“Noa—”
“Shush. I’m busy.”
I expected DJ to leave, but he remained sitting beside me, quietly watching Anastasia solve the murder of her favorite librarian’s prized cockatoo. Spoiler alert: the murderer was a library patron angry about a late-return fee.
“How can you watch this?” DJ asked at the end of the episode.
“It’s the only program in Qriosity’s library.” I refused to look at him. I was not going to be distracted by his bright blue eyes or his impossible dimples. “There are also a bunch of movies starring or co-starring Jenny Perez, but I haven’t dipped my toes into that pool yet. There are a couple that don’t look terrible. They don’t look great, either, but we have to make do with what we’ve got, right?”
The next episode began, and DJ sat with me while Anastasia, who was on a plane, traveling to Europe with her parents, discovered the pilot dead.
DJ shifted on the couch, probably trying to find a comfortable position, and it groaned each time he moved. “Come on, Noa. Shut this off and talk to me.”
“No.”
“You can’t ignore me forever.”
“I don’t see why not,” I said. “Now hush. The copilot’s about to be murdered and I don’t want to miss it.”
“The copilot?” DJ said. “But then who lands the plane?”
“I’ll give you three guesses, but you won’t need them.”
DJ peeled his attention from the show and turned to me. “You smell, Noa. Bad.”
I stuck my nose in my armpit and breathed in. “I’m fragrant.” I turned up the volume to drown out whatever insults DJ might fling at me next.
DJ got up, and I thought he was finally going to leave, but he blocked the screen instead. “I know this sucks, Noa, but you’re not the only person it’s happening to.”
I avoided his gaze like he was Medusa. I’d be fine if I didn’t look directly into his eyes. Because the truth was that I wanted to look at him. I wanted to lean into him for support. For friendship and warmth. I wanted to pull him down onto the couch with me and laugh with him about how bad Murder Your Darlings was. I wanted to leave with him and explore the galley. Sing silly songs while baking a cake. DJ had some kind of pull on me, and I didn’t quite understand it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. I just wanted to embrace it. Embrace him. But I didn’t.
“Do you want me to beg you to leave this room and stop watching this show? I will if that’s what it takes.”
“I want you to leave me alone,” I said.
DJ stared at, into, and through me, but I did not relent. I kept my eyes fixed firmly past him as if he wasn’t blocking my view. As if he wasn’t there at all. After a few seconds, DJ marched out of the room.
I’d won another round in our pointless war, but I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t feel good about it. I wasn’t angry at DJ or Jenny. I was angry at everything. At the whole damn universe. I didn’t understand why DJ and Jenny weren’t sitting on the couch beside me. We were on a ship we didn’t know how to control, lost in space with no hope of finding home. We were never again going to see the people we loved, never going to get the chance to say goodbye. DJ was acting like I’d given up, but you can’t forfeit a game that you’ve already lost.
Anastasia Darling was searching the plane for clues while the flight attendants attempted to keep the passengers calm, when the projector died.
“What the hell?!” I felt around for the remote and tried turning the screen back on, but nothing worked. A moment later, DJ charged back into the room, took one look at the screen, and nodded.
“Did you do this?”
“You’re going to talk to me, Noa.” DJ stood at the edge of the couch with his arms folded across his broad chest.
DJ finally had my attention, and I was going to make him regret it. “Who do you think you are? You’re not my mom. You’re not the captain of this busted ship. I don’t know you, and I don’t owe you anything.” I often slouched a little to avoid drawing attention to my height, but this time I stood tall.
DJ was not cowed. He squared his shoulders and took the full brunt of my anger. “I’ll turn the screen back on when you agree to talk to me.”
I didn’t care how cute his dimples were; I hated him right then. I wanted to punch him in the nose and then kick him while he was down, over and over until he hurt as badly as I did.
“Stay if you want,” I said. “I’m leaving.” I headed for the door, but DJ blocked my path. I might have been taller, but he was a cement wall. “Move.”
“No.”
“Move!”
DJ walked me backward, and I fell onto the couch. “Not until you talk to me,” he said.
I was a ball of compressed rage, a coiled spring of anger. I bounced back and pushed DJ as hard as I could, screamed at him to get the hell out of my way. Spit flew from my mouth, and tears wetted my red-rimmed eyes. And in the face of my fury, DJ hardly moved a centimeter.
“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” I sank onto the couch and buried my face in my hands.
The couch squeaked when DJ sat beside me. “Because you promised me cake.”
“Bake your own damn cake.”
“I tried,” DJ said. “It didn’t go real well. And Jenny’s more useless in the kitchen than I am. But at least we found out the fire suppression systems work.”
A high-pitched, angry laugh leaked out of me. “So that’s what this is? You don’t care about me, you’re just hungry?”
“Can’t it be both?” DJ rested a hand on my shoulder, but I shook him off. “Do you think Jenny and I like being on this ship any more than you do?”
“I don’t care about you or Jenny. I care about me.”
“You’ve made that obvious,” DJ said.
“Clearly I haven’t because you keep coming around.”
DJ’s face hardened for a moment like he was going to yell, but he didn’t. He sighed and said, “I know this situation’s bad, but we’re never going to get out of it if we don’t work together.”
“We’re never going to get out of it, period,” I said. None of this was DJ’s fault. I was the one who’d pushed him to reboot the computer. But if I’d kept my mouth shut and trusted his instincts, we’d just be in a different awful situation. We’d been screwed before we rebooted the computer, and we were screwed after. The only difference was the manner in which we were screwed.
“Noa—”
“What do you want from me, DJ?”
“I want you to quit moping,” DJ said. “I want you to get off this couch and stop watching this silly program. I want you to take a shower. Please. You really do smell like day-old horse manure.”
“And then what? Bake cakes and play starship with you and Jenny?” My hands were trembling. I couldn’t stop them. “We’re trapped, DJ! We’re going to die on this ship! I wish you had let me die in space so that I didn’t have to face the prospect of a long, slow death here.”
Tears tracked down DJ’s cheeks. “Please don’t say that. I regret a lot of stuff, but rescuing you isn’t one.”