Chapter 3

When they’d first met, they had spent a lot of time together in the evening, gazing up at the moon, sharing things they hadn’t mentioned to anyone else. Colton had been trying to make a successful, non-corporate-sponsored food truck. Fully trained as a chef, he’d had so many flavors and dishes to explore, so many plans for what he could do in the future. Get a physical location, enter competitions. And then Ben had stopped by for lunch.

Colton fell in love so fast, believed in them so much, he hadn’t considered much past their schemes for the future. In the early spring months, before it got too hot, before the vicious, unnatural storms rolled in, they’d climb up Ben’s parents’ house and lay on the roof at night, looking up at the sky. They’d been young, just out of school. There’d been sickly orange haze, and rising up through it, the moon. Round and distant, shining, perfect.

“If you want to see the colony, we can have a look through my scope after this,” Ben would say.