Phoebe North - Starbreak

Together they tumbled toward sleep almost immediately. But not me, and not Laurel. She’d hardly spoken since the beast had struck Deklan down. Now her eyes were like two shining stones in the darkness. They gleamed like glass, polished, sharp. After a moment, both of us tucked down inside our sleep sacks, she began to cry, letting out tiny gasps of breath.

“Laurel,” I whispered. I reached a hand out, offering it to her. She stared ahead. At last she put her clammy hand in mine.

“I can’t believe that he’s gone, Terra. We were always friends. For as long as I can remember.”

I remembered too. The pair of them, holding hands in school, walking together, laughing and joking, long before the rest of us had discovered what boys were for. His friends had been cruel ones, jeering, teasing. But I’d never heard him say a truly unkind word to Laurel.

“You loved him,” I said.

“Of course I did.” Her answer was quick—almost defensive, as if the suggestion otherwise offended her. And then the heat dripped away from her words, and she was crying again, worse this time. “Of course I did.”

I did the only thing I could. I held her. We’d never been friends, not really. Before that day in the library, I knew almost nothing about her life outside of school. But we were the same now, the two of us. Not only because we’d been through so much together—the rebellion and the riots, the crash and our long journey south—but because we’d both lost people we’d cared about. It was like a scar that we both wore, a secret sigil that made us different from everyone else.

As I clutched Laurel to me, rubbing her heaving shoulders, I thought of Hannah’s words about the translator. She’d said he was like me—that he carried his broken heart with him wherever he went. I wondered if he’d lost someone too.

“Terra?” Laurel asked, her voice coming, shaky and weak, through tears. She pulled away from me, leaving a soggy gap in her wake.

“Yeah?” I whispered back.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this. How I’m going to live on without him.”

I let out a long, low sigh. As I pressed my head against the cold ground, I thought back to Abba. Since his death I’d learned a lot about survival. About living on—the very thing that he’d never been able to do. What would I have told him if I could have?

“At first it will be hard. Almost impossible. You’ll wake up and feel like Deklan’s been pulled from you and all that’s left is his silhouette inside your body. It will be with you all the time. Every breath you take will be a reminder that he’s not here and breathing anymore. People will try to tell you things to make you feel better, but it will only make it worse. ‘It’s so sad,’ they’ll say, and you won’t be able to tell if they miss him because of him or because their grief will make them look noble. Sometimes it will feel like they’re trying to steal your grief, your story.

“But you’ll keep breathing, and you’ll keep living. And one day you’ll be sitting down at breakfast or talking to a friend and you’ll stop. The blood will drain from your fingertips, and you’ll go so pale, because you’ll realize that it’s been hours since you last thought about him. Maybe even days. His loss will always be with you. You won’t forget. But time will move on and it’ll get easier, and easier until one day it’s just something that’s always been there. A part of you, but not all of you. Not anymore.”

She didn’t say anything. A warm breeze stirred the cotton walls. I looked up at the dark shadows in the corners of the tent.

“It’ll surprise you,” I said at last. “You’ll be changed by his death, sure. When something like this happens, it blows your world apart. But in a way, when you patch your world back together, it’ll be stronger than it was. You will be stronger than you were. I promise, Laurel. Really. You’ll be okay.”

There was another hiccuped breath. At last, in a small, sad voice, she said, “Thanks, Terra.”

She turned her back toward me, and I, too, turned away.

I didn’t know if what I said helped her. I hoped it did, as she stumbled toward sleep that night. What I did know was that my own heart was heavy, my mind leaden with doubt as I pulled the covers over my head and retreated into the dark.

He waited for me in our usual place, in the leaves and vines that formed a bed in the warm black earth. Maybe I should have gone to him with questions. Maybe I should have asked him where he slept in the city that night, what sort of person he was, if he really was a plant . But, as always, my heart was impetuous. It wanted what it wanted. It didn’t want to think things through, didn’t want to ask questions or talk.

I wanted him. His mouth, his hands. As soon as I saw him, broad in shoulder, narrow in waist, and familiar, utterly familiar, I pulled him down against me. I felt the cool caress of his skin and the relief it offered. I wanted him. I made that clear.

His response was laughter, or something like it. He didn’t tumble away, but he did look at me. His black-eyed gaze was steady; each eye held the very same promise—deep, and even, and true.

I’m here. I’m here, I said, hardly able to keep my excitement in. Looking in those lozenge-shaped eyes, I had the strangest sense of import. My ancestors had fled a dying planet. They’d traveled five hundred years. They’d lived and died all so I could be here with him , us tumbling our bodies in a bed of violet leaves. It made me giddy to think about it. I let loose peals of laughter too. Or something like it.

His fingers wrapped around my wrist like a vine. He watched me for a long time, smiling at first. But then that smile faded; his wide lips pressed together, hiding his rows of tiny teeth. That’s when I felt it for the first time—the pain inside him. Worse than anything that I’d ever known. Worse, I think, than what Laurel felt that night. Worse than even the pain that had driven my father to fritter his life away. It made me want to cut myself open, to spill my guts out on the open ground. It made me feel halfway crazy. It was a desperate and ugly sensation; I found myself scrambling to get away. Not because I thought it was his fault . Of course not. Only because it hurt too much to stay there, his body aching on top of me.

I sat up in the soggy leaves, staring at him. He made himself small, drawing his knees to his chest.

I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to demand answers—who did that to you, made you broken and jagged, strange? But this wasn’t a night for questions. It was a night for touching, a night for feeling. I wrapped my arms around him. And even though he was stiff against me, cold to my touch, I ran my warm fingers over his shoulders, his arms. I touched him—his long fingers in triplicate, the smooth palm that had no life line at all. I knew I couldn’t heal the fissure in him. The pain was too cutting, too ancient, too true. But I could try. I figured it could never hurt to try.

I’m here, I said again, rocking him against my body. His posture finally softened. He touched a hand to my face, feeling my eyelashes flutter against his hand. I’m here. I’m here .

Morning was bright and muggy. I woke to sweaty limbs, a parched throat, and a strange, sad sensation deep in my belly—but I couldn’t name it, couldn’t quite pin it down. I put on my flight boots, pulled myself out of the tent, and went to the fire, where the others were already gathered. They talked in low tones, turning skittish glances left and right as if they were waiting for something. What, I couldn’t be sure.