Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘It’s something to do with the climate controls I think. They use these LEDs – like the ones they use on space stations, to keep them growing down here. But, for some reason, the seasons start and finish about a month later.’ Flower petals dropped like confetti and gusted across the ground. It looked like the type of wood that she and Astrid used to search for faeries in. Like the wood near Noah’s childhood house where he had first asked Juno to be his girlfriend, his cheeks burning, his eyes defiantly hopeful. Or where she’d met him after a dentist appointment, the first person he smiled for after they fitted him with braces – still ashamed of the cages they’d locked his twisted teeth into.

Dalton was a hostile place for friendships. Few romances lasted longer than a summer, but because Juno and Noah had endured, their union had taken on a kind of mystique. The young, star-bound lovers. But, after Noah had chosen to leave the programme, some of the excitement died. Juno sometimes wondered what kept them together now. The tepid comfort of habit, she supposed.

‘So—’ Noah stopped walking and let her hand drop. ‘I got you a gift.’ He dipped his hand into his pocket and opened his palm. ‘It’s a moon rock,’ he said, ‘in a necklace, so you can’t lose it.’

Juno’s heart fluttered. ‘But that’s yours,’ she said. She had lost count of how many times she’d seen him turning the little stone over in his hands, or slipping it into his pocket before exams. It was small and grey, shot through with silvery flecks. An actual piece of the moon that Noah’s father had left behind when he walked out of his son’s life.

Juno was unable to meet Noah’s gaze.

‘Yes, but I wanted to give it to you. I mean, I know you’re probably going to see so many other things on your way. Nothing so pedestrian as the moon, but—’

‘Thank you,’ Juno said, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. He smelt of sweetened milk and non-bio washing powder. Motes of dust flitted between them, and she memorized his face. His watery eyes, hair like spun sugar.

‘Shall I put it on?’ he asked.

She turned around and lowered her gaze as he tightened the clasp. The silver chain was cool on her skin and Noah let his fingers linger on the nape of her neck. Juno became aware of the airless intimacy of the garden, of the hair prickling up along her spine.

When she glanced up, though, she noticed something in the corner of the clearing. Nine holes, dug like graves in a row, and the potted saplings, ready to be transplanted into the ground. ‘Those are ours,’ she said, rushing towards them. Her name was engraved on a marble stone. JUNO JUMA. She knelt down and touched it with trembling hands.

‘Do you ever think about what we would be doing if you weren’t in the Beta?’ Noah asked, his shadow stretching before her.

‘Not really.’

‘Like, what do you think we would be doing tonight?’

‘Noah…’

‘We might be going to the same university. You’d be studying physiology or medicine and I would be a physicist. Maybe we’d go to Blackwell’s and buy all the books on our reading list second-hand, then sit upstairs in Costa blowing bubbles out of straws and making them all burst because we’re laughing so hard. When we kissed goodbye in the night we would still have tomorrow…’

Her stomach squirmed with the usual guilt. He couldn’t know that she had already left him. She wanted to say, Space, Noah, I’m going to space. How could I choose you? How could she choose those insipid dreams of his over the splendour of the sky?

As he spoke, she imagined – as she often did – that she was already up there. His hold on her decreasing, like gravity. Soon this residual remorse would be nothing at all.

‘Juno?’ When she turned to him his eyes were wide with anticipation.

‘What?’

‘Were you even listening?’

‘Sorry. I’m sorry. Please say it again.’

‘I said – I said…’ He took a breath, his cheeks flushing, ‘Will you have sex with me?’

She leapt to her feet. ‘What? Now?’

‘We’ve been going out for three years—’

‘Yeah, and I thought—’

‘I know we both agreed to wait but since you’re leaving tomorrow, I thought…’

‘What?’ she said, a little more aggressively than she intended. She was prickling all over with panic.

‘Well, don’t you think that changes things? It’s not really “waiting” anymore, is it? We’re never going to see each other again.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Tomorrow you’re going away on that shuttle, and if we see each other, ever, like if I make the Gamma and launch in two years’ time, I still won’t see you for almost three decades—’

‘Two… and a half…’

He was blinking fiercely, fighting back tears. ‘We love each other.’

‘Yes but…’ She could feel her pulse in her clenched fists.

He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Please…?’

This was it. This was the reason Noah was here, the thing he’d been steeling himself to ask. What difference did it make, it occurred to her, if she said yes or no? She’d regret it either way. And when she glanced at him, then, in the shade of the old trees, her heart swelled with pity. Juno imagined the day after the launch. Imagined what it would be like to be the one who was left behind on the planet she’d renounced. On a clear night, Noah would be able to see the Damocles flicker like another star amongst the constellations. But as it disappeared, he would feel as if it was really him getting smaller and smaller, spinning out in a lonely orbit, sentenced to navigate streets that used to be theirs.

Other astronauts had snatched pieces of the moon to keep themselves from forgetting. To make the goodbye a little easier. Would it be so bad if she gave him this?

‘Okay,’ she said, taking a deep breath as if bracing herself to dive into cold water. ‘We’ll do it.’

‘Really?’ His eyes widened with gratitude.

‘It’s what you want, right?’

‘And you, right?’

Juno glanced at her watch. ‘We haven’t got long.’

When they kissed that time, it reminded Juno of their first time. There was a photo of them on his mother’s mantelpiece, at a Christmas formal, Juno in an ill-fitting satin dress, distracted by the rainbow shards on a disco ball. Noah was photographed gazing at her in an unguarded moment of naked adoration. It had made her cringe even then. He looked the same way that day, in the Garden of Flight. He even thanked her when she twisted an index finger into one of his belt-loops, and then he stepped back to snap open the buckle and tug it loose. The light glanced off it and, for a moment, it was the blade of a knife. ‘You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,’ he said, unbuttoning his shirt.

Juno sat down on the grass and watched his fingers, fleet and trembling. He let his shirt flutter to the ground and it occurred to Juno that she had only seen his body a couple of times before: at swimming practice or at the beach. Noah’s chest was hairless except for a thin jet of blond beneath his navel. His ribs and collarbones shone through blue-veined skin. Juno was struck by how terribly alien it was. The sight of all that flesh.

The holographic stars cast a spotlight on the clearing. It was an empty stage now, before the curtain, and Juno’s nerves felt like ice. Noah lunged clumsily forward, and rolled on top of her, and then his clammy hands were everywhere, in her hair, between her thighs, pushing under the wired cradle of her bra. Juno willed herself to feel the same desire, for just a second. But as Noah continued kissing her face, her neck, urgent and dumb, the blood drained from her. He was made repulsive by his need, his heavy breathing, the sourness of his breath and the fullness in his jeans.