I stared at the words, reading them over and over. And then I began to laugh. I fell into the nearest chair and held my belly as laughter ripped out of me. As tears welled in my eyes. Because of course scanning for our current location would take thirty-one hours. I had been a fool to believe there could be any other outcome.
DJ touched my arm. “Noa…”
I jerked away from him. “Nope, I get it. This is my life now. I live on Qriosity. I’m going to die on this ship. We’re all going to die here. Are you happy? Of course you are! This is your dream.” Another laugh escaped, deformed and grotesque. “Your dream and my nightmare.”
“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Jenny asked.
In a tired, defeated voice, DJ said, “The computer needs thirty-one hours to calculate our current coordinates, but the fold drive initiates every nineteen hours.”
“So we’re not going home?” Jenny asked.
DJ tried to answer, but I beat him to it. “Nope. Sorry, Jenny, we’re stuck out here. Get used to breathing stale air, drinking recycled piss, and eating Nutreesh bars, because we’re never getting off this ship.” I stood and headed for the door.
“Where’re you going?” DJ asked.
I paused, looked him in the eye, and shrugged. “To pick up where I left off. Season four, episode thirteen. The one where Anastasia Darling finds a boy who’s gone missing. Someone on this damn ship deserves a happy ending.”
FIVE
JENNY FLOPPED DOWN ON THE couch beside me, opened a Nutreesh bar, and proceeded to devour it. Crumbs tumbled onto her shirt, and she smacked her lips as she ate, which made me want to scream.
“I expected DJ.”
“Expected?” Jenny asked. “Or hoped for?”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring what she was implying. “Seeing as he can’t stop sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and you don’t seem to care about anything but food…” I shrugged.
Jenny scooted around to face me. “I’m betting you didn’t have any friends back on Earth.”
“I had friends.”
“You couldn’t have,” she went on like I hadn’t spoken. “Because I can’t imagine anyone putting up with your selfish ass for long without sticking a knife in you.”
I gave her the finger. “I’m not selfish.”
Jenny snorted. “And I’m not full of Nutreesh right now.”
“What do you want?” I asked, my patience frayed.
Jenny folded her arms across her chest and stared at me. Her eyes were narrow and she flared her nostrils. “I get it; you’re sad. You want to go home. The universe is a cruel, desolate place, no one loves you, and nothing matters because existence is meaningless.” She paused. “Get over it.”
“I didn’t ask for this!”
“And you think I did?” Jenny asked. “You think I wanted to be trapped on a ship with one boy who’s got his head up his ass and another who hardly knows I exist because he’s so worried about you?”
“DJ’s not worried about me.”
Jenny slapped my arm. Hard. “Are you really that dense? That boy has it so bad for you. And I don’t know why. You’re okay-looking, I suppose, but your personality is somewhere between raw broccoli and a rabid raccoon having an existential crisis.”
I didn’t know what Jenny was going on about. DJ had no interest in me, and even if he had, I had no interest in him or anyone. “Sorry I’m not living up to your expectations.”
“You’re hardly living at all,” she said.
“Do you want me to cook? Is that what this is about?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, that would be nice. But I also want you to find a reason to get your broody ass off this couch. I want you to find a reason to get out of bed every day and keep going.”
“I…” I had planned to recite my list of reasons to get up in the morning, but my list was blank. I eyed Jenny thoughtfully for a moment and then asked, “What keeps you going?”
“Revenge.”
“On whom?”
Jenny shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I’ve been scouring Qriosity for clues. I think there’s more happening here than we realize, and I’m going to uncover the truth. When I do, I hope it will lead me to the people who kidnapped us.”
“And when you find them?”
“I’m going to cut off their balls,” she said. “If they have them. If not, I’ll devise a suitably painful alternative.”
“You’ve been investigating our kidnapping this whole time?”
Jenny nodded. “And I don’t need a sidekick.”
“I wasn’t offering.”
“Good,” she said. “You’ve got to find your own thing. DJ’s found his.”
“What?” I asked. “Being perfect?”
“You.” Jenny looked at me like it should have been obvious. “Taking care of you, trying to get you home. If you asked him to capture you a comet, he’d try to find a way to do it.” She shrugged. “We all need a hobby, and you, inexplicably, are his.”
What was I supposed to do with the knowledge that the only thing that kept DJ from joining me on the Couch of Misery was his desire to help me? Maybe that’s just the kind of person he was. He saw someone in pain and needed to fix them. It was sweet, but also unsettling.
“You know it doesn’t work that way, right? You can’t tell me to stop being sad. I can’t flip a switch and shut off my emotions.”
Jenny took my hand and offered me a sympathetic smile. “You don’t have to stop being sad, Noa. I have cried myself to sleep every single night since you found me.”
“You have?” I didn’t mean to sound so surprised, but Jenny didn’t strike me as the type who would readily admit to crying.
“Yes,” she said. “And I overheard DJ having a full-out argument with himself in the Freshie. He blames himself for everything that’s happened to us. We’re all hurting, Noa.”
I felt embarrassed. Jenny and DJ were going through the same thing I was, but they had kept moving forward, despite their pain, while I’d watched TV.
“What do I do?” I asked. “You’ve got your mystery and DJ’s got me, I guess. What should I do?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe you should ask the hologram.” Before I could stop her, Jenny said, “Hey, Jenny Perez, get out here. Noa’s got a question for you.”
As the sparkling photons gathered into the form of Jenny Perez, Jenny stood and took off.
“Hi! I’m your host, Jenny Perez, whom you probably remember as the precocious kid detective and bestselling author Anastasia Darling on the award-winning mystery entertainment program Murder Your Darlings. What can I help you with today?”
I was about to tell her to go away, but I stopped. I sat up on the couch and pulled my legs under me. Jenny Perez stood in front of the screen wearing a hopeful, slightly devious expression that I’d grown familiar with over a hundred episodes of her award-winning mystery entertainment program. I’d spent more time with her since waking up on Qriosity than with DJ or Jenny.