The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (64 page)

             
“Did they only take ten?”

             
“No. Tonight, they took twenty. After they were gone, there was this huge
fight. Your dad was trying to keep people calm but he only made it worse. People don’t trust him anymore. Not all people, anyway. The group is splitting up tomorrow.”

             
“Where are they going?”

             
“I don’t know. They don’t know, either. They’re just going, I t
hink. They’re just getting out of the open.”

             
“Don’t the natives know that we have nowhere else to go? We can’t go back to Earth. It’s gone.”

             
“I know,” Nick replied, “Trust me, I’d love to go home now.”

             
“Remember the other day when we were talking about
Germany?”

             
“Yeah.” I could hear him smiling.

             
“I always said that if I went to Europe, I wanted to see Paris, Rome and London. But I definitely would add Germany to the list.”

             
“You’d love it. I know I did.” There was a long pause before he spoke the words
that we both were thinking. “The final days on Earth were so chaotic that we didn't think this through completely. All we thought about was surviving another day. We just wanted to still be standing after everything was over. Even during all of that, thou
gh, I really did think that coming to another planet would be great. But I’d give anything to go home now.”

             
I was thankful for the darkness because tears began to leak from my eyes. I swallowed hard before taking a deep breath. I didn’t expect Nick to com
fort me. I wouldn’t even put him into the position where he felt like he had to embrace me or offer me kind words of reassurance. So when I spoke, I made sure that my voice was steady.

             
“Me too.”

             
“I upset you.”

             
What the hell?

             
“I can see you.” He explain
ed.

             
“You can see in the dark, too?”

             
“Yes. Try it. Just focus on it. Tell yourself that you need to be able to see.”

             
I closed my eyes and tried. Sure enough, when I opened them, I could see. It was like peering through a lens when the camera was set to n
ight vision. The only difference was that details were not glossed over. In fact, they were crystal clear.

             
“Weird, isn’t it?”

             
I nodded.

             
“The natives can see in the dark and now we can, too.” I looked up at him, “That is really weird. Do you think we’re
turning into them?”

             
I watched him look off, his face contorted into an expression of great concern. He had been contemplating that, too. I expected him to lie in order to spare my feelings. I didn’t think that he would want to worry me. But instead, he op
ted for honesty.

             
“I think so. I think it’s in the air here. We’re becoming Pangean.”

             
“I don’t want to be Pangean.”

             
“Neither do I. I read so many American comic books as a kid.
X-Men, Green Lantern
… You know what I’m talking about,
ja
?”

             
I nodded. I had
been friends with a couple of guys whose whole lives revolved around raiding comic book stores for “hidden treasures”, as they called them. They were the biggest nerds that I had
ever met but they were also my very best friends. I had enjoyed our excursion
s to the store, our rambling excitement that was shared so willingly with the workers, and our hours spent reading silently within the safe confines of my indoor patio.

             
“You’re way too cool to be a girl.” One of them had told me.

             
I had laughed in respons
e.

             
“You just haven't met any cool girls yet.”

             
I was smiling slightly at those memories. I remembered so vividly the colors of the pictures and the intricate stories. I had been a nerd. Miranda always made fun of me for it. Even though she was smart, she
was a Justin Bieber fan who spent hours painting her nails and styling her hair. We had been so different. After existing for so long within the confines of high school, though, I believed that we were exactly the same.

             
My smile faded as a suffocating rea
lization took hold of me: All of those people were dead. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. But every last one of my friends was gone. The finality of it took my breath away, leaving my grasping my chest as I struggled to draw in one unchalle
nged breath.

             
Nick was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice the sudden change in my mood.

             
“I read all of those things and thought it would be so cool to have powers. Sometimes, especially in
X-Men
, they wanted to be normal. I didn’t understand it
. How could you want to be normal when you were special, right? But now, I do understand. We’re changing over into what the natives are and I’d give anything to go back. Go back to Earth, go back to just being human.”

             
Hearing him talk had lulled me back i
nto calmness. His voice and his words were so delicate, though I'm sure that sounds strange. The content of what he was saying was a welcome distraction, too.

             
“Comfort in normalcy.” I wiped at my eyes, wondering if I had muttered that phrase to him or in
response to my internal musings
about
him. To avoid that heavy mental conversation, I addressed what he had said. “I feel the same way. I keep asking myself what I would have done if I knew everything I know now and Brynna came to me, telling me we had to
leave the earth. I don’t know if I would have gone.”

             
“I think you would have. I know I would have. I wouldn’t have wanted to die. I’ll take having powers and being hunted by natives over dying. Even if we’re running from them, at least we’re still alive t
o run, you know?”

             
I did know. It was an almost paradoxical statement and yet I totally understood what he was saying. I agreed wholeheartedly.

             
“We’ll find your sister, Violet. I found you.”

             
I nodded again and leaned into him. He wrapped his arm around
my shoulders and we stayed clasped together, protecting each other from the cold of the night and our own regrets and fears. When dawn broke, my eyes switched over to normal. I scanned the trees around us, seeing no one hiding amongst the fading darkness.
Penny awoke a few minutes after the light began to descend on us. Elijah snored away and I let him; he needed to sleep.

             
“Hi, Nick,” Penny greeted him with a wide smile, “Look, I lost a tooth!” She pointed into her mouth proudly.

             
“Oh, look at that!” Nick
replied as he bent down to observe the gap. “Did you leave it under your pillow for the...”

             
I gestured to him madly behind Penny's back, mouthing, “No! No!” But Penny was smart enough to have already picked up exactly what Nick was about to say.

             
“Vi told
me that the tooth fairy doesn’t live on Pangea. She says that maybe there’s a different fairy that brings other stuff. I didn’t get anything. So I think she’s wrong. But it’s okay because I haven’t seen any stores. So I don’t think that I need money. And
what other stuff could I get besides toys? I really wanted this singing thing I saw in the store back home...”

             
And away she went… Penny rambled to Nick enthusiastically about everything from her lost
tooth to the way Elijah passed gas in his sleep. Nick w
as cracking up through that particular conversation. I turned my head away, trying not to show how hard I was laughing, too. Elijah would be mortified to learn that Penny shared that information with a semi-stranger so freely and that made it all the funni
er.

             
“And we’re looking for Brynna. We need to wake up Elijah so we can find her. I still haven’t told her about my tooth! Well, I haven’t told her because I haven’t seen her. But when we find her, Violet says she’s going to be so excited! I think she will
be, too. Hang on a second, okay?”

             
She walked over to Elijah and shook him with both hands.
             

             
“Wake up, Eli! We have to go find Brynna.”

             
Elijah sat up abruptly, almost smacking into her head with his own. Luckily, she dodged out of the way in a blur of m
ovement. Nick looked back at me, eyes and mouth opened wide in shock. I nodded and shrugged.

             
“Her, too?” He whispered to me.

             
I nodded again and suppressed a smile.

             
“What’s going on?” Elijah asked groggily as he looked around. His eyes stopped on Nick.
“Hey, man. How the hell did you find us?”

             
“Hey. It's a long story.” Nick replied, “How’s your digestion?”

             
I snorted through my nose as I tried not to laugh. But the hilarity overtook me; I leaned forward to rest my face against my legs and giggled uncont
rollably.

             
“What are you talking about?”

             
“Nothing. I just hope it’s all going well.”

             
Elijah looked between us in confusion. Then, he shook his head.

             
“I’m not even going to ask. Seriously, though, how did you find us?”

             
“I must have memorized Violet’s
scent. I followed it until I found you.”

             
“So you’re mutating too, then?” Elijah said.

             
“I guess so. Where is your nanny? What was her name?”

             
“Maura.” Elijah and I answered grimly.

             
“She stayed behind.” I answered. I didn’t want to divulge the full detail
s. I didn’t want to hear a person voice my own disgust at Maura’s choice. To hear it spoken out loud by a third party observer would do more harm than good. Sure, I’d like to hear Maura being torn down as a broken, pathetic woman who abandoned her surrogat
e children for a man that didn't love her. But it wouldn't lessen the sting of her leaving us. Bashing her out loud would only upset Penny.

             
Nick didn’t ask questions. Instead, we all just started walking. Penny was munching on some dried fruit loudly behi
nd me, reminding me of my own hunger. I looked down as my stomach gave a mighty rumble. I would feed her above myself, always. Elijah would skip his meals for me. We were used to sacrificing things for each other but those sacrifices never involved food. W
e had always had more than enough at home, what with Maura demanding that our chef make us portions large enough to feed bodybuilders training for the Olympics.

             
“If they can afford to feed you this much, then you should eat this much.” She would say as we
shoveled in those generous helpings of rich, delicious foods. I tried not to remember the tangy tomato sauce on the homemade pasta or the huge pieces of fried chicken that when bitten into, yielded only juicy white meat. As I chewed a hard piece of dried
pear, I tried not to remember the sweet berry cobbler that our chef always made us in the summertime…

             
“Oh my God, I’m torturing myself…” I muttered to Nick as he walked beside me.

             
“How is that?”

             
“I’m remembering all the food we used to eat at home. I to
ld you about my parents' jobs. They had money and they were never at home. Maura cooked once in awhile but we also had a chef. She made us so much food, we ran out of room in our stomachs.”

             
“What kind of food?”

             
“Nick!” I laughed and my stomach growled pa
infully. “I’m not going to torture you, too!”