Jez stumbles onto the driveway and almost falls head-first into the moat. Her celebrations were never complete without open bars and bottomless champagne specials, but it didn't help that Jez wasn’t graceful to begin with. Jimmy learned to wait for her outside the house after the first three times she fell in. He drapes Jez over his cold, golden back and waits for the bridge to drop. 

“Damn thing needs an update,” Jez whispers to herself as the bridge creaks

down. 

“I can let your mother know,” Jimmy quips. 

Jez’s mother, Luna, built (ordered the materials) and programmed (ordered her team to program) the moat. According to Luna, the looming drawbridge contrasted “beautifully” with the silver castle their family called home. Jez believes it’s just a way for her mother to relive her childhood. The only thing that calmed Luna during the Great Migration some sixty-odd years ago were stories of dragons and grand castles and women fulfilling their potential. Though she couldn’t understand why her family left the only home she’d ever known, Luna would always simmer down for a good story. The buzz of a thousand ships shooting through empty space faded once her mother recited tales of a new hero gallantly defending her home. 

So, Jez lives in a silver castle fit with its own river-sized moat. When the western sun sets low, the water glows pink. It glows blue for the eastern sun. Without anything in the sky to illuminate it now, the water sits still and black. Jez used to believe electric eels sat at the bottom and waited for somebody to fall. She swore to have seen slimy creatures the last time she stumbled into the water. 

The bridge collapses across the moat with a creaky lurch. Jimmy rolls across with Jez draped over his backside and places her in a crumpled heap outside the door. “What’s your problem? Take me in, please,” Jez complains.

After a rather pregnant pause, Jez looks up to see Jimmy displaying ellipses on his screen. She rolls her eyes and waits for his courteous five-second pause – a protocol equipeed by Luna after he delivered upsetting news to the family without warning for the third time. 

“Your father has news.” 

Good lord. I can’t deal with his dramatics now. Jez thinks to herself. Yet she pulls herself off the ground and wraps her hands around the brass doorknob. 

An engulfing sigh fills the air. 

Jez pushes inside. 

Jez is met by Cameron (father) and Xavier (brother) sitting around the glass table in the first-floor living room. Luna’s ceramic jar filled with flowers has been pushed to the side, so there’s no excuse to avoid eye contact. 

Jimmy enters the foyer first and rolls to his charging station. 

Lucky him. Jez wouldn’t usually wish to trade places with Jimmy, but she despises their ‘family meetings’. The last time they met was to decide where to travel on their bi-monthly vacation. It ended in a screaming match and four separate flights booked. Jez could tell that Jimmy heard it all, because he avoided vacuuming the living room until it had been completely vacated. 

Cameron welcomes Jez and motions for her to sit in the empty chair across from him. She glares at Xavier, who sits beside her, as she fails to shift to a comfortable position. Jez softens her gaze when Xavier chuckles uneasily. He knows that he’ll catch hell later on for taking her favorite chair. Jez doubts that she’ll get through this conversation without sufficient back support, but she purses her lips as she decides to be cordial.

“You reek of alcohol.” Cameron opens. Xavier sighs and hunkers down as Jez's mouth drops. Cameron’s delivery has never been subtle. 

“You reek of sadness,” Jez retorts. 

“Okay. Let’s not do this,” Xavier butts in. “How was the merger party, Jez?” “It was good,” Jez glares at their father. Xavier pokes her arm and Jez shifts her demeanor. 

“Everyone from uni came. They loved your artwork. Zuri wants to take you out. Nia likes your newest piece. Josephine says hello.” Xavier blushes at the mention of Zuri, but Jez doesn’t press the topic further. She needs to figure out how to make him regret his choice to steal her seat before she’ll indulge in the details of his love life. 

Cameron slides a brochure across the table. It’s cheap and flimsy, and the neon colors offend Jez’s eyesight. Her lips curl up but Cameron speaks before Jez can properly insult the paper. 

“I’m going back to Earth. This is all too much for me.” 

Jez doubles backward as laughter erupts from her mouth. Cameron pales. Xavier hangs his head. Cameron pulls out a necklace with a pale blue Earth charm and another laughing fit erupts from Jez. 

If only Jimmy could laugh too. Jez thinks to herself. 

“This place isn’t good for our people. Y’all might forget where you come from, living inside a damn castle. The people outside this neighborhood cannot,”  lectured Cameron.

“Whose fault is that?” Jez spits. Xavier puts his hand on her arm, but Jez shakes him off.

He regrets turning down his mother’s invitation to FemMogul’s retreat. Sitting on a tropical beach and getting hit on by middle-aged women (who conveniently forget that he is fresh out of high school) would have been better than moderating the screaming match unfolding before him. 

“Oh, please remind me who helped plan NewWorld’s layout? Who was it that literally baked ghettos into this place? It wasn’t me! You complain about us being soo removed from our people, yet you’re the one who forced them into those conditions in the first place.” Xavier recoils in his seat and lets the battle begin. 

“I tried my best! The government took my programs but not my advice. Call my work dirty, but benefitted this family! How do you think we can pay for all this? ” Cameron frantically waves his hand around the house, pointing out the high ceilings, glass chandeliers, and grand ebony staircase. 

“Do you even watch the news anymore? Do you ever stop to pick up a newspaper?” Cameron asks. He waits for a response as silence sits over the table. 

Jez rolls her eyes and notices a tired look on Xavier’s face. It’s not the first time the two have been lectured on their “small worldview”. 

Cameron takes out a newspaper – with ink on actual pieces of paper – and points to one of the headlines at the top of the page: “BLACK BOY SHOT ON A MORNING JOG, MARKING THIS WEEK’S 15TH ADDITION TO BESOM’S GRAVEYARD.” An ad nestled underneath stories of water shortages and power outages happening two neighborhoods over begs for funeral home workers. 

Jez and Xavier skim the page. They’ve learned to tune unpleasantness out. Besides, they’ve seen the same story hundreds of times. It’s always some kid living their life until someone white decides that it’s wrong and the kid gets killed.

Luna taught her kids that the best way to improve the standing of Black people was by becoming the best versions of themselves. So, Jez graduated from university early and built a successful startup. Xavier mastered all the popular (and unpopular) illustration techniques and got himself a cushy job working with BioQuest, a wealthy yet controversial company that was recently accused of selling the biological information of recently deceased cancer patients. Xavier’s job is to make the company seem more appealing in their advertisements. He does a damn good job of it. 

Luna is proud. She believes they have a chance of changing the status quo through their respective successes, but Cameron doesn’t dote on them quite as much. While Luna wants her kids to be the greatest, Cameron wants his kids to be responsive. He wasn’t quiet about his desire for Xavier and Jez to join the marches for peace. He complained when they wouldn’t march, fight, or do anything more than sit in their silver castle with their golden butler and “rest on their laurels”. 

Jez couldn’t remember a single time when Cameron expressed his pride for his daughter who single-handedly upended the quantitative analysis field. She never heard him compliment Xavier’s art, either. He “didn’t understand” his children’s work and barely tried to. Jez and Xavier learned to stop looking for his validation eons ago. Xavier learned to take Jez’s lead, and so the two skim over unpleasant news and passively listen to their father’s various rants. 

Cameron waits for a response and the three sit in silence. Jez would never admit to something that would make her seem ignorant. Xavier holds his breath. Jimmy, still charging in the foyer, watches the conflict from afar. 

“We were never meant to live here. There’s never enough water, or power, or hope for us.” Cameron sighs and hangs his head. 

“Who’s we?” Jez narrows her eyes.

“The Founders meant for The Great Migration to be a white affair. Our people were supposed to stay on Earth and rot.” 

Silence unfolds itself again. 

Cameron rants nightly about NewWorld, but he never mentioned this. Even Xavier looks surprised. 

“How do you know this?” 

“Luna’s mother saved us all. She was well-connected and somebody let it slip. She leaked the information to the other Black officials and forced an agreement before international outrage sparked. We were so close to getting abandoned. Your grandmother didn’t let that happen.” 

Jez forgets that the chair is uncomfortable. She forgets that she’s supposed to give Xavier hell later on. She even forgets that Jimmy’s watching the conversation from the foyer. “Why are you telling us this now?” 

“What are you going back to?” Xavier asks. Cameron slides the ugly pamphlet towards Xavier. 

“Come home. We’ll help you build a life here,” is handwritten at the top of the page. The brochure briefly mentions the lesson on the Great Migration that is taught to every kid on NewWorld. Xavier skims it but doesn’t see any notice of almost-abandonment. It just mentions the pollution, the temporary agreement between nations, and the long trek toward the new planet. It also dives into the “failure” of NewWorld to make things better. 

A testimony on the bottom reads: “My mother had hope when they found NewWorld. The stories they told us of lush greenery, flowing rivers, and clean air on a planet accessible by ship were too good to pass up. Our people were lured into NewWorld with promises of better

treatment, better pay, and better lives sixty-five years ago. Yet we have been forced into ghettos again. Our kids drink from dirty taps and cough until their lungs are pink and raw. We cannot afford to go to the doctor. We cannot afford to question the status quo. 

My family suffered in NewWorld. We weren’t safe! We left because we wanted a change. We didn’t want to worry about whether our kids had a future. And we didn’t want to worry about being Black.” 

Jez gazes at the brown faces staring back at her. The brochure shows Black people living ordinary lives – eating, dancing, and celebrating. They look happy. 

Jez only leaves her neighborhood to party, but she has noticed the sunken demeanor of Black folks on NewWorld. They keep their heads on a swivel. They’re always careful of being too loud, too outspoken, or too bold. Jez slowly stopped getting invites to those parties when she refused to quiet down after hearing a siren late at night. 

Somebody cut the music and told everyone to get down. They told Jez to stop singing and dancing, or that she would get them all killed. Jez thought they were being too cautious, too serious, for people throwing parties in abandoned warehouses in the dead of night. Someone shoved her to the ground and she sat there in a huff after realizing how harshly everybody glared at her. She wasn’t disappointed when the invites stopped rolling in. The real tragedy was the pair of silver hoops she lost. 

“Y’all know that 85% of Earth came to NewWorld. Y’all know that we left in hundreds of ships for a journey that lasted years. I was born on that journey. Luna told you what it was like to travel through empty space with the fleet.” 

Xavier chuckles nervously again and Jez only has to think about the house she lives in. Everything is a reminder of Luna’s time spent on the Great Migration.

“It was an expensive ordeal. People pooled their life savings together to buy subpar tickets and get out. And when they got here, the little money they had could only land them a house in the ghettos.” 

“The people back home are Black. While The Founders got right back to the status quo, making sure that health inequalities, racial injustices, and pollution raged on, those people built a better world than we could have ever imagined.” 

“But what about the toxic air? And forests that were cut? And rivers filled with sludge? That kind of pollution cannot go away in sixty-five years!” Jez shrieks. 

“Look outside! I dare you. Go to that window and look at the river in the next neighborhood. That water can't be any dirtier than what they have on Earth. And don’t pretend like you don’t wear Resp Masks every time you want to go party somewhere outside this neighborhood. Y’all are just comfortable with this type of pollution.” 

Neither Jez or Xavier move from their seats. Jez glances back at the newspaper to avoid eye contact. After scanning through stories of mass shootings, the latest water crisis, and health disparities, Jez’s gaze returns to that ad for funeral home workers. 

“I hate living in a castle and ignoring this injustice. Y’all are old enough to figure your own stuff out. Luna is staying. My flight is booked for two months from now. I’m going home.”

Jez’s mouth is dry.

 “Will we ever see you again?” Xavier croaks. 

“There’s always the telephone. I don’t think you will miss me much, but I will have my phone handy.” Cameron pushes out of his chair and wanders into the second living room to flip on the late-night news. 

Jez’s mind goes blank as she kicks out from the table and wanders to the elevator. Xavier follows her, partly to make sure she doesn’t fall flat on her face.

On the short ride up, Xavier catches a whiff of his sister. She does, in fact, reek of alcohol. 

“He’s trying to act like he’s more ‘woke’ than the rest of us. As if he didn’t cause this. As if he didn’t undo Grandma’s work. You can’t just ease your guilt by leaving the situation entirely. That’s not how things work!” Jez hiccups. 

Xavier nods his head and sighs softly at his sister. It’s not easy to moderate a discussion between Jez and Cameron. Jez notices the gray hairs on the front of his head and wonders how many of them were caused by their arguments. 

The elevator hisses open and Cameron guides her to her bedroom. She trips on the flower-spotted futon near the room’s entrance and lies in a crumpled heap. She truly cannot be bothered to walk across the expanse of her bedroom and crawl under proper covers. Xavier currently isn’t generousto drag Jez to her bed. He instead rips the blanket off her bed and tucks her into the futon. Jez smiles before completely surrendering to slumber. 

Xavier drifts out of Jez’s room and opens Luna’s door. He always slept there when Luna was away, often claiming that her bed was more comfortable. Jez called him a mama’s boy. The silence after their arguments made him feel empty and aching for a proper familial embrace, but Jez would simply roll her eyes. 

Xavier coped by turning on cartoons or news stories that talked about nothing important. Tonight’s pick was an account about a lost cat found stuck in a tree. Xavier mutters something about wasting the fire brigade’s time before he falls asleep underneath Luna’s posters of “unruly women”.

Downstairs, Cameron sits and stares at the moving pictures laid before him. Jimmy watches as Cameron turns the brochures over and over in his hands. He mutters silently to himself and Jimmy waits for the opportunity to vacuum. He never entered common spaces after a big argument. He was more comfortable with the small messes – like helping a girl back to her home at night. Luna didn’t equip him with the tools to deal with their ‘family meetings’.