The Voyager
originally published in Issue 7 of Wizards in Space
SUNDAY
Nick [6:48 PM]: hey! 👋 just dropped jamie at the airport. lmk if you need anything while he’s gone, I’m happy to help!!
Marley [8:19 PM]: Thanks! Same here, just text me if you need me!
MONDAY
Nick [9:04 AM]: we should watch some x-files this week in honor of the voyager launch/since jamie’s not around to be a killjoy about aliens lmao
Marley [11:56 AM]: Yes!! I’m going to a guest lecture tonight, but another day!
Nick [12:09 PM]: oh yeah whenever! I’ll be here, I have nothing going on lmao
TUESDAY
Nick [3:23 PM]: do you want some blueberry muffins? I made way too many lol
Marley [10:34 PM]: Sorry, I had my late class and I’m already home! How was your day?
Nick [10:36 PM]: oh no problem!! it was fine! I’m baking a lot (obv) and I’m caught up on podcasts through 2012 lmao. and I ran 10 miles this morning! keeping busy lol
Marley [11:02 PM]: You ran 10 miles in the pouring rain??
WEDNESDAY
Marley [2:45 PM]: Hi Nick! Jamie probably sent you a picture of the dog at his hotel, but here is a picture of an assistance greyhound I saw on campus, because I know you like noodly dogs.
Marley [2:52 PM]: Also, I would like to talk if you are available. It’s not life or death but it is technically urgent, so it can’t wait until Jamie gets back. Want to get coffee tomorrow?
THURSDAY
Marley [10:29 PM]: Nick, I saw the dog again! Today he was wearing a raincoat. Here you go.
Marley [11:54 PM]: Do you still want to watch the Voyager launch tomorrow night? My friend Ramona invited me to watch it with them, but I’d prefer to watch it with you.
Marley [11:59 PM]: Also, the dog is Ramona’s. I should have told you that. His name is Tulio.
FRIDAY
Marley [9:59 AM]: Nick! I have questions and an alien show recommendation for you. Are we still on for tonight?
Marley [11:23 AM]: You know I can see that you’re still logged into my grocery account, right?
Marley [5:40 PM]: NICK!!!! HELLO!!!! Are you okay?????
Marley [5:49 PM]: I’m coming over.
***
The smell of fresh pastry hits me right away when Nick lets me in: warm, inviting, and completely incongruous with the gloom rolling off him. He looks… wilted. Fried. He looks like when cartoon characters stick forks in electrical sockets—the front of his light brown hair is pushed straight up, and all that he’s missing are the tendrils of smoke spiraling up from the tips. His t-shirt and hoodie are both so loose that they have to be Jamie’s, and his joggers and fluffy old-man moccasin slippers are dusted with flour. Every surface in the kitchen is gleaming despite the clutter of cookie tins and plastic-wrapped plates of baked goods lining the counters, and that, at least, is familiar—Nick is always making something to send home with me or take in for his coworkers.
But then I remember that Nick got laid off a few weeks ago, and suddenly the glut of pastries feels less like cheerful abundance and more like an abject threat.
“Hey,” I say, cautiously. “How are you doing?”
Nick shoves his hands into his pockets. He’s hunched into himself, looking small despite his impressive height. His dark, mismatched loungewear hangs against the kitchen’s sleek whites and chromes like another uneasy stormcloud to match the ones gathering outside. “I told you I was keeping busy.”
I flex my hands at my sides, then curl them in until my nails bite my palms. Nick’s laptop is playing NASA’s pre-launch broadcast from the counter, and it settles me some where the pastries didn’t, because that’s something Nick would do in non-crisis times, too.
“I put the broadcast on for Vivi before I left,” I say, lifting my chin at the screen. “So ee would feel included. Did I miss anything good?”
He perks up slightly at Vivi’s name. Nick has only met my little house droid once, but they hit it off right away. Ee gets more excited when I mention Nick than ee does when I come home.
“Dying to know Vivi’s take on space exploration,” he says, but without his usual enthusiasm, and I frown. “And no, nothing cool yet. They’re just going through the tech specs right now.” He shrugs. “Jamie stuff.”
“Jamie stuff,” I agree, and we both go silent again.
I’ve lived most of my adult life hours and states away from Jamie, and I’m good at being alone, though Jamie says that twins are genetically preprogrammed not to be too good at it. It’s been stranger than I expected to have him gone this week, but I haven’t felt his absence as strongly as I do right now. Nick is always the one who fills the silence, but it’s Jamie who keeps the conversation on my frequency. It’s Jamie who knows to loop me back in when I miss a cue and to ask me life-preserver questions when I’m floundering, just like I know to distract him and sweep him along onto whatever journey I’m on when he’s anxious.
But Nick—I don’t know what Nick needs. I have a decent handle on what I need, after the better part of twenty-nine years, but I’m not good at decoding it for other people. My knowledge of interpersonal support is built around one person, and he’s not even on this coast right now.
“Have you eaten?” I ask finally, because that’s usually what Nick asks when I come over. “I can order something, if you want.”
He jerks like he’s gotten another cartoon electric shock, and then he looks a little more like himself. “No, no, it’s okay. I’ve been baking nonstop, I can make one more thing.”
I squint at him. “Who are you baking for? Won’t this all be stale by the time Jamie gets back?”
Nick sags a little farther into himself. “I’m giving it to other people! The neighbors. The mail lady. The neighbors’ gardener. I’m making a lot of new friends.”
But his voice is all wrong, flat and humorless where usually Nick is goofy and loose and exuberant. I get that he’s really saying that he’s not making a lot of new friends. I get that that’s sort of the problem. But I don’t get why he didn’t just… text me, like he always does. Nick talks. Nick texts. Nick initiates. Nick does not go radio silent.
And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now that he has.
“You don’t have to make me food,” I say, and he looks at me like he’d already forgotten that was part of our conversation. “We’re already friends.”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but he just furrows his brow and casts his eyes around the kitchen. “That’s why I want to make you something. I could make, uh, I think I have—come on, Marley, humor me. Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything!” I insist. “I was just thinking that sometimes in grad school Jamie would order me dinner if he could tell I was overwhelmed. Even though he was in New York and I was in Berkeley. And I could do that for you. If you’re overwhelmed.”
Nick’s face slips for a moment: a blink that’s too fast, an unsteady roll of his lips. I hope he doesn’t cry, because then I will, too. Slowly, he folds his long body onto one of the seats at the kitchen island and leans on his elbows, giving me a difficult smile. “I look that bad, huh?”
I perch two seats down, unsure of what to say. When NASA first announced the third Voyager probe, Nick and I were convinced that they were sending it out in response to the strange, indecipherable signals its siblings were picking up, despite Jamie’s reminders that it would probably take thirty more years for Voyager 3 to even reach the other two. At this point, I’m pretty sure Jamie’s insistence that aliens don’t exist is mostly a front to give Nick and me something to unify against, but no matter his reasoning, he’s wrong. The truth, as Nick loves to intone in his best Fox Mulder impression, is out there, and, we argued, they wouldn’t send another probe out there if those signals were nothing.
The thing about strange, indecipherable signals is that they’re very exciting when they’re coming from space and very distressing when they’re coming from people you care about.
Before I can figure out how to reply, my phone buzzes with a text, and I scramble to answer it, thinking wildly that Jamie has somehow intuited from across the country that I need a life preserver.
“Jamie?” Nick guesses too, nodding at my phone. “He keeps sending me these breezy texts about his fancy hotel and what I’m having for dinner and I just know he’s gearing up for his daily inquiry about how I’m coping.”
I know exactly what kind of Jamie texts he means—I get them, too. But I read the message, and my face goes hot.
Tulio really liked meeting Vivi yesterday! (And so did I!)
“It’s not Jamie,” I say slowly. “It’s Ramona. My cowor—my friend.”
I resist the magnet pull of Nick’s gaze as it swings toward me and concentrate on my phone. Vivi said it was nice to meet you too, I reply after a long, harrowing moment. Then: That’s a joke. Ee didn’t say that. But ee did assign you a specific beep, which is almost the same thing.
“Ramona from the library?” says Nick when I raise my head, one corner of his mouth turning up in a fraction of his familiar smile. “What’s happening there?”
I avoid his eyes, starting to weave a braid into my hair. I don’t want advice about Ramona from this unfamiliar, off-kilter version of Nick. I want to fix what’s wrong with him and then pivot to my thing. “We were talking about you,” I remind him. “And how you’re doing.”
Nick’s quarter-smile extinguishes. His shoulders drop, and he folds back into himself, that little glimpse of normal falling away. “Okay, well,” he says, “I was trying to talk about how you’re doing.”
“No,” I say, annoyance creeping up my shoulders. “Tell me what’s wrong first.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he tries, but I shake my head.
“Yes, it is! You’re different than usual. You’re all… flat. Usually by this time of the week, I have about a million texts from you. The past few days? None, Nick! No texts!” My hands are too frenetic to braid, so I rake them through my hair, trying to defuse some of my frustrated energy. “If you hadn’t been ordering butter from my grocery account, I would have thought you were dead! I don’t like it and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I’m not— I’m not like Jamie, I can’t just tell those things about people the way he can, so can you just tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it?”
I don’t realize I’m yelling until an echo rings in the kitchen when I stop. Nick is staring down at the cold white countertop, a muscle twitching in his jaw. I stare at him for a minute or two, waiting, but his eyes stay fixed on the galaxy burst of the granite. He does not look at me.
Jamie would know what to do, I think bitterly. Jamie always knows what people need. There’s a balance—Jamie almost never knows what he needs, or what his limits are, or how to say no to people, which are all things I’m good at—but not knowing, or not knowing how to know, still makes me feel like I’m failing Nick.
Wordlessly, I unfold myself from the island and retrieve the tin of tea bags from the cabinet by the sink. This is what Jamie would do for me: make tea. Light the fireplace. Put on a documentary or a movie in German, which we both took in high school and need to focus on to understand. Part of me is hesitant to bring Nick into this ritual, but I make myself set it to rights in my head: The tea brand we like discontinued our favorite lavender-chamomile a few months ago, so the tea I’m making Nick will be regular chamomile, which means it’s already a slightly different ritual than I’ve established with Jamie, which means I can bend the rules.
I feel Nick’s gaze follow me as I take the electric kettle off its hub and fill it, but when I turn, his eyes are fixed determinedly on the news. I take down two mugs, one that reads I WANT TO BELIEVE and another bearing the logo of the after-school center where Nick used to work that appears to have been signed and doodled on by a dozen middle-schoolers, which I hurriedly switch out for one with the logo of the software company Jamie works for instead.
“I just don’t think I know how to be alone,” Nick says into the semi-quiet, and I go still at the fault line trembling in his voice. I need him not to cry, because then I’ll cry, too. But— I don’t get how he can say that, exactly. I’ve been here the whole time. I told him to text me if he needed me.
“And I know that sounds stupid,” he continues before I can say anything. “Because I’m an adult, and I’ve been alone before, but for some reason this is just flattening me this week, and I don’t—”
“But you’re not alone,” I interrupt, vexed. “You have me. I’m literally the closest person to Jamie you could call! I have half of his DNA!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want you to think—” he trails off, and I fix him with a hard stare, daring him not to water down what he wants to say. “I didn’t want you to feel like he left town and I went, ‘Well, time to call in Surrogate Jamie!’”
“But we’re friends,” I say, very loudly. “It’s not like he’s the only thing we have in common anymore. This is in the — the friendship manual, the job description, whatever! You’re supposed to call your people when you need help. That’s why distress signals exist, Nick! To be sent so someone can come and help you!”
“You never send them!”
I stare at him. “I sent you, like, three this week alone. Asking you to hang out or have coffee or just, I don’t know, talk to me!”
He looks so confused, which confuses me, because it seemed very clear to me that those were distress signals. I have a hard time initiating social contact, and I don’t usually ask to make plans first. Those are things Nick is good at, and that’s why we work. He initiates, and I confirm and remind, and all the pieces come together. And if I send a few texts and don’t hear anything back, I assume I misread the situation and certainly don’t send more texts. Nick texts like a never-ending Star Wars opening crawl, so that’s what I did: I tried to speak his language.
“Those were distress calls?” he asks, pushing a hand through his hair, though it’s already pasted straight up with flour and water. “Shit, Marley, I just thought… I didn’t realize. I’ve been so out of it this week. I’m sorry.”
I separate a tiny strand of hair into three even tinier strands and cross them over each other, again, again, again. On the NASA broadcast, someone is reading the statement Jimmy Carter sent up with the original probes: We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.
I didn’t know much about the Voyager probes before NASA announced this one, but Nick did, and he told me all about them: They’re studying deep space, interstellar space, the heliosphere. They’re the farthest man-made objects from Earth. They’re carrying a distillation of humanity into pictures and music and language in case they encounter intelligent life. They’re twins. It crushed me with an empathy too large for my body, a solitude I recognized: the blind, extending hope built into those vessels, the earnest humility of that mission. The lonely, dogged perseverance of so much communication with so little in return. The courage to carry so much of that hope for connection and still be so far from it.
I know what it is to feel like the only one transmitting signals into darkness. To reach out and realize you aren’t understood. Two years ago, I was shut in a tiny apartment in Berkeley, bent furiously over a dissertation I wouldn’t finish about an apocalypse theory that hasn’t come true with a ferocity no one understood. That theory shaped my days, drove my career, set my expiration date—and I outlived it. I survived the timeline I’d drawn up for myself, and when my distress call reached Jamie and Nick, they drew me into theirs, and my whole world opened wide.
Because now I think surviving is more than enduring those patient, endless years in the void of space. It’s also beaming out strange, indecipherable signals on the slim line of faith that someone will answer when you call. Every good thing I’ve found since my apocalypse fell through—moving to Seattle, befriending Nick, meeting Ramona, teaching my class—began as another hopeless shot into space, and every time I braced to miss the mark. Every time, it was worth the silence and the dark when someone finally shouted back.
“I was trying to say that I missed your texts,” I say now, and in my periphery I see Nick’s gaze tick toward me. I begin braiding my hair again, anew. “And that I wanted to talk to someone about Ramona, because I don’t know what I’m feeling for them. And that I wanted to watch the Voyager launch, but only with you.” I cross each strand of hair over the other, again and again and again. “And that I needed to make sure you were okay.”
The smile he offers me is watery, and I look away fast so I don’t cry, but I smile a little, too. The kettle clicks, a single sharp note against the rush of rain outside.
“I’m okay,” says Nick after a long moment. “And I’m sorry I worried you. I just— I told Jamie I’d check on you, and then I completely dropped the ball because I was too busy having a crisis about being lonely, and then checking on you just became the cherry on top of that crisis because I was so ashamed of being so lonely.”
I nod, finishing the braid. “Well, I told Jamie I’d check on you too, and I didn’t realize that you actually needed it until today, when I texted you for entirely selfish reasons, so I think we can call it even.” I take a jagged breath. “I didn’t realize that not everyone’s distress signal sounds the same.”
Nick makes a less-watery sound of agreement. “It would be easier if everyone came with flashing lights and klaxons,” he admits. “But also, I don’t think wanting to make sure I’m not dead is entirely selfish.”
“It is, a little bit,” I say, teasing, and he raises his eyebrows. “You’re the one with all the museum memberships.”
He laughs, startled and genuine. “Can’t you get free passes from the library?”
I scrunch up my face. “Okay, yes, but maybe I want to go with you! You and Ramona are both making me emotional and I’m not sure I like it!” I pull my hair in front of my face. “That’s not true. I do like it. Mostly.”
“Yeah, what is going on with Ramona?” he asks, and I unfold myself from the island to pour us both mugs of tea.
“I don’t know! I need to talk it out to know. It’s very good. But also terrible. I’ll talk about it once we get settled. And maybe after the launch. And,” I add pointedly, “after we eat.”
Nick gives me a sheepish grin. “I’ll light the fireplace if you order the food.”
I follow him into the living room, and when we settle on the couch, we don’t leave a valley between us where Jamie usually sits. Nick turns on the broadcast, and we bicker over what Thai food to order, and every moment is a little exhale.
We watch the third Voyager streak into space with our breath held. It feels like the next step after survival.
© 2021 Hannah Lamarre
Nick [6:48 PM]: hey! 👋 just dropped jamie at the airport. lmk if you need anything while he’s gone, I’m happy to help!!
Marley [8:19 PM]: Thanks! Same here, just text me if you need me!
MONDAY
Nick [9:04 AM]: we should watch some x-files this week in honor of the voyager launch/since jamie’s not around to be a killjoy about aliens lmao
Marley [11:56 AM]: Yes!! I’m going to a guest lecture tonight, but another day!
Nick [12:09 PM]: oh yeah whenever! I’ll be here, I have nothing going on lmao
TUESDAY
Nick [3:23 PM]: do you want some blueberry muffins? I made way too many lol
Marley [10:34 PM]: Sorry, I had my late class and I’m already home! How was your day?
Nick [10:36 PM]: oh no problem!! it was fine! I’m baking a lot (obv) and I’m caught up on podcasts through 2012 lmao. and I ran 10 miles this morning! keeping busy lol
Marley [11:02 PM]: You ran 10 miles in the pouring rain??
WEDNESDAY
Marley [2:45 PM]: Hi Nick! Jamie probably sent you a picture of the dog at his hotel, but here is a picture of an assistance greyhound I saw on campus, because I know you like noodly dogs.
Marley [2:52 PM]: Also, I would like to talk if you are available. It’s not life or death but it is technically urgent, so it can’t wait until Jamie gets back. Want to get coffee tomorrow?
THURSDAY
Marley [10:29 PM]: Nick, I saw the dog again! Today he was wearing a raincoat. Here you go.
Marley [11:54 PM]: Do you still want to watch the Voyager launch tomorrow night? My friend Ramona invited me to watch it with them, but I’d prefer to watch it with you.
Marley [11:59 PM]: Also, the dog is Ramona’s. I should have told you that. His name is Tulio.
FRIDAY
Marley [9:59 AM]: Nick! I have questions and an alien show recommendation for you. Are we still on for tonight?
Marley [11:23 AM]: You know I can see that you’re still logged into my grocery account, right?
Marley [5:40 PM]: NICK!!!! HELLO!!!! Are you okay?????
Marley [5:49 PM]: I’m coming over.
***
The smell of fresh pastry hits me right away when Nick lets me in: warm, inviting, and completely incongruous with the gloom rolling off him. He looks… wilted. Fried. He looks like when cartoon characters stick forks in electrical sockets—the front of his light brown hair is pushed straight up, and all that he’s missing are the tendrils of smoke spiraling up from the tips. His t-shirt and hoodie are both so loose that they have to be Jamie’s, and his joggers and fluffy old-man moccasin slippers are dusted with flour. Every surface in the kitchen is gleaming despite the clutter of cookie tins and plastic-wrapped plates of baked goods lining the counters, and that, at least, is familiar—Nick is always making something to send home with me or take in for his coworkers.
But then I remember that Nick got laid off a few weeks ago, and suddenly the glut of pastries feels less like cheerful abundance and more like an abject threat.
“Hey,” I say, cautiously. “How are you doing?”
Nick shoves his hands into his pockets. He’s hunched into himself, looking small despite his impressive height. His dark, mismatched loungewear hangs against the kitchen’s sleek whites and chromes like another uneasy stormcloud to match the ones gathering outside. “I told you I was keeping busy.”
I flex my hands at my sides, then curl them in until my nails bite my palms. Nick’s laptop is playing NASA’s pre-launch broadcast from the counter, and it settles me some where the pastries didn’t, because that’s something Nick would do in non-crisis times, too.
“I put the broadcast on for Vivi before I left,” I say, lifting my chin at the screen. “So ee would feel included. Did I miss anything good?”
He perks up slightly at Vivi’s name. Nick has only met my little house droid once, but they hit it off right away. Ee gets more excited when I mention Nick than ee does when I come home.
“Dying to know Vivi’s take on space exploration,” he says, but without his usual enthusiasm, and I frown. “And no, nothing cool yet. They’re just going through the tech specs right now.” He shrugs. “Jamie stuff.”
“Jamie stuff,” I agree, and we both go silent again.
I’ve lived most of my adult life hours and states away from Jamie, and I’m good at being alone, though Jamie says that twins are genetically preprogrammed not to be too good at it. It’s been stranger than I expected to have him gone this week, but I haven’t felt his absence as strongly as I do right now. Nick is always the one who fills the silence, but it’s Jamie who keeps the conversation on my frequency. It’s Jamie who knows to loop me back in when I miss a cue and to ask me life-preserver questions when I’m floundering, just like I know to distract him and sweep him along onto whatever journey I’m on when he’s anxious.
But Nick—I don’t know what Nick needs. I have a decent handle on what I need, after the better part of twenty-nine years, but I’m not good at decoding it for other people. My knowledge of interpersonal support is built around one person, and he’s not even on this coast right now.
“Have you eaten?” I ask finally, because that’s usually what Nick asks when I come over. “I can order something, if you want.”
He jerks like he’s gotten another cartoon electric shock, and then he looks a little more like himself. “No, no, it’s okay. I’ve been baking nonstop, I can make one more thing.”
I squint at him. “Who are you baking for? Won’t this all be stale by the time Jamie gets back?”
Nick sags a little farther into himself. “I’m giving it to other people! The neighbors. The mail lady. The neighbors’ gardener. I’m making a lot of new friends.”
But his voice is all wrong, flat and humorless where usually Nick is goofy and loose and exuberant. I get that he’s really saying that he’s not making a lot of new friends. I get that that’s sort of the problem. But I don’t get why he didn’t just… text me, like he always does. Nick talks. Nick texts. Nick initiates. Nick does not go radio silent.
And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now that he has.
“You don’t have to make me food,” I say, and he looks at me like he’d already forgotten that was part of our conversation. “We’re already friends.”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but he just furrows his brow and casts his eyes around the kitchen. “That’s why I want to make you something. I could make, uh, I think I have—come on, Marley, humor me. Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything!” I insist. “I was just thinking that sometimes in grad school Jamie would order me dinner if he could tell I was overwhelmed. Even though he was in New York and I was in Berkeley. And I could do that for you. If you’re overwhelmed.”
Nick’s face slips for a moment: a blink that’s too fast, an unsteady roll of his lips. I hope he doesn’t cry, because then I will, too. Slowly, he folds his long body onto one of the seats at the kitchen island and leans on his elbows, giving me a difficult smile. “I look that bad, huh?”
I perch two seats down, unsure of what to say. When NASA first announced the third Voyager probe, Nick and I were convinced that they were sending it out in response to the strange, indecipherable signals its siblings were picking up, despite Jamie’s reminders that it would probably take thirty more years for Voyager 3 to even reach the other two. At this point, I’m pretty sure Jamie’s insistence that aliens don’t exist is mostly a front to give Nick and me something to unify against, but no matter his reasoning, he’s wrong. The truth, as Nick loves to intone in his best Fox Mulder impression, is out there, and, we argued, they wouldn’t send another probe out there if those signals were nothing.
The thing about strange, indecipherable signals is that they’re very exciting when they’re coming from space and very distressing when they’re coming from people you care about.
Before I can figure out how to reply, my phone buzzes with a text, and I scramble to answer it, thinking wildly that Jamie has somehow intuited from across the country that I need a life preserver.
“Jamie?” Nick guesses too, nodding at my phone. “He keeps sending me these breezy texts about his fancy hotel and what I’m having for dinner and I just know he’s gearing up for his daily inquiry about how I’m coping.”
I know exactly what kind of Jamie texts he means—I get them, too. But I read the message, and my face goes hot.
Tulio really liked meeting Vivi yesterday! (And so did I!)
“It’s not Jamie,” I say slowly. “It’s Ramona. My cowor—my friend.”
I resist the magnet pull of Nick’s gaze as it swings toward me and concentrate on my phone. Vivi said it was nice to meet you too, I reply after a long, harrowing moment. Then: That’s a joke. Ee didn’t say that. But ee did assign you a specific beep, which is almost the same thing.
“Ramona from the library?” says Nick when I raise my head, one corner of his mouth turning up in a fraction of his familiar smile. “What’s happening there?”
I avoid his eyes, starting to weave a braid into my hair. I don’t want advice about Ramona from this unfamiliar, off-kilter version of Nick. I want to fix what’s wrong with him and then pivot to my thing. “We were talking about you,” I remind him. “And how you’re doing.”
Nick’s quarter-smile extinguishes. His shoulders drop, and he folds back into himself, that little glimpse of normal falling away. “Okay, well,” he says, “I was trying to talk about how you’re doing.”
“No,” I say, annoyance creeping up my shoulders. “Tell me what’s wrong first.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he tries, but I shake my head.
“Yes, it is! You’re different than usual. You’re all… flat. Usually by this time of the week, I have about a million texts from you. The past few days? None, Nick! No texts!” My hands are too frenetic to braid, so I rake them through my hair, trying to defuse some of my frustrated energy. “If you hadn’t been ordering butter from my grocery account, I would have thought you were dead! I don’t like it and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, and I’m not— I’m not like Jamie, I can’t just tell those things about people the way he can, so can you just tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it?”
I don’t realize I’m yelling until an echo rings in the kitchen when I stop. Nick is staring down at the cold white countertop, a muscle twitching in his jaw. I stare at him for a minute or two, waiting, but his eyes stay fixed on the galaxy burst of the granite. He does not look at me.
Jamie would know what to do, I think bitterly. Jamie always knows what people need. There’s a balance—Jamie almost never knows what he needs, or what his limits are, or how to say no to people, which are all things I’m good at—but not knowing, or not knowing how to know, still makes me feel like I’m failing Nick.
Wordlessly, I unfold myself from the island and retrieve the tin of tea bags from the cabinet by the sink. This is what Jamie would do for me: make tea. Light the fireplace. Put on a documentary or a movie in German, which we both took in high school and need to focus on to understand. Part of me is hesitant to bring Nick into this ritual, but I make myself set it to rights in my head: The tea brand we like discontinued our favorite lavender-chamomile a few months ago, so the tea I’m making Nick will be regular chamomile, which means it’s already a slightly different ritual than I’ve established with Jamie, which means I can bend the rules.
I feel Nick’s gaze follow me as I take the electric kettle off its hub and fill it, but when I turn, his eyes are fixed determinedly on the news. I take down two mugs, one that reads I WANT TO BELIEVE and another bearing the logo of the after-school center where Nick used to work that appears to have been signed and doodled on by a dozen middle-schoolers, which I hurriedly switch out for one with the logo of the software company Jamie works for instead.
“I just don’t think I know how to be alone,” Nick says into the semi-quiet, and I go still at the fault line trembling in his voice. I need him not to cry, because then I’ll cry, too. But— I don’t get how he can say that, exactly. I’ve been here the whole time. I told him to text me if he needed me.
“And I know that sounds stupid,” he continues before I can say anything. “Because I’m an adult, and I’ve been alone before, but for some reason this is just flattening me this week, and I don’t—”
“But you’re not alone,” I interrupt, vexed. “You have me. I’m literally the closest person to Jamie you could call! I have half of his DNA!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want you to think—” he trails off, and I fix him with a hard stare, daring him not to water down what he wants to say. “I didn’t want you to feel like he left town and I went, ‘Well, time to call in Surrogate Jamie!’”
“But we’re friends,” I say, very loudly. “It’s not like he’s the only thing we have in common anymore. This is in the — the friendship manual, the job description, whatever! You’re supposed to call your people when you need help. That’s why distress signals exist, Nick! To be sent so someone can come and help you!”
“You never send them!”
I stare at him. “I sent you, like, three this week alone. Asking you to hang out or have coffee or just, I don’t know, talk to me!”
He looks so confused, which confuses me, because it seemed very clear to me that those were distress signals. I have a hard time initiating social contact, and I don’t usually ask to make plans first. Those are things Nick is good at, and that’s why we work. He initiates, and I confirm and remind, and all the pieces come together. And if I send a few texts and don’t hear anything back, I assume I misread the situation and certainly don’t send more texts. Nick texts like a never-ending Star Wars opening crawl, so that’s what I did: I tried to speak his language.
“Those were distress calls?” he asks, pushing a hand through his hair, though it’s already pasted straight up with flour and water. “Shit, Marley, I just thought… I didn’t realize. I’ve been so out of it this week. I’m sorry.”
I separate a tiny strand of hair into three even tinier strands and cross them over each other, again, again, again. On the NASA broadcast, someone is reading the statement Jimmy Carter sent up with the original probes: We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.
I didn’t know much about the Voyager probes before NASA announced this one, but Nick did, and he told me all about them: They’re studying deep space, interstellar space, the heliosphere. They’re the farthest man-made objects from Earth. They’re carrying a distillation of humanity into pictures and music and language in case they encounter intelligent life. They’re twins. It crushed me with an empathy too large for my body, a solitude I recognized: the blind, extending hope built into those vessels, the earnest humility of that mission. The lonely, dogged perseverance of so much communication with so little in return. The courage to carry so much of that hope for connection and still be so far from it.
I know what it is to feel like the only one transmitting signals into darkness. To reach out and realize you aren’t understood. Two years ago, I was shut in a tiny apartment in Berkeley, bent furiously over a dissertation I wouldn’t finish about an apocalypse theory that hasn’t come true with a ferocity no one understood. That theory shaped my days, drove my career, set my expiration date—and I outlived it. I survived the timeline I’d drawn up for myself, and when my distress call reached Jamie and Nick, they drew me into theirs, and my whole world opened wide.
Because now I think surviving is more than enduring those patient, endless years in the void of space. It’s also beaming out strange, indecipherable signals on the slim line of faith that someone will answer when you call. Every good thing I’ve found since my apocalypse fell through—moving to Seattle, befriending Nick, meeting Ramona, teaching my class—began as another hopeless shot into space, and every time I braced to miss the mark. Every time, it was worth the silence and the dark when someone finally shouted back.
“I was trying to say that I missed your texts,” I say now, and in my periphery I see Nick’s gaze tick toward me. I begin braiding my hair again, anew. “And that I wanted to talk to someone about Ramona, because I don’t know what I’m feeling for them. And that I wanted to watch the Voyager launch, but only with you.” I cross each strand of hair over the other, again and again and again. “And that I needed to make sure you were okay.”
The smile he offers me is watery, and I look away fast so I don’t cry, but I smile a little, too. The kettle clicks, a single sharp note against the rush of rain outside.
“I’m okay,” says Nick after a long moment. “And I’m sorry I worried you. I just— I told Jamie I’d check on you, and then I completely dropped the ball because I was too busy having a crisis about being lonely, and then checking on you just became the cherry on top of that crisis because I was so ashamed of being so lonely.”
I nod, finishing the braid. “Well, I told Jamie I’d check on you too, and I didn’t realize that you actually needed it until today, when I texted you for entirely selfish reasons, so I think we can call it even.” I take a jagged breath. “I didn’t realize that not everyone’s distress signal sounds the same.”
Nick makes a less-watery sound of agreement. “It would be easier if everyone came with flashing lights and klaxons,” he admits. “But also, I don’t think wanting to make sure I’m not dead is entirely selfish.”
“It is, a little bit,” I say, teasing, and he raises his eyebrows. “You’re the one with all the museum memberships.”
He laughs, startled and genuine. “Can’t you get free passes from the library?”
I scrunch up my face. “Okay, yes, but maybe I want to go with you! You and Ramona are both making me emotional and I’m not sure I like it!” I pull my hair in front of my face. “That’s not true. I do like it. Mostly.”
“Yeah, what is going on with Ramona?” he asks, and I unfold myself from the island to pour us both mugs of tea.
“I don’t know! I need to talk it out to know. It’s very good. But also terrible. I’ll talk about it once we get settled. And maybe after the launch. And,” I add pointedly, “after we eat.”
Nick gives me a sheepish grin. “I’ll light the fireplace if you order the food.”
I follow him into the living room, and when we settle on the couch, we don’t leave a valley between us where Jamie usually sits. Nick turns on the broadcast, and we bicker over what Thai food to order, and every moment is a little exhale.
We watch the third Voyager streak into space with our breath held. It feels like the next step after survival.
© 2021 Hannah Lamarre