by Erin Teagan
I looked up, my ears popping a bit, and I saw the surface: a wavy ceiling so far away. The pool was pretty quiet except for the noises of our scuba equipment tapping against the side of the tank. It was like the entire world was on mute.
When Claire’s ears cleared, we continued all the way to the bottom, the weights on our belts just heavy enough to allow us to walk on the floor of the pool, half bouncing, half swimming. Thomas and Dominic were already down there with Marcus, looking out the portholes into the hangar. Buzz must have gone back down the ramp from the pool deck because he was there on the other side of Dominic’s porthole, making fish faces and sticking out his tongue.
I picked up one of the bowling balls at the bottom of the pool, surprised that, underwater, it felt as light as a piece of tissue paper. Is this what a bowling ball would feel like in space? I wondered. Thomas swam up to me and pointed at a basketball net by the EVA structure. I dove forward, holding the bowling ball over my head, and dunked it like I was a superhero.
Next to the basketball hoop was an even larger ball that looked like it was made of solid concrete. It said “100 lbs” on the side and yet I could pick it up without a problem. Then I tried throwing it to Thomas, which wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The effort of pushing the ball through the water forced me backward a bit and right into Claire, who was standing behind me.
I touched her shoulder, because I didn’t know the hand signals for “sorry, are you okay?” She touched my shoulder back and then motioned to the scuba trainers, who I realized were tapping their watches. Rock music started playing through the underwater speakers. It was time to practice our EVA.
We had already decided before we started the dive that Claire would carry the pail while we collected the samples, and I would deliver the samples to the storage area. I looked over my shoulder at the underwater storage closet. It was past the basketball net and under the giant apparatus made out of PVC piping where the boys were going to test run their robot. I just had to bring the samples into the storage room and leave them there. Simple.
Claire and I swam the perimeter of the pool, filling the pail with the balls, which were so floaty one of us had to lift the lid on the pail while the other one quickly stuffed the ball inside and then snapped the lid closed before they could float back out. The same thing would happen if we were doing our EVA outside the International Space Station in zero gravity. We swam past the boys, Claire grabbing a ball from under Dominic’s foot. Thomas handed us another ball that was wedged against one of the pipes. Dominic was running the robotics operation using a waterproof remote control, and the big robot inched forward across the pool floor.
The scuba trainers were perched on top of the PVC pipes, watching us do our jobs. Marcus gave me an A-OK sign and I gave him one back.
Claire and I did one last quick sweep of the pool to look for more balls, and then when we were sure we had gotten them all, I took the pail and swam into the storage area. I spotted the target on the floor at the back of the little room where I was supposed to leave the pail, but when I swam all the way inside, I accidentally hit the door with one of my air tanks and the door slid down behind me.
Startled by the darkness, I dropped the pail, blinking to adjust my eyes. I felt for the door, pushing myself against it, groping for a handle or for any kind of opening. But it was no use.
Not wanting to give up, I pushed and pulled so hard that I felt water seep into the bottom of my scuba mask. But the door still wouldn’t budge. I was trapped.
My heart was thumping out of my chest, and I felt as if I couldn’t get enough air through my regulator. It was as if I was stuffed into Izzy’s little car again with no one to help this time. I banged on the door, but underwater, it made barely any sound at all.
And where was Claire? Didn’t she see that the door had shut, that I was trapped? Wasn’t rule number one that we were supposed to stay together?
My mind raced. I couldn’t scream. I had no voice underwater. I kicked and banged the door, but it was no use. Did anyone else see me go into the storage room? The trainers? Were they watching? What if they all thought I went to the surface without them? How much air did I have left in this scuba tank?
My mask was now halfway filled with water, and panic was creeping up my spine. I reminded myself to breathe through my mouth. Ignore the water in my mask. I was afraid to try and get the water out. Afraid I’d forget how to do it and accidentally get water up my nose. And then what?
My heart was beating so fast and hard, I could hear it like a drum in my ears and I worried I was having a heart attack. I started feeling dizzy, and I made myself think of the time when Raelyn and I were painting our nails bright blue and Izzy wanted her nails painted too and then she walked around staring at them for the rest of the morning. My heart throbbed.
And then I saw a crack of light from the door. The crack got bigger and bigger until Pete’s face appeared and he reached in and grabbed me out of the storage room. He swam me back to the ladder where we went back up, a few rungs at a time. He checked my air gauge and was throwing a thousand hand signals at me, and the only one I could remember to give him was the A-OK sign, even though I wasn’t.
Everyone was already at the pool platform when we reached the surface. Even Claire.
She had left me.
Pete guided me to a place on the ledge where I could stand, and Sarah, who had jumped into the water, helped me take off my halfway-filled-up mask and the heavy air tank.
Claire walked over and put her hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away, my heart beating in overdrive again. “You left me down there?”
She looked stung. “I turned around and then all of a sudden you were gone and I thought you went back up already.”
“That’s a lie,” said a voice from behind me. Ella was standing at the side of the pool, a scuba mask pushed on top of her head. “I saw you leave, Claire. As soon as Luci swam into the storage room, you saw Thomas and Dominic going back up the ladder with Marcus and you went with them. If you had stayed with her, you would’ve seen that she was trapped and could have gotten her out of there sooner. She could have drowned.” Her voice was shaking.
Claire shook her head. “Okay, but I was just—”
“Claire,” Marcus interrupted. “I thought you were having an emergency. You were giving the hand signal that you needed to go up. That is the only reason I let you come to the surface without your partner. And I had no idea that Luci was stuck in the storage room. I just thought you needed to get up fast and that Luci would follow with Pete.”
Marcus seemed filled with guilt, but I knew this was not his fault.
“Claire?” Sarah said, her voice calm and measured. “Were you having an emergency?”
The whole team was around us now, waiting to hear what Claire had to say.
“No, I … um … I—I didn’t know she was stuck in there.” Her face was bright red.
“Because you swam away and left her!” Ella said.
“They said no dillydallying!” Claire yelled.
And then there was a shift in the room.
Sarah stepped up to the edge of the pool. “We also instructed you never to leave your partner, Claire. You put Luci in danger because you left. Partners need to trust and count on each other. That is a crucial part of working on a team in space.”
Marcus squeezed water out of his bathing suit. “You’re lucky that Luci is okay, that something terrible didn’t happen. To leave a partner is reckless.”
Sarah handed Claire a towel. “I think we need to talk.”
Claire took the towel, looking down at her feet the whole time. And then she disappeared down the ramp with Sarah and Marcus.
Everything was silent except for the muffled music coming from the pool speakers. And with no one talking, I had to breathe in and out just to make sure I wasn’t still underwater.
We didn’t see Claire for the rest of the day. But after dinner, when Ella and I walked to the bay with ice-cream cones, w
e spotted Claire sitting with Sarah on the front steps of our cabin, her bags beside her in the sand.
Ella looked at me and we steered ourselves away from our cabin to the other side of the beach. We sat on top of a picnic table watching the water, licking our ice cream in silence.
“Luci …” Ella started after a few minutes. I already knew what she was going to say. She had been apologizing all day about not believing me about Claire, and I kept telling her to stop because she was my friend, and if you asked me, friends were allowed to make a mistake every so often.
“Really, Ella, it’s okay,” I said, catching a drip of melting ice cream with my tongue and trying very hard to not look over to our cabin.
“Luci, stop saying that,” she said. “It’s not okay. I should have trusted you. You kept telling me Claire was bad news, and I just kept ignoring you.”
“But you had a reason not to believe me,” I said, thinking back to Space Camp. “The last time I had a strong feeling about someone, I was wrong, and I got us in big trouble.”
She shook her head. “Yeah, sorry for bringing that up so much.”
“It’s hard, though, when you just have this gut feeling about someone and no real proof, you know?” I said, nibbling on my cone.
“Well, maybe if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in being friends with Claire, I would have seen that you were right about the stopwatch and I could have saved you from what happened in the pool.”
“That’s not your fault,” I said.
“I just had this idea of what Lance Jacobs’s daughter would be like and how cool it would be to be friends with her,” Ella admitted.
“I guess I get that.” I finished my ice cream and slid off the picnic table, dipping my sticky hands in the bay.
“I’m sorry for not believing you,” Ella said, joining me at the water’s edge. “I hope you’ll still be my friend.”
“Forever and ever,” I said. And then Ella gave me a hug, which if you knew Ella was a rare thing.
Our hug was cut short by Marcus, Dominic, Buzz, and Thomas joining us on the beach, Buzz still finishing up his after-dinner ice cream.
“Team meeting,” Marcus announced, instructing everyone to sit on the sand. We all plopped down, the six of us forming a circle. I looked for Sarah and Claire at our cabin, but they were gone.
“Is Claire getting expelled from camp?” Buzz asked, crunching into his cone.
“No,” Marcus said. “Not expelled. But she has lost the chance to be on the dive team. She’ll be in mission control.”
“She’s staying?” Ella said. “Then, why were her bags packed?”
“Well,” Marcus said. “Even though she’s not expelled, she wants to go home.”
“Then she should!” Ella said, and I shushed her.
Marcus gave her a look. “But her father can’t pick her up. He’s traveling for meetings and can’t leave to get her. She asked if she could sleep in the sick bay for the rest of camp, and we are going to let her.”
I felt a wave of relief that I wouldn’t have to see Claire in the cabin later that night.
“Even in an emergency? Her dad can’t come get her?” Thomas said, making a pile of sand.
“What if she broke her leg or fell off the boat and was missing at sea?” Buzz asked. “Would he come get her then?”
Ella groaned. “Isn’t there an assistant or nanny or someone who can pick her up?”
My chest ached. If I called my parents and told them I had to come home because it was an emergency, they’d leave that very second to come get me.
Marcus shook his head. “This is not an emergency. This is a youth astronaut training camp and we’re all learning here. If we sent every kid home for making a bad decision or a big mistake, we wouldn’t be helping anyone. Did you ever make a bad decision?”
Ella and I looked at each other because the answer was yes, but that didn’t mean I felt much different about Claire.
“That being said,” Marcus continued, looking at me and then at everyone else, “you have every right to be angry with Claire.”
And maybe hurt? I mean, how could she just leave me like that? What if we had been in the ocean? I shuddered.
“Claire put a member of her team in danger,” Marcus said. “When you’re an astronaut, your team is everything. No matter where you are—up in space or training under the water—you need to be able to depend on one another.”
Thomas raised his hand. “Can Luci move to our robotic project team?”
Marcus shook his head. “There are only two more days left to work on projects, and we want Luci to stay on the hydroponics team.”
“With Claire? Are you serious?” Ella blurted out.
“Yes, with Claire. See, the thing is,” Marcus said, “when you’re in the real space program, you will not be able to pick your own team. You’ll have to work with all sorts of people and some of them will be difficult. You’ll need to figure out how to move forward with a project no matter what.”
The thought of working side by side with Claire in our little tarped greenhouse did not make me happy. I didn’t feel like figuring out how to work with her. Maybe not ever. And why should I?
The next morning at breakfast, we saw Claire with Marcus and Sarah, sitting in front of an empty plate. Ella made a growly sound, and I stared hard at the ground as we made our way to a picnic table where the boys devoured their pancakes. I did not want any accidental eye contact with Claire because I was afraid she wouldn’t even look sorry for what she did.
Buzz put down his pancake. “You probably already figured it out, but I volunteered to be on the mission control team. And it’s not because I’m a crybaby scaredy-cat or anything.”
Ella blinked at him. “Nobody even said that.”
“Maybe you were thinking it.”
We all shook our heads.
“Fine. It’s what I was thinking.” He stared at his hands. “I may be an Olympic swimmer, but I’m just not cut out for scuba diving. I’m much better staying close to the surface. The whole idea of going so far underwater freaks me out and, well, I just don’t want to take the chance of ruining the mission or something.”
Dominic gave him a half smile. “That’s very mature of you.”
“Yeah,” Buzz said. “So, maybe you should call me Cole from now on since I’m nothing like Buzz Aldrin anymore.”
Thomas sat up. “I think maybe you’re more like a real astronaut than before.”
Dominic nodded. “Sacrificing for the team and stuff.”
“Thanks, guys.” Buzz’s cheeks bloomed a sharp pink, and he returned to his breakfast.
Ella looked to her left and right. “Anyone else want mission control?” But it seemed like the rest of us were still hoping for a spot on Cetus.
“You’re going to be okay?” Thomas asked me. “After what happened?”
I thought about it, taking a bite of oatmeal. “Totally,” I said finally. But even the thought of the storage room made my heart flutter. “Yep, no problems over here,” I added.
Because I wasn’t about to give up my dream of going to Cetus. Not after I passed all of my skills tests. Not because I had one bad experience in the pool. Not for anything.
We followed Ella up to the pool when it was time for her treading test, and as we passed the greenhouse, I could see Claire’s silhouette by the grower. She was working on our project. I had peeked in on our plants earlier that morning when Claire wasn’t around. That was my plan for the rest of our time here: to do everything possible to avoid working on our plants at the same time as Claire.
Sarah caught up with Ella and me and she rubbed my back. “How do you feel this morning?”
“Good, thanks,” I said automatically, but actually I wasn’t completely sure how I felt other than mixed-up. Angry and betrayed and confused, and even a little bit sad and hurt, if feeling all of these things at once was possible.
This time Sarah was in charge of the stopwatch during Ella’s treading test, and she wore i
t safely around her neck. Ella got tired in the last few minutes again, and started to sink a bit. But then Buzz put a pair of fins on his feet and flapped around the pool platform, making everyone laugh, and Ella relaxed. She ended up passing and we cheered and high-fived and gave A-OK signs instead of thumbs-up signs. And then we all watched through one of the portholes as Ella dove to the bottom of the pool with Pirate Pete. They performed the same practice EVA that Claire and I did, collecting balls into a pail and leaving them on the target in the storage area. Except this time, when Ella went into the storage room, Pirate Pete stayed right there and waited for her to safely come out.
Everyone was ready for the next day. The day the Cetus and mission control teams would finally be announced.
When we woke up the next morning, I was almost too nervous about the dive team assignments to eat breakfast. This was what I had come for: to dive to Cetus like so many astronauts before me. Twenty-four hours under the ocean in an astronaut habitat. It wasn’t for everyone. But it was certainly the kind of place for a kid who would be the first girl to set foot on Mars.
The breeze across the bay was strong, my ponytail with its purple stripe whipping in the wind. Ella and I paused on the shore to watch the kite boarders and windsurfers scattered in the water, playing in the waves and wind, jumping and flipping high above the bay.
By the time we finished eating in the cafeteria, the wind was fierce and the clouds had turned dark.
“We’d better go,” Ella said. “Before the rain starts.”
I took one last slurp of orange juice and stood up, my stomach bundled with nerves. When we opened the cafeteria door, it got caught in the wind and I tried catching it, but it slammed against the side of the building.
“Whoa,” Ella said. “This looks like a big storm.”
The normally calm bay was filled with jagged white waves. We bolted across the grassy area to the airplane hangar, barely making it inside before giant raindrops started falling. Dominic came in right behind us, the door shutting hard against the storm.