I shake my head. I can’t hate him. But neither can I… Well, I can’t hate him, anyway.

The one I can hate? Orion.

I wrap my arms around my knees and look up at the frozen faces of my parents. The worst part of being woken up early, without your parents, on a ship that’s as messed up as this one is, is that there’s nothing to fill your days but time and regret.

I don’t know who I am here. Without my parents, I’m not a daughter. Without Earth, I barely even feel human. I need something. Something to fill me up again. Something to define myself by.

Another drop splashes down.

It’s been ninety-eight days since I woke up. Over three months. And what should have been fifty years before we land has become nothing but a question mark. Will we even land?

That’s the question that brings me down here every day. The question that makes me open my parents’ cryo chambers and stare at their frozen bodies. Will we ever land? Because if this ship is truly lost in space with no chance of ever reaching the new planet… I can wake my parents up.

Only… I promised Elder I wouldn’t. I asked him, about a month ago, what was the point of keeping my parents frozen? If we’re never going to land, why not just wake them up now?

When his eyes met mine, I could see sympathy and sorrow in them. “The ship is going to land.”

It took me a while to realize what he meant. The ship will land. Just not us. So — I keep my promise to him, and to my parents. I won’t wake them up. Not when there’s still a chance their dream of arriving at the new world is possible.

For now I’m willing to let that chance be enough. But in another ninety-eight days? Maybe then I won’t care that the ship might still land. Maybe then I will be brave enough to push the reanimation button and let these cryo boxes melt all the way.