We Dream of Space

by Erin Entrada Kelly

  The rest of the street was quiet, but lights glowed from living room and kitchen windows. Fitch wondered what all those other families were doing.

  “You should get a blanket and lie in the backyard,” Fitch said. “Then you wouldn’t have to lie on the car.”

  Bird didn’t say anything.

  The stars were brighter than he expected. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at the sky for no reason whatsoever. Ms. Salonga said that many of the stars were bigger than the sun, but they looked minuscule from down here.

  Fitch thought about his book. The aliens. Floating in deep space.

  “Do you think there’s life on other planets?” he asked. His breath puffed out of his mouth as he talked. It was strange to hear his voice without music or Major Havoc or other people pushing against it.

  “Yeah,” said Bird. “Do you?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Maybe we’ll find out someday. Someday soon.” She paused. “Maybe I’ll find out for us.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’ll become an astronaut like Judith Resnik and have NASA send me on a fact-finding mission.”

  “Judith who?”

  Bird turned her head. “Judith Resnik. The mission specialist from Challenger.”

  The name didn’t sound familiar, but he could tell from Bird’s tone that Judith Whatshername had been discussed in Ms. Salonga’s class, which meant he was supposed to know who she was.

  “But I won’t be mission specialist,” Bird continued, staring back at the sky. “I’ll be the first female shuttle commander.”

  “Shuttle commander,” Fitch repeated. “That sounds pretty cool.”

  “Yep. I’d be in charge of the whole ship.”

  Fitch suddenly felt very small under all the countless stars above them.

  “I was in charge of my own space pod and I wound up floating in deep space after fighting a bunch of aliens who looked like amoebas,” he said.

  “Is that from a video game or something?”

  “No. Space and Beyond. Choose Your Own Adventure.”

  His nose felt like a tiny block of ice. His fingertips were numb.

  “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

  “A little, but I’m wearing a hat and gloves,” she said. “If you want to stay warm, you have to cover the areas where heat escapes, like your head, hands, and feet. It’s just basic science.”

  Fitch sat up. He was wearing neither a hat nor gloves. “I’m cold. I’m gonna go back in.”

  “Okay,” Bird said.

  Fitch slid off the car. It groaned under his weight, but no real damage was done.

  “Don’t get abducted by aliens,” he said. When he reached the front door, he turned and said, “And if you do, don’t leave without me.”

  THE MOST INCREDIBLE MACHINE OF ALL

  Later that night Fitch gave Bird one of his old cassettes. He said he never listened to it anymore.

  “May as well donate its body to science,” he said, cradling the tape in the palms of his hands as if it were a dead mouse.

  She placed it under the lamp on her desk, next to an ever-growing pile of Bird’s-Eye Views.

  “Why do you do this stuff? It seems so boring,” Fitch said, not unkindly, as he flicked the drawing with his thumb.

  Bird balanced a tiny screwdriver on the uppermost corner of his tape, which she now saw was the soundtrack to Rocky. It brought back a distinct memory, long forgotten, of her parents arguing. She, Cash, and Fitch were dressed for the movies because they were supposed to see Rocky IV. The movie was scheduled to start at one p.m., but their parents argued until long after that, and by the time the house rested back into silence, everyone had disappeared into their own orbits. They never made it to the theater at all. Bird still hadn’t seen it, but Devonte said it was stupid, so she figured she hadn’t missed much.

  The original Rocky had once been Fitch’s favorite movie. Bird wondered if it still was.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The same reason you play video games.”

  “Video games are fun. But this?” He scrunched his nose. “This is like homework.”

  Bird shrugged and turned the tiny screwdriver counterclockwise—slowly, slowly. It was easy for machines to lose their parts, especially tiny ones like this. The smallest pieces could make the biggest difference.

  “I guess I just like to see how things work,” she said.

  “I already know how a cassette tape works. You put it in and hit Play.” He walked toward the door.

  “Don’t you wanna see the inside of your tape?” Bird asked.

  “Nah. You can show me later.”

  Oh, well. Maybe it was for the best that she was working alone again. It gave her time to think. The sounds of the basketball game and her brother’s boom box slipped away as she studied the components of the cassette and sketched her newest schematic.

  The mind was the most incredible machine of all, she thought, because it did so many things at once. At this moment, for instance, Bird was sketching the interior mechanisms of a cassette tape, thinking about Halley’s Comet, and doing math simultaneously. By her calculations, after this year, Halley’s Comet wouldn’t appear again until 2061 and then 2134. She could hardly imagine the year 2000—a new millennium!—much less the years 2061 or 2134.

  Bird: What do you think Halley’s Comet will look like from the Challenger?

  Judith Resnik: I don’t know. Spectacular, probably.

  Bird: Everything looks spectacular from a space shuttle, I bet.

  Judith Resnik: That’s true.

  Bird: What’s it like, anyway?

  Judith Resnik: It’s like being far away and close at the same time. Floating in a world that belongs only to you, but also belongs to everyone else.

  Bird: That doesn’t make much sense.

  Judith Resnik: True. But neither does life on Earth.

  Bird: You’re right. It makes less sense every year. Sometimes I feel like I have a million questions, but I don’t know what most of them are. And I have no one to ask.

  Judith Resnik: You can ask me.

  Bird: Well . . .

  Judith Resnik: Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.

  Bird: A girl at school said being pretty isn’t my thing. She says being smart is my thing. I already know I’m smart.

  Judith Resnik: So, what’s your question?

  Bird: Am I pretty?

  Judith Resnik: In my opinion, being smart is pretty.

  Bird: That’s not really an answer.

  Judith Resnik: Maybe. But to be honest, it’s an unanswerable question.

  Bird: Why is it unanswerable?

  Judith Resnik: Because there is no pretty.

  Bird: That’s not true. There’s a girl at my school, Rachel. Everyone thinks she’s pretty.

  Judith Resnik: Okay. Then who’s prettier—Rachel or Dani?

  Bird: That’s impossible to say. They look nothing alike.

  Judith Resnik: Exactly. “Pretty” isn’t real, Bird. It’s one person looking at another and saying yes or no, based on their own personal judgments. And it’s transient. It’s like the wind—society says something is pretty one minute, then they decide it’s not pretty anymore, and everyone moves where it takes them. Pretty is nothing. Pretty is invisible. Pretty is what you make it.

  Bird repeated that phrase in her mind: Pretty is nothing. Pretty is invisible. Pretty is what you make it.

  Maybe if she said it enough times, she could wish it into being.

  Monday, January 13, 1986

  GREAT WAY TO START THE DAY

  The morning had not started well. Maybe it was an omen.

  Fitch had overslept, for one thing. He woke up with Space and Beyond under his head, its cover creased and folded, the last paragraph—Maybe you can start all over. Maybe you can rematerialize. Try it.—inching into his brain as the alarm buzzed.

  When he opened his eyes, his first thought was: I don’t want to go to school. This wa
s often his first thought, but today it ran through his mind like a mantra, and he lay there for twenty extra minutes. He listened to everyone else moving around the house, knowing that sooner or later his mother would call his name and the sound would grate him to the bone.

  He was right.

  “Fitch! FITCH!”

  He wanted to fake sick. Complain of a headache, stomachache, anything. But then he’d have to deal with his parents. They’d be suspicious. If one said yes and the other didn’t, it would turn into a big thing.

  It wasn’t worth it.

  He got ready in a hurry, but it wasn’t fast enough for his parents, of course.

  “It’s really inconsiderate to keep everyone waiting, Fitch,” his mother said, as they all zipped their winter coats. “The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.”

  “What difference does it make?” said Fitch. “Dad’s the one who drops us off.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Mr. Thomas opened the front door. A gust of cold wind came into the house. Cash and Bird went out, quickly.

  “The point is, you’re very inconsiderate. You only think about yourself.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Tam,” his father said, keys in hand.

  Mrs. Thomas was slipping on a glove. She stopped halfway. “Time for what, exactly?” she said.

  “Whatever this is,” his father said.

  Fitch stepped outside and moved quickly toward the car, where Bird and Cash were waiting. A few houses down, one of the neighbor girls—her last name was Riley; Fitch couldn’t remember her first—was walking out the door with her parents. The girl was in fourth or fifth grade. Fitch hoped his parents’ argument didn’t carry itself outside. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “It would be nice if you backed me up once in a while with the kids, you know,” his mother said. She yanked the second glove out of her pocket and put it on. “I don’t need you correcting me in front of them.”

  She closed the front door and locked it behind her.

  “Oh, right, right,” said Mr. Thomas, walking toward the Cavalier. “You’re the perfect parent. I forgot.” He shoved the key into the driver’s door. The lock popped up at the same time he muttered something under his breath. A colorful name for their mother, Fitch presumed.

  “Great way to start the day, Mike!” his mother called, as she unlocked her own car. “Real mature!”

  Cash, Fitch, and Bird couldn’t get inside the car fast enough. Cash took the passenger seat—he always got to sit in the front, somehow—while Bird and Fitch slipped into the back. Fitch watched the Riley girl get into her mother’s car. He wondered what life was like at the Rileys’. He’d mowed the grass for them a few times last summer. Mrs. Riley gave him an extra five dollars.

  “You kids should start taking the bus in the morning,” their father said, after a few minutes of silence. “It stops right on the corner.”

  Fitch looked out the window.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Bird said. “It could be—”

  “No way,” said Cash. “The bus comes at, like, seven in the morning. I don’t wanna be standing on the corner at seven in the morning.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Bird repeated, more quietly this time.

  Fitch didn’t have an opinion. There was no escaping school, so what difference did it make if they took a car or a bus?

  Once they got dropped off, Fitch went straight to his locker and Vern appeared in minutes, waggling his eyebrows and grinning stupidly.

  “Guess what?” Vern said, leaning against the row of lockers as Fitch arranged his things.

  “What? You grow a second head over the weekend or something?”

  Vern moved his head from left to right. “Not that I can tell. But I did talk to Rachel Hill on the phone yesterday.”

  “How did that happen?” said Fitch. “She dial the wrong number?”

  “Ha. Ha. Very funny, jerk-wad.”

  Fitch moved between his locker and the mess of his backpack. As Vern babbled on, a secret wish formed in the bottom of Fitch’s mind and rose to the surface. A wish that his locker would crack open and transport him somewhere. Like a portal. Make him Vader in the Death Star. Luke in the desert, even. Just put him anywhere but Park Middle School listening to Vern.

  Fitch tossed his backpack over his shoulder and nodded at all the right times as Vern talked and talked. His irritation took root and sprouted.

  Maybe it was the way Vern had walked up, all smug, like he’d accomplished some big feat.

  Maybe it was the way Vern never shut up.

  Maybe it was the way his mother had called him “inconsiderate” that morning.

  “So, what’d you do this weekend?” Vern finally asked.

  “Not much,” Fitch mumbled, which was the truth, although he’d had a peak moment yesterday afternoon when he’d discovered two quarters in the couch and three under a stack of old copies of the News Journal.

  Why couldn’t life be like a VCR, with rewind and fast-forward buttons? He’d fast-forward this day directly to the arcade. Presuming Amanda wouldn’t be there.

  And speaking of.

  “Hey, Vern. Hey, Henry.” She smiled and half waved as she sat down. She looked different today, but Fitch couldn’t figure out why and he didn’t want to spend too much time studying her face for an answer. “Did you have a good weekend?” she asked.

  He decided to ignore the question. Let Vern answer, since he was such a ladies’ man.

  “I certainly did,” said Vern. “What about you, Henry?”

  Vern kicked the back of his chair.

  Fitch bounced his knee up and down, up and down.

  Andrea Blumenthal, who sat in front of Amanda, glanced between him and Amanda and smiled knowingly. It was a smile like Rachel’s. Fitch could practically read her thoughts. You make a cute couple.

  He mumbled something like “yes.”

  This “Henry” thing was getting out of hand. It really was.

  An angry buzzing pulsed under his skin.

  “My weekend was okay,” said Amanda, though no one had asked. And now she launched into a breathless description of all she’d done—she went to the mall with her mother, she bought new sneakers, she rented movies—as Fitch faced forward, suddenly mesmerized by Ms. Salonga standing at the classroom door, his knee bouncing up and down and up and down, his skin buzzing, beads of sweat pushing their way out of his neck. He couldn’t really hear anything Amanda was saying, but one word rang like a bell and set his fingertips on fire. Henry, Henry, Henry.

  “. . . do you like movies, Henry? . . . what kind, Henry? . . . what do you think, Henry?”

  It was the last “Henry,” the final “Henry” right before the tardy bell, that set him off. Flicked a switch. Set fire to every cell in his body. He shot out of his chair with so much force that his desk shook and wobbled out of place, and he faced her, this Amanda, this girl who had ruined his mornings and now his afternoons, this girl with her round, ruddy cheeks and her big hair, this girl who just had to talk about his red face, who played Skee-Ball and gave him stickers, and he realized now why she looked different—she was wearing makeup, makeup. His red cheeks blazed. He clenched his fists at his sides, took a quick, deep breath, and yelled, with all the rage firing through his body: “My name is Fitch, you FAT, STUPID COW! Fitch! If we’re calling each other by our real names, I guess I should call you Chewbacca!”

  A piece of spittle flew out of his mouth and rested on his chin. He picked up his notebook, the one with the TIE fighter doodle that started it all, and hurled it across the room. It hit one of Ms. Salonga’s bookcases, fluttered open like a butterfly, then fell facedown. Someone screamed—a short, quick scream of shock—and then the bell rang and everything was silent, as if he’d stepped into a deep void in space. Someone laughed. And they were all laughing at what Fitch had said and done, which made him even angrier. It was a terrible thing, to laugh at someone else’s expense. But he was the one who’d put
the words out there in the first place.

  Amanda’s face was a mess of circles. Wide eyes, mouth like an O. She looked frozen, like she was in the middle of a game of freeze tag. But then she moved. Her eyes sparkled under their new shades of blue. But no, they weren’t sparkling. They were wet. Pooling. And her bottom lip trembled.

  Ms. Salonga’s voice drifted into his brain from faraway.

  “Fitch Thomas,” she said. “In the hall. Now.”

  But it was Amanda who left the room—quickly, in big, awkward steps. She moved clumsily. She stumbled. Her foot slid on Fitch’s splayed notebook and she wobbled, her arms in the air, like a character in a cartoon, and the whole room held its breath as she slipped and fell. Someone made a noise—a wrangled gasp; maybe the noise came from Amanda, it was hard to tell—and then her rounded arms were in the air again as she struggled to stand. Ms. Salonga reached out to help her, but Amanda didn’t clutch the teacher’s hands. Instead she used the bookcase for leverage and finally she was up and out of the room. Ms. Salonga took a step in her direction, but before she did, she leveled her eyes at Fitch, and he knew—right then and there—that he would remember that look for the rest of his life.

  Ms. Salonga often talked about the importance of eye contact.

  People need to feel seen, she always said.

  He was silent and still.

  Everyone was.

  No one was laughing anymore.

  No one breathed at all.

  ONE-UP

  All is fair in love and war. No rules. Survival of the fittest.

  It was time to do some one-upping. Show Penny why she should L/S Cash Nelson Thomas instead of Charlie Whatever.

  There was a problem, though.

  Cash couldn’t one-up anything.

  Let’s face it. Charlie was an honors student. Sure, he was probably terrible at sports, but what difference did that make? Cash wasn’t exactly Moses Malone, either.

  What, then?

  He’d have to go with his instincts.

  Luckily, Ms. Salonga provided the perfect opportunity.

  Truth be told, Cash didn’t pay attention to anything she said until she got to this part: “I want you to pair off,” said Ms. Salonga. “One of you take out a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle—remember, vertical is up and down; horizontal is across—and on one side, write ‘Humans’ at the top. On the other side write ‘Machines.’ Under each column, write a list of pros and cons for each.” She demonstrated on the board. “In what ways are humans better than machines and vice versa? What are the benefits of one versus the other? Think of as many examples as you can.”