Page 49 of The Brightness Between Us

Father smiles, just from thinking of him. “You and I both know that I’m the one who’s been the roadblock on this front, not him.”

I just stand there, flabbergasted. Father nods toward the table, where Owl and Dad are peering at us nervously. He whispers, “Okay if we continue on our way to dinner?”

“Yeah, sure.”

We walk side by side, Father holding my hand like he used to do when I was a child. Owl raises an eyebrow atme as we approach. I give a shrug.What, just bonding with Father. No big deal.

“So,” Dad says, giving me and Father a long look, “how are we all doing today?”

“Very good,” I say, tucking my chair close to my portion of algae. “And this looks delicious.”

Dad’s eyebrows rise. Father notices. “Yarrow would really like full access to Earth history,” he explains. “He’s sixteen now, so I said he could.”

Dad goes still. “You allowed him, just like that?”

Owl whistles.

Father shrugs. “I knew you would be fine with it. You’ve said as much before.”

“Maybe,” Dad says slowly. “But I think we should have discussed this first.”

“We’re discussing it now.”

“But you’ve already given him permission,” Dad says, his voice steadily flat. He’s got his combustiblethe kids need us to be a unified fronttone.

“So when doI—” Owl starts to say.

“You’ve already gotten permission to go exploring for long periods, and you’re only fifteen. Don’t push it,” I say sharply. I don’t need Owl bringing this back to herself like usual and wrecking my plans.

I take Dad’s hand in mine. “I really, really think thiswill calm my mind. I think I just wanted to know what was being kept from me. It started to occupy all my thoughts, because I didn’t know. I got paranoid.”

This is sort of true. I do hope this will calm my mind. I also want to have agency over my life, over the settlement, to not feel shut out anymore.

“Can he tellmewhat he finds out about Earth?” Owl asks.

Dad looks at Father.Well? Did you consider this?

Father sighs. “No. Not until you’re sixteen.”

“So wait, I’m going to be the only human in the universe, in all of existence, who doesn’t know how Earth worked? And the rest of you are just going to tiptoe around it, or send me away whenever you want to have a private conversation about all these Earth facts you’re keeping secret?”

Father sighs. He clearly had not thought this far.

“Don’t jump ahead of the game. I haven’t found anything out yet,” I say, slurping up my algae stew. Sooner I’m done, sooner I get to go sift through the partial internet image that was on theCoordinated Endeavor. “OS, are you catching all this?”

“I am,” OS replies through Rover.

“Start warming up your memory.”

“I have already prepared a forty-seven-minute summary of Earth history for you.”

“Ugh, I hate you!” Owl says. She’s almost smiling, though. She knows I’ll be telling her anything I find out.

And the dads know it, too. But we’ll live in this truce state, pretending there are rules, pretending that they aren’t being broken. My spoon scratches the bottom of my bowl. “So, can I go ‘explore’?” I ask.

Dad sighs. “What have we done?”

Father pats me on the shoulder. “Go, go. Have a good time.”

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