Page 53 of Across the Universe (Across the Universe 1)

“Slavery. The Crusades. Genocide. Civil rights violence. Apartheid. Differences were the main source of all of Sol-Earth’s greatest man-made disasters. ”

My mouth hangs open, but I can’t refute the blemishes of my world’s history.

“Look at you being so smart,” Harley says. He winks at me. “Elder gets more education than the rest of us. Our education on Sol-Earth was mostly just farming methods and science. Elder’s the smart one. ”

Elder flushes deeply.

I don’t have time for this. “What’s being done to find the murderer?”

Both guys look up at me, blankly.

“Is there a guard over the cryogenically frozen people? Is Eldest investigating the crime? Are there suspects? Is there any kind of security or surveillance there? What’s happening?”

Neither of them have thoughts on any of this, and it infuriates me. “You never even gave any of this a second thought, did you? Someone’s died, and you’re just going to sit back and let this happen? I thought you were the future leader of this ship,” I shout, pointing at Elder. “And you’re going to ignore this and hope it goes away? Some leader!”

“I. . . I. . . ” Elder splutters.

“Don’t you realize that my parents are down there? Helpless? Frozen in a little box? You weren’t there. In the box. When it was unplugged. You don’t know what it felt like. That moment, when you’re finally awake, and you know you’re awake, and you want to vomit out those tubes, but you can’t, and you want to get out of that box, but you can’t, and you want to breathe. But. You. Can’t. ”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Calm down. Drink some water. ” Elder uses this as an excuse to refill my empty cup from the bathroom tap.

“I don’t need water!” I say. Why is it so difficult for them to see what’s important?

Elder keeps thrusting the cup toward me anyway. I take it and gulp down a swallow. An odd bitter taste stays on my tongue. I wonder how often this water has been recycled and processed. Thinking that, my anger fades and I do actually feel calmer.

“How would you feel if it were your parents?” I ask Elder quietly.

Harley looks up at us both, then slowly puts his paintbrush down. He is more intent on Elder’s answer than on my ranting.

“I never knew my parents,” Elder says.

“Did they die?” The words come out harsher than I’d intended, but this world seems intent on making me more callous.

Elder shakes his head. “No. I just never knew who they were. An Elder isn’t allowed to know. He must feel as if he is a child of the ship. ”

He speaks as if he’s reciting from a textbook, but there is also a sadness to his words that I am not sure even he recognizes. He seems very small and alone. His shoulders have hunched down, as if he wants his body to swallow him.

“Is that why you’re here?” I ask Harley.

“Nah. I know my parents. They’re weavers, in the City. My whole family has been weavers, ever since the Plague. I’d say my parents were disappointed that I didn’t uphold the family tradition, but I’m not even sure they noticed when I left. They couldn’t make me care about cloth, and I couldn’t make them care about anything else. So I moved here. It’s only Elder here without proper parents. ”

“As it should be,” E

lder says in a low voice without looking at either of us. “But right now,” he says, “if we can’t figure out who killed Mr. Robertson, let’s start with why. ”

I stride across the room to Harley and his art supplies and take up his biggest brush and the cup of black paint.

“Hey!” Harley says, but before he or Elder can do anything, I scrawl my name in big letters across the wall beside the window.

“What are you doing to your wall?!” Elder sounds shocked.

“It’s not my wall,” I say. Nothing on this ship is mine.

Under my name, I add everything that I can think of that might make me a target for the killer. Girl, I write. Seventeen, Red hair, White, Average appearance,

“You’re beautiful,” Elder says quietly, but I ignore him.

Not part of any mission, I add.