"PLEASE."
"Denise—" Els starts.
"It's all right," Michelle says. "Sit."
I didn't really look at Michelle properly before: she's got curly hair that's even longer than Iris's, and a long, stretched face that's tanned from either genetics or the sun. I pull out the empty chair. It scrapes over the floor loud enough to make me wince. It's a little bistro thing, and sitting down makes me feel twice as large as I am. I'm not that big—between strength and endurance training and the scarce food these past months, I've even slimmed down—but I've got broad hips and the chair isn't suited to that. The table matches the chair: small, good for two coffees, a plate of cookies, and little else.
"I know," Michelle says when she sees me looking. "Every dining hall has a theme. This one must be 'fit for second-graders.'" She pushes her plate my way. She's cut her sandwiches into triangles, like at a restaurant, rather than the fold-'em-double approach I take at home. "Have one."
"I'm not supposed to."
"I know. I'm giving you mine."
Brown flecks peek out from between two slices of bread. "Sprinkles?" I ask.
"Too Dutch for you?"
"No," I say, unsure if she's being racist or self-deprecating. "I don't like sprinkles." All those individual bits in my mouth, crunching and getting stuck in my teeth—the thought makes me shudder.
Dad really did think sprinkles were too Dutch. He'd grown up eating them for breakfast just like half the country, but he'd still make jokes about the four different kinds Mom always kept in the pantry.
Then he stopped making jokes, and he left with a kiss to our heads and a promise he'd be back.
"Suit yourself." Michelle takes a bite, leaning over her plate to catch falling sprinkles, even though they all bounce off anyway. "I'm on the team in charge of the manifest. I know the ship looks empty. Els explained part of it, but there's also the psychological aspect. We need space." She waves one finger in a circle. "We're all used to open sky and open space and going in straight lines; if the ship were too full, we'd be claustrophobic in a matter of weeks. Our children won't know anything else, though. Goldfish, size, bowl, et cetera."
"We're one family. A small family." I almost said two people and feel acutely guilty. Iris is still out there. I'm not abandoning her. I only want to make sure that when the lockdown ends and we go find her, we'll have a place for the three of us to return to. I shift in my chair and freeze when it scrapes over the floor again.
"There are a lot of small families out there," Michelle says. "And a lot of passengers who want to bring relatives on board. We keep a waiting list, actually, of people with necessary skills, or existing passengers' brothers or sisters or lifelong friends. You and your mother aren't on that list."
"You're going to kick us out."
"Please don't guilt-trip me."
"The captain already bent the rules by allowing you on board temporarily," Els adds.
"I was only stating a fact."
Michelle runs a hand through her hair. "This is why we keep our mouths shut about the ship. This is why we waste resources on energy-draining cloaking tech—so no one sees our lights from kilometers away. If people find out we're here, we'd only have to crush their hopes."
"We won't tell," I say, though I doubt it'll make a difference. "Captain Van Zand said he couldn't just bring anyone on board. 'Just anyone.' That means you can bring some people on board. Doesn't it?"
I can't read an answer on Michelle's face. She tents her fingers. "What does your mother do for work?"
I skip the part-time jobs she's worked and promptly lost the past few years. "She was an office manager at a big law firm for fourteen years. Janssen & Der Duin."
"Was?"
"She left." It's not a lie—she did leave. It just wasn't willingly.
"Why?" Michelle's gaze pins me into place. All this scrutiny makes me so aware of my own edges. My legs tight against each other, my hips too wide for the chair, my hands clenched in my lap.
I choose my words with care, simultaneously honest and darting around the truth like a circus act. "When I was nine, my father's parents fell ill and he returned to Suriname to look after them. He didn't come back. My mother had a hard time with that. She left work. But she's better lately."
I don't say that "better" means little, given how bad she's been. I don't say that Mom had been struggling before Dad left for Paramaribo, or that I wonder if that's the reason Dad broke his promise to return.
And I don't say cocaine and Ecstasy and ketamine.
"What about you? You go to school?"
"Not since the announcement."
"That's fair. But you understand that …"
"Look, I—I'm smart," I blurt out, which feels like my first true lie. Els must be hiding her laughter. If the doctors who once diagnosed me as intellectually disabled could hear me, they would, too. "I have a good memory. I thought I might—I might try to become a vet. I volunteered at an animal shelter."
"The only animals on board are insects and fish."
"I know! I'm not stupid." I press my fists into my thighs. "I just mean that being a vet is hard, but I wanted to do it. I don't know if I'd have succeeded"—shit, I shouldn't have said that—"but I wanted to try. Doesn't that count for something?"
Michelle sighs. "I'll take a look at the numbers, but we're already at our maximum …"
"I don't want to go out there!" When did I start shouting? My fists are pushing into my lap so hard that my shoulders point up. "I can't! I can't!"
"I said, I'll look at the numbers."
"We'll do any work you want us to. You'll need people for the crops, right? Or in processing? If this is about supplies, you can have everything we have. It's not much, but we can pay. Anything in our home, food, or drugs—"
"Excuse me?"
"Anything! We can be useful, I swear, we—"
Fingers wrap around my biceps. "Denise!"
I jerk away. The force sends my tiny chair tumbling onto its side, and me with it. I slam to the floor. Pain shoots from my shoulder to my fingers.
Els stands over me, one hand to her mouth. She must've been the one who grabbed me. I hadn't even seen her stand.
"You OK?" Michelle asks.
Now she cares? I nod, my breathing choppy and my mind too scattered to find the right words.
"Good. We're done talking."
