Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Pins and needles prickled up her fingers. ‘Noah…’ She twisted away from his sloppy mouth. Nettles in the bumpy undergrowth were sharp against Juno’s spine. As her muscles went slack she became more aware of the weight of Noah’s chest bearing down on hers so hard she could only take in shallow gasps. ‘Get off me.’

He didn’t.

She looked around wildly, flailing for words to describe her distress.

‘Noah… please. Get off me!’ It was too much. She didn’t want the weight of him, she didn’t want his hands or his lips or any part of his strange body on hers. She shoved him, leapt to her feet in one fluid movement and stood shaking at the edge of the clearing.

There was an awful quiet between them while Juno choked back the acrid tide of nausea in her throat.

‘Juno…?’ Noah’s voice trembled. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No.’ She looked away, blinking back tears. ‘No. I’m sorry. It’s me. I can’t – I don’t know why. It doesn’t feel good. It never feels good.’

‘You can. It does. You’re just… not letting yourself, that’s all.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is. I mean, we love each other. And you know, we’re basically adults and stuff…’

‘But—’

He grabbed her arm and looked at her seriously,

‘You know, Juno, there are worse things in the world than… doing this. People do worse things all the time.’

‘When did you decide that?’ she said, then regretted it.

Noah clenched his fists. Juno watched his knuckles turning white.

‘I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t help it. Loving you… wanting you. It’s all the same thing for me. And sometimes I really feel like you want to as well, but you’re stopping yourself. I think that you’re scared of not having control all the time.’

‘That’s not true,’ Juno hissed. ‘I’m not scared. I just don’t want to.’

‘Really? You don’t feel anything at all? Because sometimes you—’

‘I don’t. Feel anything. That’s the truth, Noah. When you’re on top of me, I don’t feel anything at all. Not one bit of affection, not one soupçon of desire. Not for you. Not for anyone. It’s not that I’m scared. It’s just that… sex is repulsive.

‘I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. I don’t understand why you think about it all the time. It’s just your body. It doesn’t have to control you.’

As Noah got up off the ground she caught a flash of green boxers through his jeans. He zipped them up, fingers still unsteady. ‘I can’t take this,’ he said quietly, as he turned to go. ‘Maybe everybody’s right and there really is something wrong with you.’

Juno felt the blood rise up in her face – hot with shame and fury and regret.

She called out, ‘I don’t know what it would change. It won’t change anything at all. You’ll feel okay for an hour and then you’ll feel rotten and I’ll still be leaving.’

‘Maybe that’s what it comes down to,’ he said, with a quiet rage. ‘I love you too much to ever leave you.’

‘I wish you loved me too much to ask me to stay.’

Before he disappeared into the darkness between the silver birch trees he said, ‘Don’t you realize? I always have.’

T-MINUS 22 HOURS

SHE WAS ALONE FOR a long time before someone came to find her. It was the public affairs officer, and when she did the phone in her hand was lit up. Juno thought she could hear the sound of sirens hiss through the speakers. Poppy emerged from behind her, her face streaked with tears. ‘Juno!’ she shouted, ‘Something terrible’s happened!’

ASTRID

T-MINUS 22 HOURS

SHE HAD DONE IT once before.

Once, in the gilded foodhall of Harrods department store, Astrid stole a handful of sugared almonds. She had wandered the aisles, her heart clenched with longing, and gazed at the silver fish gutted on shelves of ice, scales resplendent under the chandeliers. Towers of sherbet-coloured macarons. Strawberry truffles. White-chocolate bonbons. Glittering bowls overflowing with crystalized fruit. Astrid had glanced around – uniformed shop assistant temporarily distracted by a demanding customer – and then grabbed a handful of sugared almonds, the size and blue of robin’s eggs, and then run, past the guards at the front door, past the throngs of tourists and all the way out into the glare of the midday sun. It had been an easy thing, a little thing, a swift combination of muscle contractions that comprised the theft, all, in themselves, innocuous. Astrid and Ara stole that delicious hour of freedom just as easily.

After the public affairs officer dismissed them, Astrid followed Ara down the corridors and into the Space Museum one floor down, with Eliot racing after them. They headed through the exhibitions, barely seeing them. A tour guide was leading a group of pensioners past an exhibit that featured Edwardian spacesuits. The three of them rushed past into the neighbouring hall, the one with the machine that simulated flight for small children.

‘Wait!’ Eliot shouted. ‘Slow down!’ But Ara wasn’t listening; she gathered speed, ducking around glass display cases. Astrid followed her as she rushed around the base of a decommissioned space shuttle, almost toppling visitors. So strange, to see these members of the public. Uniformed schoolchildren, pregnant women pushing prams.

‘Where are you going?’ Astrid shouted, taking care not to slip on the linoleum.

‘Somewhere great!’ Ara shouted over her shoulder. Astrid followed past the museum’s gift shop, up spiralling flights of stairs, their laughter crashing off the marble walls.

‘Come back,’ Eliot said, just before he disappeared behind another tour group.

Astrid chased Ara through a deserted fire exit and out into the blinding daylight. She didn’t realize that they’d escaped until they had.

‘This?’ she asked.

Ara stopped running and leant on her knees to catch her breath. As Astrid’s vision cleared, she gazed around. Ara had led her to the children’s playground at the back of the building. The wooden benches were still wet from the morning’s rain, the ice cream stall shuttered, play-horses sunk into the AstroTurf, heads reared as if drowning.

‘This,’ said Ara, and pointed past the low wall of the playground and beyond the road to the wind-whipped river. She said it as if she was giving it to Astrid. ‘We have an hour. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s take what we can.’

‘But…’ Astrid hesitated. ‘What about Eliot?’

‘He’ll find us.’

‘We should probably stay indoors.’ Astrid glanced back through the fire door at the darkened stairwell.

‘Astrid, don’t you want to do everything you never did before? Or at least one thing?’

Astrid’s arms were prickling with goosebumps.

She wanted to go.

She knew what she should do. She should go back into the building and wait for the other astronauts to arrive. She should rejoin her sister and Poppy and Eliot and plant her sapling…

‘Astrid?’

…and yet, she had only one life. And she was tormented by how lovely the sky was, with the sun spearing through the clouds, and the pavements glittering.

How would she explain it to the Astronaut Office when she returned? Or to herself an hour later? Or in the years that would follow? How would she explain the mistake she was about to make?

Ara vaulted the fence on the other side of the playground and strode into the road, forcing two drivers to swerve, both cursing out of their windows. Astrid had a second, as another car passed, to choose between staying or following. She glanced back at the Interplanetary Society. The unlit corridor was like a dark maw, leading to a life away from everyone she loved. And, for one wild minute, she didn’t want it at all.