2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Page 2

  Well, that was true anyway. I was allergic to Earth.

  “Class,” the teacher said, “this is our new student, from Alpha Colony on the moon, Nia Phillips. I hope you’ll all make her feel welcome. Nia, that’s your desk right here.”

  So many kids! And all the same age! On Alpha, there were only seventeen kids and two teachers, and my group had little Ben, six years old, and Jillian, twelve. This class was too big. They all stared at me, and a few girls smiled. I didn’t smile back. I wanted to be on the moon with Jillian and Kate and Ben and Jack and Rosa. Or in my bedroom with Luna and Bandit. I didn’t belong here.

  But at least the window blinds were down.

  Everybody was doing math. The teacher, Ms. Bukowski, told me the URL and I got it on my tablet. It was fractions—dead easy. But next came history. Ms. Bukowski said, “Who can name the group that makes laws for our whole country?”

  “I can!”

  “You have to raise your hand, Nia. But go ahead.”

  I felt my face get warm. Nobody in my old class had to raise their hand; the nine of us just talked normally with Leila, our teacher. But Ms. Bukowski looked encouraging, so I said, “The NASA-Moon Council!”

  A girl across from me snickered. Then a boy in the back of the room laughed. Then they were all laughing and giggling, and I felt so stupid I wanted to die. It wasn’t the NASA-Moon Council, it was something called “the United States Congress.” Dumb name!

  I didn’t say anything to anybody until we all pushed our desks into groups of four for science. There were a bunch of rocks to identify by dripping acid on them and looking at pieces through a microscope and other stuff that might have been interesting except that the other three girls in my group all kept staring at me. Finally one said, “I’m Ellen.”

  “Nia,” I said.

  “We know,” Ellen said, and started giggling. Why? I hadn’t said anything funny.

  Another girl, who had gorgeous black hair that looked shiny and hard, said, “What’s it like on the moon?”

  I could have told her. I could have described the caverns and tunnels and domes and farms. I could have talked about our school. I could have showed them on my tablet pictures of my friends or the spaceport or the ship that brought me here. If I had done that, maybe things would have been different.

  But Ellen was the girl who’d snickered when I answered wrong before. And the other two girls sat way closer to her than to me, and they stared like I was some sort of exhibit in the Alpha Pioneers Museum. And anyway, that other girl’s hair was way too shiny. What did she put on it, machine oil?

  So I said, “What’s the moon like? It’s way better than here.”

  “I suppose you think you’re so special,” Ellen said.

  “Yes,” I said. “And you’re not.”

  After that, nobody talked to me except to sneer. Nobody wanted my help during peer tutoring time. Nobody sat with me at lunch. And lunch included broccoli.

  …………………………

  So that was my life now. I stayed in our house and played with the dogs or messaged my friends on Alpha or watched TV. I went to school where everyone hated me. I didn’t let Dad or Mom talk to me about anything important because I had enough misery at school. So Dad and I played video games and Mom and I baked cookies and every night I went to bed with Luna on one side of me and Bandit on the other and I didn’t even care when Bandit, who was almost house-broken but not all the way, peed in a corner of my room in the middle of the night.

  “Nia,” Dad said to me after I just slammed him on the fourth level of Planet Doom, “next week I have to go to Dallas for a Council conference.”

  I didn’t know where Dallas was and I didn’t care, but Mom was away in Washington, talking to Congress (take that, Ellen!) I said, “Where will I be?” On the moon, I would have just stayed with Kate’s family.

  “A babysitter is going to—”

  “I’m not a baby!”

  Dad ran his hand through his hair like he does when he’s worried. I think that’s why his hair is getting thin. “No, of course you’re not, that’s just the Earth word. Anyway, she’s a very nice woman, and she’ll stay here while I’m gone and take you to school and everything. Her name is Mrs. Allen. You’ll like her.”

  No, I won’t, I thought. But Mrs. Allen wasn’t too bad. She was old—white hair and a little limp—and she didn’t try to be friends or anything. She mostly left me alone except for meals and a reminder it was bedtime and did I do my homework yet? And when Bandit had an accident in the living room she didn’t get upset.

  Still, I didn’t tell her when Bandit bit me. I didn’t want her to freak out, and it wasn’t Bandit’s fault. I dropped a cookie on the floor of my room and he rushed over to eat it. I tried to get there first, we reached the cookie at the same time, and his little teeth sank into my finger. It hurt.

  “Bandit!” I cried, and immediately he got all whimpery, crawling around at my feet. Luna never did any of this because she never ate, so I was just as much shocked as hurt. But after I bandaged my finger, I went online and read that you’re never supposed to take food from a dog and that you’re supposed to teach them to “leave it.” So it wasn’t Bandit’s fault.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “We’ll work on ‘leave it.’ You’ll learn.”

  He cuddled up next to me on my bed and licked my hand, right near the bandaged finger.

  …………………………

  There was a new girl at school, so I didn’t have to be the only one who didn’t know how stuff was done here. But unlike me, she was popular from the first day. Her name was Alice Hunter. She was really pretty, and she walked on crutches because of a “skiing accident.” Skiing is when you strap boards on your feet and slide down a mountain, and how dumb did that sound? Alice had run her skis into a tree—I knew that trees were trouble!—and broke her leg in three places. It would heal, but for now she had a cast on her leg and all the girls signed it, oohing and ahhing over Alice’s clothes and hair and stories about skiing someplace called Europe. But at least they weren’t putting their attention on me.

  Except for Ellen.

  When I sat down at my desk, something ugly and slimy fell off the edge of it and onto my lap. I screamed and jumped away, and the thing fell to the floor. Everybody rushed over to look, and then they all roared with laughter.

  “It’s just a worm, you moron!” one of the boys said. “You afraid of a worm?”

  Ms. Bukowski sent the kids back to their desks and Ellen to the principal’s office and the worm out the window. She tried to explain to me that worms were not dangerous but were good, burrowing around in the soil and getting air into it. I didn’t care. On Alpha, robots get air into the soil, and robots aren’t slimy. Or on my desk. And now everybody here not only hated me but thought I was a Fraidy Freddie.

  In English we had to write an essay, and I wrote mine on “Why I Hate earth.” And I wouldn’t capitalize “earth,” either, not even in the essay’s title, although I know you’re supposed to. I made a small “e;” my tablet corrected it to a capital “E;” I put it back to a small one. This planet doesn’t deserve a capital letter.

  It was that essay that started all the trouble.

  …………………………

  “Mom! Why are you home?”

  Mom stood in the doorway to my room, holding a little red suitcase I’d never seen before. She wasn’t supposed to be home until Wednesday. She did not look happy.

  “I flew home to see you,” Mom said. “I’m going back early tomorrow morning.”

  “You flew home just for one night? Is that a new suitcase?”

  “Yes. Nia—”

  “Did you buy a new suitcase just for this trip? Because it’s smaller and you don’t need so much stuff for overnight?”

  “Forget the suitcase! I’m here because your teacher called me.”

  Mrs. Allen passed behind Mom in the hallway and I heard the door to her room close. She was giving us privacy. Th
e only reason I didn’t try to close my own door is that Mom didn’t look angry, she looked really sad. Usually it’s Dad that looks sad when I don’t behave. Somehow it was much worse to see Mom like that. It meant I couldn’t yell back.

  She came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. Bandit raised his head from his basket, blinked, and went back to sleep. Luna was turned off.

  Mom said gently, “I know you miss Alpha, Nia. The moon is your home and it’s natural to miss your home. We’ll go back there when my posting changes and—”

  “If it changes,” I said, but I didn’t say it mean. She looked so tired.

  “—and when you’re older, you can make the decision for yourself where you want to live. But for now, you aren’t being fair. Not to me and your father, because Earth is where our work needs to be now. And you’re not fair to Earth, either. You made up your mind to hate it before you even saw it. You pre-judged, which is where the word ‘prejudice’ comes from. You wouldn’t be prejudiced about a person, so why are you about a planet?”

  All I could think of to say was, “I don’t like it.” That sounded pretty lame.

  “Isn’t there anything you like about it?”

  Suddenly I wanted to say something that would please her. She was being so soft to me, like Dad usually was. Mom and I fight a lot, but I didn’t want to fight right now. I said, “I like Bandit.”

  She gave a tiny smile. “Well, I suppose that’s something.”

  “Yes! Bandit is something!”

  We both stared at Bandit in his basket, because Mom and I didn’t ever talk like this, and we were both embarrassed. Bandit yawned, showing all the inside of his little pink mouth.

  When I woke for school the next morning, Mom and her small red suitcase had already gone back to Washington.

  …………………………

  David, one of the boys at school, started calling me “Moony.” The first time I heard it, I kind of liked it, but then I saw how nasty the boys with him were smiling, and one of them said, “Hey, Moony—moon us! Drop your pants!”

  It wasn’t a good thing to be called.

  I hated them all.

  …………………………

  The weather stopped being so hot—I knew this from the quick two feet of open air I had to cross to get from the car to the school’s back door—so the gym teacher took everybody outside for soccer. Until now, we’d had gym inside, which wasn’t too bad except that we didn’t play basketball. “That’s a winter sport,” the gym teacher explained, which seemed dumb. The ball and net don’t care about seasons. On Alpha we played basketball all the time.

  I didn’t have to go outside for soccer, because of my agoraphobia. Neither did Alice, because of her broken leg. We stayed with Ms. Bukowski in our classroom, both of us reading, me with my back to the windows. Then Mrs. Bukowski said, “Girls—I’m going to just duck down to the faculty room for a cup of coffee. Will you two be all right here?”

  Well, of course we would—what did she think? On Alpha kids were left without adults most of the time. Everything was safe and we weren’t babies.

  As soon as the teacher left, Alice’s crutches thumped on the floor. I heard the window blinds swish. After risking a peek behind me, I turned around. She’d closed all the blinds all the way to the bottom.

  “Hey,” I said, before I knew I was going to, “why did you do that?”

  “I don’t like the view,” she said. “It’s too crowded.”

  Too crowded? I blurted, “It’s too empty!”

  We stared at each other a moment and then Alice laughed. “Not to me. I come from Wyoming.”

  I didn’t know where that was, but if it was even emptier than the Midwest, it must be really awful. I probably would have ended the conversation right there but Alice said, “I miss Wyoming. Here there are so many buildings and cars and everything, and so many lights you can hardly see the stars at night. Do you miss the moon?”

  “Yes,” I said. I wasn’t going to say any more because what if she was trying to trick me into saying something she could make fun of? But Alice kept talking.

  “On summer mornings in Wyoming, really early, I go outside to the barn to the horses and the sky is so wide and everything smells…so…so great.” She didn’t have words. She smiled at me instead. “What’s the moon like?”

  And I found myself telling her. Not much, because there wasn’t time. But more than I’d told anybody else, until Ms. Bukowski came back with her coffee. Just as she pushed open the classroom door, Alice said quickly, “Some of us girls think that David and his group are being awful to you. Ellen, too. Just ignore them. They’re jerks.”

  “Girls,” Ms. Bukowski said, “why are the blinds closed?’

  Alice smiled at me again.

  …………………………

  After dinner I sat on my bed, thinking. But I didn’t get to think very long because Mrs. Allen suddenly screamed.

  I ran out into the kitchen. Mrs. Allen lay sprawled on the floor, face down, and Bandit cowered in a corner, barking.

  “I tripped over him,” she gasped. “Nia, help me up.”

  I did. She leaned on me, shaky, with one foot off the floor. I said, “I can call 911.” Dad taught me that.

  “No, no….just help me to the sofa.”

  I did, and I got her ice for her ankle. She wouldn’t call a doctor. Instead I brought her a bottle of pills from her purse and a glass of water. “Mild painkillers,” she said after she swallowed them. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I still think I should call 911.”

  “No, this has happened before. I just have weak ankles. I’ll be fine.”

  We turned on the television and watched for a while, me shooting little glances at her to make sure she didn’t die or anything. Instead she went to sleep, and I went to find Bandit. I’d checked him right after Mrs. Allen fell, and he’d seemed okay. But probably he was still scared, hiding under my bed or something.

  He wasn’t under my bed.

  He wasn’t anywhere in my parents’ bedroom, or Mrs. Allen’s.

  He wasn’t anywhere in the house, and the kitchen door was part way open.

  My heart froze. A little clump of fresh herbs sat on the countertop. Had Mrs. Allen picked them in the little garden that Dad said was out there, put them on the counter, then tripped over Bandit when she went to close the door? When she’d screamed, I’d been too worried about her to even notice the door.

  It was only open a little bit.

  I edged toward it, closed my eyes, and leaned out. “Bandit!”

  Nothing.

  Eyes still closed, I groped my way out the door.

  The smells hit me first: strange sweet odors that I’d never smelled on Alpha. Some came from the herb garden. Air moved against my face, cool and whispery. Next came sounds: whooo whooo, very low and soft. Rustles, like Mom’s party dress swishing. And a puppy’s cries.

  “Bandit!” I opened my eyes and clutched the door frame to hold myself up. Dizziness flooded me. Bandit’s cries got louder.

  The cries came from the “woods,” a bunch of trees across a big open space of grass. That open space looked as huge as a whole spaceport. I could never cross it, never never never I couldn’t it was too empty….

  Bandit barked, and it sounded like he was hurt.

  I couldn’t close my eyes—I would trip and fall and then both Mrs. Allen and I would both be useless. So I half-closed my eyes, squinting just enough to see the trees, and ran like I was running down the basketball court, like I was chasing Kate or Jack or Rosa through the corridors of Alpha, like I was being chased by my worst nightmare. I made it to the trees and crashed through them. It was darker here but there was enough silvery light to see, and Bandit was only a little way into the woods. His front left leg was caught under a root of the tree that came up from the ground and then went back down again. He whimpered.

  I got him out and held him to me like I might never let him go. His warm little body squirmed in my
arms and he licked my face. We sat on a pile of dead leaves, while I got up my courage to run back across the grass.

  Only…halfway to the house, it happened.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something big and bright, and before I knew it, I was standing completely still, eyes fully open, staring at the sky.

  The bright thing was the moon. It shone full and round in the dark blue sky, and around it were stars. They weren’t small and steady like they looked from the Alpha dome. They twinkled and glowed, and together the moon and the stars made that silvery light I’d seen through the trees. The trees waved at me in the breeze, and their almost bare branches made lacy patterns against the sky. The air smelled of leaves and dirt and, somewhere, smoke.

  It was all beautiful.

  I stared up at the moon until my neck hurt. Kate and Jillian and Jack were up there. My life was up there. But this all around me was life, too. Mom and Dad were making a different life here on Earth. Alice was making a different life away from Wyoming. Mom said I’d “pre-judged” Earth, hadn’t given it a chance. Alice said some of the kids at school thought David and Ellen were jerks.

  Maybe some parts of Earth were different from others, were actually okay. Maybe some parts of school could be okay, too, if I “gave it a chance,” like Mom said. Maybe Alice and I could be friends.

  Bandit squirmed in my arms. It was colder now. I had to go inside. My face was wet from tears, looking up at the moon, but I didn’t feel dizzy or anything. I felt okay. And I could wipe away the tears inside.

  …………………………

  It’s a month later. Alice and Sarah and I are going to the movies with Sarah’s mother. I have on a cool red hoodie that Alice loaned me. Bandit is all house-broken. Dad took the boards off my bedroom windows.