Stardust

     As the days passed, July found herself almost comfortable.

     It was strange. She missed Lake—she kept half-expecting to turn a corner and see him sprawled out on the couch, or cooking something on the stove, or to hear his voice from down the hall—but he’d been gone so often, and so consistently, it didn’t actually feel that different. Most of her days in his family home had been spent wandering the hallways with no-one but her hallucinations to keep her company, filling her time with chores and naps and workouts.

     No, her routine stayed basically the same. What was different was the people—and after a year practically in solitary confinement, July was overwhelmed with the newfound vibrancy of her social sphere.

     Axel, despite his initial reservations, wasted no time taking her under his wing. In the days following the (mildly disastrous) smoke session, he would show up at her door multiple times a day, dragging her out to have a meal with the group or play video games with him.

     He was especially excited about that second one; July's mom had been aggressively anti-video-game, to the point that she’d never so much as touched a joystick pre-bombings, and to her eternal shame, when Axel first put a controller in her hands, she had to ask him what each button did individually. It only took three buttons for him to catch on, and then he spent a while laughing uproariously at her while she pummeled him on the shoulder repeatedly and demanded that he shut the fuck up; once it became clear he was undeterred, she threw herself bodily at him and attempted to wrestle him into a headlock. But after that, Axel taught her the controls for a few different games—all “first-person shooters,” as he later informed her—and she found herself absolutely enraptured by this new way to royally kick his ass.

     Cas avoided her. They had polite interactions in groups, but July didn’t see them one-on-one again. Mels roped her into makeup practice, somehow; she taught July how to do a perfect eyeliner wing while they lounged on her bedroom floor and ate popcorn. Baz and Nina seemed to operate as a unit; she never saw one without the other, and every time the kids harassed her into playing a round of video games, Nina would drape herself over her brother’s shoulders and whisper mysteriously into his ear as he wielded the controller. Sage continued to be oddly friendly, going so far as to stand by when July insisted on hand-washing the dishes (using the dishwasher felt like cheating) and dry them with a scratchy white towel.

     June didn’t show up again for several days. At first, July was shaken by what Matt had said—but after thinking about it, she realized June never actually said why or how she was there. They’d spent all night talking about other things—reminiscing about childhood, July haphazardly and poorly explaining events over the past few years—and she'd had been so overwhelmed and exhausted and self-obsessed, she didn’t even notice she hadn’t asked June a single question about her life since the bombings.

     Two days after Axel’s smoke session, July checked the calendar (hung exactly where Axel said it would be) and found out two things. Firstly, that it was mid-February, which, while essentially meaningless, still knocked July mildly off-kilter.

     Secondly, someone had penciled July into the chore schedule in very neat, clean handwriting. She had dishes on Fridays, sweeping the kitchen on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and vacuuming the hideous pink fluffy rug on Wednesdays. As she stared at the near-perfectly-straight handwriting, a little warm ball rose in her chest.

     July found herself busy, for the first time in over a year. It felt good.

###

     A few days into her new routine, July had her first psych check-in.

     She found out about it from a sheet of paper slid under her door sometime in the early-morning hours before she woke up. It wasn’t very informational—just said she had an appointment at 3 PM, that her patient ID would allow her through the door at the end of the hall, and that not showing up would result in docked privileges.

     It did not give her any directions past the locked door. July, remembering how confusing and maze-like that section of the ship had been when Ophelia took her out to the balcony, found this worrying. When she tried to bring it up to Jasper and the kids at breakfast, they just laughed at her.

     “You’ll figure it out,” Baz said, not unkindly. His bangs were violently greasy that morning, hanging over his eyes in a slightly damp curtain. “It’s hard to explain, you’ll see when you’re there.”

     This was not comforting. July raised her eyes to look at Jasper, who was flipping pancakes on the stove, but he just shrugged.

     “You’d think I was screwing with you,” he said.

     So when July stood in front of the locked door that afternoon, clutching her patient ID between sweaty fingers, she had no idea what to expect.

     She tapped her ID against the box and the door clicked open. Beyond it was a set of stairs leading down—mesh grate stairs that had most definitely not been there the last time.

     She looked behind her; the hall looked entirely normal, everyone’s doors shut, the common room door still closed at the opposite end. There were no other doors in sight, no other paths to take.

     She looked back at the doorway in front of her. It resolutely continued to lead to a flight of stairs.

     Anxiety mounting, July stepped through the doorway; the door swung shut behind her without her even touching it. She swallowed, straightened her shoulders, put her head on a swivel, and began to plod her way down the stairs.

     There was no sign of the former juncture of corridors. The stairs continued down, no end in sight, leading her deeper and deeper into fuckall-knew-where; as the flight stretched longer and longer, July began to speed up. The repetitive clonk of her boots on the grate echoed dully up and down the hall. Her breath began to come short and fast; her heartbeat pounded audibly in her ears.

     July began speed-walking. Her calf muscles burned. Odd, uncomfortably wet noises stirred somewhere below the endless metal webbing. Her boots sank slightly with each step, the grate flexing underneath her soles rhythmically.

     The dim lighting wasn't helping her nerves. Every pipe and cable on the ceiling looked oddly organic in the dirty gloom, like limbs of a creature tucked up in the metal rafters, ready to spring down onto her head the second she passed beneath them.

     July started to run.

     A stitch flared up in her side, its dull, burning ache driving her to greater heights of irritation. Her momentum sent her wheeling down the stairs, hitting each step with a heavy bang, endless dark metal panels blurring in the corners of her vision—

     And then the stairs opened out onto a landing. July hit it hard and heavy, nearly stumbling into the wall; she caught herself just in time and planted her hands firmly on her knees, instead, and stood like that for a few moments, panting. There was a door on the landing with a black rubber seal running along the bottom edge, just a couple of feet from July's face.

     A peek over her shoulder showed the staircase sitting there primly, mocking her with its material reality. It loomed endlessly up behind her, eventually disappearing into distant darkness.

     July was thoroughly wigged out.

     The door had another one of those black boxes beside its handle; July tapped her ID against it and entered. The room beyond was almost laughably normal. Ophelia was sitting at a neatly organized desk, spacious and free of clutter, surrounded by shelves of books. On July’s side of the desk, two overstuffed armchairs and a couch were conscientiously spaced out around a small side table, which held a box of tissues and a small bowl of candies.

     “Hello, July.” Ophelia slid a drawer open, retrieved a small sheaf of papers, tapped them on the surface of the desk once, aligning them with one another, and placed them in front of her. “It’s nice to see you.”

     July squinted at the alien suspiciously. The door swung shut behind her.

     “Please sit down,” Ophelia said.

     After a moment, July obliged, sprawling in one of the cushy armchairs with her knees apart. Her armpits were still slightly damp from her brisk jog, and pesky strands of hair stuck to her back and shoulders. She unstuck a few locks of hair from her skin, watching Ophelia closely.

     It was still difficult to gauge Dusties’ facial expressions. When they stared at July for too long—which they did frequently, she wasn’t even sure if they blinked at all—it made her feel like a mouse being examined by a boa constrictor. Their pupils grew and shrank between vertical slits and huge round balls that obscured their irises; as best as July could tell, it had something to do with focus and mood. Ophelia didn't seem to be looking at July at all right that moment, instead flitting between the handheld screen lying on her desk and the papers she was thumbing through, and her pupils were thin.

     Finally, she put a pen to the sheaf of papers and looked up at July with a tight-lipped smile that showed exactly zero of her fangs. “How are you doing today?”

     “Um.” July wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. Not that, at least. “… Getting here was hard.”

     “Yes, humans often have a difficult time learning to navigate our ships.” Ophelia tilted her head to one side. “Many species do. It’s best if you trust the ship—it will take you where you need to go.”

     “Right.” July wasn’t about to try and figure that one out. She let her gaze wander around the room, which, apart from the bookshelves, was entirely devoid of decor. She couldn’t even find anything recognizably personal on Ophelia’s desk—apart from the sleek chrome screen and a stack of manila folders, it only had neatly-organized containers filled with pencils and pens and pads of post-it notes. The bookshelves were filled with volumes of all different sizes and colors, but most of them, as far as July could tell, weren’t in English—their spines were covered in geometric shapes she barely recognized as letters at all. Of the few she caught that she could read, she didn’t recognize their titles; they all had dull, long names, most of which were preceded with Journal of.

     “We’ll start with a routine questionnaire.” Ophelia’s crisp tone yanked July back into the present. “On a scale of one to ten, with one being ‘never’ and ten being ‘constantly or all the time,’ how often over the last week have you experienced listlessness or a lack of interest in pleasurable activities?”

     “Um,” July said again. “I don’t know, three?”

     Ophelia’s pen scratched over her paper. July decided to examine the candy bowl, a cheap plastic mixing bowl with “GOOD VIBES” printed on one side, as Ophelia continued to bombard her with confusing, annoying questions. Only half-listening, July gave random numbers, having already checked out of the interaction. She pulled a candy out of the bowl and unwrapped it, cellophane crinkling between her fingers. When she popped it into her mouth, it was cool and tasted sweet and buttery.

     “Thank you for your patience,” Ophelia said, scooping up the papers and stacking them neatly again in one smooth motion. “We will have to go over this form at the beginning of every session, for formality’s sake.”

     July made a noncommittal noise, rolling the candy around her mouth with her tongue.

     The alien leaned over her desk, double-jointed fingers wrapped around each other in an intricate tangle of digits; her focus shifted and her unnerving gaze latched onto July, who began fidgeting in discomfort. “How have you been adjusting to life onboard?”

     “I don’t know,” July said again. She stared at one of the bookshelves behind Ophelia, playing with a strand of hair, until a flash of inspiration hit. “You know, it’d be easier to adjust if I, like, knew what I was doing here?”

     “You were randomly selected to participate in the program. I am afraid I do not know why participants are put in the selection pool to begin with.”

     Frustrated, she bit down on the candy. Crunchy sweet shards dug into the hollows of her teeth. “No, like—the program. What am I supposed to be doing?”

     “Oh! Nothing whatsoever.” July’s look of confused disbelief set off one of Ophelia’s quiet, wheezing chuckles. “This is a research program, July. We are collecting data on human welfare and biology. You do not need to worry about performing to any metric; we are studying your natural behaviors, your environmental and social needs, things of that nature.”

     July rooted around in the gaps of her teeth with her tongue, digging for pieces of candy gummed onto her enamel, as she considered this. Try as she might, she couldn’t come up with anything that disproved Ophelia’s statement.

     “We are here to talk about you, though, July.” If the alien didn’t stop using her name every other sentence, July felt as though she might launch herself over the desk and start punching. “Now that you know the purpose of our program, do you feel any differently about your adjustment period?”

     The last chunk of candy popped out of her back tooth. She crunched down on it, thoughtfully eyeing the bowl.

     “Not really,” she said.

###

     Despite July's disapproval, the stairs continued to exist on the way out. Somehow, they seemed even longer going up; by the time she reached the top, she was panting and sweating again, which pissed her off even more.

     Every annoyed thought flew out of her head when she opened her door to see her sister lounging on her bed.

     “June!” she squealed—enthusiasm bubbling up in her throat, she threw herself across the room and looped her arms around June’s neck, landing both of them on the bed in a tangle of limbs and messy hair. June wrapped her arms around her in turn and squeezed, hard enough to make July’s ribs creak.

     “Sorry I’ve been so busy.” June’s voice was muffled, her face buried in the crook of July’s neck. When her lips moved against July’s skin, they sent delighted, half-disbelieving shivers down her spine.

     July fell back and dropped to the mattress with a gentle whoof. June disentangled herself to prop her torso up on one elbow, free arm slung loosely over July’s stomach; July looked up at her in adoration, unable to stop herself from grinning so widely, her cheeks ached. June wasn’t wearing sunglasses this time—fascinated, July reached up to gently brush the pads of her fingers over the outer edge of June’s eye, barely disturbing the thick lashes curled over solid black marbles. A thick, floral scent drifted headily into July’s sinuses, blanketing the inside of her skull.

     She let her hand fall back to the mattress. “What have you been busy with?”

     “Stuff.” June tightened the arm around July's stomach. The inner crook of her elbow pressed into July’s waist as her sister gathered her into a tight embrace; it was so easy to slot back into this role, one half of June-and-July, all the rusted, broken machinery of their childhood slowly wheezing and chugging its way back to life. Their bodies fit together perfectly, gears clicking into place.

     This was not enough to distract July. “What kind of stuff?”

     Even after years apart, July could tell when June was stalling. It was, admittedly, very obvious at the moment—she didn’t even have a derail for that question, just stayed silent as she played her fingers along the lines of July’s ribs and idly twisted them in the damp fabric of July’s tanktop. In the following silence, July wiggled one arm around until she managed to squirm it under June’s body and press her palm to her back—a clumsy attempt at comfort.

     “It’s okay,” July said. “I know you’re not a patient here.”

     June exhaled sharply through her nose. It resembled a snort, but it wasn’t humorous. “I never said I was.”

     “I know that, too.” The look June gave her was entirely impenetrable; her eyelids drooped low and heavy, then she dipped her face low to press her forehead to the side of July’s skull. July leaned her head into June’s in response, palm rubbing tiny circles into her back. “I get it. You’re not sure how to explain. But it’s not—you’re here, June, do you think I care why or how?”

     Their skulls pressed together harder, hard enough to ache. For one all-consuming moment, July was overcome with the image of June breaking open her skull and crawling inside, pressing the whole of herself against walls of bone til she dissolved into a bloom of cerebral fluid. Then June gave another heavy sigh and flopped onto her back beside July, embrace discarded in favor of grabbing her sweaty palm and squeezing, hard.

     “I do live on the ship,” June said. “I was… adopted.”

     “By a Dusty?”

     That got a bark of laughter—sharp, cold, stilted. The cloying scent of roses was tinged with metallic undertones. “No, Daddy’s a human. We live here because… because of his job.”

     The way she said Daddy was so easy, so natural—it sounded strange falling from June’s lips so effortlessly, too vulnerable, too childish for the June she knew. Back in the day, she'd only ever call their mother “Mom” to her face if prompted. “So he works with the Dusties?”

     “Sort of, yeah.” A glance at June showed her face all screwed up, lips pressed together in some twisted expression of pain; July gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. June didn’t look over. Eventually, she said “He’s the, uh… he’s the secretary of state.”

     Her palm felt clammy against July's skin. A few more quiet moments passed, during which July tried to fight off the arrival of a mysterious sinking feeling in her stomach.

     “That’s shit luck,” July finally offered. June didn’t respond; heart fluttering, July pressed on. “I mean, out of all the people who could have adopted you, it had to—”

     “It’s fine,” June said, too quickly. “He’s not… he’s a good dad.”

     July snorted. “Still. He’s like, basically a cop.”

     Her sister continued to not reply, or to look anywhere other than the ceiling. July’s own palms were starting to sweat; she retrieved her hand from June’s grasp to wipe it on her pants.

     The silence was becoming palpable. July started “And he works for the Dust—”

     “Don’t.” June cut her off, sharp and loud and so sudden that July was stunned back into silence. June sat up, glaring down at her balefully. “I can’t—I can’t deal with this, I know you were brainwashed, but fucking hell.”

     “’Brainwashed?’” July repeated. The word sat wrong in her mouth—it tasted like iron and rubbed uncomfortably against her teeth.

     June ignored her, scrambling up and vaulting over her body to exit the bed. The air around July suddenly felt very cold. She sat up and drew her knees up to her chest, watching as June started to pace back-and-forth in front of the bed.

     “Whatever. Whatever. I shouldn’t have to break it to you that using fucking child soldiers is a red flag.” She was pacing in manic, tightly-controlled lines, her shoulders hunched up and her hands clasped behind her back so tightly her knuckles were white.

     It took July a moment to connect the dots in her head. “I know Tyler was a shithead. He had a Celtic cross tattoo.”

     “It’s not just the people you knew, it’s the whole—” June whipped around to pace in the opposite direction, her hair swinging behind her in a heavy arc. “God! I shouldn’t be confronting you about this shit yet, you’re not—”

     “I’m fine,” July said. The smell of iron and roses was clogging up her thoughts; somewhere in the background, a bird sang, distant and shrill. Her stomach felt funny. She wondered, momentarily, if she shouldn’t have eaten twelve candies in a row back in Ophelia’s office, but quickly dismissed that thought as the distraction it was. “Are you saying you like the Dusties?”

     “I’m saying,” June said, voice like a runaway train, “that I like my dad. He’s doing good work, he—”

     That got to July. She burst out laughing, half-hysterical—it wasn’t a funny kind of laugh, it was harsh and cruel, and it exploded out of her chest with an uncontrollable violence that scared her. June stopped pacing to face the bed, her face so crimson it was almost purple.

     Voice ragged and pitchy, tongue moving faster than her brain, July said “Mom would be so pissed at you right now.”

     “Yeah, because Ella was such a great person,” June snapped. The sarcasm in her voice was palpable.

     It sent July reeling. She shot to her feet, heart shuddering, birds screeching in her ears. “She was! Mom did her best, she taught us—”

     “She taught us bullshit!” June’s hands were at her shirt—not pushing, not fighting, but clutching, grasping the damp fabric with dissonant desperation. She was staring directly into July’s eyes at that point, black holes boring into July with a familiar intensity that made her stomach do sickly flips. “You never got it, you never had to deal with her shit—she gave a shit about you, of course you wouldn’t understand—”

     July’s hands came up to cover June’s as they twisted the straps of her tanktop; she could feel June’s tendons and bones shaking beneath her palms as she panted and raved. July’s head buzzed emptily, metal coating her tongue. With effort, she said “What are you talking about?”

     But June didn’t explain; she shoved July back with a raw, wordless vocalization, something that wasn’t quite a shout and wasn’t quite a sob, but sounded an awful lot like both. July hit the bed again, still reaching out toward her twin—but June was pacing again, faster this time, wringing her hands violently as she did so, and then she said “Fuck!” and she was gone.

     It was instant and entirely without fanfare. One moment she was there, close enough for July to reach out and brush her fingers against her hip, and the next moment, the room was empty save for July.

     Silence yawned. July’s breath was suddenly much too loud. The smell of roses was replaced with the sting of metal coating the inside of her nose, liquid iron painted over the breadth of her tongue and the back of her throat.

     Across the room, a little June peeked around the edge of the bathroom door, peering at July with big green eyes. She opened her mouth and birdsong fell out.

     With a screech of frustration, July threw herself bodily on the bed and shoved her head under her pillow, pressing it over her ears and straining til her eardrums roared. Hot tears pricked at the corners of her eyes—her body shook and trembled—and she yelled again, incoherent and frantic.

     The birds sang nonetheless.