“I’m home!” she called out, even though she knew no one was there.
It had taken more than half an hour to walk to Dani’s house. Bird’s nose was red and her hands were cold, even though she’d worn her gloves. She slipped the house key into her pocket, then took off all her winter gear. The Logans had a front hall closet just for coats. They hung there obediently and neatly. Bird put hers in there, too.
The Logan house was warm.
Bird took one step forward. Two. Soon she was in the living room. She eyed the coffee table where she and Dani had spread out their junk food and drunk soda. She walked to the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator. Removed a Sunkist. When she opened the can, the chhh of escaped carbonation filled the emptiness. She stood by one of the kitchen counters and took a deep sip. She put the soda on a coaster.
The Logans had a kitchen island in their house, but it was nothing like the one at the Nelson Thomases’. The Logans’ kitchen island was marbled, and polished. The Logans’ house had two stories, not one. A set of oak stairs led to the second floor. A set of carpeted stairs led down to the basement. There was ample space here. Space to breathe, move, exist.
Bird leaned over the fancy island and faced the two empty barstools on the other side.
“Things didn’t go as expected yesterday,” she said.
A clock ticked somewhere.
Bird hadn’t noticed that before.
It had never been so quiet anywhere on Earth.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
She straightened up and walked into the adjoining dining room.
She sat in the same chair as before.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
How long did she sit there? She couldn’t be sure. But she must have been sitting still—she must have been sitting very still—because something moved in her peripheral vision and she knew right away what it was. She didn’t move her head. Only her eyes.
Yes.
Chekov.
He was slender. Most of his fur was sleek and black, but his underbelly was white, just like the tip of his tail, which swung lazily in the air behind him. He stepped cautiously, one paw in front of the other. Bird was afraid to move. She didn’t want to scare him.
He paused when he saw her. Stopped.
Bird turned her head, slowly, slowly.
Chekov stepped forward. One step, two.
He meowed.
“It’s okay,” Bird whispered.
He seemed to understand.
He closed the distance between them quickly. Rubbed against her shins. Wove in and out.
When he meowed again and put his paws on the edge of the chair, Bird took a chance and lifted him up. He didn’t mind. He nuzzled and purred.
She scratched his back.
She put her nose in his fur.
“They didn’t make it,” she said.
At some point Bird fell asleep on the couch, and when she woke up, Chekov was nowhere to be seen. For a moment she forgot where she was. She breathed in the fresh scent of the throw pillow. She looked at the clean white ceiling above her. She turned to the mantel, where a clock ticked methodically.
And then she remembered.
It was past noon. She’d slept for a long time, and her body ached.
She sat up, stretched, and yawned.
She called for Chekov, but he didn’t come.
She finished her soda and placed it carefully in the trash.
She turned on the television. Days of Our Lives was on, which made her think of her mother.
She wondered if Mrs. Logan ever watched soap operas.
She wished she could stay here, on this couch, forever.
She wished the Logans would come home, see her there, and act like it was totally normal. We’ll show you to your room, they would say. They would make dinner together and sit at the table and do cheers at her good ideas, whatever they were. After they set their glasses down, she would ask, “Is it okay to cry for people you don’t know?” And they would comfort her. They would hear, really hear, every word she said. They would sit on either side of her and nothing would be about them. No raised voices. No lost questions. Just consensus.
She wished she was part of a different family.
She wished she was part of this family.
It wasn’t a pretty thought.
But there it was.
THAT NIGHT
Bird: I’m sorry.
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Bird:
Thursday, January 30, 1986
FIRST PERIOD
Fitch never thought of his family as a machine. His mind wasn’t built like Bird’s. When he thought of his family, he thought of sounds. His parents shouting. Music from his boom box. Basketball on the television and his brother and father hooting and hollering about things he wasn’t a part of; sports he didn’t understand. And he thought of his mother, her disappointed voice, her huffs and sighs.
But he never thought about Bird.
Not really.
Not until now.
She’d stayed home from school again today. Ms. Salonga had come to school after a full day’s absence, but Bird mumbled that she still didn’t feel well and their parents didn’t push the issue.
He’d never noticed before how each sound in the house affected the others, including Bird’s silence. She wasn’t loud to begin with, but her quietness had become the loudest thing in the family. Last night he’d knocked on her door to ask if she was okay. At one point Cash had casually asked if she had any new schematics. That’s when Fitch realized that no one had ever really asked about Bird’s drawings before. She went to her room without answering; he wasn’t even sure she’d heard them.
Fitch was rolling all these thoughts over in his head when Ms. Salonga started class.
Her eyes still looked tired.
When the tardy bell rang, she stood in front of her desk and leaned against it. She looked at all of them and none of them at once. She brought her hands together, put them under her chin, then dropped them at her sides.
“Class,” she began. “I want to talk about what happened on Tuesday. We spent the entire month preparing for this launch, and . . . well, obviously it didn’t go as planned.” Inhale. “As you know, the Challenger meant a lot to me. I know it meant a lot to you, too. And even though many of you would never admit it, I’m sure there are people in this room who are going through a mix of emotions. I know I am. Sadness and confusion, mostly. I want to know what went wrong, and why. Mostly I’m thinking about the astronauts. I’m thinking about all the opportunities they’ll miss, and the ones we’ll miss, too. There are many people out there who are angry and believe this was all for nothing. They say we should end the space program before more lives and money are lost. And that worries me, too.” Pause. “Last week, I asked each of your crews to come up with five reasons why we should invest in space exploration. Some of you struggled with this question. Many of you said you couldn’t come up with one reason. Many of you asked—that day and other days—What’s the point, Ms. Salonga? We’re this one little planet in this huge universe. How could we ever begin to know what’s out there? It’s too big, too vast. I have an answer for you—”
SECOND PERIOD
“—And it’s pretty simple, really. The only way for us to know what’s out there is if we’re out there, too. Yes, we are small. Yes, there are things we may never understand. But to be small is not to be inconsequential. Never mistake size for might.”
Ms. Salonga paced the front of the room, like her thoughts were floating in the air and she needed to catch up to them.
Some of the students rolled their eyes, exasperated at any lecture, trying to act casual and pretend they didn’t care. But Cash cared. At that moment, he cared a great deal.
Things had shifted at home
since Tuesday. There was a mood over the Nelson Thomas house. There was always a mood over the house, to be honest, but not this kind. At first he thought it was everywhere, as if the tragedy had blanketed American neighborhoods with a sense of surreal melancholy. But it wasn’t everywhere. The school hallways weren’t much different. Brant and Kenny were their same selves. Everyone seemed to be doing what they always did.
Last night, as he stared at Dr. J, wondering if Dr. J had seen the shuttle explosion and wondering what he thought about it, Cash realized that the tone of the house had been set by Bird. Not on purpose. It just was. Bird was the even-tempered rock of the family. She didn’t lose her temper like Fitch. She didn’t yell and argue like their parents. She didn’t break bones or flunk out. She was just Bird.
Cash thought about the night she’d told him how many days there were in summer vacation.
He thought of how she offered to bring him his homework after he broke his wrist.
He thought of how she’d tagged along to the X-ray room to ask a million questions.
He thought of other things, too.
Like all those schematics he knew nothing about. And the time she tried to talk to him about space and he was frozen by Mumm-Ra.
He wondered: What’s she doing now?
“Did you know that removing one single grain of sand can change an entire beach? A single grain of sand. Earth may be a tiny pinprick in comparison with the whole universe, but that doesn’t make it any more or less impactful than the sun or the moon.” Ms. Salonga was back at her desk again. She leaned on the corner. “If the sand never moves, it never changes. And each of us should strive to change every single day. To be better explorers. To be better teachers and students. To be better humans. To just be better.” She paused. She seemed to look directly at Cash, but maybe it was his imagination. “The astronauts on the Challenger trained rigorously for months to become the best explorers this nation had to offer, despite the risks, despite the possibility that the worst would happen. We owe it to ourselves, and to everyone, to offer our best to the world. To quote the words of one of the brightest people I know: The universe is waiting. So what are we waiting for?”
BRIGHT STAR
Checking the pay phone for forgotten quarters had become rote for Fitch and Vern. One of them would inevitably break away from the sidewalk on their way to the arcade and beeline to the dingy phone on the side of the gas station. After a quick swipe through the coin return—yielding nothing, always—the journey would continue.
Today it was Fitch who jogged over.
Today it was Fitch who swiped the coin return.
Today he found a quarter.
His fingertips brushed its familiar ridged edges.
His ears heard the clink of the coin.
It was like finding gold.
ONE OF BILLIONS
Bird gathered all her schematics. She held them in her arms, close to her chest, and stood up from her desk. She walked into the kitchen.
There were more than she’d thought. When she first put them in a pile, a twinge of pride moved through her, and she quickly stamped it down. She slipped her pride underneath a steel compressor and bore down until it flattened out and disappeared.
The compressor was called reality.
She was plain.
She was just a girl.
She was just a girl in Park, Delaware.
Machines weren’t worth studying.
Machines were dangerous.
She would never be an astronaut.
She shouldn’t want to be one, anyway.
Astronauts died.
They died for nothing—because what was the point?
She was just one of billions of people, floating out in space, so small and pointless.
NEW CASH
Runners needed a healthy diet. That was true of all athletes, of course, but Cash hadn’t considered himself an athlete in a long time. Today, though? Today, he was a runner in training, so when he got home from school, with no one there but Bird, he put two oranges and one banana on the counter in front of him and proceeded to eat. No junk food. This would be the start of a new life. The life of a runner. He could practically feel the wind against his face already. He was so lost in the imaginings of it all that he barely remembered eating the fruit, but suddenly he was standing there with a full belly and a pile of peels. It had been tricky to peel the fruit with his cast, but he persevered. That’s what new Cash did—he persevered.
He tried to carry all of the peels in one hand to the trash, but a few wayward pieces of orange rind fell to the floor. He cursed as he opened the lid of the garbage can and tossed everything inside.
He knew something was off immediately.
A stack of papers was stuffed in the trash.
He brushed some of the peels aside, but he already knew what they were. He recognized Bird’s handwriting. He saw pencil lines and arrows pointing to this and that. He picked up one peel after another—a strange reversal—and soon he was holding the peels in his hand again.
She hadn’t just tossed one out.
It was an entire stack.
Normally he wouldn’t rush to pull things out of the garbage, but he didn’t think twice about it today. He tossed his peels in the sink—something to worry about later—and took the schematics out of the trash. Some of the edges were damp. Others were dotted with old coffee. For the most part, though, they were in good shape. Maybe they hadn’t been in there long. He held them as best as he could in the crook of his left arm, then walked down the hall and knocked on Bird’s door.
“What,” she said, sounding more like Fitch than herself.
Cash had to do some fancy maneuvering to open the door without dropping all the papers, but he managed it.
Bird was sitting on her bedroom floor. She had their dad’s old Walkman on her lap. The headphones draped around her neck. He couldn’t tell if there was a tape inside.
“I found these in the trash,” Cash said.
“So?”
“Why are you throwing them away?”
“Why not?”
“It’s all your work.”
“I know what they are. I’m the one who made them.”
Cash’s heart did something strange then. It grew and pushed against his rib cage, like a balloon filling with water.
“What’s the matter with you?” Cash asked.
“Nothing,” Bird said. “I’m just done with those stupid schematics. It was a waste of time.”
Cash paused. “Is this because of the Challenger?”
“What do you care?” said Bird. She turned her attention to the Walkman.
“Ms. Salonga talked about it today. She said a lot of stuff about how we should be our best selves because that’s what the astronauts did . . .”
“Lot of good that did them, huh?”
“. . . and she said something really cool about sand. Like, we’re all grains of sand, and even though Earth is so small, that doesn’t mean we aren’t powerful, or something.”
“Wow,” Bird said, flatly. “Fascinating.”
Cash sighed. “I’m not saying it right.”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Bird said. “I don’t want my drawings, so you can put them back in the trash.”
She didn’t wait for him to say anything else.
She put the headphones on and turned the other way.
Friday, January 31, 1986
THE MOST PREDICTABLE MACHINE
Bird was curious about Ms. Salonga’s lecture—she couldn’t help herself. What had she said? Did she mention Judith Resnik? What did she say, exactly?—but she put her curiosity under the steel compressor. Most of all she wondered if Ms. Salonga thought people should end space exploration for good.
No. That was impossible.
Well, maybe it was impossible for Ms. Salonga, but not for Bird.
Bird was operating in reality now, and in this new place, nothing much mattered. Judith Resnik and the other astronauts were gone for
ever, and they didn’t make it to space. NASA had designed, studied, and built the machines, and the machines had betrayed them.
Bird spent the day molding and shaping this new belief system. When Monday came around, she was going to be a different person. She wouldn’t concern herself with silly drawings or becoming the first female shuttle commander. She would direct all that energy toward things that actually mattered. Maybe she’d dust her eyelids with blue shadow like the Jessicas and figure out what she was really supposed to be doing in the world.
She didn’t say a word in science. Not to Devonte, not to Ms. Salonga. She even shuffled away when Dani asked if she was okay, partly because she felt a detached sense of guilt for sneaking into Dani’s house, which was technically a crime—but this is the new me, she told herself, new reality, new me—and partly because she didn’t want to talk about whether she was okay or not.
Here was the plan:
She would burrow into her brain.
She would reconstruct her thoughts.
She would emerge when it was safe, like Chekov.
When she emerged, it would be a new, safer world.
It would be safer because she wouldn’t have any expectations.
If you have no expectations, you have no disappointments.
She would expect nothing from herself and nothing from anyone else.
And if she didn’t become a shuttle commander or whatever, it wouldn’t matter, because who cared anyway?
It would just take a little mental training, that’s all.
When she studied the logic under her mental microscope, she couldn’t find a single flaw.
If she’d never been looking forward to the launch, then she wouldn’t have had to hide in the bathroom.
If she didn’t expect to be an astronaut, then it wouldn’t matter if she became one or not.
Look where expectation has gotten me, she thought, as she walked home. Wandering around other people’s houses like a maniac.
As she hung up her winter coat and tossed her backpack aside, she thought: I wanted to be part of another family, but the reality is, this is my family. And families don’t change. You can’t count on families, just like you can’t count on machines.
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