Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
“I bet he did. You look like you needed saving. What’s the deal with where you’re from? One of those freakish cult villages?”
“We’re not freaks, and it’s not a cult. It’s how we live.”
“Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that’s how we always referred to them. Every now and then, someone from one of those places would show up in the city. I knew a guy from a place like that. He always wore corduroy.”
“I am from a small town. We were quite remote. And now we’re all going to an alien world.”
“Yes,” she says. “I don’t know what they’re going to do with all of you, though. Seems like it’ll be a tight fit at their house. It’s big, but it’s not a hundred cult members big.”
“I’m not in a cult.”
“Sorry. I keep forgetting that’s offensive.”
Now she’s rubbing me the wrong way again. I get the feeling that Jen is the sort of person who doesn’t really expect to be liked and doesn’t try very hard to get along with people. That’s not an option in a small town like mine. Where I’m from, you have to be able to get along, and antagonizing people for the fun of it is straight up dangerous to us all.
“That’s okay,” I say, forcing a smile I don’t feel because I am very good at masking my feelings. Unlike Jen, I do know how to fit in. I could fit in anywhere. Even here.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s better than Earth. I didn’t think it would be for a long time. I wanted to escape and get back home. Then I found out about how Wrathelder guys killed Arkan’s dad, and how his mom went and hooked up with the Wrathelder clan guy, and I was like, wow, this is some fucked-up shit. I’m in.”
I don’t know if I am up for any fucked-up shit, as she says. It’s obvious that this feud is dangerous for all concerned. It almost got us killed. If not for Arkan and Kahn bringing the ship in the very nick of time, I would be a lifeless corpse floating frozen in space right now.
The thought makes me feel lightheaded. There’s really way too much going on. I come from a simple place, a place I understand. But I understand nothing of what is happening here.
“I like fighting aliens,” Jen says. “I like fighting most things.”
She gives me an up and down glance. “You don’t look like a fighter.”
“That’s because I’m not.”
“What are you then? What did you do before this?”
“I lived in my village.”
“Right,” she says. “Just… lived. In a village.”
Something about Jen makes everything about my life before this feel very small and very simple. She’s so much more bold and brash. She wears cooler clothes. She’s everything I never wanted to be and yet somehow I still feel like I somehow pale in comparison to her.
“I am going to find Zain,” I say. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Sure,” she says. “Nice to meet you too.”
I don’t think she really means it. I think she means to say it was boring to meet me, because that’s what I am. I never knew it before, but I am absolutely certain of it now.
I leave the room and begin to walk the ship. I don’t know where Zain is. I don’t know where anything or anyone is. There’s no signage, and the ship is large. I wish Zain hadn’t left me alone. I don’t feel safe alone. I’ve never actually been alone, now I think about it. When you’re born in a tiny town and always live there, your neighbors are more than your friends. They’re extended family. I’ve never had to handle myself with a stranger.
Waves of sickness roll through me. It’s a feeling kind of like the one I had when I was flying through the air, but nothing bad is actually happening. My body doesn’t know that, though. I feel my hands start to shake, adrenaline hitting my knees and knuckles with an intense tingling. My breath comes in short gasps.
I lean against the wall, hands on my knees. My head is spinning and my thoughts are racing. I want nothing more than to feel good and safe and normal again, but right now good and safe and normal seems like it’s a million miles away and never coming back.
I’m dizzy, but I don’t want to sit down. Sitting still feels like an impossibility.
“Emily?”
Zain’s voice comes to me from what feels like a very, very long way away.
Before I know it, his arms are around me and I am picked up off the ground and held tight. I burrow my head against his muscular shoulder and neck and close my eyes until the shaking starts to abate and is followed instead by tears.