io9 is proud to current fiction from . As soon as a month, we function a narrative from LIGHTSPEED’s present challenge. This month’s choice is “Spaceship Joyride” by Dominique Dickey. You’ll be able to learn the story under or on LIGHTSPEED’s web site. Get pleasure from!
Spoilers of the Week | June third
Spaceship Joyride
Probably the most lovely boy you’ve ever seen in your life is hot-wiring a spaceship.
It’s an objectively unsexy spaceship, insofar as a spaceship might be unsexy—a six-seater constructed like a 2008 Honda Odyssey, a automobile mannequin you’re solely conscious of as a result of it continues to seem in memes.
The boy is decidedly not unsexy, although. His identify is Eddie, he’s your xenobiology lab companion, and he’s at present bent over the spaceship’s popped hood. And he’s in his pajamas. His fleecy pants have rubber geese printed on them, which he appears solely unashamed of, which solely makes him extra compelling.
“You’ve finished this earlier than?” you ask him, simply to have one thing to ask him. From the way in which his palms transfer . . . after all he’s finished this earlier than.
“On a regular basis,” Eddie says. The spaceship makes a stuttering kind of whirring sound because it powers up. Eddie slams the hood down. “Bingo. Let’s go.”
He swings into the motive force’s seat. You climb into the passenger facet. You strive to not watch his slender palms as he buckles his five-point harness, pondering, Eyes by yourself work, child. You’ve finished this half one million occasions and you continue to fumble the buckle over your chest. The straps click on into place and cinch down tight.
Eddie glances over at you. His smile is lopsided, like half of his mouth is sluggish on the draw. You’re feeling one thing shift in your intestine. “You prepared?” he asks. You nod, undecided why you don’t belief your voice. He places the spaceship in gear. He has one hand on the wheel, the opposite on the again of your seat, so near touching you. If he have been touching you, you assume you’d lean into his hand. He’s touched you earlier than, simple: a handshake that leads right into a momentary hug, a slap on the again, ruffling your hair. Like he touches all his pals. Like there’s nothing to it. Prefer it doesn’t make his intestine do . . . issues. Not the way in which yours does.
He’s nothing such as you. He’s regular, and also you aren’t. What’s not regular about you? It’s simply that he’s a boy, and you’re a boy, and boys aren’t imagined to really feel like this. It’s that taking a look at him makes you need to set your self on hearth—after which at the least your outsides would match how you are feeling on the within, like each floor of your physique is rippling and set alight.
And goddamn, the way in which he rolls his decrease lip between his tooth as he appears to be like again over his shoulder makes you are feeling one thing you don’t have the phrases to call. You pressure your self to look out the windshield, on the receding parking bay of Sacred Coronary heart Secondary Faculty. Behind you, open house grows nearer. You’ve half a thoughts to want it might simply swallow you and prevent from the methods you’re sure to embarrass your self tonight.
The vacuum of house is chilly, chilly sufficient to place out this ungodly hearth.
The spaceship picks up pace, then suggestions backwards out of the parking bay and into the void. You float, straining up towards the straps holding you in place. Your hair most likely appears to be like silly in zero gravity, a cloud of waves round your face, however Eddie’s is ideal. He clicks a button on the sprint. The door to the parking bay rolls shut. The ship flips over, although it doesn’t matter anymore which method is up, and you then’re zooming away from Sacred Coronary heart.
“The place are we going?” you ask. You’ve realized you don’t know, and that’s silly and greater than a little bit bit reckless. Who’re you to get in a stolen automobile with a heartbreakingly lovely boy with no vacation spot?
“I do know a spot,” he says. “About an hour out, tops.” He varieties a set of coordinates into the dashboard show. They’re unfamiliar to you, however not far-off.
“What sort of place?”
“You’ll see.” When he grins, it lists to 1 facet.
The radio is busted, or possibly it’s the audio system which might be blown out. All that comes out is a tuneless rattle that morphs into abrasive static, and Eddie rapidly turns it off.
Both method, the sound system is shot, you’ve an hour of driving forward of you, and nothing to do however speak to Eddie. He’s simple to speak to—you like speaking to him—however being alone with him within the little bubble of the spaceship isn’t making you any extra eloquent. The low gentle from the dashboard turns his pores and skin clean and bluish, however you already know it solely washes you out, and any trace of a flush shall be much more seen in your face. You hope he doesn’t have a look at you. You actually want he have been taking a look at you. His eyes slide backwards and forwards from the windshield to the dashboard displays, his palms at an ideal ten and two.
It’s an hour of driving and you must speak about one thing. So, you speak concerning the newest xenobiology lab, as a result of that is how you’re helpful to him. You need to be helpful to him. You need him to love you, and usefulness is the way you’ve at all times conned individuals into liking you. And Eddie’s good individuals, or at the least decided to humor you, so he asks you questions on xenophyophores and makes little noises as you ramble to sign that he’s actually listening.
“This could’t probably be that attention-grabbing,” you say after some time. You examine the dashboard show—you’re about fifteen minutes out out of your vacation spot, now. Rattling. Both time’s sped up or Eddie’s actually hauling ass on this clunky spaceship, most likely as a result of he’s realized that he’s trapped in it with you and your countless science bullshit. “I’m boring you,” you say. “I should be boring you. Your flip. You speak about one thing.”
“Hand to god, you’re not boring me.” His voice comes out with the identical earnest depth as his litany of effectively worded follow-up questions. “I feel it’s actually cool that you already know all these items.”
Proper. As a result of it’s helpful.
“It’s helpful, at the least,” you say.
He makes a sound, glances down on the sprint. “It’s not simply that it’s helpful, it’s that you simply actually care.”
“Nicely, it was xenobiology or soccer, and also you don’t need to see me try a free-throw.”
He reaches over and shoves your shoulder, laughing, and your intestine does that factor once more. Is that this what individuals imply after they speak about butterflies within the stomach? You hate how a lot you’re keen on the sensation.
Final semester, once you first got here to Sacred Coronary heart, you didn’t care about making pals. You have been the brand new child, beginning your senior 12 months in a wierd place as a result of a sequence of follies that you simply’d left half a galaxy away. Whether or not or not the scholars right here favored you was inappropriate. Your goal was to hit your commencement necessities, move all of your courses, and hopefully get into an honest college alongside the way in which.
Then Mrs. Marian, the xenobiology trainer, paired you with Eddie for lab. Not being favored grew to become a terrifying prospect. You needed this boy to love you.
You bought fortunate. It was simple to make Eddie smile. When he laughed it got here out suddenly, just like the sound waves have been pushing previous a bottleneck in his throat. He invited you to eat lunch with him and his pals within the backyard. You stated sure. He invited you to review with him and his pals within the commons. You stated sure.
Midway by final semester, the invites stopped coming. After the preliminary stab of panic in your chest, you realized why: as a result of your presence was a given. He didn’t want to ask you, as a result of he knew you’ll be there. Since you have been his pal. You’d made it.
A couple of weeks in the past, the invites began up once more. At all times texts, by no means questions, as if he knew you wouldn’t say no.
Meet me by the pine for lunch. I’ll convey sandwiches.
However why? Why would he exit of his technique to invite you someplace you have been already sure to be? Extra importantly, why does he know your needlessly difficult sandwich order: a turkey and swiss with just one slice of bread toasted, additional mustard, and the barest smidge of mayo on the not-toasted slice?
Meet me on the statue within the commons. Let’s do the lab report collectively.
You confirmed up all over the place he instructed you to, on the appointed time, even when it meant extricating your self from different commitments.
Meet me by the library steps. I’ve bought a query concerning the xeno quiz.
Generally—most of the time—the remainder of his pals weren’t there. This made you are feeling awkward at first, however Eddie’s simple as hell to speak to, after which there’s the matter of feeling such as you’ve bought the solar below your pores and skin once you’re with him. How might you say no to even a second of that?
Meet me on the parking deck after lights out.
How might you probably say no, even when you already know he doesn’t really feel the identical? He’s attempting to be your pal. The least you may do is let him.
“Ta-da!” Eddie says, with a flourish that’s most likely an try at jazz palms.
Based on the GPS, you’ve arrived. Based on the view out the home windows, you’re exactly in the course of nowhere. You go searching, blinking, a bit afraid that you simply’re lacking the joke.
“That is it.” Eddie kills the engine. The placement indicator on the sprint shifts backwards and forwards together with the ship because it bobs freely in house.
“That is it?”
He turns in direction of you with out taking his seatbelt off. “Yeah. I, uh, didn’t actually know a spot. I simply needed to take you for a drive.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Are you taking anybody to promenade?” he asks, totally with out preamble.
All his pals—who you continue to should remind your self are your pals, too—are asking women from Our Girl of Perpetual Assist, the ladies’ faculty on the subsequent rock over. Who would you ask? Who would ask you? You huff. “No,” you say.
“Do you need to go?”
“I imply, it’s a convention, proper? I can’t be the loser who doesn’t go—”
“Shut up.” He makes a sound you could’t place, till you notice he’s midway to laughing, holding it again. “I’m asking if you wish to go with me. Do you need to go to promenade with me?”
“Sure.” You don’t have to consider the reply. Your solely fear is that you simply’ve made your self sound too keen.
Eddie appears to be like at you, nods, begins the spaceship’s engine once more. “It’s a date,” he says, with that capsizing smile, and also you’re certainly blushing now.
A sequence of indicators on the sprint gentle up. The audio system crackle and hiss. Beneath the static, you may hear an aborted, muffled siren.
“The place is it?” he asks, and there’s not a touch of mirth left in his voice.
You duck your head, then go searching. Eddie curses. “Nonetheless veiled,” you say. There’s an emergency car pulling up on you and it’s undetectable by radar or by sight, mixing into the starry background. A risk you may’t make out.
You hear the staticky blare of the sirens and you’re afraid, as a result of you consider how your father’s black pores and skin turns midnight blue within the darkness, how that darkness turns into harmful. Not in the way in which a weapon is harmful, however the way in which a goal attracts hazard in direction of it. The bluish glow of black pores and skin is a risk, within the sense that it’s threatened.
You’re feeling your father’s concern: a concern so outdated, so deeply ingrained, that you simply don’t know who put it there. Was there ever a single second when the world taught you to be afraid? Or have been you born working from this menace, flinching at sirens? The latter appears extra seemingly.
You consider your father’s concern, your father’s pores and skin.
You consider Eddie’s concern, Eddie’s pores and skin. The gorgeous boy behind the wheel turns blue at the hours of darkness. Not you, although. You’re protected, and also you’re afraid—not for your self, however for the effortlessly cool boy within the goofy pajama pants who hot-wired a spaceship simply to ask you to promenade.
The police ship seems suddenly, glossy and black and looming above you, lights flashing crimson and blue. There’s an aperture within the ship’s stomach. A voice comes by the radio, however the phrases are splintered into nonsense sounds. Nonetheless, you already know what it’s saying: You might be being pulled over. Please enter the regulation enforcement car. Failure to adjust to additional directions will end in penalties. You might be being pulled over. Please enter the regulation enforcement car. Failure to adjust to additional directions will end in penalties.
“Play it cool,” Eddie says, as he steers by the hole.
You’ve by no means been cool a day in your life. You relaxation your palms in your knees such as you’ve been taught, eyes ahead. The siren stops. The underside of the police ship closes behind you, sealing you in. There’s the hiss of strain altering, the gut-wobbling feeling of synthetic gravity settling. That is positively not butterflies.
Eddie places the ship in park and rolls down the window. An officer in a basic darkish blue uniform strides as much as the motive force’s facet. You scan his chest, attempting to memorize his identify and badge quantity in case something goes sideways. Rapidly—you’re meant to be going through ahead, in a scenario like this. It’s what you’ve been taught to do.
“Are you conscious of why I finished you?” asks Officer Holt, badge quantity 070963.
“No, sir,” Eddie says. His voice comes out with such a wierd high quality that it’s unattainable not to have a look at him. A muscle jumps in his jaw. You’ll be able to see the place his pulse resides below the pores and skin of his throat. You marvel simply how briskly his coronary heart goes. You don’t need to know. His palms flex towards the wheel, a grip so tight it should be painful.
You look down at your individual palms in your lap, your pale pores and skin washed out by the dashboard lights, the blue veins displaying by, your crimson plaid pajama pants.
“Loitering in an energetic roadway,” the officer says, which is silly, as a result of house doesn’t even actually have roads. Eddie doesn’t say something. The officer asks for his license and registration. Eddie declares each transfer earlier than he makes it—“My license is in my pants pocket. I’m going to achieve into my pocket. The registration is within the console. I’m going to achieve over and open the console.” He palms the documentation to the officer, who takes it and walks away.
Eddie’s palms return to the wheel, falling again into that very same tight grip. “I’m . . . scared,” he says. It’s not a confession, as a result of it by no means was a secret. You can see the concern in the way in which his pores and skin tightened into goosebumps from the siren’s first sound. You’re sure he might see it on you, too.
“I’m on this with you,” you inform him.
“You’d be high quality,” he says, however there’s no bitterness in it, such as you assume you’d be bitter in his place. He turns his head simply far sufficient to have a look at you. “I’m sorry I lied.”
“It’s okay.” You don’t know what he was even mendacity about, till—
“I don’t do that on a regular basis. I by no means do this type of factor. I simply needed you to assume—”
“I already assume the world of you.” Perhaps it’s too trustworthy, however the scenario appears to warrant that form of honesty. “Wait, then why have you learnt methods to hot-wire a spaceship?”
He shrugs. “Tutorials are simple to search out, for those who go searching.”
This boy, who discovered to commit a felony from a goddamn YouTube tutorial, will certainly be the loss of life of you in a technique or one other.
A special officer comes as much as the spaceship. He strikes actual sluggish, his palms on his hips, and leans to date ahead his head is nearly within the window. “Gents,” he says, “would both of you care to clarify why you’re out using round in a stolen car?”
The panic prickling behind your sternum feels prefer it lasts for weeks, months, years, however it should solely be a second as a result of by the point the spots clear out of your imaginative and prescient, by the point you cease pondering shit-shit-shit-shit-dammit-dammit-dammit-motherfucking-hell, Eddie nonetheless hasn’t stated something and Officer Moreno, badge quantity 061941, continues to be awaiting a reply.
“There should have been a misunderstanding,” you say, earlier than you even know what you’re saying, the place you’re going with this.
“Oh?” Officer Moreno asks. Eddie appears to be like at you with a lot concern behind his eyes that it downright hurts you to see.
“Sure, sir,” you proceed. “We’re college students at Sacred Coronary heart Secondary Faculty. The college owns this car, and a fleet of others prefer it, and repeatedly loans them out to college students for excursions off-campus.” To date, all of that is true. The perfect lies are largely reality. “We’re on an outing, and one thing should have been misfiled in our paperwork, main Sacred Coronary heart to imagine we’d stolen the ship once we meant to signal it out for a number of hours. See? A innocent misunderstanding.” You smile at him such as you’re in a toothpaste advert. It could’t harm.
Officer Moreno chews on his lip. “An outing, huh? The place have been you even going at the moment of evening?”
“Nowhere specifically.” You’re stunned by how clean the lie comes out. “We’re simply training driving. It’s simpler, you already know, with fewer ships out and about.”
“Huh,” Officer Moreno says, and shuffles away.
You hear your heartbeat in your ears, however it sounds flawed. It’s just like the rattling of the damaged radio. Static as an alternative of a gentle thrum. You have a look at Eddie. He’s going through straight forward, his expression betraying completely nothing, his palms nonetheless on the wheel.
Officer Holt walks again over, taking ridiculously lengthy steps—critically, the way in which he walks can’t probably be simple on the joints. Eddie’s jaw tenses. The officer stops beside the open window.
“All proper, boys,” he says, “right here’s what’s going to occur subsequent: we’re going to provide you a trip again to Sacred Coronary heart and get this complete misunderstanding sorted out. You two simply sit tight, and we’ll have you ever again at college in a jiffy.”
“Sure, sir,” Eddie says, in a voice that hardly sounds prefer it’s his. Officer Holt walks away. Eddie continues to be gripping the wheel, going through ahead.
“I feel you may roll up the window,” you inform him, simply to say one thing, to possibly get him to maneuver, as a result of the frozen method he’s sitting appears to be like so tense and unnatural, so in contrast to the boy you already know.
“Proper,” he says. He presses the button to lift the window, then goes again to gripping the wheel with each palms, although the ship’s engine is off. It doesn’t really feel such as you’re shifting, however the location indicator on the sprint begins to shift again in direction of Sacred Coronary heart. You twist your palms collectively in your lap and marvel how quickly you’ll get again, and what’s going to await you once you arrive.
Eddie doesn’t appear that focused on speaking and, actually, neither are you. You concentrate on a sequence of information, to provide your self one thing to puzzle over within the silence:
Eddie needs to take you to promenade.
Eddie drove you an hour out into the center of nowhere to ask you.
Eddie should’ve been assured you’d say sure, or else ballsy as hell to danger an ungainly drive again to high school after you turned him down.
Eddie is aware of you want him.
Eddie likes you? Unclear. Perhaps he needs to go as pals.
Eddie stated it was a date. That’s a determine of speech. Don’t get forward of your self.
Eddie’s lovely palms are nonetheless vise-tight on the steering wheel.
When he speaks, it startles the ideas filter of your head. “I assumed sneaking again in could be the laborious half, however it appears to be like like that plan is shot,” he says. “Who’s on tonight?”
“Mrs. Marian.” Your xenobiology trainer is the resident supervisor on responsibility—a truth you solely know since you needed to slip previous her in your method out of your dorm to the parking deck.
“We’re in hassle.” The strain is beginning to fall out of his voice, which makes it clear simply how a lot he modified himself below strain. It’s endearing and interesting and actually a little bit bit terrifying.
“We have been already in hassle,” you say.
“We’re extra in hassle.”
“She likes me.”
“Everybody likes you,” he says and once more, there’s no bitterness in it.
“Loads of individuals like you.”
“Like who?”
“Um. Me?”
Eddie makes that half-laugh sound once more, like he’s holding the total pressure of it behind his tooth. It makes one thing ache in your chest: you need to hear the true factor. “After the previous half hour, I wasn’t so positive,” he says.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s the textbook definition of my fault.”
“Okay. Perhaps that’s true. However I stated I’m on this with you and I meant that.”
That’s what lastly will get him to have a look at you. “Thanks,” he says, and one thing concerning the depth of his voice makes your intestine do this annoying and fantastic factor once more. Butterflies? No, xenophyophores.
The aperture within the backside of the police service opens. Eddie begins the ship, and also you watch him go searching as he orients himself. The parking bay of Sacred Coronary heart is under you and a bit to 1 facet, and for a second you’re in house and it doesn’t matter which method’s up, and you then’re within the parking bay and all of the angles really feel wonky from the sudden shift in orientation. Eddie has one hand on the steering wheel, the opposite curled in his lap. He places the ship in park.
“We could gaily march to our execution?” he asks—due to course Mrs. Marian shall be proper inside, ready for you.
You must simply undo your seatbelt and go away it at that, however you must ask, when you’re nonetheless within the spaceship with him, as a result of you may inform that as quickly as he opens the door one thing will change. The evening gained’t be what it was, anymore, and that shall be each a aid and a pointy sorrow.
“Wait. You stated— You stated it was a date. Did you imply that the way in which I feel you imply it?”
He unbuckles his seatbelt and leans throughout the console, near you. He doesn’t kiss you, however he touches your face, and it feels extra intense than you’ve ever imagined a kiss might be. He’s lifeless critical when he says, “What the fuck are you speaking about? We’re already relationship.”
It’s your flip to giggle, the sound popping out damaged. He appears to be like wounded. You need to contact the wrinkle between his eyebrows, so that you do. His face relaxes below your fingertips. You might be aflame.
“Was this not a date?” he asks.
“You’re taking me to all of the nicest locations,” you say. That will get a correct giggle out of him, his head tipped again and his mouth open broad. You’re feeling such as you’ve swallowed a star.
“What about all these occasions I introduced you lunch?” Eddie asks. He touches your face once more, a momentary brush of his hand.
“Okay,” you say. There’s nothing else to say.
“You’re a dumbass,” he tells you. You’ll be able to’t argue with that.
“Nicely, let’s . . . gaily march forth, and all that.”
He appears to be like at you want he doesn’t know what to do with you, then presses a button on the sprint. The ship’s doorways click on and unlock. You climb down on wobbly legs.
Mrs. Marian is ready as quickly as you clear the parking bay. She’s a small brown girl sporting a white bathrobe open over a pajama set, her hair tied up in a silk scarf. You’ve by no means seen the way in which anger adjustments her face earlier than.
“The police went round to the entrance entrance,” she says. “They needed to speak with the headmaster.”
“Christ on a motorcycle,” Eddie says, voice barely a breath.
You watch Mrs. Marian as her eyes scan over you—two teenage boys of their nightclothes, faces nonetheless tight with fear—and her livid expression breaks into one in all concern.
“Had been you scared?” Mrs. Marian asks.
Eddie appears to be like at you for a second earlier than he nods. “Yeah.”
“I used to be, too.”
“It was my fault,” you say, earlier than you even know what you’re saying. Why not? Falling by yourself sword is simply one other technique to be helpful, and possibly Mrs. Marian will go simple on you.
Eddie rakes his palms over his quick, tight curls. “Are you able to shut the hell up?”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it’s,” says Mrs. Marian. “You’re each grounded for the remainder of the time period. You go to class, you go to review corridor, you report back to your dorms. That’s it.” When Eddie begins laughing—that actual, loud giggle once more—Mrs. Marian pulls him right into a sudden hug. He’s method taller than her however he goes limp on the contact, eyes falling shut. “What the hell is so humorous?” she asks, as soon as she’s launched him.
Eddie opens his eyes and appears at you, smiling off-kilter. “Guess we aren’t going to promenade in spite of everything.”
Concerning the Writer
Dominique Dickey is a author, editor, and cultural advisor working in RPGs and fiction. Along with creating TRIAL, Plant Woman Recreation, and co-creating Tomorrow on Revelation III, Dominique has written for Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Dungeons & Dragons, and Pathfinder. Their fiction has appeared in Lightspeed Journal, Fantasy Journal, and Nightmare Journal, amongst different venues. They dwell within the DC space, and are at all times on the hunt for his or her subsequent thought. You’ll find them on twitter at @DomSDickey or at dominiquedickey.com.
Please go to to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the June 2023 challenge, which additionally options work by Wendy Nikel, Sarah Gray, Elad Haber, Kyle E Miller, Ruth Joffre, Deborah L. Davitt, Wealthy Larson, and extra. You’ll be able to look forward to this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should purchase the entire challenge proper now in handy book format for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the book version .
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