“When I said you could spend your senior year abroad this is really not what I had in mind,” Dad says.
“Are you kidding ? This is awesome, I am so jealous I wish I could go too!,” Gemma gushes and then sticks her bottom lip out dramatically. “I’m going to miss you, baby brother.”
I hadn’t expected them to come all the way to Newfoundland to see me off, no other families had come. It was mildly uncomfortable that Maxwell was here, sitting silently in his adaptive chair. We hadn’t had a choice, a few press people were following us and it would look odd if he didn’t come along to see me off.
Maxwell and my dad had been divorced for nearly 2 years now and as the media was concerned it was completely amicable and in progress before the "accident". Maxwell lived in a private care residence run by the Mojave Blade Foundation. His Syndicate had an adaptive function that used eye movement to speak for him but he’d never used it since it never said the things he wanted it to say.
I’d felt bad for him at first, locked inside his body, but I’d gotten used to it. There’d been lots of stories about his injury at the beginning but within a year he and the rest of us mostly faded from public consciousness—the media only coming around when something big was happening to the family.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving us,”
Dad sighs. "I can't believe I'm letting you."
“I’ll only be gone the school year,” I remind them, even though I also wanted apply to college abroad too.
“Yeah, in freaking outer space!,” Gemma
exclaims, pointing dramatically to the docked Atlas Star that rested beyond the buzzing checkpoint.
I say my goodbyes again and pass through the new passengers checkpoint before Dad throws me back in the car and drives me back home like I know he wants to. I anxiously sit through the onboarding orientation about life on the satellite ship, expectations of military academy students in the ASSES, Atlas Star Student Exchange Semester (yeah, they still suck at abbreviation).
During the mandatory health screening I scan the medical technicians in their sea of pastel colored scrubs but no one looks familiar.
When I finally board the Star as Phoenix it feels almost too good to be true. Familiarity washes over me at the sight of the sprawling corridors and elevators. Still, I don’t see any friendly faces. I decide to bypass walking down the main escalator where most of the new students are going and head for the rear elevators that probably still rarely get used.
“Phoenix, where are you going?,” our school administrator asks me as I wander from the group
“Uh, to see someone,” I say, turning back to the elevators and then think better of it. “Um, can you call me Sky while I’m on the ship ? ”
“Oh…um, sure,” he says. “Of course.”
“It’s a nickname,” I say.
I’m not sure he believes me but having the last name Prescott-Maxwell still got me things.
I board the elevator, take it all the way to the bottom floor where support, janitorial and medical staff live and make my way quickly down the winding halls of cabins. When I get to the familiar door I hesitantly press the smooth round button on in the center of the door. It glows white as the doors slide open and I’m greeted by a chorus.
----
You: Okay, but how--
SHV: It turned out fine. Everything worked out and everyone is fine.