I’VE BOARDED PLENTY of planes before. But nobody told me that lugging my life on a luxury spaceliner would be so heavy. I have two suitcases, a purse, and a bookbag, each crammed with clothes and items I treasure too much to give away.
The buff security guard at the entrance is rather harsh. He aggressively barks, “Ticket.” I grope around with my purse until I find the pass and awkwardly press it in his heavily tattooed hands. “Are you Lavender Taneka?” He asks, brutally slandering my name.
“Lavender Tah-na-kah.” He rolls his eyes like a child and scans my pass, putting me into the system. He also gives me a keycard with my room number, 128. I stick it in my purse and hand my heavy luggage to the two maintenance workers heaving them to my room. When I step through the door and duck under the low-hanging oxygen tanks, I audibly gasp.
The main hall is massive and empty. The walls are made of thick, impenetrable polycarbonate panels. A crystal chandelier dangles high in the midpoint of the ceiling. Higher up, the left and right sides have looming balconies, three large stone pillars holding up each side. Under the pillars, couches and fine tables are meticulously arranged in three pairs; even three small chandeliers hanging from each balcony floor. And in the epicenter of it all, an extensive couch with bookshelves on either side is pushed a few inches from the panels. I marvel at the grand sight, my mouth hanging open.
“I take it you’ve never been on a spaceship?” I look up to see a girl. Well, I should say more of a lady, with her curly ombre hair in two pretty buns with big hoop earrings. She’s wearing a ruffly white shirt with a high starched collar that ruffles around her neck and her sleeves fluff down in four layers. She’s also wearing an overall dress with a thick braided belt and at least fourteen different charms hanging off it.
“Sorry, you’re?” I ask, confused. She purses her lips like I’m supposed to know.
“I’m Kelley.” She jerks her hands in a way that tells me that she’s undoubtedly someone famous. “Princess Kelley Jade Khaleesi, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Queen of London, England. At your service.” She bows and loops her arms through mine.
“Are you gonna be my tour guide, like in the movies?” I ask. She laughs.
“Something like that.”
As we walk through the enormous hallways, Kelley points at people who have clustered around in different groups and tells me about the cruiseliner. “I’ve been living on this ship for around two months, it hasn’t ever taken off, because people are still boarding, so it’s leaving in two days after the scholarship kids board tomorrow.”
“Cool, cool,” I say, nodding my head.
“That,” She says, pointing to a group of people. “Are nerds. But, they’re not your ordinary astrophysics nerds. They ditched the acne, TI-97s, and pocket protectors, and now they’re the most popular kids here.”
I pivot to look at them, almost swept off my feet. The girls look like they’ve stepped straight out of Vogue, and the guys are even better. The girls wear berets, short plaid skirts, different color sweater vests with white shirts underneath, and chunky heels. The guys wear sweater vests, khaki pants, and dress shoes.
The girl who appears to be the head of the group stands in the center, angled to the side. She has thin black glasses, dark eyes, and tan skin that seems to reflect the light. Her straight black hair falls in curls just below her waist. She’s sporting a blazer dress with a white collared shirt and a Burberry tie. She’s carrying a Hunger Games book in her left hand and To kill a Mockingbird in her right.
“Who is that?” I whisper under my breath. We’re rather close to them, but we’re sitting on a slim bench propped close to the illuminated walls.
“That’s Andrea Messi.” She says it blankly like I’m supposed to automatically know her just from hearing her name. Apparently, I live under a rock.
“And?”
“And she’s the leader. She won the Scripps National Spelling Bee five years in a row, she’s won the lottery twice, and she’s related somehow to Lionel Messi.” I blink.
“Lionel Messi?” I hiss.
“Yes, Leo Messi.”
We resume farther down the hall, leaving the not-so-nerdy-nerd group behind.
“Those people are the only thing not swapped around in this place. In the group are the goth, the emo, and the people who claim whatever they’re smoking is for medical purposes.”
“It’s not though, is it?” I ask.
“No, and don’t we all know it,” Kelley says, shaking her head.
It’s a large group, taking up most of the hallway space. Most of the girls are wearing heavy eyeliner, press-on nails, lace black crop tops, corsets, ripped jeans, Air Jordans, nose, face, ear piercings, and crusty mascara. One of the girls has two full sleeves of tattoos and pointy black nails. The guys wear sagging black ripped jeans, shirts with skulls and devils, tattoos, more piercings, and beanies, and almost all of them have a vape hanging out of their mouths. The fruity smell burns my nose so Kelley and I pull up our shirts over our noses.
“Dorks!” A guy yells out, smoke seeping out his lips and nose, his red-rimmed eyes puffy. Kelley and I duck around them and run as fast as our heels would take us away from them.
“Close call,” I say, coughing as soon as we’ve rounded the corner. Kelley just nods in response, vomiting into the barf box in the wall.
“Curse the inventor of E-cigarettes,” Kelley mumbles after wiping the vomit off her lips with a handkerchief.
“No, curse the person who decided to make the legal smoking age sixteen,” I reply.
“True that, sis. True that.” She says.
We continue down the hallways to the rooms. A small clipboard on the wall says who sleeps on that floor. I look through the L-A’s to find mine.
Lavender Tanaka 128.
“Looks like you’re bunking with me, roomie!” Kelley says excitedly.
“It must be fate!” I squeal.
“Yeah, fate,” Kelley whispers, more to herself than me. When Kelley swipes her keycard in the metal slot the metal door swings open. We step through and it slams shut again. The lights are low with purple and blue LEDs lining the ceiling. Kelley’s bed is in the far corner of the room, covered in a bedsheet with little Big Bens dotting the sheet. K E L L E Y is spelled above her bed in purple LEDs.
A square hole in the wall for my bed is tucked in like a baby. The comforters are white with watercolored lilies on the sheets.
“Welcome, Lav. Can I call you that? Lav?”
“Thanks, Kelley, and yes, you can call me Lav.” She hugs me and whispers in my ear,
“We’re gonna be great friends, Lav, I can tell.”
209Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7roccApbty
Dinnertime is noisy. I mean, it’s inevitable when you pack tens of thousands of kids into a hall for a meal. The mess hall has pristine, untouched-looking white tables in many rows that are just begging to be disarrayed. The chairs are plain grey metal picnic chairs attached to the table with thick, twisted rods. I wonder if they’re hollow.
I sit with Kelley and her friends at dinner, plopping down my dumplings and chili oil.
Diya Moreno: the sixteen-year-old Indian Ambassador’s daughter, Eleni and Aeon Sakellaropoulou: the fifteen and seventeen-year-old daughter and son of the president of Greece, Aurelia Gates: Bill Gates’ eighteen-year-old great-great-great-great niece, and lastly, Yoko Sakura-Masako: the seventeen-year-old great-great-great-great granddaughter of the Japanese Empress.
“Hi,” is all I manage to spit out.
“Hello,” They all chorus in unison.
“How are you?” I ask. My voice comes off as shaky, maybe because I’m sitting at a table full of nobles, presidency, and royalty. Yoko answers first.
“Kore made no tokoro, tote mo yoidesu, soshite anata wa?”
“What?” I say.
“Yoko mostly speaks Japanese. She can speak English, but she prefers Japanese since her whole family does, and she just said, ‘So far, so good, and you?’” Kelley replied.
“Well, Yoko, I’m doing well, thank you,” I say. “I can’t speak Japanese, and I never thought I’d have to learn.”
She laughs and hands me something that looks a little like an earBud.
“Put it on!” Diya says excitedly. Everyone turns to the left, and I can see a tiny earBud in all their ears, each flashing a small blue light so faint you have to squint. I put it in my ear and the feedback screeches loudly, I flinch in my seat. When it adjusts to the noise level in the hall, Yoko talks again.
“It’s a translator. When you wear it, you can understand and speak any language!” This time, I understand Yoko perfectly, and I reply in Japanese,
“That’s so cool!” Yoko smiles brightly and turns to her dinner. It’s a fat-looking egg with ketchup squiggles on it. “What’s that?” I ask, pointing to her dish right before she cuts it.
“It's omurice, better known as Japanese Omelette Rice. It's a sweet-and-savory chicken fried rice flavored with ketchup and wrapped in a soft, thin layer of egg.” She replies, cutting into it with joy. It bursts open and rice spills over the edges of where she cut it. Eleni reaches over and yanks a piece of her plate and stuffs it into her mouth.
“Yummy!” Yoko narrows her eyes playfully then goes back to eating her omurice.
We continue to eat, laugh, and joke until the dinner bell rings. We swim through the sea of bodies to get back to our rooms.
Before I know it, I’m in my room, tugging off my sweaty clothes and throwing them in the laundry chute. I stare longingly at the shower for a while before crashing into bed and falling into a deep. . . . sleep
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