I made it a rule for Charlie to stay far away from my apartment. He's never broken that rule until now. 

Through the peephole, I can read the diner's name "Lucky Star" off of his work cap. He steps back, allowing me to see more than just his faded red hat and his hair that has been put into twists peeking out of it. He has his signature sherpa jacket over his uniform and his name tag is still on.

He brings his fist up to knock again but I open the door before he has a chance.

"What are you doing here?" 

He looks past me, taking in the expertly decorated living entryway and living room. My mother hired an interior decorator for the house knowing good and well we couldn't afford it. Typical. I happen to hate the clean, modern look. I would rather have a place that appeared lived in rather than a movie set. 

 "So this is the ogres layer. Not too bad." 

"You can't be here." 

He holds up a grease stained bag. "But I brought nuggets." 

I groan, rubbing my temple with my finger tips. My parents won't be home until tomorrow morning from their business trip. Technically, there is no reason for me to worry about him being over. There are no hidden Nanny cams and the neighbors mind their business. He just can't make a habit of swinging by. 

I step aside to let him in. "I don't want to sound rude but why are you here?" 

He wanders over to the couch and sets the doggy bag on the coffee table. After shrugging off his jacket, he sinks into the cushions. I would make a comment about how comfortable he's making himself if it wasn't for the way he's watching me. It's like he's trying to see into my soul. 

"I wanted to check on you. Aren't you going to sit down?" 

I'm planted at the otherside of the room, arms crossed. Suddenly self aware, I drop my shoulders from my ears and sit beside him. 

"I'm fine." 

He rolls his eyes and though he does this often, this time feels different. He looks away from me, watching as rain begins to smack against the window glass. He's chewing his lip as something dark invades his expression. 

"That's bull." 

"Excuse me?" 

He turns back to me. The frustration in his previous words fade to something softer. "I know something is wrong. I just don't understand why you won't tell me." 

Deny. Deny. Deny. 

It's what I need to do to protect him and myself. If my parents or the researchers find out I told someone about all of this, who knows what will happen to us? And things will change between us if he knows. He'll pity me or be afraid of me and the last thing I want right now is to lose him. 

But I'm tired. 

"Is it that you don't trust me?" 

I bury my face in my hands. "Of course I trust you." 

Charlie is one of the only people I can trust. The only probably. Gosh, that is so pathetic. What kind of life am I living that I can't be honest with the one person who kind of cares? 

"Then, what is it?" He is full on pleading now, sitting close enough that I can feel his body heat. "Maybe I can help you -" 

"No one can help me!" 

I think of all the kids that could be trapped on that ship. I think of how dark and lonely the lower levels probably are. How the wood and steel creak at night, how the doctors hands are always cold, how it smells of chlorox and bleach. No one is helping those kids as they get strapped to tables and poked at. No one is helping me either. Even if it all stopped today, the ship's operation is done and over with, any day now some after effect from the drugs they've tried on me can kick in and kill me. Maybe it already is. Maybe I'm slowly rotting from the inside out. Maybe I'm already dead. 

"No one can help me." I curl into myself on the couch, unable to stop the sobs that shake my body. Charlie flinches away, his hands freezing in the air. Then he scoots closer, uncertain and gentle. 

"Tell me. Please." 

There is nothing I can do but let everything pour out of me. I don't think I could stop it even if I tried. I know that all the Non- Disclosure Agreements have been torn up in my mind. I tell him about every single wretched thing they have done to me on the ship. I tell him about the cries I hear whenever they keep me overnight - that some of them sound like children much younger than I. Worst of all, I tell him of the ringleader himself: the doctor who's coat is forever stained red on his sleeves and who has a stump for a pinky on his left hand because one of his victims was anguished enough to tear it off. 

Charlie has never touched me before. Everytime I try to hug him after his baseball game or high five him for a good exam grade, he says he doesn't want to take the risk of my 'annoyingness' being contagious. But now, he puts his arm around me and lets me soak his shirt with my tears. 

"You can't tell anyone," I croak, wiping my nose with the back of my sleeve. "There's nothing that can be done to help. This place is big. This organization is bigger than all of us and it will only make things worse." 

He doesn't reply for a long time. In fact, his eyes seem distant. "This can't be legal . . . If the cops knew . . ." 

"They'd make it go away!" I sit up, grabbing a hold of his arms so he'll look at me. "There's nothing you can do. Nothing." 

"That can't be true."

This won't click with Charlie and I should have known that. He doesn't listen to his coach when he tells him his stance is wrong until he proves to himself it isn't working. He didn't listen to the doctors when they said to quit smoking until a simple flight of stairs had him winded. With the sensation of my blood freezing over, I realize I've picked the wrong person to tell. 

I shouldn't have told anyone.

Charlie has only been gone for an hour when I decide I need to go after him. I need to make him understand the severity of the situation. He needs to promise me he won't tell. 

Of course it feels good to have someone know about such a huge and traumatic part of my life but the cost of that is too high.

There is not a single thing I haven't thought to do to save myself and if I have to spell it out for him, I will. Nothing will work. Last year, I tried confiding in my friend's mother. She would take our cheer squad to ice cream after practice and she liked to say she would adopt me if she could. One day when she was dropping me off at home, I asked her if she had seen the cargo shipped always sitting at the dock. I pointed out that it was strange that it never actually took the cargo anywhere. I was testing the waters, the idea of telling someone had been dancing around my head. She looked at me through the rear view mirror and said that I knew good and well why it never moved. Then she told me to get out of the car and her daughter stopped talking to me. 

Not to mention that I've seen a group of researchers have lunch with the town's sheriff at the local grill. I don't think they'd feel so comfortable to do that if they thought he'd ever incarcerate them. 

There is a ton at stake if their experiments succeed. Anyone would pay top dollar for the chance to fly. The ability could be used in war, in entertainment and attractions. It's all about money and power. Charlie, though meaning well, could ruin our lives if he tried anything rash. 

When I burst through the diner's entrance, the chimes announcing my arrival, Charlie isn't alone. There is a man sitting on the bar stool I usually sit on afterschool. Lizzie puts her arm around him while pouring his coffee. She's making a sarcastic comment about them having the most hardworking nephew on the planet. 

Charlie's uncle. 

I've never met him because he's never around. Charlie says he works late and when he's not working he's at home complaining about everything. Because of Charlie's clear resentment of him, I never felt curious about the man. He never seemed like a man worth knowing. Charlie was devastated when Lizzie married him. He skipped the wedding and everything. 

I'm still standing in the doorway because I'm thrown off by the extra company. I hover there long enough to catch his uncle lifting his hand to rub his wife's back. His hand is missing a finger. He's missing a pinky. 

His features set into place.

I'm staring at Doctor Nakpuna's back. 

Charlie's eyes are wider than the plates he has stacked in front of him. He swallows, his steel expression giving way to something more intense than I have ever seen on him. 

I'm trembling. The conveyor belt feeling is back, the checkered tiling beneath me moving towards Dr. Nakpuna. My body is swaying as if I'm right back on the ship and soon I feel concrete scraping against my elbows. I've fallen out of the diner and Charlie is jumping over the counter for me. 

"I didn't know! I swear to you, I didn't know!" He is pulling me to my feet as Dr. Nukpana slithers over to the source of the commotion. Charlie stupidly places himself between the doctor and I, his chest rising and falling in a kind of panic that is beyond suspicious. 

Dr. Nakpuna's lips curl, his stare driving deep into me like a scalpel. 

"Dovie Scarlet, funny to run into you here." 

"Please . . ." I don't know what I'm pleading for. Then Charlie opens his mouth and I'm certain it's for him. 

"I know what you do."

Nakpuna's mouth twitches. "You haven't the faintest idea." 

+++

Sunlight has seeped through my bedroom's shades. The rays drench my quilt in a warm yellow, waking me from my sleep. Dust floats in the air above me, illuminated by the light so they look like tiny snowflakes. I lay still trying to stop time. I don't want to disturb this tiny thread of peace I have. Maybe the repercussions of yesterday don't have to be felt if I don't move a muscle. The consequences will remain suspended in time, waiting for me to face them.

My mother bursts through the door and tosses an empty duffel bed at my chest.

"Pack your clothes."

"What?" She doesn't answer me but rather pulls out all the draws of my wardrobe like that was the part I was confused about. She leaves the room so quickly she almost has a cloud of dust trailing her. I fall out of bed, tripping over my sheets to follow.

"Why am I packing?"

She doesn't even face me as she gives me a death sentence. "You're going to participate in the experimental trials full time for a few weeks."

"Why?!" After the run in with Nakpuna, Charlie dragged me over to his trusty, dingy delivery moped with the faded stickers plastered onto them. He gave me a ride home and promised that he had no idea what his uncle did at work. He knew he was a doctor involved in experimental trials but that was all. The only response I could give him was a nod, the shock from everything taking over my senses. I hoped he understood I believed him.

My mother does a sharp turn in the hallway. I knock into her from the sudden stop and have to look up as her heels give her several inches over me.

"Dr.Nakpuna called us this morning and told us about the stunt you pulled yesterday!" She points a finger at my chest, her face contorted into a snarl. "You've been out of line lately but this? We signed NDAs, Dovie. This isn't a game!"

My lip quivers. I understand this isn't a game better than she ever will.

All of this got out only a few hours after it happened? I thought I would have more time before I had to do damage control. And all it took was one phone call from Nakpuna to convince my mother to hand me over? Just like that?

Somehow, her disdain for me continues to cut deep.

"So he suggested you ship me off? Get me out of the way?"

She turns, waving her hand dismissively. I search her body language for any sign that she may be at least a little worried for me. Her body is rigid. She's moved on to typing on her phone. "Pack your things."

Aren't you worried about what he'll do to me?

The question dies on my lips. It's useless.

At the late hours of the night, my parents trade me off like a truck full of drugs. The three of us form an inverted triangle, my parents at the front and me trudging behind. The wind slaps against my skin and pricks the back of my neck. The water smells extra salty. The stars above me are the same as yesterday but somehow everything has changed.

I am already on the ship. If I was going to run away, it should have been before we arrived at the docks. But it's like whatever spell I was under, the numbness that made me feel detached from everything, like I was watching a movie, has weared off. It is no use for me to flee but my legs are moving ahead of my better judgment. I run up the ramp and at first no one moves to stop me because I am right where they want me to be. But then I am climbing the boxes of cargo, climbing up as high as I can. I'm throwing my legs over the steel and reaching my arms to their ledges.

There is not a sliver of fear in me as I look down at everyone below me, everyone who sees me not as a person but as a means to an end - a commodity to be exchanged and a body to use.

I've heard the cries of the kids who live on this ship. I won't join them. There's no world where I could bear seeing their hopelessness and torment while simultaneously trying to bare my own.

Nakpuna has come out from the depths of the ship holding his lab coat closed around him to block out the wind. I'm guessing he heard everyone calling after me. My parents are staring at me with wide eyes. My mother's hand clutches my father's arm, the other hand over her heart.

"You want to see me fly?" The doctor's mouth is agape as he realizes what I am about to do. He holds out his hands in front of him as if he has a chance at successfully coaxing me down. The stump where his pinky should be disgusts me. I wish that kid would have torn more off. "Watch me!"

My feet leave the solidness of the crate and again, for a moment, I am suspended in the air. I am neither falling or flying but stationary. Then, I am plummeting faster than I can process, my vision a blur of colors.

The stars rearrange themselves in the night sky. They flicker, glowing brighter and dimmer as they assume different positions. They descend from the sky and get close enough that I can touch them. They are forming a halo around my head, shining like little beacons of hope, the faint glow of lighthouses trying to guide me to safety.

I can't hear anything and my limbs are cemented into the ground. My vision is fixed on the rich night sky, unaware of the life draining out of me. I don't even know if I am alive for certain. I just know that while I can't move, the stars can. They are dancing.

They have grown bigger and are overlapping each other. They are flaring and temporarily blinding me before growing dim again. Their dance has the simplicity and playfulness of a group of children with flashlights in the darkness of a basement. It's like they were daring me to join them, to chase them. Soon, the stars have taken my whole line of vision.

A shrill screech erupts. It's too high pitched to be human but like the whistle of a kettle from inside my head. With the throbbing of my inner ears, my hearing comes back. At first, it's all muffled. I am underwater or everything is far away. Then I can hear the crickets chirping, the sirens, the researchers scurrying around the deck in disarray.

Someone is beside me. Their footsteps have kicked up dirt and I cough. Suddenly, blood is spilling out of my mouth and I'm choking. I know the person beside me has turned me over on my side but I can't feel it. I can't feel anything.

"Stay with me, Dove. Don't you dare leave!"

And even though I am certain that the coppery taste in my mouth is the taste of death, I hope that I can stay for him. I hope that I can stay with Charlie. A tear falls off of his cheek and trickles onto my forehead. He's stroking my hair but I can't feel it.

The stars have stopped dancing and have gone back to their stationary positions in the sky. They seem overly formal now, twinkling without movement or personality. Seconds after the stars stop their play, I start to feel again. The pain echoes through my body in agonizing pulses. I want nothing more than to escape my misery.

I want to join the stars. 

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