Something shifted in his gaze, and she closed her eyes, sure that he was about to kiss her. But then a crack sounded from the trees, and Bellamy’s head whipped around. “What was that?” he asked. Without waiting for Clarke to respond, he took off for the shore, leaving her alone in the water.
Clarke watched Bellamy grab his bow and disappear into the shadows. She sighed, then silently chastised herself for her foolishness. If it’d been her family they were seeking, she wouldn’t waste time playing in the water either. She tilted her head back, sending drops of water trickling off her face as she stared up at the sky and thought about the two bodies drifting among those very stars. What would her parents say if they could see her now, here on the planet they had always dreamed of calling home?
“Can we play the atlas game?” Clarke asked, leaning over her father to peer at his tablet. It was covered with complicated-looking equations that Clarke didn’t recognize. But she would someday soon; even though she was only eight, she’d recently started algebra. When Cora and Glass heard about it, they’d rolled their eyes and whispered loudly about how math was pointless. Clarke had tried to explain that without math, there would be no doctors, and no engineers, which meant that they’d all die of preventable diseases… if the Colony didn’t burst into flames first. But Cora and Glass had only laughed and then spent the rest of the day giggling every time Clarke walked past.
“In a minute,” her father said. He frowned slightly as he swiped the screen, rearranging the order of the equations. “I just need to finish this first.”
Clarke brought her face closer to the tablet. “Can I help? If you explain it to me, I bet I can figure the hard part out.”
He laughed and ruffled her hair. “I’m sure you could. But you’re helping me just by sitting here. You remind me why our research is so important.” He smiled, closed the program he was working on, and opened the atlas. A holographic globe appeared in the air just above the couch.
Clarke swiped her finger through the air and the globe rotated. “What’s this one?” she asked, pointing to the outline of a large country.
Her father squinted. “Let’s see… that’s Saudi Arabia.”
Clarke pressed her finger against the shape. It turned blue and the words New Mecca appeared.
“Ah, that’s right,” her father said. “That one changed its name a number of times before the Cataclysm.” He rotated the sphere and pointed to a long, narrow country on the other side of the globe. “What about that one?”
“Chile,” Clarke said confidently.
“Really? I think it feels pretty warm in here.”
Clarke rolled her eyes. “Daddy, are you going to make that joke every time we play?”
“Every. Single. Time.” He smiled and pulled Clarke onto his lap. “At least, until we’re actually in Chile. Then it might get old.”
“David,” Clarke’s mom warned from the kitchen, where she was tearing open protein packets and mixing them in with the greenhouse kale. She didn’t like it when Clarke’s father made jokes about going to Earth. According to her research, it was going to be at least another hundred years until the planet was safe.
“What about the people?” Clarke asked.
Her father cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I want to see where all the people lived. Why aren’t any apartments on the map?”
Her father smiled. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything that detailed. But people lived everywhere.” He traced his finger along one of the squiggly lines. “They lived by the ocean… they lived in the mountains… the desert… along the rivers.”
“How come they didn’t do anything when they knew the Cataclysm was coming?”
Her mother walked over to join them on the couch. “It all happened very quickly,” she said after she’d sat down. “And there weren’t many places on Earth where people could hide from all that radiation. I think the Chinese were building a structure here.” She zoomed out the map and pointed to a spot on the far right side. “And there was talk of something near the seed bank, here.” She traced her finger to the top of the map.
“What about Mount Weather?” her father asked.
Clarke’s mother fiddled with the globe. “That was in what would’ve been Virginia, right?”
“What’s Mount Weather?” Clarke asked, leaning in for a better look.
“Many years before the Cataclysm, the United States government built a large underground bunker in case of nuclear war. The scenario seemed unlikely, but they had to do something to protect the President—he was like their Chancellor,” she explained. “But when the bombs finally fell, no one made it there in time, not even the President. It all happened too suddenly.”
An uncomfortable question bumped against the jumble of other thoughts in Clarke’s mind. “How many people died? Like, thousands?”
Her father sighed. “More like billions.”
“Billions?” Clarke rose to her feet and padded over to the small, round, star-filled window. “Do you think they’re all up here now?”
Her mother walked over and placed her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Isn’t heaven supposed to be somewhere in space?”
Clarke’s mother gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I think heaven is wherever we imagine it to be. I’ve always thought mine would be on Earth. In a forest somewhere, full of trees.”
Clarke slipped her hand into her mother’s. “Then that’s where mine will be too.”
“And I know what song will be playing at the pearly gates,” her father said with a laugh.
Her mother spun around. “David, don’t you dare play that song again.” But it was too late. Music was already streaming out of the speakers in the walls. Clarke grinned as she heard the opening lines of “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
“Seriously, David?” her mother asked, raising an eyebrow.
Her father only laughed and bounded over to grab their hands, and the three of them spun around the living room, singing along to her father’s favorite song.
“Clarke!” Bellamy emerged from the tree line, breathless. It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but she could hear the urgency in his voice. “Come and see this!”