by Erin Teagan
As soon as Claire closed the door to wait outside, I leaned over the bed. “I don’t trust her,” I whispered to Ella as she tied her shoes. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Who? Claire?” Ella said like it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.
“Yes,” I said firmly.
“Because she offered to help train you?” Ella said, standing up. “She’s just trying to help. Because honestly it took you a long time to pass the second part of the skills test yesterday.”
Anger flared in my belly, and I pushed all my covers off. “Because she kept moving away from me!”
Ella shook her head. “Why would she do that? And anyway, she already said she didn’t.”
“And we should just believe her?”
Ella sighed. It was obvious we did not have the same kind of feelings about Claire.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already passed all my skills tests, no thanks to her,” I said more softly.
Ella crossed her arms over her chest. “In case you forgot, not all of us have passed our skills tests.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Ella.”
She turned to the door.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Look, I just don’t think she’s a good friend.”
She looked back at me. “Maybe you’re the one not being a good friend.”
I sat up, shocked by her sharp words.
She dropped her shoulders. “Wait, no. Luci, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just, Claire’s not so bad, you know?” Ella said. “You should give her a chance so we can all be friends.”
I felt a knot in my belly. Giving people a chance was practically my specialty, but there was something about Claire. Taking my bed that first night, and the left-out feeling I had when I was around her and Ella. Plus, I really did think she moved away from me in the pool. But instead of saying something and making Ella upset again, I said, “All right.” And I gave her an A-OK sign and watched her head out of the cabin.
I ate breakfast with Thomas, Dominic, and Buzz under a tree by the beach.
“Where were you during the scuba lesson yesterday?” I asked Buzz, whose mouth was full of biscuits dipped in honey. “You missed the skills tests.”
“Nurse,” Buzz said, wiping his face with a napkin. “Too much bacon I think.”
Buzz took another bite of biscuit and didn’t say anything else. I got the sense that he wasn’t telling the whole truth, but I let it go.
Once we finished breakfast, we headed back to the hangar to work on our projects. I was relieved when Ella smiled and waved at me from her spot in front of the 3-D printer as she sorted through a bunch of colored plastic filament with Buzz. I really didn’t want to fight with her and decided then and there that I would try my hardest to give Claire another chance—for Ella’s sake.
When I headed over to the greenhouse, Claire was already there in her lab coat and goggles.
“No sprouts yet,” she said, inspecting one of the plant pillows.
“We should probably add another 100 milliliters of water,” I suggested.
She flipped the UV light off and started lining up the plant pillows on a tray to move them over to the metal worktable. I filled a beaker with water from the jug and pulled out a pipette, pushing the rubber bulb onto the end of the glass tube.
“What was it like to dive in the Bahamas?” I asked, trying to make friendly conversation.
Her face lit up. “It was the best. It was so clear. I saw so many fish. There was even a nurse shark that liked swimming around the boat, but the captain told me not to worry because they aren’t mean. When my dad came back to the surface, he brought me a giant conch shell.” She handed me the pipette to take my turn. “It was this huge.” She held her hands out wide.
“You didn’t go to the bottom with him?”
She shook her head. “I was only eight. They don’t let eight-year-olds scuba dive.” She laughed, like this was everyday common knowledge.
“But I thought you said—”
“I was with my dad for all the training, though,” she continued, “and they let me watch and try some stuff out in the pool. So, technically, I haven’t been diving yet, but it was pretty much the same thing.”
No, I thought, it was not the same thing. But I took a breath, remembering what Ella said about wanting us all to be friends. I wanted that too. I just needed to try a little harder. I suppose watching her dad dive gives her more experience than I have, I told myself.
“When I go to Cetus, my dad said he’ll fly in to dive down to the habitat with me,” Claire said, taking her turn with the pipette.
“You mean if you make the dive team?” I corrected her.
Claire smiled. “Right. Of course. But don’t you think the team is going to be you, me, and Dominic?”
I stood up, bringing the watered plants back to the growing area. “But what about Ella? She’s been practicing so much.”
“I know,” Claire said, putting her sunglasses on and turning on the UV light bank. “I told her she’s doing great and all, but the honest truth is that I worry she’s just not good enough yet.”
“She’ll be ready,” I said, because clearly Claire didn’t know the real Ella. The not-giving-up kind of Ella. “Who knows? Maybe it will be you, me, and Ella on the dive team.”
Claire clapped. “That would be perfect.”
I hoped she meant it.
It seemed like watering the plants really helped because the next day a little shoot of green peeked up through one of the plant pillows. Our first sprout.
“It’s so cute,” Claire said, both of us leaning over the growing area. “So delicate.”
We brought it to our greenhouse table, and I measured it with a ruler. Our tiny bit of butter lettuce was one centimeter tall. Claire pulled out the protocol binder and tore out an observation sheet, giving me the honor of making our first entry. I recorded the size and shape of our sprout and the bright green color.
“Want to take the picture?” I asked, handing Claire the lab camera. It looked like an ordinary camera except when Claire pressed the button, an instant photo of our little seedling popped out.
“Cool,” I said, taping it onto our observation sheet. “Perfect.”
“One more,” Claire said. She held the camera out, and took one of us, smiling with our baby sprout, and when we got back to our cottage that night, we hung it up on the wall.
And even though I still had some doubts about Claire, I had to admit that we looked like real friends.
On Friday, Claire, Dominic, and I sat on the side of the pool with our feet dangling in the water. The three of us had passed all of our skills tests and were ready for the big dive to the bottom of the pool on Sunday. We were there to cheer on Ella, Thomas, and Buzz as they tried to pass their tests.
While Ella was in the changing room, Thomas was on the platform, ready to retake the scuba mask skills test.
“You’ve got this, Thomas!” Dominic called, and Thomas gave him an A-OK sign.
Buzz was lingering by the racks of gear, clutching his stomach.
Thomas dipped under the water. Moments later, he sprang up, coughing and sputtering, his mask still full of water. He tore it off.
“You can do it!” shouted Dominic.
Thomas tried again, and when he came back up, he spit out his regulator, grinning.
Pirate Pete held up one of Thomas’s arms like he had just won a boxing match. “Winner!”
Sarah helped a dripping and shivering Thomas out of his scuba gear.
“Who’s next?” Pete asked.
“Me!” Ella said, coming out of the dressing room.
She was ready to do this skills test. I could see it in the way she walked across the pool platform. She knew she had it this time. As Ella waded into the pool with Pirate Pete, Marcus escorted a very pale-looking Buzz to the ramp.
“Where are you going?” Dominic asked as Buzz and Marcus walked past us. “You have like a thousand skills tests
to make up.”
“Nurse,” he groaned. “Bacon.”
“Really?” Dominic said. “Again?”
“I just can’t resist the stuff.”
Marcus led him to the ramp back down to the floor of the hangar.
“Since Marcus is helping Buzz, can someone else be in charge of timing for me so I can get this stuff put away?” Sarah asked, lining up Thomas’s gear and getting ready to sanitize everything and store it in the racks.
Claire hopped up. “I’ll do it!”
Sarah reached into a bin, pulled out a stopwatch, and handed it to Claire.
“Set it to countdown from fifteen,” Sarah instructed, watching Claire get it all set up. “There. Good. Hang it from your neck so you don’t drop it.”
But Claire was barely listening, skipping back to the rest of us at the side of the pool with the stopwatch in her hand. “You ready, Ella?”
Ella nodded and Pete held up three fingers and we counted down together. “Three … two … one … go!”
Claire started the stopwatch, and Ella pushed off the platform, floating into the deep end. I pretty much started holding my breath, worried. Because what if Claire was right? What if Ella wasn’t ready? Thomas sat with us, wrapped in a towel, the four of us swirling our legs through the water. Every few seconds, I peered over Claire’s shoulder and watched the countdown on the stopwatch. 14 minutes 34 seconds, 13 minutes 48 seconds … until my neck started hurting from the strain of it.
I kept trying to get Ella’s attention so I could give her an A-OK sign. I waved, made funny faces, and even splashed her a bit, but she was too focused.
“How’s the robot build going?” I finally asked Thomas after it was quiet for a minute or two, Ella still looking strong in the water.
“We just have a few more tweaks to make but we’ll be ready to test him in the pool on Sunday,” he said.
The big dive to the bottom of the pool on Sunday was our first chance to practice the tasks we would perform on Cetus, which meant I’d be doing an EVA to take samples from the bottom of the pool, pretending they were samples of sand, and Dominic and Thomas would practice a set of robotic operations and run their robot underwater for the first time.
I looked at the stopwatch again. Only six minutes and four seconds left and Ella was still smiling.
“Good job, Ella!” I cheered.
We stood up to root Ella on together, chanting, “Go, Ella! You can do it!”
As the time passed, I was feeling less and less worried about Ella not making it this time.
Soon Marcus came back with Buzz, who wasn’t holding his stomach anymore.
“Feeling better?” Thomas asked him.
Buzz patted his stomach. “I think I’m allergic to bacon. That’s what the nurse said, at least. It’s not good for the system.”
“Or maybe you’re allergic to scuba diving?” Dominic said, but Thomas shushed him.
Soon, we noticed Ella start to fade, her head not so high above the water anymore, with still a few more minutes to go.
“Let’s do a wave,” I suggested to the rest of the crew, hoping to make Ella laugh. “Like at a baseball game. Buzz, you start.”
Buzz bowed his head and came up fanning his arms to the ceiling, Dominic following a second later, and then Thomas and me, and finally Claire. But when Claire raised her arms … she lost her grip on the stopwatch and it dropped into the pool.
“The timer!” I yelled. Ella looked really tired at this point. Like, sinking below the surface tired.
Sarah looked at the pool and at Claire. “What? How did—you didn’t secure it around your neck? That’s why there’s a cord!”
And then Marcus was leaning over the side of the pool, trying to help Pirate Pete get Ella to the platform, where she stood, breathing hard.
Sarah ran over and fished the timer out of the pool, where thankfully it had landed on the shallow ledge. But I could tell from the look on Sarah’s face that it didn’t matter anyway. When she held it up, we could all see that the screen was dark.
“Stopwatches and water don’t mix,” Sarah said, speaking pointedly at Claire. “I told you to wear it around your neck.”
“I didn’t hear you,” Claire said. “It was an accident.”
Sarah put her hand on her hip. “Well do you know how many minutes are left on the timer?”
Claire shook her head. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “I wasn’t keeping track.”
The rest of us stood up, the entire pool area silent, and for a second I thought Ella was going to cry. “Does that mean I didn’t pass?”
All of us just stood there looking at one another. How could Claire have let this happen?
“Let me try it again right now,” Ella said, but we all knew her muscles were too tired. She’d never make it another fifteen minutes.
“Can’t we just assume she passed?” I blurted out. “The last I checked the time, it was so close to zero. She definitely made it.”
“But you can’t be sure,” Claire said. “I mean, what if there was more time left than you thought?”
I turned to her. “But there wasn’t, Claire.”
She made a sad shrug.
“Unfortunately, Ella,” Sarah said, coming to the side of the pool and kneeling down to talk to her, “if we can’t be sure of the time, we can’t pass you. It’s just the rule. For safety.”
Ella exhaled. “Does that mean I can’t do the dive on Sunday?”
“I’m sorry, Ella,” Sarah said. “The Aviation kids have the pool all day tomorrow for an activity, so there’s no time for makeups before the pool dive.”
My throat felt tight. Ella wasn’t going to dive with us.
“Does that mean she has no chance at making the dive team to Cetus?” This was so unfair.
Sarah and Marcus looked at each other. “Normally, yes that would be the case.”
“But we’ll take a look at the pool schedule,” Marcus said. “Maybe there’s a window for one more chance at makeups. Buzz needs to pass his skills tests too.”
Claire squatted down next to Sarah. “Ella, I am so sorry. You probably made it.”
And maybe it was the way she said “I’m sorry” that didn’t really sound sorry at all or how she told me Ella wasn’t going to pass her test when it was clear she would have, but like a jolt, I knew Claire dropped the stopwatch on purpose. My heart thumped in my chest. Was she so worried about Ella taking her spot on Cetus that she’d sabotage her friend like that?
I thought about what happened a few days ago and how I could have sworn Claire was moving away from me underwater. On purpose. Trying to make it so I didn’t pass my skills test. Could she have done the same thing to Ella?
Claire was telling Ella over and over how bad she felt for her, and all of a sudden I couldn’t take it.
“Did you do this on purpose?” I asked, so loud I even shocked myself. “So that Ella wouldn’t pass?”
Claire dropped Ella’s hand. “What? Of course not.”
Sarah looked at me. “Luci, it was an honest mistake.”
“What if it wasn’t?” But there was no way to prove it. Just my gut feeling. A really strong one.
“Luci …” Ella said.
“What? She told me the other day how we were all competing against one another and we know how much she wants to go to Cetus and—”
Claire glared at me, burst into tears, and ran out of the pool area.
“Luci,” Sarah said. “I know you’re upset for Ella, but if you have a problem with another camper, you should come to Marcus or me or Pete next time, okay?”
When I looked at Ella again, she looked mad. “Way to go Luci,” she said. “Way to make Claire feel completely awful when none of this was her fault. She’s been helping me for three days! Why would she purposely drop the stopwatch in the water?”
I knew why. Because she wanted to go to Cetus.
“It’s like you’re jealous or something,” Ella said, fuming.
“Jeal
ous?” I repeated, so shocked I could barely form my thoughts. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t need your help, Luci.”
“But that’s what friends do!” I said. “Why don’t you trust me when I tell you she’s not a good friend?”
“I guess I …” Ella paused. “… I just don’t. I mean would you after what happened at Space Camp?”
It was like a punch to the gut.
She was talking about how I almost got us sent home from Space Camp when I thought one of the other robotics teams was cheating. We took matters into our own hands and nearly ruined the entire robotics competition for another team. It had been all my idea—and in the end, it turned out I was wrong.
“It’s not like that, Ella,” I said. “Not this time.”
“That’s what you always say, Luci.” And then she stomped away, everyone else following her, leaving me alone on the pool deck.
That night our crew took a buggy ride over the dunes to get a glimpse of the International Space Station through a telescope. It would be in view for only four minutes or so.
When we got to the beach, I trailed behind the rest of the group. It was clear that I was the only one who didn’t think Claire was amazing and awesome and the best kid who ever lived. Nobody invited me to share a seat on their driftwood, and when Sarah and Marcus told everyone to quickly line up to see the space station, I kept getting bumped from the line until I was the very last person.
Sarah and Marcus were talking about something up at the front of the line, but with the wind and the waves, it was hard to hear.
I tapped Thomas on the shoulder. “Did you hear what they said?”
He turned around. “Sarah said astronauts on the ISS regularly video chat with their family on earth, but it won’t be like that when they go to Mars.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved that at least one person was talking to me. “Why?”
“Too far away,” Thomas said, moving up a bit in the sand. “A message from Mars could take ten or even twenty minutes to get to Earth, and then it would take another ten or twenty minutes to send a message back to Mars. So, you couldn’t really have a back and forth conversation that easily.”