpit,” the woman said. “If you need anything, you just ask for Auntie Anne, and I’ll come right away, all right? As soon as we get you aboard the New Horizon, we’ll get you some nice food and something soothing to drink. You’ll be safe and sound.”

  The woman gave them such a warm, inviting smile, some of the girls actually smiled back. Then she turned and walked back to the cockpit, and the door slipped closed behind her.

  Waverly saw that any hope of defiance, of overcoming the shuttle crew, was over. Anne Mather’s story had worked beautifully. There would be no revolt. There could be no revolt. The other girls would not cooperate with one because most of them wanted to believe the story even more than Waverly did.

  Waverly felt her breathing slow. She leaned her aching body against Felicity, finally giving in to her pain and exhaustion. She closed her eyes and, in spite of her fear, slept.

  THE NEW HORIZON

  “Wake up.”

  At first, the voice seemed to form out of the air around Waverly. As she came to herself, she heard with great relief the profound humming she’d heard her entire life—the familiar drone of the Empyrean’s engines. She was safe back home. She felt a hand at the back of her neck and edged her eyes open. In the dim light, she made out the rounded features of a woman in her fifties. She had raw, pink skin, light brown hair touched with gray, and solemn hazel eyes. A stranger.

  Waverly released a strangled whimper. She wasn’t aboard the Empyrean at all. They’d taken her and all the girls to the New Horizon.

  “Try a sip of this, honey,” the woman said. Waverly opened her mouth to receive an aromatic broth of chicken and parsley. “You’ve had quite a time,” the woman said. Waverly heard a spoon slide against an earthenware bowl, and it was held to her lips. The broth was warm and delicious. As she swallowed, Waverly realized that she was ravenously hungry. “That good?” the woman asked gently.

  Something in the way the woman touched her, cared for her, spoke to her so gently, made Waverly feel precious. She nodded, disturbed by this weird intimacy.

  The way the ship vibrated, the sound of the engines, the smell of the pollen from the corn crop, the oval shape of the portholes, and the view of the nebula that glowed outside like an eerie shroud: Everything was identical to the Empyrean. It was home, and not home.

  “What happened to me?” she croaked.

  The woman put the spoon in Waverly’s hand, then collapsed into a chair near the bed. She seemed very tired, and she moved as if each of her limbs weighed a hundred pounds. It was the same exhaustion Waverly had noticed in the men who’d taken them from the auditorium. Was everyone on the New Horizon sick?

  “I’m your nurse,” the woman said. “My name’s Magda.”

  “Where are the girls?” Waverly asked between spoonfuls.

  “They’re safe.”

  Waverly hated how the woman didn’t quite answer her questions.

  “We’re aboard the New Horizon?”

  “The Empyrean was further compromised after our rescue operation.” The controlled way she spoke made Waverly think that she was reciting from memory. “We had to bring you aboard.”

  “Where are we?” Waverly craned her neck to look out the porthole. “Where’s the Empyrean?”

  “It can’t be seen from here. We had to put some distance between us and your ship, honey. Just to be safe.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t safe anymore.”

  “Why did you take only the girls?”

  “A little at a time, okay?” the woman said, indicating the spoon Waverly held, though it seemed the woman was talking about information: not too much at once.

  The broth felt like a healing elixir, and Waverly swallowed it eagerly in spite of herself. If she were stronger, she’d go on a hunger strike, demand to be taken back to her mother. But Waverly wasn’t strong. Her fingers were shaking, her legs ached, and her throat was agonizingly dry, no matter how much broth she swallowed.

  “I was electrocuted,” she said, not so much questioning as remembering.

  “Yes. Your heart and nervous system were affected, and you were burned. You needed immediate attention. That’s partly why we hurried you away.”

  “You shot at people,” Waverly said, her brown eyes fixed on the woman’s angular jaw. “My friends.”

  The nurse dropped her eyes to Waverly’s knees, and she fidgeted callused fingers. “There was a panic. They had to control the crowd, but the casualties were few.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  She thought she saw fear in the woman’s eyes. The room felt menacingly quiet, as if the walls possessed an alien will.

  “You have no choice but to trust us,” the nurse said slowly and carefully. There was a message in the way her eyes fixed on Waverly’s, willing her to understand: You have no choice.

  Waverly felt very fragile.

  “Have you had your fill of broth?”
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  Waverly nodded. Her stomach had shrunk as she began to realize what was happening. She might never see her mother again, or Kieran, or Seth, or any of the other people she’d grown up with all her life. She nearly vomited.

  “I know what might cheer you up.” With a knowing smile, the nurse left the room but was soon back with Felicity trailing behind her. “This girl must be a friend of yours. She kept asking how you were. Now you two can have a lovely chat.”

  Felicity looked haggard, though her pale hair was pulled away from her face in a neat bow. She wore a plain blue dress that brought out the blue of her eyes, and formal slippers on her feet. She sighed when she saw Waverly and sat on the bed.

  “We’ve been so worried about you,” she said.

  “Are you all right? Are the girls safe?” Waverly asked.

  Felicity said with measured voice, “They haven’t hurt any of us.”

  Waverly looked over Felicity’s shoulder. The nurse was sitting in a chair by the door, her legs crossed, her pant legs too short so that the tops of her cotton socks showed. She pretended to peruse Waverly’s chart, but she was clearly listening to the girls.

  “How long have we been here?” Waverly asked.

  “They keep us away from clocks. All I know is I’ve slept twice.”

  “Where is the Empyrean?”

  Felicity’s bottom lip quivered. “They say they haven’t gotten any communication since we left. They’re looking for wreckage.”

  The bed tilted, and for a moment Waverly felt as though she might fall off. Destroyed. Her home. Everyone she’d ever known. Her mother. And Kieran.

  No. It was impossible. If she gave in to this, she didn’t know how she could go on living. Waverly gripped Felicity’s hands and waited until their eyes met, then she whispered, “That’s what they said, right?”

  Felicity sucked in air through her red lips. “Right.”

  “Don’t shut down.”

  “What do you mean?” Felicity asked distantly.

  Waverly knew her friend too well. When Waverly’s father died in the air lock accident, Felicity had pulled away from her in the faintest way. Whenever Waverly talked about her father and how she missed him, she felt that Felicity was trying to listen, trying to say the right thing, but she always managed to change the subject and redirect Waverly’s attention to something cheerier. “I don’t want to cheer up! I want be sad!” she’d yelled once, but Felicity didn’t seem to hear. Their friendship changed after that. They were still best friends in name, but they were never really close again. Waverly knew that it wasn’t her fault, that Felicity just wasn’t very strong. But it still hurt.

  In this situation, though, the girls had no choice but to be strong.

  Waverly reached for Felicity’s hand, held on so firmly that she could feel the girl’s fingers squirm. “I need you to stay brave with me, Felicity. Can you do that?”

  “Of course,” Felicity said, but she pulled her fingers out of Waverly’s grasp.

  A knock sounded at the door. The gray-haired woman, Anne Mather, leaned into the room with a smile. “How’s our patient doing?”

  Waverly did not answer.

  The woman sat in a chair near the head of the bed. She moved the same weary way the nurse moved, and Waverly could see her face was moist with sweat. “You’re a resilient girl,” Anne Mather observed.

  Waverly looked at her own knees. She didn’t like looking at the woman because she found herself being pulled in, persuaded.

  “You’ve been through so much, child,” the woman said softly.

  Waverly lifted her eyes. “I’m not a child.”

  “Oh, dear, that’s right. You’re probably all the way through puberty, is that right?”

  This was such a strange question, Waverly could only stare.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. We’re very frank about these things aboard the New Horizon. Forty-three years alone in space makes people … comfortable with each other, doesn’t it?”

  The nurse snickered but stopped after a cold glance from Anne Mather.

  “Waverly,” Mather said, “we’re doing everything we can to search for survivors from the Empyrean. Don’t give up on them yet, all right?”

  “Really? You’re trying to help them?”

  “That’s right. We’re doing all we can.” Anne Mather put a friendly hand on Waverly’s knee. “Dear, we’re going to count on you to help us with the other girls. Felicity has been wonderful.…”

  Felicity’s eyes snapped onto the woman. Anne Mather took no notice, though the girl was standing right next to her.

  “We think the girls need reassurance from you, Waverly. Since you’re the oldest.”

  Something wasn’t right in the way Anne Mather watched for the tiniest whisper of expression on Waverly’s face.

  “What do you mean?” Waverly asked. “Reassurance about what?”

  “That they’re in good hands here. That we’ll take care of them. Good care.”

  Waverly narrowed her eyes, tried to make out what this woman was really saying.

  “They’ve been through so much. And the rescue mission must have been confusing. They’ll trust you to know what’s best, won’t they?” She leaned away primly and waited for Waverly to say something.

  She could wait forever if she wanted to. Waverly was too angry to offer cooperation. She needed to think.

  Anne Mather spoke again, her voice firmer now. “I know you’ve been through an ordeal, but all the girls have. This is no time for self-pity.”

  Rage swept through Waverly. She wished she were strong enough to take this woman’s throat in her hands and squeeze her to death. But what if what she said was true, that the girls had been rescued rather than kidnapped? Could it be true?

  “There can be no great journey without tribulations,” Anne Mather said, her gray eyes skirting the boundaries of the room. “It will be so much easier if we can work together.”

  “And if we can’t?” Waverly asked grimly. “What happens then?”

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” Anne Mather said. The warmth was gone from her voice. She returned Waverly’s stare and waited until the girl blinked before she spoke again. “We’re just so glad to have you girls aboard,” she said, the honey back in her voice. “It’s such a pleasure to see young faces again, isn’t it, Magda?”

  “It’s a good thing we came when we did, that’s all,” the nurse said cheerily. She’d come back to stand behind Felicity, who had shrunk to the foot of Waverly’s bed and was holding on to the railing with white knuckles. The nurse laughed and put her hand on Felicity’s shoulder. The girl seemed to wilt under her touch.

  “It’s time you got some sleep, Waverly.” Anne Mather nodded at the nurse, who went to a cabinet. From a drawer she pulled a vial and pierced its membrane with a needle.

  “What’s that? What are you doing?” Panic rose like acid in Waverly’s throat. She started to get up, but the nurse pushed the needle into a tube that ran into her arm. She hadn’t noticed it there, all this time.

  Were they keeping her drugged? Was that why Waverly felt so weak?

  “Sleep now, child,” Anne Mather murmured in her ear. “And when you’re well enough to help us with the other girls, we’ll take you off these medicines and you can join the group. Do you understand?”

  “So if I don’t help, you’ll keep me like this?” Waverly asked, her voice already muffled.

  No answer came, but she felt dry fingers stroking her cheek. Then they moved down her neck, cupping her larynx for one brief, terror-stricken moment.

  Waverly wanted to lift her arms to Felicity, beg the girl to stay with her, but her arms were so heavy. She saw the shadow of Anne Mather next to the nurse, and the two women spoke in whispers. What were they going to do to her once she was asleep and helpless, alone in the dark? She struggled to keep her eyes open, but they felt as though they were filling with sand, and soon they were too full, too heavy not to close. The smallest part of her wandered away i
nto a corner deep inside herself.

  All sound and light disappeared, and finally she felt safe.

  DORMITORY

  When Waverly opened her eyes, she saw the nurse, Magda, standing over her with a syringe. “What time is it?” Waverly said, her voice sluggish.

  “Okay, then,” Magda said brightly. “Do you want to join your friends, or do you want to sleep?”

  “I want to see my friends,” Waverly said. Her mouth was so dry, her lips stuck together.

  Magda put down the syringe and sat on the edge of Waverly’s bed. “Pastor Mather will be glad to hear that.”

  Waverly looked with longing at the water jug on the table next to her bed. Magda seemed to understand, and she heaved the jug up, wincing with the weight of it, and poured a glass of water for Waverly. The girl sat up and drank, then poured herself another glass, and another, before finally leaning back against her pillows. The water revived her incredibly. She even felt strong enough to make a demand. “I want to see the other girls right now.”

  “Pastor Mather will want to speak with you first.” Magda pressed a button on the table next to Waverly’s bed. “In the meantime, let’s get you bathed and dressed.”

  The woman drew a bath for Waverly, gave her a fluffy sponge and some soap that smelled of jasmine, and left the room. The warm water felt soothing against her stiff joints. Her entire right side was still very sore from the shock she’d gotten, but it was starting to feel like a healing soreness. Waverly had to keep her burned hand dry, so washing herself took extra time. Waverly lost herself in the fragrance of the soap, pretending she was home, that her mother might knock on the door any second to nag, “Waverly! Hurry up!” She wanted to hide in the bathroom forever, but she could sense someone on the other side of the door, waiting. So she got out and dried herself with a cotton towel, then slipped into the pink dress that was hanging on a hook in the corner. It was a little girl’s dress, quite unlike the hemp trousers Waverly was used to wearing. It was comfortable, even pretty, but it felt like a costume. It must have been borrowed from a girl aboard the New Horizon, though it looked newly sewn. Waverly combed her heavy wet hair away from her forehead, took a few deep breaths, and opened the bathroom door.