Work Text:
Eva Stratt spent launch day in a windowless room, hands clasped and head bowed in prayer to a God she stopped believing in when the sun began to die before her very eyes. She listened to the Hail Mary take off, listened to it through a broadcast on a pair of headphones that could never convey the weight of her choices. Could never communicate how much she had sacrificed to get here.
Eva Stratt spent the night after launch crying. Carl came to accompany her, whether as a friend or as a government representative, she would never know. She didn’t have friends, and all the world’s governments hated her guts. She had broken every law there was and then some. Had stood on the shoulders of geniuses and ignored their shouting and screaming as she did everything necessary for the survival of their species.
Eva Stratt spent the day after launch on trial.
It wasn’t the big, public trial she had been expecting. It wasn’t televised, there were no reporters or photographers outside the building as she was marched in. The halls were quiet, the door too loud as it shut with a certain finality, a promise to Stratt that she’d never see a day of freedom again.
She placed her hand on the Bible offered to her and tried to ignore the creeping horror up her spine as she thought about Grace’s pleading cries, her sacrificial lamb led to slaughter.
She met the eyes of the judge as he sat and blinked away the image of Grace’s eyes fluttering shut one last time, blond lashes hiding blue eyes full of tears, face stained in them like rain on a stained glass window.
She listened to the droning, the legal jargon she tried to pay attention to. It was important. These people were the only thing between her and a world record for highest number of life sentences served. Representatives from every nation in the UN were sat there, nodding, as she stood in the center of that room, summer hot and yet cold as the depths of winter. The judge was reading the contracts she signed years ago, the ones that gave her complete and total control of the world in the name of their sole hope, their Hail Mary that was currently sailing amidst the stars.
“Ms. Stratt? Do you understand what I just said?”
“Hm?” Stratt looked at the judge, who was staring back at her.
“I asked if you understand that I just read your contacts to you,” he repeated. “The ones that say you’ll assume complete responsibility for any crimes committed during the research period for Project Hail Mary.”
“I do.”
“And you signed those contracts of sound mind and of your own volition?”
“I did.”
The judge shuffled some papers around. “All told, you’ve tallied quite the impressive rap sheet. Authorizing the paving the Sahara, approving nukes to be dropped on Antarctica, pushing the boundaries of morality in the name of salvation. Ms. Stratt, with a rap sheet like this, you’re looking at a prison sentence of thirty thousand years, at a minimum.”
The number swam in Stratt’s head, making her dizzy. She had signed the papers knowing full well she’d never see the sun again, never taste freedom, but hearing the number was still a lot. Not that she had much to lose. Unmarried, childless, with no house to call home and no one to miss her when they sent her away.
“However.”
Stratt froze. There was a ‘however.’ A glimmer of hope. A ray through the clouds. She knew it would have strings, but she didn’t care. She needed the false hope, like a rainbow overlooking a barbed wire fence.
“We have all come to a more or less unanimous agreement,” the judge continued, as if he hadn’t just offered Stratt an opportunity she didn’t think she’d ever get. “According to these estimations, it’ll take twenty six years to see results from the Hail Mary, correct?”
“Give or take, yes.”
The judge picked up a new piece of paper, adjusting his glasses and peering at her, like a bug under a microscope. “We are willing to offer you complete immunity for the duration of the Hail Mary’s trip. You will be giving up all previous power given for the purposes of this mission and will be asked to go into witness protection to protect your identity. Eva Stratt will no longer exist, but you will have your freedom.”
Stratt’s eyes widened, and she couldn’t help her knees going weak. She tried to sit as gracefully as possible, but her grace was gone, flying amidst the stars as she all but crumpled into the chair behind her. “I-“ She couldn’t speak, choking on her emotions. “I don’t-“
“There is a caveat,” the judge said, cutting her off before she could embarrass herself further. “Should the Hail Mary fail in its mission, this contract is null and void and you will serve your full and complete prison sentence. If it succeeds, you’ll be fully pardoned and lauded as the hero you are. Any questions?”
Stratt shook her head, then nodded. “May I request a specific place to go?”
“You may. We can’t guarantee we’ll give it to you, but you may make a request.”
“San Francisco.” The words tumbled out, a mental image of a tilted bike and the wooden door of a classroom in her head as she spoke. “I want to go to San Francisco. There’s a school. I could be a teacher.”
The judge’s face softened. She remembered he had met Grace once, had seen the way he followed and respected her, how she had protected him from all the evils of the project until the end. “I think it would suit you,” he decided. “You are dismissed. The young man behind you will escort you out. We’ll release a story about how you went to prison and are serving justice for what you’ve done. The world will remember Eva Stratt as she rots in an imaginary prison cell, but it’s for the best.”
Eva Stratt turned on her heel and tried not to cry as she walked down those same empty halls, her flat shoes nearly silent on the tile.
“What now?” She asked the overly young military man beside her. “Where are we going?”
“Back to the ship,” he said, turning down an unfamiliar hall. “You’ll stay there for a few days while the people here get your new identity, then you’ll be placed wherever they put you. You might spend a few weeks in government custody while they work with you on who you’ll be. You’re allowed a few possessions, I think you’ll be given a few boxes, but aside from that everything you need will be provided.”
Stratt nodded, exiting the building and climbing into the same nondescript black car that brought her here, but now, she felt a weight off her chest, like she could breathe just a little easier.
As promised, she was taken back to the ship to pack. She wasn’t sentimental, and she hated carrying dead weight, so she had very little she actually wanted to take.
At least from her own room.
Her room was just down the hall from Grace’s, and she pushed the door open slowly. It was a time capsule, despite only a week passing since Grace had been in it. She had packed his bag for the trip, so there weren’t many clothes left, but what remained was strewn exactly where he had left it. The walls were bare, the paintings rocketing away from Earth and the pictures already tucked into a folder with his full government name stamped across the front. Stratt stood there in that room, the unmistakable smell and warmth and feel of Ryland Grace, and finally felt the weight of all she had done.
She sat on the edge of the bed, the colorful quilt that once adorned it having been neatly folded and vacuum sealed so Grace could have it once he woke up. She missed the color already.
She missed him.
Stratt took a breath, shaking and wet, and leaned forward, in on herself, curling up there on Grace’s bed, and for the first time since signing her life away, she screamed.
It was desperately cathartic and yet somehow made her feel worse all at once. Her lungs felt hollow, her sternum threatening to cave in on itself if she breathed too heavy, rose bushes growing around her ribs, the thorns digging in with every sob. Tears spilled down her cheeks, quick and numerous, as if racing each other to see who could reach the wrinkled sheet below her face the fastest. Her breath caught in her throat and she let out another hoarse scream, like a wounded animal finally giving up, finally accepting death. A beautiful corpse on the side of the road, pity and prayers falling on dead, deaf ears.
She lay like that until the tears dried and the world stopped ringing. The sun crept across the room, illuminating little bits and pieces of Grace’s life slowly, and then she blinked and they were dark again, the sun having moved on. She sat up slowly, wiping her eyes and nose and adjusting her sweater. She stood, then turned in a full circle, assessing the room.
The last few corny shirts, overly worn and faded? Folded neatly and set on the bed.
The stack of pictures Grace had taken with a camera he certainly wasn’t allowed to have? Paper clipped into stacks and placed on top of the shirts.
The beat up old Walkman and shoebox of cassettes? The cassettes could be organized later, but the box went next to the shirts, the Walkman placed inside.
The annotated books haphazardly stacked on the nightstand? She picked three and set them on top of the cassette box.
Grace’s rain jacket and favorite beanie? Folded as best they could be and placed on the other side of the shirts.
Stratt did another lap, making sure she didn’t miss anything she truly wanted. Most of what remained was research related or junk, and she didn’t need either of those things in her life anymore. She made sure to carefully pack it all into a box, snapping the lid shut with a certain finality and labeling it in her neat print.
Eva Stratt. Fragile.
She got one last night aboard the ship. Most people had moved out, but a few remained. They came to see her, thanking her for her bravery and sacrifice. News spread fast, and everyone she spoke with ran with the story they had been fed. She was getting one last goodbye before being locked away behind bars for the rest of her life. Although Dimitri looked skeptical when he spoke to her, like he could see right through the lies she was telling him.
“Just be careful, wherever you end up,” he said, digging through his pocket for something and handing her a little sheet of paper, folded in on itself a few times. “For his sake.”
Stratt opened the paper, staring at the notebook sheet and picture folded inside it. A picture of Grace at one of the happy hours the crew did to help morale. He was laughing, glasses slipping down his face in that way only he could make look endearing. She remembered that day, when he stumbled into her bedroom by accident, drunk as anything, and she had to walk him back to his own room. His hair had been getting too long, and she had selfishly run her hands through it a few times as he fell asleep. She was rarely selfish, especially regarding the Hail Mary mission, but Ryland Grace brought out the worst of her, she supposed.
That night, in that same bed she had slept in for years, surrounded by packed boxes and an uncertain future, Stratt dreamed.
“I’m afraid! I don’t want to die!”
“You can’t do that! I won’t do it! This is insane!”
“You’re murdering me! I don’t want to die! Don’t send me off to die! Please!”
Stratt gasped awake, thrashing under her blankets and screaming as the guard outside her room rushed in and tried to grab her wrists to calm her. Her hands made contact with his face, his chest, and it took far too long for her to collect herself, to realize it was all a dream, that those echoing words were in the past, where they seemingly refused to stay.
She couldn’t sleep after that. The guard, that same young man from earlier whose name patch read ‘Henry,’ sat with her while she sat in the cafeteria, a steaming cup of tasteless coffee in her hands and an Atlas-heavy burden across her shoulders, guilt pressing down on her like the weight of the sky itself.
Henry didn’t talk much. But he stayed, drank his own coffee, got her a plastic cup of dry cereal and apologized for the lack of milk. She ate it anyway. It was just as tasteless as the coffee.
The next month passed in a complete blur. Her packed boxes were taken, stored away somewhere while several government people in crisp outfits worked on getting her a new identity. She stayed on their property, in a tan walled room with a single window, and tried not to get depressed about it. Grace haunted her dreams, so much so that some nights she refused to sleep altogether just to avoid him. Healthy? No. But when had Eva Stratt ever been accused of doing the healthy thing?
Eva Stratt was the first piece of her identity to die.
“These are your new documents,” a woman in a navy pantsuit said, sliding a folder across a glass table at her. “Your new name is Sandra Elizabeth Harley. You’ll find all the details about your past in there, as well as a legitimate birth certificate, social security card, passport, and government ID. Story is that you were born and lived on the east coast for a while before going to college in Belgium and staying because you got a good job offer. But your parents both passed recently and you decided to come back to the states, picking California for a fresh start. Got it?”
Stratt… no, Sandra nodded slowly.
The woman smiled, although it didn’t reach her eyes. “Anything else you’ll need will be provided before you move. I actually think they found you an apartment already. Any questions for me so far?”
“No.”
“Good. It would’ve taken too long to get you through accent training, so that’s why we picked Belgium. We’re keeping your degree in history and gave you a certificate in child education, although since graduating it says you’ve been working a low level government position, just something to cover the bills. Once you’re in the apartment, an application will be sent to Grover Cleveland Middle. Their other history teacher just retired, and you come highly recommended.”
“I do?”
“Of course you do.”
The rest of the day was paperwork and memorization. Stratt, no, she had to stop calling herself that. Maybe Eva was a safe bet internally. She could still be Eva in her mind. Eva was good at memorization, and before she knew it, her history had been overwritten, drilled into her so she could never forget it.
The next week was her appearance. Stratt had been a public figure, she had been on the news all around the world and had made no attempt to hide herself. Why would she? She was humanity’s scapegoat, and every scapegoat needed a face, an image to put your hatred towards, an appearance to carry the blame.
So her appearance had to be altered.
Thankfully, it was nothing intensive. The two stylists who worked with her were quiet and respectful, offering her options and always listening on the rare occasion she spoke. She made a point to remember their names. Dino did her hair and makeup and Carly was in charge of her wardrobe and anything else Dino wouldn’t do. She ended up with colored contacts, changing her eyes from their usual steeled blue to a warm, rich brown. Carly smiled as she helped Eva learn how to put contacts in.
“Glasses too,” she said, handing Eva a pair of gold rimmed glasses, not unlike Grace’s old ones.
“Why?”
“It’s the Superman effect,” Carly said, opening a box full of various pairs of glasses in a variety of styles. “I dunno the science behind it, but it works.”
“Like how Dolly Parton once lost a look alike contest to a drag queen!” Dino called from across the room.
Carly giggled. “Yeah, like that. Just find a pair you like. You can pick any of them.”
Eva ended up with a lovely pair of black glasses that Carly said complimented her face well. She tried on half a dozen pairs before picking, steering far away from anything else that glinted gold.
“According to your paperwork, your eyes aren’t super bad,” Carly said as she pulled through a small rack of clothes. “So it won’t be suspicious if you’re caught without your glasses. Just try to make a point to wear them when reading and driving.”
Next was her hair. She had already been warned she’d be changing it drastically, but she didn’t expect Dino to start by immediately cutting most of it off with no preamble or warning. Granted, she didn’t say anything, so he didn’t either.
She didn’t hate where she ended up. Short, tidy, significantly easier to care for than her long hair.
And brown.
Dino walked her through the process of dyeing her hair by herself, making sure he explained each step thoroughly, and by the time he was done, her hair was brown. It was a nice brown, but brown nonetheless.
She tried not to be sad about it. It was necessary.
Grace was necessary too. She didn’t have time to be sad about necessary sacrifices.
“Once you start going grey, you don’t have to be so insistent on dyeing it, and you can even start growing it again if you want,” Dino explained as he did her eyebrows. “We just wanna be sure the original look is gone, y’know?”
“A necessary sacrifice.”
“A necessary sacrifice,” Dino repeated softly.
Her month in government custody ended abruptly, and before she knew it, she was standing in an apartment she had never seen before, yet it reeked of familiarity.
“The last tenant was that guy they shot into space,” the landlord explained as he showed her the apartment that some government man had picked for her, and he sounded almost bored, utterly apathetic. “Furnishings are included. Rent is due on the first of the month, and you already paid for three months. Lease is twelve months. My number is on the fridge if you need anything.”
Eva, surrounded by boxes and ghosts, stood in the bones of Grace’s old apartment, and somehow had to find a home amidst the rubble of his life.
Unpacking took two days. Everything had clearly been cleaned since Grace moved out, but all his furniture was still there, like the foundation of a building blown to ash. All personal touches had been removed, and Eva slowly added them back in, sitting on the couch late at night and wondering if this was where Grace sat when he learned about the astrophage. If that TV was tuned to any specific channel or if he watched on his phone. Did he grade papers at that scuffed kitchen table? Why did one of the chairs wobble?
All questions she’d never have the answers to now.
However, she did bring Ryland Grace home in a way. His rain coat on the jacket hook, his shirts in the closet. His books began her collection on the single living room bookshelf and his cassette box was dutifully organized by artist and set on the TV stand. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a sure start.
And yet his ghost lingered despite how little of him was left. He haunted her periphery, always stubbornly just out of sight. She heard him late at night, as she was falling asleep. Sometimes it was his crying, his begging and pleading. Sometimes it was his final words to her, spat with malice she didn’t know he could conjure. Sometimes, worst of all, it was his laugh, his jokes, his sunshine joy that lit up every room he existed in.
How utterly ironic that she had sent away the Hail Mary’s sunshine. Like she was directly responsible for every moment of dimming as that infectious smile and warmth traveled further and further away.
The last thing she unpacked she didn’t unpack at all. It was one last box, solid black and had been given to her with a grave warning. Don’t open it. Inside was everything that remained of Eva Stratt. If she needed help, felt like her identity was compromised or she was in danger, she could get in touch with someone using the phone in the box, and there was a laptop if she ever had cause to use it. She’d be notified if Eva Stratt was ever needed via mail, but until then, the box was to remain untouched and hidden.
She put it in her closet, under a pair of rain boots and behind a box of fuzzy socks.
Time stretched like taffy after that, too slow and too fast all at once, and in no time she was sitting in a cold principal’s office, smiling faintly and attending an interview she barely remembered agreeing to.
“You seem to be a perfect candidate,” the principal, Dr. Stanford, said, flipping through her resume. “We don’t usually hire without prior teaching experience, but since the news got out about,” he gestured almost uselessly at the sun, “a lot of teachers have been retiring early and it’s been very hard to find anyone passionate enough to teach middle school in these unprecedented times.”
“I understand,” Eva said. “Honestly, I can’t see why anyone would want to quit teaching because of the astrophage problem. If anything, I’d want to stay. Help bolster the next generation. After all, they’ll be the ones dealing with the worst of it.”
Dr. Stanford smiled. “You’re a good one, Ms. Harley. Usually, we’d place you as a teacher’s aid for the first school year, get you accustomed to the routine, et cetera, but we don’t have the time nor resources. We will be closed for renovations until the end of September, so you have three weeks to prepare your classroom. Science and history classes are down in the same wing, super easy to find. The previous teacher left plenty of material for you, and parsing her old lesson plans shouldn’t be hard. You’re down where a lot of the construction is, actually. Down by Mr. Grace’s old classroom.”
Right. Grace’s room. It had been declared historically significant and was to be preserved exactly as it had been. She remembered seeing it once.
Now she guessed she’d be seeing it daily.
“We’re also rebranding,” Dr. Stanford said. “Grover Cleveland is now becoming Ryland Grace Middle School. Gotta honor those who make sacrifices, and all that.”
Eva nodded slowly, a sick churning in her stomach at the word sacrifice.
She talked with Dr. Stanford for a while more, took a tour and saw her room, and began to gather what she needed. Three weeks was certainly not enough time to do everything she wanted to do and get as settled as possible, so she had to come up with a plan. Something structured and stable and reliable.
The first thing she did was get a pet.
The animal shelter was hot, overly so, and she spent several hours in it despite the sweat. The volunteer was sweet, empathizing when she sold her false story of moving halfway around the world and living in a whole new place with no one to call family. In a way, it wasn’t a story, but it felt odd to say it regardless.
“If you’re going to be teaching, I would recommend a cat,” the volunteer said, gesturing to a wall of crates. “They’re less maintenance and can be left to their own devices for longer periods of time if raised properly.”
Eva smiled that smile that didn’t reach her eyes, looking at a lazily lounging tabby. “I always wanted a cat,” she said, the lie thick in her throat. She never liked the idea of a pet, but she needed something to fill the overwhelming silence of her apartment.
In the end, she found the perfect cat. A kitten, barely months old, scrawny and pathetic and mewling as she scooped him up, orange fur sticking up in clumps and cowlicks. He crawled into her jacket hood and began to make biscuits in her shoulders, and she left with him like that, purring in her ear and lounging in her warmth.
She named him Ryland.
Her new Ryland, as it turned out, was just as annoying as her old one. He was clingy, refusing to leave her side for anything. She tried a cat bed that lasted for all of thirty seconds before Ryland was curling up on her pillow, using his wide eyes and sad demeanor to charm his way right into her heart.
Again.
The first time she tried to leave Ryland alone for an afternoon, she followed every letter of advice from the Internet. She made sure he was comfortable, had water and a little mouse toy and there was nothing dangerous on the kitchen counters. She even set up a baby monitor, downloading the shitty app and making sure it worked as well as it could. She was only going down the street for groceries, an errand that would take forty minutes at most. She set Ryland down on his bed, toed her shoes on, and let the door fall shut quietly.
She made it two steps down the hall before he started to cry.
One more step. The crying got louder.
Another. This time she winced as something crashed into her front door.
A fifth. She could’ve sworn she heard her name, cried out in desperation and pleading with her to turn around, to not let him go.
She didn’t make it a sixth step.
Eva turned and practically ran for her door, throwing it open and scooping Ryland up, hugging him close and falling to her knees with a sob.
“I’m sorry!” She cried, listening to Ryland’s mewls slow and stop as she held him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t go, I won’t let you go.”
She shopped with him in her hoodie pocket, his little head poking out and his purrs rumbling against her stomach when the teenaged cashier scratched behind his ears. She bought him a bag of cat treats and a can of wet food almost on impulse. She shook her head as she realized she was rewarding Ryland for being clingy, but one look down at his sweet half asleep face and she just sighed and paid for the treats without complaining.
Ryland’s first month in her apartment was chaotic. She accustomed him to his crate, draping blankets over it and making sure he knew it was safe. She jokingly called it ‘Stratt’s Vat,’ putting a little plastic aircraft carrier toy she found at a thrift store on top of it just to make herself smile a little. Slowly, she started leaving the apartment more and more, always finding Ryland curled up in his crate or on her bed when she got back.
However, the longer he lived with her, the more she saw her old Ryland in that little kitten. He was silly and meowed loudly for her attention and chittered when she was sad. He watched her eat dinner and sat next to her while she watched Jeopardy, head cocked and ears perked up. Ryland followed everywhere she went, forever her silly shadow, never more than a half step behind her.
Her first day of school was not as bad as she assumed it would be.
She showed up early, writing her name on the board and looking at it, her brand new looping script spelling out that name she barely knew and yet knew she had to claim.
Ms. Sandra Harley
Her students shuffled in slowly, sitting at their desks and looking up at her as she carefully wrote out her lesson plan for the month until the bell rung. She turned to look, smiling gently. “Good morning students.”
“Good morning Ms. Harley,” about half the students chorused back to her.
Despite the fact that she wasn’t a teacher by any means, the class went by smoothly. The kids behaved for her, which was a godsend, although she used a lot of tricks she remembered Grace telling her about during late nights as he explained how he wrangled conference rooms full of diplomats. She was kind, gentle with the kids, treating and teaching them like adults, although she left her cold military professionalism at the door.
Five minutes before the bell rang, she sat at her desk and let the kids mingle, looking at her lesson plans for the next period while the kids talked. She heard whisperings of astrophage and the sun and what would happen in the next ten years. It made her feel sick, and she slowly typed out ‘current astrophage news’ into her computer’s search bar.
She wished she hadn’t.
She saw her own face plastered everywhere, articles about her jail time and whatever minuscule updates anyone could scrape together about the Hail Mary itself. She saw headlines calling Ryland Grace a selfless hero, the world’s bravest, and everything in between.
Eva tried not to think of his cowardice. Tried to forget his cries and screams and pleas to the very end.
Tried to forget how he condemned her to a lifetime of nightmares with three simple words.
“You’re murdering me!”
Her nightmares lasted months. Far too long to be normal but what was she supposed to do? Go to a therapist and tell them what she had done? At best, she’d end up institutionalized for delusions. At worst, some government official in a black suit would come and take her away to prison.
Where she belonged.
She couldn’t help the thoughts. The guilt that weighed on her very soul late at night and when she had those moments of silence between classes. Her mask dropped, cracked, shattered at her feet as she breathed deep and tried not to think of Grace’s last moments, scared and in pain and alone, not by choice but by her own cruel design. He would always be alone now, a part of his soul fragmented from and lost forever, torn away by her cruel orders and cold, gloved hands. He would likely never remember his whole life again, always plagued by holes and tears and blank spots that would span years. He wouldn’t remember his high school graduation, his twenty-first birthday. His prom would be fuzzy at best and anything before age twelve would be gone entirely. There was no way around the gaps, no matter how hard anyone tried.
It kept her up at night, as did everything else.
In the night darkened bedroom of her tiny apartment, watching the same shadows Grace watched, listening to the same honking cars and sighing to the same creaks and groans, she whispered to herself, always slow and measured, calculated in a way only Eva Stratt could be.
“My name is Eva Stratt. I am fifty one years old. I was born in Ghent, and moved to Brussels when I was ten years old. I studied history at the University of Antwerp and moved to the United States when I was twenty seven. I moved back to Belgium when I was thirty five. I used to work for the UN. I was appointed head of the Petrova Task Force. I did what had to be done.”
This lasted through the fall, then the winter, until finally it was Christmas and Eva hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since August. She tried everything, every sleep aid there was on the market. Nothing worked. Some even made it worse, knocking her out cold but exacerbating her nightmares ten fold, leaving her unable to wake up or paralyzed in her bed, crying as Grace stood over her, his desperate pleads ringing in her ears over and over and over again until she was screaming, crying, choking on her sobs and her need for rest. Even her students noticed, a few of them asking her if she was okay when they passed her desk in the morning.
Christmas Eve, she finally snapped. Ryland was getting bigger, although he still insisted on sleeping in her bed, and he watched through lazily opened eyes as she threw her blankets back and marched to her closet, practically throwing the door open and digging through that box, the black one she was warned not to touch unless it was an emergency. The contents were still the same. A flip phone, a laptop, four folders of paperwork, and a stack of Polaroid photos held together with a paper clip. Photos from the project, pictures that proved Eva Stratt existed. She tossed them aside in favor of the phone, flipping it open and dialing the number scrawled across the top of the first manilla folder.
Someone picked up on the second ring.
“Ms. Stratt?”
“I need help.” The words felt like tar pouring from her throat, harsh and heavy and nearly impossible. She had agreed years ago, signed the papers that said she wouldn’t need help, that she was giving up all need for aid in favor of being cold, unmoving even in the face of certain death. But those contracts were null and void and after years of torture, Eva Stratt was finally able to ask for help.
Two days later, she was sitting in a blank office, a therapist sworn to secrecy across from her, a blank faced government official just outside the door. It was after school, Eva still in her skirt and sweater, this time a deep navy knit with two little deer. It reminded her of Grace’s fox cardigan.
“So I hear you’re having trouble sleeping.”
“I am.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Since the Hail Mary launch.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It is.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do I get a choice?”
“You always have a choice, Eva.”
She sat in that office for three hours. The first was spent sobbing, like a dam finally bursting open as months, years of piling the weight of the world on her shoulders finally crumbled away in that blank office.
The second hour was spent talking. She talked herself hoarse, about her nightmares and Grace’s screams ringing in her ears. Finally, she told another living soul that she had murdered him. Had sent him to the gallows with no more than a single call, had tied the noose and made someone else pull the lever.
The third was silent. The therapist, Jenny, sat there and watched Eva work. Just kept her company as she graded papers and updated her lesson plans. It was nice to have company again, after so long in an empty apartment with only a cat to stave off the ghosts. Jenny liked that she had a pet. Said it gave her a reason to come home every day.
“Plenty of people in situations like yours get pets,” she had said, half an hour in after Eva had calmed her tears. “One of my clients said it helped because a pet would never truly understand why you never came home. You can’t explain suicide to a cat, so they made sure they always walked through the door at the end of the day.”
After three hours, Jenny stood, handing Eva a prescription for antidepressants, a new appointment for two weeks from her first one, and a challenge.
Make a friend.
It seemed impossible, but Eva refused to see Jenny’s disappointment written on her face, so she pushed through. Sat in the teacher’s lounge for lunch that week and spoke to the other history teacher about lessons and units and students. The teacher, Laura, was nice. Younger than Eva by nearly thirty years and always optimistic, no matter what. They ate lunch together three days out of the week, the other two Eva spent in her classroom, Grace’s Walkman playing some old tape he obviously liked. The kids came and went, a few of the quieter ones sticking around and thanking her as they hurried off to their next class.
January passed in a blur, then February. Eva was doing better. Not great, but she slept more and socialized a bit here and there. Ryland was still her only true friend, but Laura was up there, as were the science teachers and one of the English teachers. She went to cafes and libraries, branched out in her hobbies.
Slowly, Eva Stratt began to live her life again.
March came with the final piece of paperwork she’d ever sign with her birth name. Something a judge wanted her to approve personally.
A statue.
She had promised him a statue.
It was installed over spring break, a statue of Grace in a space suit, one hand reaching to the stars, his helmet at his feet and his glasses on crooked.
The glasses had been her idea.
With the weather warming, kids ate lunch outside more often than not, and Eva joined them. The first day, she avoided the statue like the plague, unable to look at his face without vomiting. But the kids liked it, and she liked them, so one afternoon she joined them, sat on the base and ate her sandwich, helping one of her students memorize years on a timeline and who started which war and for what reason. With the change in classes, she had a free period after lunch, sitting there alone while kids ran to class.
Alone with him.
“I can see why you loved these kids,” Eva murmured, looking out at the courtyard. “They’re so bright. Like stars. They tell me I’m a good teacher, and it makes me feel warm.”
Predictably, the statue didn’t respond.
Eva kept talking anyway.
She talked about everything. Her cat, her newest crochet project, the book she had just started reading. The kids, their grades and lives and parents. Her therapist, any modicum of information she had on the Hail Mary, the newly renamed Ryland Grace Center for Microbiology at the University he used to attend. She sat with him every day, talking as if he would respond, being the friend she hadn’t been able to be before.
Life burned by slowly. One year turned to two. Two to five. Five to ten. Eva saw students come and go in equal measure, and she was a good teacher to all of them. She lived her life the way Grace would’ve wanted. Happily. She saw her therapist once a month, went out for dinner with coworkers every other weekend. Participated in school events, charity drives, parent nights. And every day, no matter the weather, she sat at that statue after work and talked to Grace. Told him about work, complained, bragged, cried and laughed and cried some more. She wondered what he would think of her now. Wondered if maybe the woman she was today would’ve gotten along with the man from all those years ago. If they’d crack jokes over break room tables and toss notes back and forth across the hall. Maybe in another lifetime that was who they were. But in this one, all she could be was better, better than the woman who signed Ryland Grace’s death warrant with a cold, uncaring signature. Better than the woman who stood to the side and pulled the lever, watching the trolley shift and dooming Ryland Grace to be humanity’s sacrificial lamb, and her his merciless shepherd.
Twenty six years passed. Twenty six years of teaching, of waiting, of slowly fading ghosts and life lived in a dying sun. Twenty six years until a letter arrived for her, addressed to a name she hadn’t seen written out in ages.
Eva Stratt.
The Beetles are back.
He did it.
And for the first time in twenty six years, Eva Stratt sat at that kitchen table and reached for a cell phone only to be used in emergencies, dialed a familiar number, and got someone on the second ring.
“Ms. Stratt?”
“We have work to do.”