It is a quiet evening, into the second week at Thistledown, but every evening in my life has always been quiet, even before my brother left. My mother and I have not spoken at all since we have arrived, well, except for once when she told me I looked like a slut in the slip I was wearing. And maybe it’s just the everlasting silence wearing on my nerves, but I feel like I am being watched. Earlier today, while I was painting in the gazebo, I suddenly felt eyes on me, and my skin prickled with goose flesh and I broke into a cold sweat. My skin felt also slimy to the touch. And in a moment of emotional weakness, I fled back inside and hid up in the tower, and even though I know that was just me being a silly goose, I cannot make myself venture back out to retrieve my painting. And all day when even I have looked out into the rain, I have caught, in the corner of my eyes, a motion. Vaguely the shape of a figure with an umbrella is all I’ve seen, and mayhaps it is only a dark spot in the corner of my eyes, but all day, when ever I have looked outside, I’ve seen the phantom. I head up to my bedroom early, and the moment I turn off the light I see him - in the mirror. His round amphibious head with sightless bulbous eyes, which are locked on mine. He is standing out side my bedroom window, next to the overgrown rose bush. And I’m not surprised to see him there, watching me, umbrella in hand. I think I always knew that whatever took my brother would come for me, all in due time. I walk over to the window, and unlatching, my eyes on his, and let him in.

The study room was silent for the first time in the school year has, for the first time, everyone was actually studying. Even Marcus, who prided himself in how he didn’t ‘need’ to study to ace his classes, was on his laptop, forehead wrinkled in concentration. Today was career day, and everyone was doing research on what planet or space station they might want to apply to be stationed at. Everyone I knew was excited for graduation and to be sent to an off-earth post. Our friends, Lielah and Luce, who were the only one of us who were in a serious relationship, were going to apply to a private couples pod off of Jupiter. Even quiet, shy little Selca was thrilled for intergalactic travel - they wanted to be on Mars, with the troops. I wasn’t excited about this - I didn’t want to leave earth, but try as I did, I couldn’t find a way to actually explain that to my friends. No one stayed on earth… as soon as you turned 16, everyone left, except for pod mothers, and I defiantly didn’t have the aptitude to be a pod mother. Because the truth was… I couldn’t space travel. I was born with a rare disease called asthma, and if I walked through a portal, the brief second where you couldn’t breath, would be deadly to me. According to Doctor Stephans, there was a 87% chance I’d die. But I can’t tell anyone, because I would be executed. Once upon a time, Asthma was uncontagious, but now it was so so dangerous that if I wasn’t on such heavy medication, everyone in my pod could have contracted it and be stuck on earth as well.