“I don’t know,” DJ said. “We might not find the crew, but we could still stumble across something that might help us survive out here.”
“Or the ship might be full of clever traps designed to kill us like the murder hotel of H. H. Holmes.”
DJ’s optimistic smile slipped. “Uh, yeah. I guess it could be that, too.”
I grabbed the nearest rung to pull myself up, stopped, and turned to DJ. “How are you so calm about what’s going on?” I didn’t give him the opportunity to reply before going off again. “I mean, here we are in space—in space—and you’re just rolling with it like, whatever. Are you a robot or something? You look like the type of person who punches things when he gets pissed off. Or do you break things? Why aren’t you throwing things across the room or smashing stuff with your giant fists?”
It felt good to blow up. If I hadn’t let out a bit of the pressure that had been building inside me, the explosion later would have been so much worse. At the same time, I felt like a jerk. DJ hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d saved my life. I should have been kissing his ass and massaging his feet.
DJ lowered his eyes, and his chin dipped to his chest. “It’s just… you’re messed up about what we’re going through, and I don’t know what Jenny’s deal is, but she doesn’t seem real stable, so I figure one of us has got to keep it together. Might as well be me.”
“Well, isn’t that responsible of you,” I said. “For the record, I don’t need you to look after me. I’m usually pretty okay at looking after myself.” DJ opened his mouth, but I already knew what he was going to say. “Yes, fine, I did almost die earlier, but that wasn’t really my fault, was it?”
When I finally shut up long enough for DJ to speak, he either had nothing to say or chose to keep whatever he was thinking to himself. I didn’t know what I was hoping would happen. That he’d argue with me? That he’d yell so that I could yell back and we could really go at it? For him to sling his arm around my shoulder and tell me he had a plan to get us home and that everything was going to be okay? Hell, maybe he was waiting for me to reassure him. He would be waiting a long time if that was the case.
Eventually, the moment passed, and we climbed the ladder to the next level. We kept the talking to a minimum as we continued our pointless search. Deck two was slightly more interesting than deck one had been. We found a couple of rooms containing what appeared to be lab instruments, a machine shop that DJ said was probably for repairing and fabricating parts for the ship, and a gym with workout equipment that looked older than me. But no people. Nothing to indicate that there had ever been people on Qriosity other than us. I was ready to give up when I found a room marked “Storage.” DJ was investigating a locked door at the end of the corridor, so I went in without him.
The storage room was filled with shipping containers each about the size of a steamer trunk and labeled across the front with a barcode and a name.
“DJ! Check this out!” While I waited for DJ, I attempted to pry open the container belonging to J. Winters, but it was sealed tight, and I didn’t see a slot for a key or a pad to enter a code into.
DJ was breathless when he dashed into the room, and his cheeks were flaming red. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I found the crew’s personal belongings.” I stood aside so he could see the container in front of me.
“Really?” he asked. “Are you going to open it?”
“Nah. I thought I’d caress it gently and sing it a lullaby.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s locked.”
“Oh.”
I looked around the room and read off the names on the other containers. “A. London, C. Dietrich, P. Stamper, R. Douglass, A. Sass, K. Jackson, C. Roehrig. These must belong to the crew—”
“But then where’s the crew?”
I ignored the question and focused my attention on the chest. “Why won’t you open?” I slammed my fist on the lid and swore when it resisted my attempts to break into it.
DJ cleared his throat. “Maybe we should leave them be. Besides, they might be full of personal stuff.”
“So what? Were you a Boy Scout or something?”
“Well, yeah,” DJ said. “But I don’t see how—”
I stood and posed for DJ with my arms held out. “Do you see this outfit? I look like I’m about to service your car, and I’m wearing underwear with someone else’s skid marks in them. So if there are better, cleaner clothes in these trunks, I’m going to get to them one way or another.”
“I get it,” DJ said. “I think you look fine. Good. I mean, you look nice.” He was blushing hard, and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Besides, we’re probably all of us wearing someone else’s underpants. I woke up wearing boxers, and I hate boxers.”
I covertly pinched my arm to keep from imagining DJ in nothing but boxers, but the more I tried to avoid the mental image, the more detailed it became. “Whatever. I just want to wear something that doesn’t smell like my grandparents’ bathroom. Is that too much to ask?”
DJ cocked his head and flashed those dimples at me. “How about we finish searching the ship, and then we’ll come back and figure out how to crack these open?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Fine.”
“Hey, I promise, okay? I keep my promises, remember?”
I should have been grateful, but DJ’s patience only got on my nerves. “Why are you so nice to me?”
DJ shrugged. “I guess because I’ve got no reason not to be.”
“I saw what you did,” I said. “That MediQwik thing showed me how you saved my life.”
“CPR’s easy—”
“No, I saw everything. You put on a suit and jumped out of the airlock to rescue me. You don’t even know me and you risked your life to save mine, which means you’re either a superhero or a super freak.”
“I only did what needed to be done.” DJ’s shoulders bowed inward like he was trying to make himself small. “Besides, you wouldn’t have needed saving if I’d waited for you to get into the airlock before shutting down the reactor.”
“I said it was okay. I don’t blame you, and you shouldn’t blame yourself.” The last thing I needed was DJ following me around like a puppy, trying to make up for some imagined wrong.
“It’s not a big deal,” DJ said. “And you would’ve done the same.”
I lashed out with a trenchant laugh. “I most definitely would not have.”
DJ glanced up at me through his lashes. “When you’re in the moment, you find yourself doing things you never thought you could. I think you’re capable of more than you know.”
“Maybe that’s true,” I said. “But I still wouldn’t have jumped out of the ship to save you or Jenny or anyone.” DJ couldn’t hide the hurt on his face. Every word was a knife wound, and I hated hurting him, but I couldn’t stop. “It’s got nothing to do with you. You’re cute and sweet, and if I saw you sitting alone in a bookstore, I’d maybe engineer some way to accidentally run into you so that we could talk and exchange numbers and go out…” I stopped and coughed. “I guess what I’m saying is that I like you well enough, it’s just that I like me more.”