How could I compete with someone like that? How could I compete with a ghost? I had to wall off the jealousy that seethed within me; I had to remind myself that I had pushed DJ into this conversation.
“You miss him a lot, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”
“No,” DJ said. “He’s gone, and I won’t ever get him back.”
“But if you could,” I asked.
“Noa—”
I shifted my body away from DJ. “I mean, he sounds great. I can see why you miss him. What I can’t see is why you’d want anything to do with me.”
“You’re completely different people, Noa.”
“That’s obvious,” I shot back. “He’s brave, I’m a coward. He’s funny, I’m basically the human equivalent of Valium. He never gives up, I give up at the first bump in the road.”
DJ slid his hand into mine and laced our fingers together. “None of that’s true and you know it.”
“But if you could have him over me, you’d take him, wouldn’t you?” I shook my head. “No need to answer. I already know. Hell, I’d take him over me.”
“He’s my past, Noa, but you’re my future. I hope.” DJ took my chin in his hand and turned my face toward his. He leaned in to kiss me. His lips barely grazed mine. I wanted to close my eyes and fall into it. I wanted to fall into him. Instead, I flinched. My body seized and I pulled back.
DJ lowered his eyes. “Sorry—”
“No, DJ, I didn’t mean—”
“Noa? DJ? Are you there?”
I was annoyed at Jenny because now DJ was going to think I had flinched because of him. At the same time, I was grateful to her for saving me from embarrassing myself further. Reluctantly, I let go of DJ’s hand. “Jenny? We’re here. Where are you?”
Jenny sounded more composed than she had last time. Less consumed with panic as a result of being stalked by something that was going to eat her. But only just barely. “I’m hiding in the shuttle.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Where’s the monster? Is it a monster?”
DJ squeezed my knee and threw me a look that was like, Give the girl a chance to answer.
“It’s definitely a monster.” Jenny was breathing hard. I couldn’t imagine what she’d been going through. “It grabbed my leg and secreted some kind of juice that burned me pretty bad. I can still run, though.”
My heart dropped. Jenny was out there, hurt and alone, and DJ and I were trapped and couldn’t help her.
“I don’t know what the hell it is, Noa, but it’s big.”
“Tentacles?” I asked.
Jenny stifled a horrified laugh. “No. But it’s got teeth. Lots and lots of teeth.”
“Jenny?” DJ said. “Can you stay in the shuttle? Are you safe there?”
“I’m safe for now.” Jenny paused. “But I don’t know for how long. It burned through the door to the cargo bay. I only escaped because I’ve searched the ship so many times that I know where every service tunnel is.”
What the hell could burn through a two-inch-thick pressure door? If the monster got tired of chasing Jenny and tried to get through the door to Reactor Control, it could flood the entire ship with radiation. And also kill us.
“Any chance I could get some help from you guys?” Jenny asked. “I could really use it.”
“We’re trapped in Reactor Control,” DJ said. I mentally added, Slowly dying from radiation exposure, but kept it to myself because Jenny had enough problems to deal with.
“You’re working on escaping, though, right?”
“Yeah,” DJ said. “We’re doing our best, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take. Just stay—”
“It’s here!” Jenny’s voice dropped to a whisper again. “I have to go.”
DJ and I waited for Jenny to come back, but the comms remained silent.
SIX
THE SHIP WAS TOO BIG and the room was too small, and Jenny was out there fighting for her life while DJ and I were trapped and unable to do anything to save ourselves except wait. Despite that, despite the desperate circumstances in which we were imprisoned, I couldn’t stop thinking about DJ’s lips as I paced the room. About kissing his lips. About what they would feel like pressed against mine—would they be warm? Would they be dry or soft or smooth?—about what they would taste like, about how it might feel to be touched by someone with the lights on and whose face I could see.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked.
It had been maybe an hour since we’d last heard from Jenny, and I imagined a million different scenarios, each worse than the last. In one she was strung up from the ceiling in a web of alien mucus, frantically trying to free herself as the monster crept closer, its jaws widening so that she could see each of its razor-sharp teeth. In another, the alien paralyzed her but left her conscious so that she would remain awake while it slowly devoured and digested her, unable to move. Unable to scream. I tried to turn my thoughts to more productive tasks, but there was little I could do that I hadn’t already done. Thinking about DJ was the only thing that took my mind off Jenny, and I felt guilty as hell about it.
DJ had managed to stand and was working quietly at the station farthest from where he’d emptied his stomach. “Head still hurts,” he said. “But it’s not too bad.”
“Maybe you should sit.” I stopped pacing. “My mom told me this story about a guy who hit his head and thought he was fine because he seemed fine, but then he dropped dead a few hours later because it turned out his brain had been bleeding and eventually the pressure built up so much—”
“My brain’s not bleeding.”
“You don’t know that.”
DJ turned around. “You’re right. I don’t.” He returned to his work.
I peeked over his shoulder and tried to figure out what he was up to, but no matter how much I learned about Qriosity, DJ knew more. “What’re you doing?”
“Trying to use the ship’s sensors to scan inside Qriosity like you suggested before this mess started,” he said. “We might not be able to reach Jenny, but we might be able to help her stay one step ahead of the monster.”
“You remind me of my mom,” I said. “In a good way. She’s cool in a crisis and so are you. You could be a firefighter or a nurse or a doctor.” I paused and thought about what I’d said. “Could’ve been, I guess. We don’t need nurses or doctors as long as we have MediQwik, do we?”
DJ swore under his breath. It was the first time I’d ever heard him cuss, which I took as a sign that things were not going well. He sighed and leaned over the console. “I’m not calm,” he said. “And I’m not good under pressure either.”
“Then you’re a hell of an actor.”
“Yeah.” DJ waved at the console. “I can’t scan the ship. I might be able to reroute the systems from Ops, but we can’t get there.” He threw up his hands. “Jenny’s on her own.”