Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon

by Richard Roberts

  I knew that because of the other difference between this hall and the last. Kids! Dressed in the same awkward costumes as adults, they laughed and chatted all the way down the row, mostly loitering in doorways of what I guessed were their rooms. They all had a sameness to them that reminded me of the cookie cutter dockworkers. They were all thin and light-skinned, and nearly all of them had mouse brown hair.

  Conversation didn’t entirely stop when we appeared, but it certainly slowed down. That I understood. The peculiar ritual I noticed was half a dozen kids, four boys and two girls, disappearing into their rooms and then returning with leather and brass goggles. They either hung the goggles around their necks like collars, or strapped them up on their foreheads. All of the kids with goggles watched us more intently than any of the others. Claire got the most stares from regular kids, but the ones with the goggles ignored Ray and Claire entirely. They had eyes only for me.

  I took my own goggles off my forehead, twirled them around by my finger, and then hung them around my neck. Eyes narrowed, accompanied by smiles.

  The first person to say anything to us was a boy, who said with a sneer, “Why, Master Remington is back, and he brought friends.”

  Remmy’s face set in fury, but she didn’t respond.

  Only that one boy seemed actively unfriendly, and an especially pale, goggle-wearing girl squeaked with excitement as she darted out of her bedroom to meet us. “Remmy, who are they? More Jets?”

  “Jets don’t dress like that,” a boy a couple of doors down contradicted her.

  “Oh, we’re from Earth,” Claire demurred, her tone and smile as light and casual as if she didn’t know she was setting off a conversational nuclear bomb.

  “Really from Earth?”

  “Remington’s friends are bigger liars than he is.”

  “Is it true, Remmy?”

  “Are there more of you? Is there going to be a new wave of immigration?”

  “How did you get past the Puppeteers?”

  The mob trailed behind us like a comet’s tail, until at the very end of the hall we found our rooms. 59 and 59 on opposite sides, Ray and Claire’s. Remmy opened the wooden door to look room 58 on the girl’s side over, and didn’t seem pleased by the view. There was only one room 60. I’d actually gotten the room at the very end of the hall.

  I opened the door to room 60, and the crowd around us pushed me, Ray, and Claire into it. I took in as much as I could in the confusion. Wood paneled walls, narrow bed, empty shelves, dresser and chest at the foot of the bed. A hatch on the wall labeled ‘laundry.’

  I sat on the bed, and Ray and Claire joined me on either side. Ray unfastened the string tying his duffel bag together, and handed me a plastic-wrapped hamburger and a cardboard box of spicy fried potato wedges. Claire got a casserole―and there could be anything in a Misty Lutra casserole―and Ray served himself an entire beef roast and a bag of carrots.

  The crowding kids had managed to stop themselves at the doorway, but the boy in front sniffed the air. “That… smells… good.”

  The girl next to him took a deeper breath than I’d have believed her corset allowed. “I’ve never smelled anything like it.” From her awed tone, she meant that.

  Why not? We wouldn’t be here long, and Red Herring’s food stocks would keep refilling by whatever secret method Spider had arranged. I reached into the bag and pulled out a platter of orange chicken on rice and another of fried noodles with shrimp. I held them out, and kids crept into the room so the boy could take the orange chicken, and the girl the fried noodles.

  Ray didn’t even pause in wolfing down his roast beef, just held out a fistful of forks.

  The boy scooped up a bite, and the girl the same. They both had goggles on their foreheads, I noticed. When they made ‘mmm’ noises of satisfaction, more kids behind them grabbed forks and took bites. The platters disappeared into the crowd, passed back so the lucky kids could try Claire’s Mom’s cooking before they ran out.

  Ray, a sweetheart even if a lecherous one, passed over a pan of grilled salmon and a nacho bowl. Okay, those had to be Miss Lutra’s cooking. Nobody else made a big bowl of salsa with beans and fruit in it and stuck it like a pincushion with chips.

  “Is that Earth food?” the girl in front asked me.

  “Are those Earth clothes?” the boy asked Claire. He had rather a Rayish grin. These people were way too excited about twelve inches of Claire’s calves.

  From the ceiling, an echoing voice announced, “Lights Out in five minutes!” It held that hint of wobble Miss Rattlebottom’s voice had, and maybe the words weren’t emphasized quite right.

  Sixty kids groaned in unison. Well, a lot of kids. Sixty rooms didn’t mean sixty kids, and come to think of it, that would be one hundred nineteen kids, including us.

  Remmy joined in the universal groaning. She’d just shoved her way through the crowd to join us, and now joined the reluctant exodus. Everybody shuffled back to their rooms, but with so many in the way, it took her nearly half a minute to reach the door.

  Ray used the time to pass her a submarine sandwich, a pair of scotch eggs, and a twenty-four ounce bottle of cola.

  Her chest puffed out at that, and she gave a jerk of her head, looking at Claire and Ray in turn. “You two better get going. You do not want to be late for Lights Out.”

  Hands full of food, Ray and Claire shrugged and followed the crowd, presumably to their own rooms. Remmy shut the door behind them.

  I finished my french fries seconds before Lights Out. Remmy had been right, they were serious. With no further announcement, the light in my room switched off. The room went pitch black.

  Fine by me. I was tired. I dumped my food wrappings in the wastebasket, wriggled out of my jumpsuit, and plopped back on a pleasantly springy mattress. What a wonderful change from the Red Herring’s creepy Puppeteer coffins.

  I fell asleep.

  he room wasn’t quite as black as I’d thought. The feeblest amount of light leaked around the edges of the door. Large objects made lighter shapes against a deeply shadowed background, but that was better than being completely blind.

  One of those shapes leaned against the wall, his long rabbit ears waggling. He held one hand up to his face, like he was smoking a cigarette. I caught up with his words in mid-sentence. “―not like me, after all. Juliet, you’ll have to warn―”

  I sat up.

  Harvey was gone. Had that been Harvey? I’d heard the same man’s voice from the Red Panacea Clinic’s PA. He still sounded worried.

  …hadn’t he?

  I couldn’t remember clearly. It was like a dream.

  I looked around the dark room, with its bare shelves and no sign of a man with rabbit ears. It wasn’t like a dream―it was a dream. It had felt like a dream, and now, I felt awake.

  Awake, but still tired. I put my head back on the feather pillow and zonked out. My last coherent thought was that it would be nice to get back to my own bed. This vacation in space had been just what I needed.

  he lights turning on woke me up properly. I looked around for a light switch, and didn’t see one. Lying in bed late was evidently not a thing on Jupiter’s moons.

  My door stood slightly ajar, and from outside came the sound of feet thumping and girl’s voices. Just barely, the sound of showers starting to spray filtered through.

  I made the obligatory grumble and sat up, dangling my legs off the side of the bed.

  The door opened wide, and Claire skipped in. There might be no sunrise this far out in the solar system, but her glowing blond presence and early-morning energy tried to make up for that.

  With a bit of a jolt, I realized she was only wearing underwear, but so were the girls stampeding through the hallway around her. They just wore a lot more underwear. Poofy bloomers and shapeless undershirts? I didn’t wear that much fully dressed!

  The awkward sensation creeping up must have shown on my face, because Claire skipped a greeting and went straight to, “The boys’ rooms are locked,
silly.”

  As a proper daughter of the Lutra family, she had, of course, checked. Not making me feel any less embarrassed, Claire!

  At least she immediately changed the subject. “How did you sleep?”

  “Interesting question. The beds are nice, but I had the-”

  I didn’t get to tell her about my dream. Clicking and rattling presaged an automaton rolling down the track to stand in front of my door. Her head and shoulders shook and flopped, but the voice was even more convincingly human than the automaton in the lobby. It conveyed strict disapproval particularly well. “Get to the showers, girls, or no breakfast.”

  Claire gave her the classic singsong reply, “Yes, Miss Brassfarthing.”

  I looked around for my jumpsuit. It had disappeared from the floor. How did they manage that?

  Claire didn’t let me stall. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of bed and out into the hall. Yes, all the other girls were in their underwear too, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

  As she’d said, every door on the boys’ side of the hall was shut tight. All the doors on the girls’ side stood open. The hall had doorways besides the bedrooms, and Claire pulled me into one.

  Oh, criminy. A communal shower. Really? What was this, an athletic summer camp?

  Most everybody’s underthings had already been dropped into a laundry hamper. I put that off as long as possible, brushing my teeth at one of the sinks and staring resolutely at the faucet.

  Nobody else was shy. Nobody. Claire fit in perfectly, but, of course, she could stand around and chatter with the others in absolute confidence that she was the prettiest girl in the room.

  I caught, “Are all Earth underclothes so small?” and ran for the showers. If I had to stand in a line with a bunch of other showering girls, at least I could turn up the spray so I couldn’t hear them, and focus on the shampoo and soap.

  Turning off the water, I wrung my hair out and looked over at the laundry hamper―empty. Folded into the wall, in fact. Fine. I wrapped myself in the biggest towel they had, and beat feet for my bedroom.

  Toweling myself dry gave me time to reflect on one thing I’d noticed. I’d always thought my hair was long, past my shoulders so I could put it in braids. There was hardly a girl here whose hair hadn’t reached her waist. Remmy’s actually reached her thighs, if barely. They’d all worn it tied up last night, and I hadn’t noticed.

  Dresses filled my wardrobe. Voluminous Jupiter underwear filled my dresser. A set of both lay on top of the chest, with a corset and tiny button boots. My goggles, the only untouched item of my own, sat primly on top. No, wait. When I pulled up the underwear, I found my belt pouches underneath. Considering what they carried, that was a good thing.

  The underwear felt bulky to wear, but also perfectly decent. That was a good thing, because I’d hardly begun braiding my hair when Claire bounced into my room, carrying her own clothes.

  Other girls thundered past behind her into their own rooms, all laughing and talking.

  Slipping into her own pajama-like underclothes, Claire said, “This is shy even for you, Penny.” The girl whose father’s identity was completely up for grabs sounded casual and comfortable about the whole thing.

  Okay, that was just plain catty. Taking a deep breath, I blew it out slowly and let the tension drain along with it.

  That done, I gave Claire half a smile. “Maybe it’s that the boys are right there.”

  On cue, my bedroom door swung shut. A click announced the lock setting itself. Barely audible footsteps outside hinted that it was the boys’ turn at the showers.

  Claire slipped on her petticoat, and then the dress over it. She made it look easy. I had to fumble with the sleeves. As she fastened up buttons, she asked, “Help me with the corset?”

  Lifting one eyebrow and squinting the other eye, I peered at our corsets in disdain. “You really want to wear that?”

  “When in Rome. The dorm mother will pitch a fit if we don’t.”

  I had to bow to that logic. I wasn’t even sure how to wear a corset, but Claire unfastened hooks I hadn’t seen, wrapped it around her waist, and then turned her back. “Tie me up?”

  I tugged the laces until they didn’t hang, and had just started a bow knot when Claire instructed, “Tighter.”

  Oookay. I gave the laces a good pull all the way down the row, and was starting to tie when she interrupted me again. “Tighter, please?”

  My mouth hung open. “Seriously?”

  “As tight as you can.”

  “Seriously?”

  Claire laughed, and you know what? I did too. It was great having friends more adventurous than me. Claire wasn’t even using her power. Her hair remained pale, not yellow. She explained it all in a downright eager tone. “My mother wore these for years. They’re common among supervillains. I want to try it. Don’t you?”

  “Well…”

  “You don’t have to tight-lace,” she promised, “But don’t hold back on mine.”

  I shrugged, and gave the top row of laces a hard yank, and then another. Claire didn’t protest, so I kept going. At the end, I had to add a granny knot to the bow to keep up the tension.

  Claire swished around. With her blond hair, the bright yellow dress made her look like a daffodil. The tiny waist tried hard to make her look like a wasp, instead.

  I hooked my own corset around my waist, and the pressure felt weird even without the laces tied. I gave Claire the skeptical tilted eyebrows. “Can you even breathe in that?”

  “Easily.” I had to admit, she didn’t sound wheezy. “The back support is kind of nice. What I don’t get is how Mom did acrobatics wearing one of these.”

  The funny thought forced a giggle out of me. “Practice?”

  Claire tied up my corset. I’d lucked out with a dull, respectable grey. Sitting down on the bed together, we were buttoning up our shoes when a click and my door sliding a few inches open signaled that the boys’ showers had finished.

  I took a few wobbly steps. I am not a heels girl, and these weren’t even high. The corset had already stopped feeling weird, but then I wasn’t wearing mine tighter than a normal belt. What surprised me was that I had no trouble walking in this narrow skirt. The loose pleats gave me more room to move than had been visible from the outside, and around my knees they flared out anyway. What I couldn’t do was run, and as a supervillain, that did not please me.

  Boy, did the familiar feel of buckling my goggles up on my forehead help. Claire and I trotted out to meet the other girls, and I immediately grabbed Remmy by the shoulder.

  “First, we are getting our clothes back, even if Vera has to melt down the laundry room door. Second, how did you get pants?!”

  Seriously, how did she get pants? Other than losing all the grease except a few stains in her hair, Remmy’s outfit hadn’t changed. Oh, the new shirt didn’t have sleeves torn to shreds, but she wore the same pants with pouches full of tools. Like me, she wore her corset tight enough not to hang, and that was about it.

  Remmy patted my wrist. “It’s cool. The automatons aren’t as smart as they pretend. They’ll bring your laundry back as soon as it’s clean, because that’s what they do with laundry. Until they see you wearing it, all clothing is clothing.”

  I pointed down the hall at Miss Brassfarthing stationed in front of the exit doors with her hands folded over her hips. “She can see you. What gives?”

  Now Remmy grinned, big and toothy. “I hid a bunch of spares last time I was here. Nobody found them. She’ll complain after lunch if I don’t have repairs to make, but mechanics get a lot of extra privileges. If you stayed here, you’d get to ask for different clothes.” The grin turned into a smirk. “Nothing ‘scandalous’ or ‘improper’, of course.”

  This dress felt like wearing a parka and a circus tent at the same time. My only relief was that the outfit didn’t include a bustle. And I could seriously do with another hour’s sleep. “No way. This place is a control freak’s dream.” Looking back over
my shoulder, I gave Claire a smirk. “If I’d been born here, I wouldn’t even have tried being a hero.”

  She laughed, and stepped up so close, her arm pressed to mine. Leaning her head towards my shoulder and lowering her voice, she said, “Which reminds me. You didn’t get to talk to Calvin and Juno like I did. If we refuse to help their revolution, I don’t think they’ll take it well.”

  Discretion didn’t mean Remmy couldn’t hear us. She gave a sarcastic snort. “You haven’t even begun to see ‘control freak.’ You’ll admit my brother is right before the day is over.”

  Doors clicked and opened on the boys’ side of the hall. The male half of Callisto’s tween population hurried out to join us. With no further signal, everyone solidified into lines, girls on the left, boys on the right, facing Miss Brassfarthing at the head of the hall.

  “Breakfast time!” Remmy told me and Claire over her shoulder as the lines started to move.

  The kids in Dorm M were more or less our age. None of them looked younger than Remmy. Of course, thanks to the hopefully soon forgotten shower incident, I now knew that Remmy was so short and coat hanger thin, she needed a baggy shirt and two inch boot soles just to look eleven.

  The kids in the cafeteria ranged from kindergarteners to pushing college age, all packed into one giant dining hall. I was back in school all over again. At least this cafeteria was much better decorated than the one back home. Hardwood chairs beat hard plastic chairs, and the brass-edged wooden tables were downright lovely―and hardly vandalized at all! The table Ray, Remmy, Claire, and I sat down at only had one deeply scratched ‘M+G’, proving that the habits of love were universal, or at least interplanetary.

  Automatons rolled up and down the aisles with carts. We collected brass trays with brass tableware. The dishes were merely heavy china, but boy, did the Jupiter colonists like brass and wood. I liked brass and wood, which made me much happier about the whole back-to-school atmosphere.

  Then I made a mistake. I looked at my plate.

  The farms on the top level must have been productive, because half our meal was a pile of chopped up fresh fruit. The bread looked stale, and crunched when I gripped it, but smelled rich, with more than a hint of corn. Both of those were acceptable. The meat lay in its bowl like a lump of congealed glue, off-white and shiny-crusted. It smelled like fish and plastic, not two flavors I wanted combined.