The rehabilitation center is a squat, beige building on the outskirts of town. I turn off the truck's engine, and sit in the parking lot for a minute, trying to slow my breathing. It had seemed like such a good idea when I had gotten the call, but now ... I think of the last time I saw her: after graduation, laughing hysterically, her eyeliner smearing down her cheeks, holding a bottle of cheap tequila. "C'mon June, join the party. Don't make my last memory of this place a downer." I had bowed my head, gone to her side, and taken a swig from the bottle; but as I looked up at her dilated eyes -- already staring away from this place, looking ahead to the things she would see with her new angel's gaze -- I had felt a hollowness settle in the pit of my stomach. Ten years, and I still haven't really gotten rid of that empty space; but I've patched it up, and moved on. And now it's all coming back.

I thump a hand against the steering wheel, and exhale violently. I can't do this right now -- I need to get moving. I lower myself down from the truck's cab, and try to convince my legs that they're steady as I hold onto the handgrip. My breath curls in the fall air, and I fold my arms across my stomach as I trudge across the cracked asphalt, telling myself that I'm holding onto myself for warmth. I almost believe it.

Inside, the rehabilitation center is as bland as its exterior had promised -- every detail carefully contrived to produce the minimum stimulation. I am ushered into a single person waiting room -- tan carpet, rounded chairs, and a small, muted television set -- and told to sit. Left alone, I pick up a year-old hunting magazine and try to interest myself in the latest shotgun accessories.

I've reread the same paragraph a half dozen times when the door opens again. I spit out the strand of hair I've been nibbling nervously -- a habit I thought I'd left behind in high school -- and stand too quickly. An orderly enters first, quiet and unobtrusive as a mouse, and then ...

Kinny.

I want to say I hardly recognize her. I shouldn't be able to; she's changed so much. Always thin and bony, she's withered away almost to nothing. I can see her ribs through her TransCo tank top, and her wrists look like I could get my fingers around them, with room to spare. And her hair -- whether worn all the way down her back or cropped jaw-length, Kinny always valued her glossy black hair above anything else. Now it's gone, shaved a fraction of an inch away from her skull. She looks like a barely mobile skeleton.

But I recognize those eyes. They're deeper than when I last saw them, and darker; but they still have a few sparkles of their old mischief. And her mouth, although now surrounded by deep grooves, still quirks into its old, lopsided smile at my shock.

"Hey, Junebug. Haven't seen you in a while."

...

I lie awake in bed, watching a square of moonlight creep slowly up the wall. I can hear Dave breathing at my back, and I can tell he's not sleeping either. After a while, he says softly, "Kindra seems ... calmer than she used to be."

"Yeah."

"And she looks like she's recovering nicely."

"Yeah."

"Some pilots can't even walk for months."

...

In the middle of the night I'm awakened by muffled noises from the kitchen. I lie still next to Dave's softly breathing form, listening, before padding softly out of our bedroom. I find Kinny sitting at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. I sit down across from her, and she looks at me with eyes bruised from sleeplessness.

"Did I wake you? Sorry."

"Kinny, have you been sleeping?"

"Not much."

"Bad dreams?"

"Yes. No. Kind of."

I watch her, as she fidgets with the handle of the mug.

"When I sleep, it's like being back out there. I remember all of it."

...

"When you're piloting, you're ... not yourself anymore. Everything that happened to me -- it happened to a different me."

I snuffle. "I know. I remember the videos. You're ... what do they call it? You're tied into the ship."

"The videos don't do it justice. You're not just tied in; you are the ship. Its hull is your skin, its sensors are your eyes and ears. You start to forget what your old body was like."

I turn back to the table and sit down again, a little shakily. "What is it like, to be out there?"

Kinny smiles a small, fragile smile I've never seen her use before. "It's like nothing else. Remember science class, learning about the vacuum of space, and how it's all just emptiness? Well, it's not. The ships, they're outfitted with a whole range of sensors; thermal sniffers, electromagnetic scopes, mass spectrometers. When you're tied in, you can see particles popping in and out of existence. You can hear fusion happening in the hearts of stars; you can feel waves of solar radiation. It feels like ... like a summer breeze, but a thousand times stranger. June, I've seen things that our old science teachers would have killed to be able to see."

Her voice is stronger, surer, and when she looks at me I can see galaxies dancing in her eyes. "I've watched stars being born. I've danced through radiation left over from the big bang. I've felt photons kiss my silver skin, and flirted with gravity wells. Have you ever felt the pull of a black hole? It's almost like being in some boy's arms; the soft, strong grip draws you in, and you want to fall forever. And more; I've experienced things none of you humans even know about. There are places, way out into the Black, where space gets all ... weird. Things start to fold, and tear, and ... other places start to show through. And if you get closer into the center of the galaxy, you start to hear things. The stars there, they almost start to sing -- there's music, but it's not like anything you've ever heard before. You don't even hear it, really, you feel it; it goes through you like a knife, and you just want to follow it wherever it leads you ..."

She trails off, staring out into memories she can't even begin to verbalize. When she finally comes back down to earth her confidence has left her, and her voice is quiet and halting again.

"And now ... I don't even recognize the world anymore. It seems like there's a sheet of plastic between me and everything else. I'm stuck back in this body that's been stored away in some cradle for the past ten years, and these senses are all dim, and nothing even works right anymore. June, I was an angel. I was a god. Now I'm a broken puppet, limping around and staring up at the stars."

I stare across the table at her, at her skeletal fingers rolling her mug from hand to hand, at her dark, dark eyes, shining like fragments of broken glass. My throat swells shut, and I have no words for her.

Dave has work early the next morning, and so Kinny and I share a late breakfast in silence. As I wash up afterwards, she tells me that she's going to re-sign with TransCo for another ten year tour. I freeze for a moment, hands clenching on the edge of a plate; then I breathe out slowly and continue washing.

"Alright."

In the silence that follows, I pray she knows: knows that I accept her decision, knows that I am willing to let her go, even though it will hurt me to do so. I pray she knows that I understand.

That night, Dave and I take her out to dinner, and the three of us stay out well past midnight laughing and drinking and remembering high school. The next morning I help her move her boxes -- still hardly unpacked -- back into storage, and drive her downtown. I walk her into the TransCo headquarters, and give her one last hug goodbye in the lobby. We exchange a few meaningless pleasantries, and then a nurse guides her through the big double doors, and she's gone. I stare at the place where she disappeared, and try to ignore the hole that's reopened in my chest.

Kinny, though -- she never even looked back.

On the way home I put in the same tape I played when I picked Kinny up, and let the familiar words wash over me.

River, take me home,

It's been twelve years since I seen my mother,

I've spent too long as the highway's daughter,

Need to get back to my own true lover,

So take me home, river,

Take me home.

As I drive I watch the fields roll past, enjoying the sight of them stretched out lazily in the afternoon sun, lolling all the way out to the horizon.

Back to the land where I am from,

Back to the place where I belong,

Just take me home, river,

Take me home.

The house is quiet and empty when I get back. I drop my keys on the counter, and drift aimlessly from room to room. Finally, I end up on sitting on the edge of my bed, lights off, watching the daylight spill through the blinds, and paint the carpet a watery gold. After a long while, I reach into the bedside table, and pull out a pencil and a pad of paper.

I have a few poems that I've been thinking about. Maybe it's time to start writing them down again.