Entry 63

I spent the rest of the night in my room, curled on my bed and generally feeling sorry for myself. John was going to leave me. I was going to be all alone. The thoughts played through my head like a broken record.

I fell asleep at some point, in my clothes, which meant that I was far from pretty when I woke up the next morning. Between the dried tears and crumpled clothes, I was a mess. However, after a hot shower I felt marvelously better, even though John was going to leave me.

Being the mature teenager that I was, I wasn’t going to allow John to see what pain he caused me, so I put a bounce in my step and a smile on my face as I went to eat breakfast.

“Carlee.” It was Ven at the breakfast table, not John. Disappointment filled me. Maybe John did not want to see me anymore, now that he was leaving me. “It’s been brought to my attention that we missed a rather important day.”

“What day?” I asked, grabbing a pseudo-muffin and taking my seat.

“Your sixteenth birthday,” Ven responded. I looked up at him in surprise.

“No, my birthday is in February,” I said, shaking my head. “It can’t be February already.”

“Well, I am unsure if we can argue that it is February in space, but it is most definitely February on Earth.” It was Blaue who spoke, materializing in the room. “I triple checked. You are sixteen years old.” Sixteen? Surely I would feel different if I really was such a marvelous age. Sixteen made me practically an adult. Sixteen was supposed to be that magical year in a girl’s life where she got a boyfriend and went to junior prom and all sorts of magical things. I wondered if the human colony had a prom.

“In honor of your birthday, I have a gift for you,” Ven said. I looked at him suspiciously. A gift from Ven? That sounded suspiciously like when the Greeks gave the Trojans a gift of a horse.

“Really,” I said. “Did you buy me something at the spacestation yesterday?”

“No,” Ven answered. “What I’m going to give you is better than anything that I could have purchased yesterday.” I gave him a flat, doubtful stare. I could think of nothing that Ven could give me that would not need to be purchased, unless he had suddenly had a complete change in personality and was going to try to help me keep John.

“I am going to give you your first flying lesson today,” Ven said.

“What!” I jumped out of my seat. “Like flying Blaue? You really mean it? You’re going to teach me to fly her?” He was right. It was better than anything he could have purchased. I had given up the hope that Ven would teach me to fly ages ago.

“I really do mean it,” Ven said with his debonair smile. “Of course, today’s lesson is very rudimentary, just the basics, but you have to start somewhere before I just hand over manual control to you.” I stared at him, unable to speak I was so surprised. Ven just laughed.

“Eat your breakfast, Carlee,” Ven said. “You need to have a good breakfast in order to retain everything I’m going to teach you.”