Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)(75)

Our friends lifted what we were taking with us into the shuttle; there was a lot we were leaving behind, too bulky to take, that we had given to friends. One by one all my friends gave me hugs and farewells, and dropped away, and then there was just Gretchen and me again.

"You want to come with me?" I asked.

Gretchen laughed. "Someone has to take care of Magdy," she said. "And Dad. And Roanoke."

"You always were the organized one," I said.

"And you were always you," Gretchen said.

"Someone had to be," I said. "And anyone else would have messed it up."

Gretchen gave me another hug. Then she stood back from me. "No good-byes," she said. "You're in my heart. Which means you're not gone."

"All right," I said. "No good-byes. I love you, Gretchen."

"I love you too," Gretchen said. And then she turned and she walked away, and didn't look back, although she did stop to give Babar a hug. He slobbered her thoroughly.

And then he came to me, and I led him into the passenger compartment of the shuttle. In time, everyone else came in. John. Jane. Savitri. Hickory. Dickory.

My family.

I looked out the shuttle window at Roanoke, my world, my home. Our home. But our home no longer. I looked at it and the people in it, some of whom I loved and some of whom I lost. Trying to take it all in, to make it a part of me. To make it a part of my story. My tale. To remember it so I can tell the story of my time here, not straight but true, so that anyone who asked me could feel what I felt about my time, on my world.

I sat, and looked, and remembered in the present time.

And when I was sure I had it, I kissed the window and drew the shade.

The engines on the shuttle came to life.

"Here we go," Dad said.

I smiled and closed my eyes and counted down the seconds until liftoff.

Five. Four. Three. Two.

One.

[page]
  
I lifted up my dad's PDA and counted off the seconds with the two thousand other people in the room.

"Five! Four! Three! Two! One!"

And then there was no noise, because everyone's attention - and I mean everyone's - was glued to the monitors peppered around the Magellan's common area. The screens, which had held starry skies in them, were blank and black, and everyone was holding their breath, waiting for what came next.

A world appeared, green and blue.

And we all went insane.

Because it was our world. It was Roanoke, our new home. We would be the first people to land there, the first people to settle there, the first people to live our lives there. And we celebrated seeing it for that first time, we two thousand settlers of Roanoke, all crammed into that common area, hugging and kissing and singing "Auld Lang Syne," because, well, what else do you sing when you come to a new world? A new world, new beginnings, a new year, a new life. New everything. I hugged my best friend Gretchen and we hollered into the microphone I had been using to count down the seconds, and hopped up and down like idiots.

When we stopped hopping, a whisper in my ear. "So beautiful," Enzo said.

I turned to look at him, at this gorgeous, beautiful boy who I was seriously considering making my boyfriend. He was a perfect combination: heart-flutteringly pretty and apparently entirely ignorant of the fact, because he'd been spending the last week trying to charm me with his words, of all things. Words! Like he didn't get the teenage boy manual on how to be completely inarticulate around girls.

I appreciated the effort. And I appreciated the fact that when he whispered his words, he was looking at me and not the planet. I glanced over at my parents about six meters away, kissing to celebrate the arrival. That seemed like a good idea. I reached my hand behind Enzo's head to draw him to me and planted one right on his lips. Our first kiss. New world, new life, new boyfriend.

What can I say. I was caught up in the moment.

Enzo didn't complain. "'O brave new world, that has such people in it,'" he said, after I let him breathe again.

I smiled at him, my arms still around his neck. "You've been saving that up," I said.

"Maybe," he admitted. "I wanted you to have a quality first kiss moment."

See. Most sixteen-year-old boys would have used a kiss as an excuse to dive straight for the boobs. He used it as an excuse for Shakespeare. A girl could do worse.

"You're adorable," I said, kissed him again, then gave him a playful push and launched myself into my parents, breaking up their canoodling and demanding their attention. The two of them were our colony's leaders, and soon enough they would barely have time to breathe. It was best I get in some quality time while I could. We hugged and laughed and then Gretchen yanked me back toward her.

"Look what I have," she said, and thrust her PDA in my face. It showed a vidcap of me and Enzo kissing.

"You evil little thing," I said.

"It's amazing," Gretchen said. "It actually looks like you're trying to swallow his entire face."

"Stop it," I said.

"See? Look," Gretchen tapped a button, and the vidcap played in slow motion. "Right there. You're mauling him. Like his lips were made of chocolate."

I was trying very hard not to laugh, because she was actually right about that. "Wench," I said. "Give me that." I snatched the PDA from her with one hand, erased the file, and handed it back. "There. Thank you."