8 Rosalynn

No one wanted me.

All of the males that were there picked someone else. I still can’t believe it, and I can’t believe anything else.

I start to doubt my every aspect—my height, weight, scent, hair. Could it be that they thought I wasn’t curvy enough? Maybe it was my band color that wasn’t popular this round. Or because I tripped, they think I’m uncoordinated and won’t produce healthy offspring?

A million ideas flit through my mind, but it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t chosen.

I have a million credits. I could do a lot with that. It's a huge upgrade from the few thousand I paid. But the only thing I was looking forward to was to be desired by someone for a change, to feel like I had a family again or at least like I could build one with someone who wanted me enough to stick around a while. I got myself into the one place that felt like it had a high concentration of horny males with good lives, and still I came out with nothing I really wanted.

The stars were distant beacons of hope when I first arrived to the Abr compound. Now, as the transport docks at the spaceport, they look like pinpricks of light in darkness, like I have a bag over my head because no one wants to look at me.

I don’t want anyone to look at me.

Aryssa greets me when I hike down the ramp. “Hey, you won!”

She hugs me while the crew sets my bags in the claim area. But I am cold and empty inside. I don’t have the strength to return her affection.

“Oh, come on. Let’s get you a drink, and you can tell me what you’re thinking about doing next with all that money.”

Aryssa grabs my duffel and hands me my backpack with a gentle smile.

“You get half.”

She shakes her head. “That’s yours. You put yourself through a lot of long hours and paid a lot for that chance. I’m not taking that from you. Just buy me a drink now and then? Fly me to visit you on whatever moon you buy.”

I sling my backpack over my shoulder and trudge alongside her to The Spacebar, with a 360 degree view of the stars.

Aryssa sits down and tucks my bag protectively between her feet. It’s habit in a strange place or even a familiar but dangerous one. “Two supernovas and a galaxy appetizer plate.”

The bartender mixes up the drinks and sends an order through his tablet to the kitchen. Then he sets a pair of bubble glasses on the bar with fizzing white cores and lights them both with a fancy whip of his hand. He winks at Aryssa and turns to greet another customer.

Even my friend is getting hit on more than I am.

I sink into the glittery blue cushion of the barstool and fight the ache in my limbs to pick up the drink.

“It’s not the first disappointment is it?” she asks me. It’s rhetorical. She knows I’ve been stood up before, ghosted, and ignored. She knows about Lorado and all the others before him.

I blow out my drink and take a sip. It’s lightly sweet and minty and makes me think of winter. The burn of alcohol is the only warmth in me now. I turn and look out at the stars.

“You can literally go anywhere or do anything,” Aryssa says. “So what ideas do you have?”

I think of the super car I’ve dreamt of, but I know I couldn’t afford the insurance for long. I’ve wanted to take a trip across the galaxy, see all of the planets. I would’ve got to in the festivities this week. I could’ve tried all the weird alien foods, seen the creatures that live on so many different worlds.

“Stop it.”

“Sorry?” I turn to Aryssa, but she’s not glaring at me. “What is it?”

“Someone tried to take your bag.” She twists and scours the room as she draws my bag up to her chest. There’s no one close by that I can see. But I catch the scent of someone other than Aryssa—sweaty, musky, woody. Definitely a man. By the strength of the scent, they’re close, but I don’t see anyone.

I catch a watery shimmer distorting the stars and do the only thing I can: I toss my drink at them.

“Aw shit!” A blob of a figure appears in sticky translucent white. They run off down the hallway. But the moment they’re gone, someone grabs my backpack and pulls me away from the bar and into the hallway.

“Rosa!” Aryssa calls to me, but another invisible force holds her back.

“Aryssa!” Everyone in the bar looks on in shock as I’m dragged after the sticky bandit wannabe, down the hall, by yet another cloaked person. Clarita would’ve called it witchcraft.

I’m reminded of the mall and whoever was stealing our tech and metal jewelry. The scent I pick up is from a stressed out human, not the same smoky scent I detected in the shops. But now I know, whoever it is, is definitely using a ghostcloak.

“Arys—” someone puts their hand over my mouth. Fear crawls up my spine as they drag me around a corner and into a darkened hallway.

“I want the million credits. Give them to me or I’ll put a pretty little scar on your ugly little face,” he hisses.

Ugly? I choke at his remark. Then somewhere inside, I remember my self defense training.

I try to break free by twisting and punching his soft spots, but there isn’t a way to know what body part is where when I can’t see him.

He jerks me around and pushes me against the floor. I’m panicking and trying to calm my racing thoughts to find a way out of my situation. The clash of emotions makes me nauseous.

As he pins me beneath the weight of what I assume is a knee on my chest, my backpack shifts. The plinks of glass perfume testers remind me of the weapons I have left. I come up with a story.

“They’re here! You can have them!” I claw into my backpack, pull out a vial and then spray the air in my best guess of where his face is.

He grunts and spits.

The weight on my chest leaves.

I take the opportunity, grab my bag, scramble up, and run. I can’t head back toward Aryssa because he’s in the way. So I take every available corridor I can until I am completely lost and in a private sector of the spaceport with smaller spacecraft docked outside. Then I slip myself into a shadowed and empty spot between a support beam and a door with no handle, likely for emergency evacuations only.

I struggle to catch my breath but the fear I’m being followed makes me eager to quiet it so I can listen. My muscles shake with exhaustion.

When I’m able to listen without making a noise, I hear nothing except the door that opens to a distant transport. A green alien in a leather jacket exits and looks at his wristband then walks down the hallway away from me.

I sigh and rest my head back against the wall then slump to sit on the floor.

This is not what I wanted for myself after the race. I’m scared to contact Aryssa, to move, to make a noise, but I fear for her.

I have no idea what to do. I’m scared and all I can think is that this whole week, the race, everything has been a big mistake.

I wanted too much, more than I deserved. I should’ve known my place like my mother always said. I should’ve been grateful for what I had like my sister said. And I’ve become Icarus. Now my wings have burned, and I’m falling from the sky.