Page 58 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH FOR THE DURATION OF THE MISSION

On any given night that I snuck out to the camp, I invalidated the results of our study. If I were caught, I’d be fired. I understood that, and I continued to go.

I noticed everything when I was there—who was in charge, what the camp’s objectives were for that week or month, and how they carried them out. The more I visited, the more people told me things.

Whatever I learned—names and plans, potential threats to my own mission—I wrote down immediately upon returning to the hab.

I was a scientist, in the habit of collecting information.

Data, even data entered in a camp log in a notebook under my mattress, helped me feel in control.

(Control had been lacking since the start of the simulation, and my feelings for Nadia hadn’t helped.)

On my first day of having a girlfriend, I decided to stop visiting the camp.

I’d repaired things with my sister well enough, at great personal risk over several months of visits.

I’d done my part. It was time to turn over a new leaf.

Maybe I could build something stable with Nadia, at least for the duration of the mission.

But on my third day of having a girlfriend, she sneezed four times after lunch.

Adisu promptly quarantined her, grasping desperately for a medical emergency.

Late that night, with Nadia medicated and isolated in her quarters, I pulled my suit from its hook by the air lock.

I worried over its color, how it seemed to be a little darker than the others.

Was I imagining that it was dirtier now, or more worn down?

I zipped myself into it and stood in the air lock, making a mental note to wipe down my suit the next chance I got.

Maybe I could volunteer to wash them all.

I felt my way to the perimeter in near-total darkness. I had not yet been caught.

On my walk to the camp, I felt a longing for it.

Not just for my sister but the world she was a part of.

I had spent nights at bonfires with Native Hawaiian people, and with people indigenous to all parts of the Earth.

A Sakha poet had visited from a city in Siberia—the coldest major city in the world, Kayla said—and recited eight thousand verses about the disintegration of nomadic society.

Four Sardinian separatists had sung field songs in harmony in a tight circle at night, mimicking the voices of a cow, a sheep, a shepherd, and the wind.

Ten Maori doctors doing a short residency in Honolulu had flown down to film a haka at the base of the volcano.

There’d been songs, drums, and little girls practicing hula.

Teenage boys with ripped and faded red armbands muttered into walkie-talkies.

They’d wanted to be the camp’s security team, to feel strong and protective, and the elders let them.

I had hummed along to every protest song.

I’d sipped Navajo tea gathered from the side of a highway in Arizona.

My hazmat suit was always hidden in a crate.

When the space station flew over us, I had gathered people close to me and pointed up. I had traced it across the sky.

I felt myself getting closer to something.

As a child I’d sit outside the circle in a camp chair—with Brett, a paperback, a flashlight.

I’d watch him watch my mother and sister move slow in a round dance, their arms wrapped in blankets, their feet pressing flat to the grass with dozens of others in step.

Sometimes I thought about flipping the switch on my flashlight.

Setting my book face down on the chair, stepping into the circle and taking their hands. But I never had.

I sat across from Kayla, working up the courage to ask if Felicia could leave.

She wanted to see her father, to get some reassurance that he wasn’t dropping out of her life.

She also wanted to go back to her old school.

There was no way these asks would go over well, because they implied Kayla had been seen as a bad mom.

That was something she couldn’t tolerate.

“I’m not happy,” she said. The bottoms of her shoes had melted down smooth, after too many nights held up too close to fire.

“I know. I got your email asking me to leave. But if I drop out, they won’t assign me a mission to space.”

Kayla looked at me, tired. She and her new friend Diana had cut each other’s hair short, and I pictured them matching, like sisters.

Kayla had once done entire YouTube videos of her beach waves wash day routine, with sponsored product recommendations for every step.

She flattened it down now, with dusty hats and bandanas.

“Ha,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about you. I meant I have feelings for Mark.”

“The tattoo guy?”

“The traditional tattoo guy. One of the few people alive who’s achieved the right to pass on kākau uhi. And before you judge me, no, we haven’t done anything.”

She would have judged me, I thought, if our roles had been reversed.

“Diana thinks it’s just a crush,” Kayla said. “She says it’s a sign I’m not happy with my life. She says when people have affairs— not that I’ve had one —when people do that, it’s never about the new guy.”

I prickled at the thought of Diana and her advice, though I agreed with it completely. When my sister had lived at Hollis, she’d often chosen Della over me for help.

“What’s it about then,” I said, too harshly.

I softened and tried again. “What do you think it might be about?”

“If you say I told you so , I’ll scream,” said Kayla. “But I wish I’d carved out more time for myself when I was younger. Figured out my job, what I’m trying to do, and what I want to say with my art?”

“Yeah. Do you think you should have gone to college?”

“Steph, I swear to God. I’m trying to talk to you.”

“Sorry! It was an honest question! I’ll just listen.”

“Things have obviously worked out,” Kayla said. “I’m smart, I work hard, I built everything I have. And Felicia! Felicia is perfect.”

Jason had brought in some wealth, I thought, and a beachside home inherited from his late grandparents—impossible to afford in Hawai’i today. Felicia was not perfect, she was good , which was different from perfect. Which I loved.

I nodded, vigorously. I could be supportive, like Diana.

“It’s not about what I did with what I had,” Kayla said. “I did fine.”

I said nothing, and she spoke again. “It’s about this period of life when you have like a zillion options—so many different lives you could live because you’re young and undecided.

And then you make a choice, even a great one, like Felicia—and overnight they’re all gone.

All but a few, with a guy who’s good enough but he’s—”

“Felicia’s father ,” I said.

I was trying to stop this, to block her from saying something she’d regret. What if this was all just a reaction to her months at camp?

It was a failure to see outside myself. Felicia didn’t need two parents in love. All she’d ever asked for was information.

I was pushing my sister back toward Jason, because no one had tried to push me.

Della had come up the stairs. She’d seen her bed made, her drawers filled, the lizard in the terrarium moved onto her dresser.

I’d heard the swing and click of her door.

My mother and sister never spoke of it. Not even after the ceremony when I met them in the crowd, alone, diploma in a crimson folder clutched to my chest. When I fell short in love, no one was surprised.

Kayla looked behind her at the hab in the distance, circled in lights for security. She was disappointed. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I didn’t. My crewmates weren’t touching, seeing, or even talking to people outside the hab.

“It’s a crush,” she said. “Diana was right.”