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The Mars terraforming project was failing and everyone knew it. No one talks about it, but everyone spoke of it all the same. In comments, in hints, in small worrying tones without the right words. Even Simon’s mother, in her actions, acknowledging what they all knew and were silently preparing for.
In the meagre meals they ate, made up primarily of nutri-bars, densely packed gelatinous bars that she cut small and dissolved slowly into warm water, serving it over genetically-modified rice. The gristly bits, the slick slide of the parts that wouldn’t disappear entirely, the hard stones that hadn’t been filtered out entirely. It all hits Simon’s stomach the same. Four large spoonfuls and pretending he doesn’t notice his mother’s portion is smaller than his own. That he doesn’t notice the thinness of her cheeks, the waning in her eyes.
Their water rations are cut back, like everyone else's in their sector. Simon spends the majority of every day thirsty, so used to the feeling that it almost doesn’t register anymore. Or he tells himself that it doesn’t. The dryness of his tongue, the lack of sweat, pissing infrequently and sickly yellow. Each of them at the school are allotted ten seconds at the drinking fountain during the midday break. Hot, satisfying water that only starts to quench the beginning of the unending well within him before the fountain’s timer clicks off.
In the loss of their last precious belongings. Simon notices the loss incrementally over the course of several long weeks. Little things at first: the woman down the road wearing his mother’s best dress. The hem uneven and resewn and the missing buttons having been replaced for more symmetrical bone buttons, ivory and sensible. His mother had begun plucking them off to replace those lost on Simon’s shirts. A pair of his pants had been lengthened and patched with the muted brown gingham fabric last growing season.
The clothes he’d grown out of, a myriad of shirts and covers and pants. His mother kept them in a basket near their heating unit. Her callused hands unstitch previous work, smooth the fabric until the creases soften along the edge of the heating unit, burning her fingertips. Small piles of fabric would grow until she’d decided there was enough to stitch together another cover, another shirt, one that fit the growing breadth of Simon’s chest and arms. This too disappears one morning.
His mother no longer opens the hidden cubby within their air vent late at night, when the Martian air cools and the patrol flightlights start cutting through their window on a predictable interval. The cubby was home to all the precious things she'd brought from home, from his father, from her life outside of Mars. A perfume bottle, the scent faded into a haze of alcohol, but his mother describes that last lingering scent as vanilla and rose. Powdery, warm, and Simon pretends the harsh scent of the alcohol doesn't burn along his nostrils.
Two rings, gold and dented. One larger, loose on Simon's finger when he would play with it years ago. The other is small, thinner, and fits his mother's finger easily.
“I swallowed them,” she told him once. “They sat in my belly just like you did, all the way here.” And Simon had smiled as she'd pressed a kiss to the edge of his forehead, not understanding but glad to hear his mother happy, remembering, smiling something small and stilted.
In the jobs she started taking after her shift in the growing bays. Late night jobs that leave her tired and disconnected. Simon's eyes trail her across their room as she shuffles quietly back in, feet uncertain and hands hovering around chest. He keeps his breath even, the blanket tucked into his chin, but his eyes glow white in the patrol lights that shine dimly through their window. She pulls out the water discard, a shallow dish of their bathing water, from beneath their low dining table. With careful hands, she washes herself. The water trickles when she rings out the cloth. Simon would think it wasteful if not for the way with every wipe of the rag, a part of his mother is brought back into herself. Her chest slows; her eyelids droop. Her skin clears one brush at a time. And after, with their shared comb, the tangles of her hair release to the greasy shine he knows. Nimble fingers braid it back against her scalp, revealing a ring of bruises around her neck, along her bare shoulders.
Not long after his mother begins working late, she pulls Simon from school. Simon is not the first to leave, nor will he be the last. He’s nearly of-age now, old enough to take on a manual labor job and help provide: mining, oxygen farming, atmospheric maintenance, radiation control. There are teams behind all the terraforming divisions; intelligent people who keep the poorly-oiled machine chugging along. Who monitor the progress and provide vague updates to everyone in their sector, obvious and worrying. Behind those people are people like Simon and his classmates. Young, strong, desperate.
An older boy gets Simon a job at the oxygen farm north of their sector, near the ice cap. He works in the algae vats, suited up in rubber waders a size too large, raking through the muck. Every hour a siren whirls above, shrill and quick. Simon dons a pair of goggles and a ventilation mask, ill-fitting. All the boys in the neighboring vats do the same, a stretch of fifteen of them in any direction Simon can look. From above, a water-borne bacteria rains down, prickling against any exposed skin. It feeds the algae, exuding enriched oxygen back into the air, pumping through the air filtration before being released into the atmosphere. In ten days, they’ll clear these vats and begin the growing process over again.
The rain feels like nothing Simon has ever experienced and even though he knows it’s eating at him – the bacteria growing beneath the beds of his nails, caking in the cavern of his ears, a rash that spreads in the crevices of his joints – he finds it worth it to feel the cleansing coolness of the water. One afternoon, the boy to the east of him, a thin weed of a boy a year younger than Simon, raises his head upwards to the sprinkler system after the siren calls. His ventilator is pulled to the side, dangling around his neck. His mouth is exposed to the sky, tongue outstretched to catch the rain. He smiles as the water runs into his mouth. He doesn’t return the following day. Simon can’t recall his name no matter how hard he tries.
People begin to visit their home early in the mornings, before either of them have left for work. Colonist that his mother knows from the growing bays, neighbors, strangers. They hover quietly around in their common space, arms intertwined, eyes enraptured. A man stands before them, unassuming in his plain clothes, but his voice carries in the small familiar space. He makes promises of a second chance, in a home beyond the stars.
“You’ll love it there,” Simon’s mother whispers to the crown of his hair that final night. Quiet, unrecognizable, reverent.