Astronaut.

The calm feeling in her stomach squirmed for only a moment before settling back into place. His voice had been a trigger in her mind, startling no doubt, but nothing big. And she didn’t have to stand there convincing herself that this was true, either. She knew it the second after she turned to look into his eyes. She had almost been expecting him. Somewhere inside, she had known what her presence meant. She was made to be here at this very moment in time, and so was he.

They looked on at each other for several minutes before Jupiter spoke. The words he had muttered through the silence were just registering in her mind. She understood what he had said, and smiled enough that her teeth showed. It was a foreign easiness that lifted her eyes and made them shine in the dark moonlight.

“Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved,” she whispered wisely, dropping her eyes from his earnest gaze. She didn’t want to see him this way, because she had stopped dreaming about it happening alongside this very script they were following. “I know that I love myself, and so I am happy.” Two of her dainty fingers lifted the sleeve of her shirt above her shoulder. Without pause, she pulled her hair back with both hands and gently stroked it over her chest. Her thoughts were quick, her oceanic eyes wide and bright where she stood. What she said next were words aimed like an arrow for his heart. “So, what are you doing here?”

She could have sworn she saw a flinch at the corner of his golden eye. She would have preached to the choir that she had seen a wince in Noah’s graceful features. She might have only imagined his face for years, but she knew the expression there now better than she knew her own weary cheeks.

After a stretched silence, he spoke. “I missed it here,” is all he said, his eyes fading from her but always returning with the swiftness of an addicted stare. “I missed you.”

Jupiter’s quaint smile hardly reached the corner of her lips. She had felt little anger toward him for the past four empty years, but she felt a surge of spite mounting inside her. “I missed a lot of things.”

Again: the grimace.

She remembered the silence as it filled her soul and stripped her bare. She felt naked before him, and yet so controlled. She was a time bomb in the subtle starlight.

“I’m sorry,” he began, but Jupiter cut him off with a sharp hiss. Her narrowed eyes cut like molten steel.

“You’re ‘sorry’? For what, Noah? Be specific; there’s a lot to be sorry for. Many things happened after you left. I went crazy. My happiness all but burst into flames. Every waking moment was hell. Every minute I slept, I had nightmares. I couldn’t eat any more than I needed to live. I couldn’t leave my house without feeling exposed to the world. I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life.” She watched him as the words dripped like venom from her lips. She could see the hurt in his eyes. She saw it in the trembling of his lip, the slight tilt of his head as he stared at her, horrified.

Good.

“But it’s okay now,” she sighed, turning her head so that he wouldn’t notice the cold twinkle in her eye that was growing into a hot ember. “I’m okay now. My heart is mended. It took so long,” she reminded him. She would never let him forget. “But I’m okay.”

She looked back at him. He was defenseless. She knew it.

“But I don’t even care about what you did to me.” He was curious now; there was a hopeful lift in his chin. She couldn’t bear it. She stared right into his soul, ripped him apart with the words she snarled next. “What you did to Lora Joan is unforgivable.”



Sunlight bled through the open window but offered no sweet comfort. The air was dust and depression. Every breath Jupiter took felt as though she were swallowing unseen knives and cyanide. Each tear that stroked the skin of her face was like a liquid flame. Her heart beat, her eyes blinked, and she wanted to die.

Of course, she couldn’t. What a cowardly way to go. Broken and alone, watching her younger half waste away, deteriorate, retrogress more and more every minute. She would despise herself in the afterlife if she knew she hadn’t been strong enough for her Lora Joan.

The girl sat up in bed that day. Her hair was a dingy mess of fluff that hung around her small face in a precious cloud. The perfect light shone on the eyelashes of her partly closed eyes. Jupiter was unsure of whether the glamour there was the spangle of wet stars or only the remnants of a tired awakening. Lora Joan’s lap was decorated with a thick duvet, a large book, and several sheets of blank paper.Blank paper. No words. No drawings. Not an inkling of color or dormant creativity from this ill child’s imagination.

Jupiter took a leaf and stared at the dull white. It was stained, too faint for Lora Joan to notice but just visible enough for Jupiter to hear it screaming, were tears. Large, pregnant tears that had gushed angrily from her eyes the night before as she sat huddled, just as her sister was now, over empty pages, with a full mind and desolate tongue.

Her hand took hold of the blunt pencil Lora Joan had asked for. The beautifully untalented artist girl had woken from a dream far greater than her waking reality. She had been a material princess, with flowers in her hair and a tiny tiara perched delicately upon her crown. Birds had sung to her and the sky had been clear, clean of pain and weariness. She had even had a prince of her very own.

“I want to draw,” she had whispered in the weakness that was left of her angelic voice.

And here she sat, inspiration abandoned, longing smile faded into a frown too deep for her beautiful little face.

Jupiter waited in anguish for a shape to enter her mind. She had never been excellent at drawing; her family members had forever been poles with light bulbs for heads. Sighing quietly in defeat, she closed her eyes. The image that filled her blind gaze (Noah gone Lora Joan dead Jupiter dying the sky’s so dark) was painful, and when she opened her eyes again they were filled with tears.

It had been two months since Noah had gone away. The only reason Jupiter was still breathing was Lora Joan, her gem, her precious little angel. Her faint, beautiful frighteningly intelligent sister was also her lifeline to sanity.

“Jupie,” she said very quietly. Jupiter emerged from her sorrow immediately. Her back straightened, her hand swiped absentmindedly across her eyes, and she smiled for her angel. “Jupie, don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying, honey,” she muttered, ashamed to have been caught. “I was just tired. You know when you yawn and tears come but you aren’t really crying, don’t you?” She waited for the smile, the understanding nod…

Lora Joan’s eyes burned into hers for only a moment too long. When she looked away, Jupiter felt like her soul had been ravaged.

“Draw something, baby,” she prompted. She slipped the pencil between her tiny fingers and nudged the papers closer to her. “Draw me your prince. I want to see what he looks like. I want to know who thinks he’s good enough for my Lora Joan.”

The girl seemed to resign to pleasing her sister with a little too much zeal to be exasperated. She leaned heavily over the book, her fragile hand moving to scribble dark lines.

Jupiter sighed in relief and turned to look away. Lora Joan disliked being watched in the art process; she wanted privacy in her perfection.

Waiting for the masterpiece of doodle-quality to be done, she looked around the small room. When Mama had still been alive, she had bought Lora Joan a glass doll for every important holiday. These included Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and of course, birthdays for every year they had been alive together. Jupiter’s eyes followed the shelf running along the opposite wall. The dolls sat upon it in neat, tiny rows, anxiously observing their small master and friend.

She looked like a doll herself. Even more so now that her skin had drained to a pasty white. It was like the firm innocence in her skin had simply melted right off and left her, a sagging shell, in her own infected body. Jupiter looked at this, saw her faint hair and milky eyes, and felt her heart breaking. The light was gone from Lora Joan’s eyes. She wasn’t in love with her short life anymore. This was what tore Jupiter to shreds, inside and out.

“I finished drawing,” said the girl in her tiny, paper-thin voice. She held up a crumpled piece of art, scribbled and beautiful in its simplicity. There was a boy with a blue cape billowing behind his narrow shoulders. The little crown on his sandy-haired head sparkled with a big black shape, meant to represent the light reflected on its jewels. Even a drawing as innocently wonderful as this seemed like the Mona Lisa to Jupiter.

“Oh, baby, it’s beautiful. He’s such a wonderful prince. What’s his name?” she cooed, admiring the work with the most warm, loving, sad expression on her face.

Lora Joan’s brow furrowed into an angry knot. “He doesn’t have a name. He’s not real. I’ll never have him.”

A pang of fear pierced her heart, cold as mountain water. “W-what do you mean? Why won’t you have him?” She had spent her life encouraging Lora Joan to believe that she would have a prince of her very own. Someone to love her and hold her and take care of her when she was sick was part of the dream Jupiter had always wanted to make this reality, if not for herself than for the joy of her sister.

Lora Joan’s all-knowing child’s eyes turned to meet hers. A chill ran down Jupiter’s spine. “If a prince like Noah leaves my beautiful Jupiter, why would any prince want me?”

The fear turned into true pain in her heart. It filled her stomach like hot metal and made her eyes prickle with tears. “No…” she muttered, bringing the small child closer in her arms. Her skin was fevered, her body frail. “No, no, no, Lora Joan, it’s not true.” The desperation in her whispers was thick; her throat threatened to close completely. “He didn’t leave, he went on an adventure. He had to go find a better place for a little while. He’ll be back. You’ll see.” With every word that fell like fluorescent lies from her lips she sank deeper and deeper into the lake of pain. “He’s just…lost…”

“No he’s not.”

The words, in her quiet and haunting voice, made Jupiter’s breath leave in a short gasp. She sobbed to herself in a frenzy of ultimate despair. How did she expect to do this? How did she mean to survive the disappearance of yet another piece of her heart?

“Jupie?”

Her petal lip trembled pitifully as crystal tears coated her bright eyes. The wisdom which had glowed under her skin was now gone, leaving instead a timid, frightened little girl who was watching her big sister cry. “Oh, Lora, it’s okay,” she whispered, holding her close and nuzzling into her hair. She smelled of soap and sunshine. “I’m sorry. Don’t be sad. It’s okay, I’m here.” Her eyes turned urgently over the bed, the small table beside the bed, anywhere she might find something to fix this. Finally her gaze landed on a shard of something slightly green, and faintly familiar.

The sea-glass lay as good as shattered, but never forgotten, alone in the corner of the room.

“Look, Lora Joan,” she whispered, turning the girl and pointing out at her discovery. “The glass. It’s magical, remember? Your prince left it for you. It’ll make you healthy again!” She let go of the hot creature in her embrace and went to retrieve the glass that was a direct descendent of her marine gaze. She picked it up carefully, only using the tips of her pale fingers, and returned to hold it out as an offering of happiness and peace. “See? Isn’t it beautiful?” Her hand lifted, fingers brushing at the sticky hair across Lora Joan’s brow. “It’s beautiful, just like you, princess.” Earnestly, she placed the shard of Neptune in the palm of her sister’s hand. “It always made you healthy,” she whispered hopefully.

Lora Joan looked up at her once more, this time with a frightened glint to her eyes. “I won’t get better this time.”