Willow looked around the tiny room she was going to call home for the rest of the month. The bed was smaller than she expected, even for an interstellar cruise ship, and there were no windows. That’s what she got for trying to skimp on her trip, though. The cost of the excursion was already so high before adding luxuries like windows or extra-large beds that she had chosen not to spring for those things.
Willow had been saving for years to take this trip. She didn’t want to waste any extra cash on things she didn’t really need. Only now, as she stared at the tiny, plain space, she wondered if she had made a mistake. She’d seen Ashley’s room. It was big. There was a large, double bed covered in soft pillows and blankets. The in-room bathroom was huge, too. It was almost as big as the suite itself with a bathtub and a shower.
Willow couldn’t believe it. Her family had money, but Ashley’s was positively loaded. Willow couldn’t imagine something as spectacular as a bathtub on her trip, but then, she might as well not even think about it. She would be sharing a bathroom with several other females in her hall. She didn’t even have the pleasure of showering alone, and Ashley had a bathtub.
Placing her bag on the tiny bed, Willow walked around the room once more. It wasn’t as horrible as she thought it was at first. It was plain, to be sure, but there was a large floor-to-ceiling mirror and a little desk she could sit at when she wasn’t sleeping.
Not that Willow planned to spend much time in her room.
No, her time on the ship would be spent at the on-board night club or wandering around the many different dining facilities. This was an all-you-can-eat vacation with lots of on-board activities, so Willow planned to take advantage of all the free stuff she could.
After all, she’d paid enough for the cruise itself.
A monotone voice came over the speaker announcing that the ship would be leaving Mars in the next five minutes. Anyone who wanted to watch the ship take off should proceed to the top level.
Willow didn’t really care about saying goodbye to Mars. Colony 12 would be just fine without her. As a human child, her family had left before Earth died, before it was completely obliterated. She could barely remember the planet at all. Mars was her home now.
Oh, she’d have to come back home in a month, of course, but there was nothing for her there now. There was nothing and no one waiting for her, not since she’d turned down her mother’s “suggestion” that she marry Anthony Weathermore.
It hadn’t really been a suggestion, Willow knew. It had been an ultimatum: one Willow didn’t appreciate. She could marry Anthony Weathermore and secure her family’s position in Colony 12, or she could fuck off.
She had taken the second option.
She didn’t want to think about it, though. This month was about having fun, about finding herself. This month was about meeting new people and maybe hanging out with Ashley a little bit.
Willow stripped out of her day dress and changed into a black tank top, black shorts, and black sandals. It was a lot of black for someone so pale, she knew. Her mother always complained that Willow dressed a little like a vampire, but that was how she liked it. Black was her favorite color.
Besides, she liked the way her skin contrasted with the dark fabric.
She applied some lip gloss and brushed her hair, then grabbed her room bracelet and slipped it on. The thin metal bracelet was the only way to access different areas of the ship, so she didn’t want to lose it. Hers was programmed to open her bedroom door, as well as other areas she was allowed to access.
The bracelets were how underage travelers were kept out of the club and adults-only area, but were also how the staff members kept track of kids for the on-board children’s programs. The bracelets also enabled you to buy things on the ship. When she had boarded Ship 449302, Willow had added credits to her bracelet that would last her for the duration of her trip.
At least, she hoped they would last. Things were already turning out to be more expensive than she had hoped. Who knew vacations could be so costly? Sure, it was her first solo trip, but at this rate, Willow wouldn’t be able to take another vacation for, well, ever.
Hopefully she wouldn’t run into Ashley when her friend was in a shopping mood. Willow liked Ashley a lot, but not enough to go into crazy debt for. When she went back home to Mars, she’d need to figure out some sort of future for herself. Willow didn’t want to. She’d much rather travel around like this, exploring the world, than go sit around some boring colony.
Too bad we don’t always get what we want, she thought glumly.
Stepping into the brightly-lit hallway, she closed the door to her room and waved her bracelet in front of the circular panel to lock it. A bright yellow light let her know the room was now locked. It was secure and she could go explore without worrying that anyone was going to take any of her meager belongings.
“Tricky, isn’t it?” A voice sounded from beside her. Willow turned and looked up at a tall blonde man who was smiling at her.
“I, um, suppose,” she agreed, even though it really wasn’t that hard to figure out. Was he serious? Locking her room was by far the easiest thing she’d done all day.
Figuring out how to get through the decontamination tunnels to actually access her room had been tough. This was a piece of cake compared to that. She shivered involuntarily as she thought of the way the sticky goo had covered her body in the tunnels, then the sucking room she’d had to go through. Vacuum-like robots had sucked the pink slime from her body, along with all the contaminants she carried on her body from Mars.
Interstellar travel was hard enough without spreading foreign germs everywhere. At least, that’s what the brochure said. People chose Ship 449302 because it was so clean, because it was guaranteed not to spread diseases between planets. When people traveled on a cruise ship, they wanted to have fun jumping in Trocklee ponds, not coming down with Iteliansalei Fever.
The blonde man saw Willow shiver and obviously mistook it for cold because he nodded knowingly.
“Chilly, I know. You’re human, right? I know the first time human females travel through space it can be difficult to adjust to the temperature. You know how you can solve that, right?”
“Um,” Willow looked around, but to her dismay, the rest of the hallway was empty. She was basically stuck with this guy. “No, I don’t know,” she said, turning to start walking down the hall.
“Why, a man, of course,” he said. The man followed close behind her, much to her dismay, and placed a hand on her lower back. Was this guy serious? Willow wasn’t especially confrontational, but this was ridiculous. Just because she was traveling by herself didn’t give him the right to get all handsy on her.
“Excuse me,” she murmured. “I have a girlfriend, so if you’ll be so kind.” It was a lie, but he didn’t know that. She motioned to his hand, but the man didn’t seem to take a hint.
“Oh, that’s no trouble to me,” he said eagerly.
“No, I mean move your hand,” she pushed his hand away, and he frowned, but pulled his hand back to himself.
“As I was saying,” he continued, following her down the hall. “A man can help you warm up, you know, in more ways than one.”
“Too bad I have a girlfriend,” Willow repeated noncommittally. She passed several small doors that were identical to the one for her room, then turned a corner. Around the bend, she spotted a central set of elevators and began to walk toward them.
“Are you going to the roof for the farewell ceremony?” The man asked. He stood beside Willow as she waved her bracelet in front of the elevator’s circular side plate to call it. With her luck, she’d be waiting half an hour to get away from the creep.
She wasn’t sure why she felt so uncomfortable with this man, yet she did. He was obviously, human, like her. Was he a resident of Mars? Was he from Colony 12? Something about him made her feel vulnerable and unsure of herself: two things Willow never felt. Ever.
Luckily, she was saved from having to answer by a couple of rowdy females who came from another hallway. They were laughing loudly, giggling and pointing at things. Were they drunk already? Maybe they’d boarded early and gotten some special refreshments. Willow heard the petal juice on the ship was to die for.
“Oh, are you waiting for the lift?” One of the girls asked, pointing to the elevators.
“Yes,” Willow answered quickly.
“Did you scan your, um, thingie?” The girl lifted her bracelet and pointed to it. “You have to scan it next to that, you know.” She pointed to the round metal piece mounted on the wall beside the elevator. “It’s just like the bedroom doors.”
“She knows, Jenny,” her friend said, rolling her eyes. “Sorry about my friend,” she turned to Willow. “She’s a bit, well, you know.”
“It’s okay,” Willow said with a smile, happy she didn’t have to be alone with Sir-Creeps-a-Lot any longer.
“Is this your first time on a space cruiser?” The girl asked.
“Yes,” Willow told her, but didn’t offer any further information. The girl didn’t seem to need it, though, because she began talking at warp speed.
“Oh, you’re going to just love it,” she said. “You must visit the water center on the 15th level deck. There’s a hot pool and a cold tub and a rainbow tub that has water from four different planets!”
“Why do they call it a rainbow tub?” Willow couldn’t help but ask. Her curiosity was piqued.
“It’s a rainbow tub because the water from different planets doesn’t mix. So the water from Taneyemm, for example, is clear. The water from Orchid, on the other hand, is bright purple. It’s beautiful.”
“And it’s safe?” Willow asked, but the two girls just laughed.
“Just don’t drink the water,” Jenny said.
“Why not?”
Just then, the doors to the elevator opened and the women squeezed inside, along with the blonde man from the hall. Willow cringed as his body touched hers in the narrow space. The elevator was a small, round area that really only should have fit two people, yet somehow the four of them managed to squeeze in.
“Top,” Jenny said loudly. Nothing happened. “Top,” she repeated. Finally, she turned to her friend. “Lily, make it work,” she whined.
Lily sighed, then spoke. “Top deck,” she said loudly, and the elevator whooshed off. Willow did her best to stay standing perfectly still. She didn’t want to touch the strange man any more than she had to. Finally, the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Jenny and Lily hopped off, followed by the man. He turned back to say something to Willow, but she quickly said “Close,” and the elevator doors shut immediately.
“16th deck,” she said before the man could open the doors again. Immediately, the elevator began moving down, and she breathed a sigh of relief. It shouldn’t be so horrifying to be stuck with a strange man, but there was something weird about the blonde that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
There was something strange about him.
Taking a deep breath, Willow stepped off the elevator at the 16th floor and took a look around. The elevator opened into a large lobby-like area with several hallways shooting off in different directions. She took a look at one of the maps posted on the wall.
Just one floor down was the water floor. That was the floor Lily had talked about with the rainbow water. Willow wanted to see it, but not right now. Right now she wanted to eat. Call her fat or dorky, but she needed food. Any food.
She noticed there was a dining area down one of the halls, so she followed it, passing many different looking people on the way. Some of them were obviously rich and well-to-do. People like Ashley, she thought. They were all dressed in gowns and formalwear. Most of them simply ignored Willow and her strange outfit, but a few people actually lifted their noses at her.
She saw why when she reached the dining area at the end of the hall. It was a formal dining room where a ball gown was required. Damn. Willow sighed and turned to go, but the woman at the hostess booth smiled at her.
“Hungry?” She asked knowingly.
Willow nodded.
“Yeah, I didn’t realize this was a formal one. I’ll just head out to…” Her voice trailed off and she motioned back at the hallway she’d come down, realizing she wasn’t really sure where to go next.
“Don’t worry about that,” the woman waved her hand. “Take this hall instead,” she pointed down a narrow passageway that went around the side of the formal dining room. Willow hadn’t even noticed it. The hallway was narrow, but like the rest of the ship, brightly lit.
“What’s down that hall?” Willow asked a bit doubtfully. It looked like it led to more living quarters, but the woman was already talking to someone else about finding a seat and ignored her question.
She didn’t have anything better to do, so Willow decided to go exploring. She made her way down the tiny hallway, hoping to find something to eat. Another announcement came over the loudspeaker. The ship was officially on its way.
Amazing. Willow hadn’t even felt the cruiser start moving, but it obviously was. She was in space now. She was a real, legitimate intergalactic traveler.
Somehow, the idea didn’t make her as nervous as it should have. Oh, she’d been dreaming of visiting space for years, but so had many of her friends. In fact, Willow was the last among them to finally take a voyage.
Maybe if things with her parents hadn’t gotten so messed up, she would have come sooner. Maybe she would have gone with her folks on the cruise they took over the summer, but Willow knew what she was doing when she refused to marry Anthony.
She knew perfectly well she was severing ties with her family.
That was fine, though. She’d be okay on her own.
Honestly, it was losing her relationship with her sister that pained her most. Ashley was friends with both Willow and Wilma, so Willow heard secondhand how her sister was doing and how Wilma’s new job was going perfectly.
Still, she wished that refusing to marry Anthony hadn’t meant she would lose her best friend. Humans may have colonized Mars, but they still held tight to some of their oldest traditions. Marrying into positions of wealth and prosperity was the tradition Willow hated most.
Whether it was logical or not, Wilma really had been her best friend. They were sisters, after all. Wilma hadn’t cared who Willow married or didn’t marry. Willow had no doubt her sister had been forced to stop talking to her. Mother could be fierce when she wanted to be. Chances were that she had somehow convinced Wilma she’d be kicked out of Colony 12 or forced to live in a poorer colony if she spoke with Willow again or if she refused the match Mother chose for Wilma.
Willow and Wilma had been life partners, or at least, they were supposed to have been. There was a hole in Willow’s heart where her sister’s love had once been and part of her thought it would hurt forever. No man, no love, and no space travel could ever replace what she had lost.
Finally, her heart heavy, she reached the end of the hall. It opened into a large, open area with the most beautiful park she had ever seen. There were trees – real trees – growing in the center of the park and there was soft, green grass beneath her feet.
Willow hadn’t seen grass in years. Earth had been the site of an intergalactic battle. When it began to die, to slowly perish, the grass had turned brown and died right along with it. She remembered grass from when she was a kid, before they immigrated to Mars. Willow remembered running through it with her sister before they stopped speaking. They would spin in circles until they got dizzy, then they would collapse together on the soft, wonderful greens.
Even that was nothing compared to what she was seeing now.
Willow stared at the open park. People from all levels of the ship were walking around. A couple sat beneath a tree with their backs against the trunk. They were whispering softly. The woman was feeding the man pieces of food. He looked happy, sated. They both did.
She pulled her eyes from what was obviously a private moment and looked around the rest of the park. There were children playing in the grass and laughing loudly. Vendors were pushing carts full of food around the area, so she could get a snack when she was ready. A bar was in one corner of the park and Willow could see the crowd already gathered there, ready to get drunk on their cruise. Trees and flowers filled the open space, but more than that, there were huge, open windows.
She could see space.
All of it.
Willow found herself drawn to the windows. She walked slowly, staring, not caring if she looked silly. She’d never seen anything like this before. Hell, maybe she had been wrong in not springing for the deluxe suite. This was amazing.
Before she could stop herself, she continued moving until she pressed her hand to the window. It would leave a print, of course, and someone would have to come clean it, but she didn’t quite care. From here, she could see Mars in the distance. Obviously, they were moving away from it.
Far, far away from it.
Willow’s family was on that little planet. It wasn’t little, not really, but it looked so small from here. She had spent her entire life trying to please people on that planet, and for what? What did she have to show for any of it?
Willow was 25-years-old and she had nothing.
Nothing.
She had no family anymore, no husband, no boyfriend, and no children. She had very few friends and a very ordinary job and a very ordinary, normal, boring life. This trip was her gift to herself. This journey was a present to herself for working so hard for all of those years.
Willow stared out of the window and looked at her home planet.
She felt like she should miss it. She ought to miss it. She ought to feel sad or upset or anything at all, really, but she didn’t.
The only thing Willow felt as she looked at Mars was relief.
And she realized that she really never wanted to go back.
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