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.