172 Hours on the Moon (9 page)

“Kari. She wrote the lyrics and everything. I had no idea she could even write. And definitely no clue that she could sing.
But she’s a totally awesome singer, wouldn’t you know it? Kari, you’re a totally awesome singer!”

Mia could hear the other girls hooting in the background.

“
And
she can play the guitar at the same time!” Silje added.

“But … I’m still the vocalist, right?” Mia asked facetiously.

“Of course. We can talk about all that stuff when you get back. I mean, we’ll work something out. But she’s crazy good. You
want to hear? Wait a sec. …”

Mia didn’t have a chance to respond before Silje set down the phone. It was quiet for a few seconds, then she heard them start
one of the new songs.

And it was good. That was the problem. It was really good.

She stood there and listened to them for a minute, until the phone indicated that her money was almost used up. Then she hung
up.

“No one home?”

Mia jumped. Someone was speaking English to her. She spun
around and was staring into the face of a homeless person, who was bending over a shopping cart. He must have been around
seventy and was wearing a huge, filthy brown coat. But there was actually something really pleasant about him, despite the
fact that he definitely hadn’t bathed in several months. Or maybe years.

“Excuse me?” Mia responded.

“I said, ‘No one home?’” The man gestured at the phone.

“Oh, no. Busy.”

“That’s how it is these days, you know. Everyone is busy all day. Not that I know why, but they are. So damn busy, all of
them. It was different before. Have you ever been to Coney Island?”

“No.”

“Playground of the World, it was called. It used to be an amazing place. Amazing. Now there’s hardly anything left of it.
When I was a kid, people from all over the world went there, and all the things you could do, all the rides, oh my God. There
was a mechanical horse race, felt like it went on for hours, and over in Dreamland there was a railroad that ran through this
mountain landscape, like the Swiss Alps or something. There were Venetian canals with gondolas, roller coasters, and Ferris
wheels. And there was a one-armed lion tamer, Captain Bonavita he was called. It was the Playground of the World. That’s what
they called it. It was an amazing place. People came from all over the world to see it.”

The man was starting to repeat himself, and Mia wondered if he wasn’t senile. He disappeared into his own thoughts for a moment.

“We used to spend the nights there when we were kids. Slept on the beach. Under the stars. You can’t do that anymore. I guess
it’s too dangerous nowadays. It’s really sad.”

“Maybe you should do it again?” Mia suggested.

“I wouldn’t dare.” He smiled at her. It was one of those sad smiles that made her heart cringe. “And you shouldn’t be out
here alone, either. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I’m waiting for us to move on. My parents are back at the Four Seasons.”

“Well, I have to tell you … best hotel in the city. I worked there once. As a doorman. But they fired me.”

“Why?”

“I let everyone in. Probably shouldn’t have. It’s an expensive hotel.”

“NASA is paying.”

“NASA, you say? Not bad. Wait. You’re not … yes, yes you
are
! You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“One of who?”

“One of those poor kids they’re going to send up into space.”

Mia nodded.

“Nothing good will come of it, believe me. It’s all about money, the whole thing. And who knows what you’ll find up there?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just that you ought to let sleeping dogs lie. Take care of the people on Earth first. I think people ought to stay put. You
know, uh, everything that goes up … must come down again.”

He pulled an orange out of his coat pocket, held it in his hand a second before throwing it up into the air. It disappeared
in the
darkness, before coming rushing back down again and splitting open against the ground, some orangey flesh and pulp splattering
over the asphalt path.

“You see? I think you ought to stay home.”

“Little too late to suggest that now. It wasn’t my idea. Going.”

“It never is. It’s always someone else’s idea. Come on, it’s time to get you back home to your folks.”

“Are you going to walk me to the hotel?”

“Does it look like I have anything more important to do?”

“I guess not.”

“Come on, then.” He waved his hand toward the way out. “My name’s Murray.”

“Mia.” He extended his dirty hand to her, and she shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Mia.”

They strolled out of the park together. Several people they passed gave them weird looks, wondering if this disheveled homeless
man was bothering her. A couple even stopped and asked her if she was all right.

And she was. Perfectly all right. Murray was giving her an impromptu tour, pointing to different buildings and educating Mia
about their names and histories.

As she followed Murray pushing his shopping cart of possessions a few feet ahead of her, she now noticed that Murray had written
something on the back of his coat in large black figures. She didn’t know how she could have possibly missed it earlier. It
looked like he had taken a gigantic felt-tipped pen and written across the whole surface.

“What does that mean?” she asked curiously when they stopped at a crosswalk.

“What?” he replied.

“The writing on your coat. ‘6E.’ Is that your address or something?”

Murray looked at her in surprise, as if he didn’t understand what she meant. “
What
are you talking about?
6E?
What is that?”

“That’s what it says on your back,” Mia said, pointing.

“It does?”

“Yeah.”

“6E?”

“Yup.”

Murray pulled off his coat and held it up in front of him.

“What the hell is this?” Murray asked Mia.

“Don’t ask me. It’s your coat,” she said.

“But that’s not my handwriting.”

“Are you sure?” Mia asked.

“Am I sure? I know what my own handwriting looks like!”

“I was just asking,” Mia protested.

Murray studied the writing on his coat.

“This isn’t good,” he mumbled to himself.

“What did you say?” Mia asked.

“Nothing. Best not to talk about it,” he said, getting agitated. He immediately threw the coat in a nearby garbage can.

“Don’t you want it?” Mia asked. “It’s just pen, it’ll wash out. I’m sure.”

But Murray wasn’t listening to her.

He’s scared
, she thought suddenly, and noticed the fear rubbing off on her. The writing on the coat was still visible from the trashcan.
From time to time he glanced over his shoulder, as if he was expecting someone to be following him in the darkness.

What are you afraid of?
she was going to ask, but didn’t get the chance. When they turned the corner onto Madison Avenue at East Fifty-Seventh Street,
Murray suddenly stopped and said, “It’s best if you go on alone from here. The hotel is just over there. No point in anyone
seeing me.”

“You think they’d recognize you?”

“I don’t know, but I recognize this place. That’s bad enough.”

“Okay.”

“Take care of yourself, and make sure you come back again. Believe me, the moon is no place to stay.
Bad juju
.”

And with those words, Murray raised a hand in farewell, swung his shopping cart around, and plodded back down Fifty-Seventh
Street again.

It was almost quarter past four in the morning when Mia finally tiptoed past her parents’ hotel room and let herself back
into her own. Sander was sound asleep and probably hadn’t even noticed she was gone. She was going to miss him, strange little
Sander. She silently kicked off her shoes, took off her clothes, and got into bed.

Something poked her in the side. She ran a hand down to her thigh, felt something, and pulled it up.

It was an envelope. Sander had written her a letter after all.

She was about to open it but changed her mind.
No
, she thought,
I’ll save it for later, when I’m on the moon. When I miss him. That’s what he’d want
.

She lay in bed for a while before she fell asleep, thinking about the band, about her friends. What would happen to it, to
her? Would there be a band to come home to? Would she even be able to go back to Norway as the same old Mia?

One thing was for sure, anyway. When she got back to Norway, she would make her own decisions about her life. If a vocalist
was what she wanted to be (and it was), then that’s what she would be. And if she didn’t want to go trotting around the globe
as part of some NASA ad campaign, then she would refuse. Her mind was made up on that.

And she knew she could pull it off.

Because she’d spent a night on the town in New York City, and it had taught her something important: She was the one who decided
which path she would take.

On that first day, Midori sat in a small classroom in the largest building at Johnson Space Center in Houston, along with
the two other teens, who she knew were named Mia and Antoine. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t officially been introduced
to them yet, even though they had all been staying at that same hotel in New York. She had been the first one in the room,
followed by some air force officers and folks from NASA. The instructors arrived minutes later escorting the other two people
her age. But before any of them could say one word to each other, or at least nod at each other in recognition, the lesson
had begun.

Midori had been told there would be a lot to learn, but when the manuals were tossed in her lap she realized she had been
underestimating. The hefty volumes covered everything from an intense crash course in astronomy to how to eat, shower, go
to the bathroom, walk, and move around in a weightless environment and on the surface of the moon, where gravity was only
one-sixth as strong as on Earth. And there was an entire manual devoted just to safety and emergency preparedness. They’d
have to study everything that could go wrong; nothing must be left to chance.

Midori stared down at her lap. There were three thick manuals there, labeled with the titles
EXTRAVEHICULAR STAYS, DWELLING MODULE
, and
CERES/DEMETER
. Those words meant almost nothing to her, so she glanced around. The other two teenagers, the girl from Norway and the boy
from France, were also sitting there, randomly flipping back and forth through the manuals. She wished she could make eye
contact with them. A smile maybe. Something that could lighten the mood a little. She felt a little lame, since she was sure
the other two were moon nerds and she wasn’t even remotely interested in it. Now she realized with dismay that she had to
summon up the motivation to read and remember over seven hundred pages of dense information. Sure, NASA had translated her
manuals into Japanese, but there were limits. She hadn’t been tricked into a whole summer of homework, had she?

“Welcome.” A man in a dark suit with light gray hair moved to stand in the front of the room. “My name is Dr. Paul Lewis.
I’m an administrator here at NASA, and it’s my great honor to welcome you here to the Johnson Space Center. And, first of
all, let me tell you one thing: You three sitting before me today …” He
paused for dramatic effect. “You are the three luckiest people on this planet.” His face dissolved into an enormous smile.
“And with a little help, you’ll be the luckiest three people in space, too. Only a few people have experienced what you’re
going to experience. You’ll be the youngest people to ever leave Earth’s atmosphere. And you’ll be the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth people to set foot on another celestial body. You’ll be part of cutting-edge, pioneering research. And even
more important” — he stretched his arms out wide — “you’ll be part of history.”

Midori looked down at her books. Maybe reading one of them would be enough.

Dr. Lewis continued: “As some of the luckiest people in the world, you also bear a great responsibility. I think you understand
this. And I see more than just anticipation in your faces; I also see concern. And I see homesickness. It’s nothing to be
embarrassed about. Because you’ll be going far away, farther than anyone you know has ever gone. You flew a combined total
of over eighteen thousand miles to get here.” He looked at the three teenagers. “Your ultimate destination is two hundred
thirty-eight thousand miles away. And as you travel there, as you see Earth getting smaller through the windows … I guarantee
you this: You’ll miss home. But the things you will experience, the stories you’ll have to tell from a stay of just one hundred
seventy-two hours, will take you a lifetime to tell.”

Midori glanced at the other two. She already got, even now, that they were different from her. They were both leaning over,
their eyes wide, following the man’s every word. She wondered how this was going to go. What if they were such computer nerds
that you couldn’t even really talk to them?

“So, what are we going to do here at Johnson for the next three months?” Dr. Lewis continued. “Well, we’re going to train.
We’re going to teach you everything you need to know — about the equipment, about safety, about the spacecraft you’ll be traveling
on and the base you’ll be staying at. Can any of you tell me what a module is?”

The European boy raised his hand.

“Mr. Devereux?”

“Modules are the units that make up the base on the surface of the moon,” he answered in English.

Midori rolled her eyes. Apparently he’d read up on this stuff in advance.

“Correct,” Dr. Lewis responded. “Let me show you.” He signaled to one of the other suits in the room, and seconds later the
lights were dimmed and the curtains drawn. Dr. Lewis pressed a button on the laptop in front of him, and a giant flat-screen
computer monitor on the wall displayed a diagram of the moon base.

“DARLAH 2 is composed of four modules, located in the region called Mare Tranquillitatis. The Sea of Tranquility. The name
is quite old, from a time when people thought the dark areas on the moon were filled with water. Today we know that the dark
areas indicate lowlands and that the light gray areas are mountainous regions and higher terrain. We’ve marked the Mare Tranquillitatis
landing area for you here.”

Dr. Lewis pressed another button and displayed a picture.

“The reason we chose this specific site is that this is where the very first moon landing took place on July 20, 1969. No
one has been there since. It will be your job to find the traces they left behind. Among other things, I can tell you that
Buzz Aldrin left his moon boots sitting in the dust there.”

Cool
, Midori thought, deciding then and there that she would be the first to get hold of those boots. How cool would that be,
to strut around Harajuku in those? She flinched a little.
Oh, that’s right
. She wasn’t going back there, was she?

Never.

Dr. Lewis presented them with a schedule for the upcoming weeks and then launched into a lecture on the history of the moon
and its significance through the ages. Midori tuned out pretty much the whole thing when Dr. Lewis suddenly woke her up by
turning on the lights.

“Finally, today I’d like to introduce you to the crew. You’ll have the best available expertise with you on this trip, and
they’ll be responsible for everything. They’ll be giving you assignments and orders, but they’ll bear the ultimate responsibility
for everything. Don’t forget that. As long as you do what they ask, you’ll have a fabulous trip. I promise you that.”

One by one the crewmembers stepped forward and introduced themselves. Midori did her best to pay attention, but the session
had already contained too much information all at once, and soon she had each person mixed up with the next. The only people
she had no trouble keeping straight were the other two teenagers. Dr. Lewis called their names and they walked over to
him. Antoine, the guy from France, was a very tall, lanky guy with dark hair and a big nose, sort of cute. (Very cute, actually,
now that she thought about it.) And then there was Mia from Norway, a head taller than her, with black hair that hung down
over her eyes. She was wearing enormous sunglasses and looked like a real goth girl.
Not exactly original, but cool anyway
, Midori thought. Then she went up, said her name and where she was from, shook hands with the other two and the crew.

“Well, that was it for today,” Dr. Lewis concluded. “Now I assume you’d like to go back and see your families at the visitors’
center. We’ll see you back here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Midori stood up, grabbed her bag, and started toward the exit. By the door she picked up an information sheet with the names
of everyone who would be going.
Could be good to have
, she thought.
At least until I can tell everyone apart. If I ever can
.