“We’re more than that, Noa. You’re more.”
The weight of the truth was too much. I felt like I was collapsing in on myself. “Who we were is who we are,” I said. “Our experiences are the scaffolding for the people we become. If none of my memories are real, then nothing about me is real! Why do I love baking if it isn’t because Mrs. Blum taught me? Why do I love horror movies if it isn’t because my mom and I marathon-watched them every October? Why do I love reading so much if it isn’t because of the summer days I spent on my apartment building’s roof, soaking up the sun with my battered copy of Brown Girl Dreaming?”
“Those memories are real, Noa. They may not have belonged to you, but they belonged to someone. There is a real Mrs. Blum who owns a bakery. There is a real Billy who deserves to be in jail.” DJ clenched his fists.
“So what?” I said. “They’re not my memories.”
“They are now,” DJ countered. “They’re in your head. You’re their caretaker. You have to honor the people those memories were harvested from and the pain they endured creating them.”
“Doesn’t that make us as bad as Production?” I asked. “They’re stolen memories regardless of whether I stole them. Our audience”—just saying the word made me uncomfortable—“loves us because of who we are, but who we are is a lie. A lie appropriated from others. If I keep playing that role, then I’m complicit.”
Even knowing that I had probably never lived in Seattle, that my father hadn’t abandoned me, that I didn’t have a best friend named Becca, those memories still felt like my life. They were mine, but they didn’t belong to me. “I don’t know who I am, DJ.”
“You’re Noa North. You’re courageous and stubborn. You doubt yourself and your own worth even when everyone around you can see how amazing you are. You have a dark sense of humor, but you love making people smile.”
“Did Nico like to bake?”
DJ shook his head. “Nico loved to paint. Even after people got sick, he’d sneak around the station and paint murals on the walls of sunny beaches or snowcapped mountains in the hopes that it might make someone’s day a little better.”
“Oh.”
“You bake, he painted, but you’re both kind and generous.”
It was easier if I thought of Nico as a totally different person and not as someone who had inhabited my body before me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Was it easier to manipulate me into falling in love with you if I didn’t know?”
DJ looked like I’d torn open his belly with a rusty baling hook. “I… I swear I didn’t manipulate you.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I promise,” he said. “I did everything I could to give you your space and let whatever happened between us happen.”
“What would you have done if I had never returned your feelings?”
“I would have been happy to have your friendship.”
It was so difficult to believe him. How often had I believed his lies in the past? He looked sincere, but he had proven he was a talented liar.
“And I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t allowed,” DJ said. “After you died, Production made contact through Jenny Perez. They informed me that our ratings were the only reason they weren’t canceling us immediately. They warned me not to tell you or Jenny the truth.”
“You could have tried,” I said. “I would have.”
DJ nodded solemnly. “I know. Just like on Fomalhaut. I was so scared of losing you that I was willing to do anything to hold on to what we had, even if it was imperfect.”
I kept trying to sympathize with DJ, but he had lied to me. He’d betrayed me. I didn’t know how to reconcile that with my feelings for him.
“Are we in danger now?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “Production has controlled everything that’s happened to us. They set the alien loose; they trapped us in Reactor Control and flooded it with radiation. We never would have arrived near the school if they hadn’t wanted us to. I assumed they’d planned for Ty to join us, but now I don’t think they did.” He shrugged. “I’ve got no idea what happens next.”
“Okay.” It was the only thing I could say. I was heartbroken and confused. DJ was the one person I wanted to talk through my feelings with, but he was also the one person I couldn’t.
“Noa, please believe me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I need time, okay?” I told him. “Just give me some time.”
Slowly, DJ stood and turned to leave. “I wish I could tell you to take as long as you need, but we may not have much time left.”
TWO
JENNY WAS ALONE IN HER quarters, sitting cross-legged on her bed, when I found her. I’d tried the galley first, but she was gone. Ty was gone too, and I assumed DJ had locked him up again. Not that I cared. Ty could’ve taken a short walk out of the airlock and it wouldn’t have made much difference to me.
“Should I call you Nico or Noa?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Should I call you Jenny or Karen?”
“It’s so weird to think that there was some other me wandering around in my body,” Jenny said. “But from what DJ described of Karen, you boys got the better version of me.”
Jenny had changed into a pair of comfy sweats and a tank top. Her ruined dress lay in a heap on the floor in the corner. I motioned at it with my chin. “How’s your… How’re you feeling?”
“I died, Noa.”
“Welcome to the club.”
Jenny barked out a laugh, then covered her mouth as if embarrassed at the sound. “Sorry.”
“No need to be,” I said. “Did you see anything when you were dead?”
“Like a bright light?”
“Or whatever.”
Jenny pursed her lips, frowned, and then shook her head.
“Me neither.” I sat beside Jenny, and she rested her head on my shoulder. “This is so messed up.”
It was a few moments before Jenny replied. “My whole life, I’ve felt like someone’s sidekick. In middle school, it was Margie Gelbwasser. She was my best friend, but she was always up to something, dragging me along for the ride. In high school, it was the same, but with a different group. I followed. I was a follower. But I had this feeling I could be more. That, if given the opportunity, I could step up; I could be the star.
“And then I had the chance, and DJ locked me in the toilet and forced me into the background again.”
I leaned back and stared at her. “That’s what you’re pissed about? That DJ snatched the spotlight?”
“Everyone wants the chance to tell their story, Noa.” I attempted to interrupt, but Jenny wasn’t having it. “Do you know what I went through while you were trapped in the reactor room, making out with DJ?”
“We weren’t—”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “Because you didn’t ask. You didn’t care. And neither does whoever watches our program, because the story has been about you.” The more Jenny spoke, the more worked up she got. “You haven’t even asked how I knew DJ was the one who’d betrayed us.”