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Dear Mr. Hargreeves,
Hello, I hope this letter finds you well! I am a teacher at Millard Fillmore Elementary School in the Bronx, and I’m writing to invite you to be a guest speaker for our third grade class.
We are about to start the astronomy unit of our science curriculum. I read an article that mentioned you’re currently the world record holder for the most time spent in space, and I saw that you still live locally. It would be such a wonderful learning experience for our students to be able to hear from a real astronaut.
I’m sure that you’re flooded with requests like this, but if you could find the time to visit us, we would all be delighted. You could even say we’d be over the moon!
Sincerely,
Jazmin Rivera-Alavez
Luther dropped the letter onto the desk and readjusted the phone next to his ear.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds like a prank to me.”
“I really doubt that,” Allison’s voice floated over the line. “Who would be pranking you?”
Well… no one. You had to know people in order to get pranked by them, he guessed.
“It’s just weird,” he said, holding the letter away from his face to scan it again. “I mean—I couldn’t go talk to kids. I’m not a teacher or anything, I don’t… It’s weird.”
“You could do it.” There were a few muffled noises on the other end. Allison’s housekeeper was taking the week off, she had said, and so she was fending for herself at mealtimes. “I don’t think they’re expecting you to teach a whole class. They just want you to go tell the kiddos about space.”
Tell them what about space? It was big and mostly unexplored and a lot of very important research was going on up there. Also, it was cold and lonely and the food was bad.
Space, in a nutshell.
Luther traced his thumb over a scratch in their father’s desk. “I don’t think public speaking is really for me.”
Allison blew a raspberry in his ear. “Lu-ther. How many interviews have you done? This is just like that, except the people interviewing you are a bunch of munchkins who are impressed by literally everything.”
He shrugged, and then felt stupid because she wasn’t there to see it. “Tons of people have gone to space. It’s not that impressive anymore.”
“It is impressive!” Allison said with a disbelieving laugh. “And anyway—one time last year, I caught a glass as it was falling off the counter. Claire is still talking about it.”
“How is Claire? Wasn’t her dance recital yesterday?”
“She’s great, the dance recital was great, I’ll show you pictures when I get to town, and don’t change the subject. Why don’t you want to go give a talk about space? You’d like it, I bet.”
Luther picked at the scratch in the wood. Maybe he would have liked talking about space, before he’d been there.
Before he’d been looking at a pantry with a single meal left in it and knowing that the next shuttle delivery was two Earth days away, at the earliest. Before he’d gone a straight month sleeping an hour at a time, because one of the sensors had needed to be switched over to manual controls until he could get a replacement part to fix it. Before he’d spent four years without hearing another human voice.
Luther closed his eyes. “I can’t,” he said. “Allison. I can’t.”
Forget talking about space. Sometimes, he could barely stand to think about it anymore.
“Alright,” she said. Her tone was light, but he could hear the underlying concern. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You’ll let this teacher down easy, though? It sounds like she’s really try—OH, HELL.”
He snapped to attention in the chair. “Allison? What’s wrong? Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she said irritably. “I just—I was trying to get all fancy with lunch, and I messed up. Jesus Christ, I should have stuck with cereal.”
“What were you making?”
“Grilled cheese.”
“That’s fancy to you?” he asked dubiously.
“Oh my God, there’s melted cheese everywhere. How did it get in my hair?!”
Excellent question. He could make a grilled cheese sandwich just fine. Klaus could make a grilled cheese sandwich just fine.
“Stuff happens,” he reassured her, though he had his doubts.
There were a few noises on the other end. “Okay, Luther—I have to go, the floor is lava over here. Oh my GOD. Talk to you later.”
“Goodb—“
He was interrupted by the line going dead.
He pulled the phone away from his ear and studied it. Allison had said her housekeeper would be back… Wednesday? She could make it to then
Probably.
{}{}{}{}{}
Dear Mr. Hargreeves,
Public speaking is always intimidating, isn’t it? I think you’ll find, however, that our students will be a captive audience.
To make things simpler, I asked the class to each write down a question they had for you, which you’ll find in the enclosed yellow envelope. We wouldn’t expect you to answer all of them, of course, but I thought it might be a helpful starting point.
We’re all looking forward to your visit! Usually, we make an annual trip to the planetarium, but it wasn’t in the budget this year. I really can’t thank you enough for taking the time to come and see us. Does 10 a.m. on the 19th work for you?
Sincerely,
Jazmin Rivera-Alavez
Luther squinted at the letter in dismay.
Thinking back on it, he might have let this lady down so gently that she didn’t even realize she was being let down.
“Now you have to go,” Klaus told him cheerfully, already tearing open the big yellow envelope. Scraps of wide-ruled paper cascaded across the kitchen table. “We don’t want to disappoint the kiddies, do we?”
Luther surveyed the pile with a sinking feeling. How many students were in this class?
“Don’t make that face,” Klaus scolded. He selected one of the scraps at random. “It’ll be fun! I hear that if you do a good job in school you get stickers, and you can answer such important questions as—“
He studied the paper. “—‘Where do you poop in space?’ Thought-provoking!”
Diego plucked a question that had landed in his oatmeal out of the bowl and held it between two fingers.
“’If you met an alien, would you fight it or be friends?’” he read out loud.
“Our public school system is failing,” Five muttered over his coffee mug.
Luther shifted his weight to his other foot. “I guess I should say I’d be friends with it? I don’t think I should tell the kids to fight people. Aliens. Whatever.”
Diego gave him a disgusted look. “You shouldn’t tell them to talk to strangers, either, you idiot.”
Oh. Yeah, valid point. Maybe he’d just skip that question altogether. Too topical.
Ben stood up from retrieving two slips that had fallen on the floor. “I’ve got ’How do you use the bathroom in outer space?’ and ‘What is the moon made of?’”
“Oh,” Luther said, cautiously optimistic. “A lot of my research was into the composition and properties of lunar soil. I can tell them about that. It’s pretty interesting.”
Ben exchanged a doubtful glance with Dave.
“Lunar soil!” Klaus pointed finger guns at him. “See, that’s why you’re the astronaut, I would have said the moon is made of moon. Anyway, this next kid wants to know how big your rockets are.”
Diego snickered into his oatmeal.
“’Which planet has a moon called Ganymede?’” Five read out loud. He pursed his lips. “Okay, this one is obviously just trying to get you to do their homework for them.”
Klaus brought another slip to his face with a flourish of his wrist. “’Why is the sun?’”
“Why is the sun what?” Ben asked.
“No, that’s the whole question.” He flipped it around to show him. “’Why is the sun?’”
Luther bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he confessed.
Dave chose a paper from the pile. “’Can you touch a star?’ Aw. That’s a cute one.”
“Oh, no,” Luther told him seriously. “No, most of them would incinerate you. But even with a cold star, you’d be crushed to death by gravity before you even got close.”
Dave dropped the scrap onto the table. “Bummer.”
Ben settled into a chair. “Okay, this one is a two-parter,” he announced, scanning a slip. “’How do you become an astronaut?’ and ‘If you pee in space does it float up and go in your eyes?’”
Well, the usual way to become an astronaut was to get a degree in a scientific field, apply to a highly selective training program, undergo several years of rigorous physical and technical education, and then maybe, if you were lucky, you’d get to go on a mission.
Alternatively, you could get sent on a fool’s errand with minimal preparation because your father thought you were too gross to look at anymore.
Cold sweat prickled Luther’s palms. Oh God, he wasn’t even a real astronaut, was he? He was a massive fraud, and the kids were going to know it. He was going to get laughed out of the classroom by a bunch of eight-year-olds.
“’Do you like Star Wars?’” Diego tossed the scrap of paper back to the table with a derisive snort, oblivious to Luther’s quiet panic. “Yeah, because you’re a fucking nerd.”
Klaus rested his chin in his hands. “Says the man who owns fifty trillion Batman comics.”
“They’re collectables.”
“This one is just a drawing of a hotdog,” Five said in frustration.
“’What happens if you fart in a spacesuit?’” Ben frowned. “Okay, you know what, I’m going to put all the bathroom-related ones in their own pile.”
“’What if there are other planets that we can’t see?’” Dave read off.
“Well, there probably are,” Luther said unsteadily. “There’s thousands of planets outside of our solar system, so… we can’t have found all of them yet.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“I knew that,” Klaus told him proudly. “I also know my multiplication tables and at least thirty states. I think I deserve a sticker.”
“Oh, here’s a good one.” Ben cleared his throat. “’Why did you want to be an astronaut?’”
“Well…” Luther thought about it. “I… like space?”
“Inspirational,” Five intoned.
Luther shrugged helplessly.
Klaus crowed at the other end of the table. “Uh-oh, cancel the whole thing!” he said, waving a scrap of paper in the air. “Jared T. says that his Mom told him the moon landing was fake and wants you to explain yourself. It’s a trap, Luther!”
Oh Jesus. What was he going to do if he was confronted by a miniature conspiracy theorist? This was sounding like a worse idea by the minute.
Klaus smoothed the paper out on the table. “I’m going to frame this,” he said fondly.
Luther held back a sigh. He should have been ruder in his letter.
{}{}{}{}{}
“—advancements in solar electric propulsion, which hopefully will someday help us to reach Mars. And that’s the conclusion of my presentation. Thank you for coming.”
Luther paused and glanced between Klaus and Vanya. Klaus was glassy-eyed with boredom. Vanya wore a look of intense focus, like she was trying to follow a conversation in a language she only half-understood.
He tapped his note cards against the heel of his hand. “Uh. So, then I guess I’d ask if they had any questions.”
Klaus’s hand shot up immediately. “Yes, hello, I have a question: What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What do you mean?” Luther asked. “Which part didn’t make sense?”
Klaus steepled his fingers under his chin. “I guess everything after you said ‘Hello, my name is Luther Hargreeves.’ And then all the stuff in the middle. And then that part at the end where you thanked a room full of third-graders for taking the time out of their busy eight-year-old lives to listen to you drone about oxidation at them.”
Luther frowned. He hadn’t been droning. Had he been droning? God, he knew he didn’t have the chops for public speaking. If he could make oxidation sound boring, there was no hope.
Vanya shifted in her seat on the couch. “It was… maybe too advanced for kids,” she agreed.
“Okay.” Luther dropped his index cards onto the coffee table. “What should I do different?”
“Zhuzh it up,” suggested Klaus.
“Right, but how?”
“By adding some pizzazz.”
“Okay, just—Can you give me an example?”
“Sure! Sprinkle in some razzle-dazzle.”
Alright. Now he was being unhelpful on purpose.
“You could probably simplify the vocabulary a little,” said Vanya. “Or a lot. And… Well, all the stuff about propellants was kind of long, and I don’t think third-graders really know what thrust is?”
“But one of them asked about the power of the ship,” Luther told her, feeling slightly desperate. “How else would I explain it?”
“I think they wanted to know how fast it goes, probably.” She shrugged one shoulder. “They’re eight. They measure speed in cheetahs.”
Klaus snapped his fingers. “Ooh, I know. Tell them jokes! Kids love jokes.”
“I don’t think I know any jokes.”
“Oh my God, you’re like if the phone book was a person. Okay, space jokes, space jokes…” Klaus did a little dance in his seat while he thought. “Alright! Why didn’t the sun go to college?”
“Why?” asked Vanya.
“Because it already had a million degrees!” He pantomimed hitting a drum. “Badum-tiss!”
Luther scrunched up his face. “The sun is more like six thousand degrees.”
“Really not the point, meine bruder.”
“It’s kind of misleading, though. I don’t want to give them bad information.”
Klaus gazed at him with open affection. “You have no idea how much I want to give you a swirly right now.”
“If you don’t want to tell jokes, you could try asking them questions,” suggested Vanya. “When I’m doing lessons with kids at that age, they pay more attention if I let them be involved, sort of? Just, like… ask some stuff they would know the answers to.”
“Yeah? Okay.” Luther ran a hand up and down his arm absently-mindedly. “Maybe… Oh, what do you call the first layer of deposits that cover moon rock?”
Klaus raised an eager hand. “Lunar soil!”
“Regolith. It’s called regolith.”
“…Snot rockets. No stickers for me.”
Vanya offered him a chagrined smile. “I was thinking more like ‘How many planets are there?’ Like… stuff kids would know. Kids, Luther.”
“Nine!” Klaus flapped his hands and bounced in his seat. “No wait, eight! Trick question, Pluto’s not a planet anymore!”
“Oh, well, actually, there’s a lot of debate about that,” Luther informed him. “It’s… Well, I won’t get into it, but basically it boils down to how you define a planet. I’d say that it still meets the criteria.”
“Dammit! PICK A LANE, PLUTO!”
“And you shouldn’t read off of note cards,” said Vanya. “It’s kind of… I mean, they’re fine while you’re just practicing with us, but, you know. Kids aren’t really used to that. It looks funny to them, I think.”
Wait, did he have to memorize this whole speech? What if he forgot part of it while he was standing there in front of the class?
Oh, no. No no no. This was exactly why people who had attended regular school had stress dreams about it well into adulthood, Luther realized.
Klaus was watching Vanya curiously. “Is it just me, or are you speaking from experience?” he asked. “Did you go into a music lesson and read to your student off of a note card?”
Vanya hunched her shoulders up around her ears, face flushed.
“Oh my God, you did!” Klaus said, plainly delighted. “In a one-on-one lesson? Vanya! That’s so weird that even I know it’s weird!”
“That was… I think I was nineteen,” she said, her voice small and defensive. “I’d never dealt with little kids before or taught anybody anything. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I’ll say,” gloated Klaus.
Vanya sighed. “Do you want to go again?” she asked Luther.
Not really. But none of them had anywhere else to be until dinner was ready, he guessed.
“Okay.” He cleared his throat and tried to envision his notes in his mind. Maybe he was better off ditching them, honestly—reading all of that small print had been giving him a headache. “Good morning, students. It is a pleasure to be here with you today.”
“More razzle-dazzle,” Klaus ordered.
“Uh… Hi, everyone. It’s… good to be here?”
“More! I AM NOT DAZZLED.”
{}{}{}{}{}
“—and scientists are developing new kinds of fuel that they hope will help us get to the fourth planet from the sun. Who knows which planet that is?”
After a few moments of silence, Diego glanced up from the knife he was sharpening. “Are we actually supposed to answer that?”
“Mars,” Ben chimed in helpfully.
Diego rolled his eyes before returning his attention to his knife.
Luther eased into a seat between them at the dining room table.
“What did you guys think?” he asked. “It wasn’t too complicated for eight-year-olds?”
“Well…” Ben hesitated. “No, no I think they could understand it.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Diego, even though nobody had been. “I’ve been listening to you ramble about space for my whole life. It all runs together at this point.”
Luther turned back to Ben. “You think they could understand it, but…?”
“But it still needs something.” Ben made a thoughtful sound. “I don’t know, pictures maybe? Something to keep their interest.”
Luther scrubbed a hand through his hair. Was he still not at sufficient levels of pizzazz? Klaus had seemed satisfied.
“I bet dinosaurs would keep their interest,” said Diego. He thrust out his chin, eyes glinting with challenge. “I bet kids like dinosaurs more than space.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Ben suggested politely. He pushed aside the shopping list he’d been making. “Do you have pictures of your ship? Or of the surface of the moon?”
“I’m sure there’s pictures someplace. I don’t know where.” Luther chewed his bottom lip. “I have moon rocks.”
The scraping of Diego’s knife stopped.
“Really?” Ben leaned forward. “Here in the house? Can I see?”
The packets of data he’d compiled over four years were still under the floorboards, undisturbed in this timeline. Luther sorted through them for one that looked like it might contain samples. He brushed away the dust that had settled over it, and squinted down at the label.
“Wow, I didn’t know there were so many,” Ben commented as he pulled two more envelopes up from the hiding space. He studied one marked ‘Oct. 2017’ with a vague frown. “You… really did a lot of research up there.”
Luther shrugged and wiped at one eye. Why were the words so blurry? Was he allergic to dust? Maybe he was allergic to dust. “Not much else to do.”
Ben watched him with an unreadable look for a few seconds. “Right,” he said softly. “I’m sure.”
“Find them?”
Diego was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. In a single fluid movement, Ben’s tabby cat darted past him, leapt up onto the desk, and knocked a cup full of pens to the floor.
“I thought you didn’t care,” Ben said as Luther tore open a package and shook out the contents. “Since moon rocks just look like any other kind of rocks.”
“They do look like any other kind of rocks.” Diego stepped forward and took the one Luther was offering him. He studied it with a contemplative frown. “Except they used to be on the moon.”
Ben got on his hands and knees and began scooping up the pens. “Have you ever thought about… like, doing something with your research?” he asked Luther over his shoulder. His tone was cautious. “Submitting it somewhere, I guess?”
“This rock,” Diego said solemnly, “used to be on the moon. And now it’s in my hand.”
Luther traced his fingers over the package in his lap. He remembered this one—there were soil samples inside.
“Not really. I don’t know who’d want it.”
Ben’s lips quirked into a puzzled smile. “NASA. Right?”
“I mean, like… this rock was up there, and how I’m fucking holding it.”
“NASA needs people to be… I don’t know,” Luther said uncertainly. “I don’t think you can just send them stuff. You have to be qualified, or certified, or… something.”
Ben sat back on his heels. “Luther, you survived in outer space for four years. I’m pretty sure that’s all the qualification you need, dude.”
Diego was crouching on the floor showing the moon rock to the cat.
“Can he tell it’s not from Earth?” he mumbled under his breath as the cat sniffed it. “What does he smell?”
Luther studied October 2017’s package. The soil samples would be useless now, since they hadn’t been stored properly. With a spike of annoyance, he remembered the handling instructions he’d left on his father’s desk two days before heading into orbit. What an incredible waste.
Still. He’d conducted his own experiments on them before sending them home. The results should be around here somewhere.
Couldn’t hurt to look them over, he supposed.
“Alright.” He got to his feet. “I guess I’ll go through all this stuff and see what to take to the school.”
“I’ll help,” Ben offered.
Diego blinked up at him, a frown settling in. “You’re going to let the kids touch them?”
“Uh… yeah?”
“What if they break them?” Diego cradled the rock against his chest. “Kids are always breaking shit.”
“You were always breaking shit,” said Ben. “The rest of us, not so much.”
“How would they break a rock?” Luther asked.
“They could find a way.”
“You could have found a way.”
“Well, I have a lot of samples,” said Luther. He gestured towards the rock Diego held. “You can keep that one, if you want.”
Diego scoffed. “Yeah, right. The fuck would I do with it?”
They regarded each other in silence for a moment.
Diego took a step backwards. “I’m just… I’m going to go show it to Klaus real quick. He gets excited about stupid shit like this.”
“You get excited about stupid—“
Diego turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him.
Ben popped out from under the desk with a fistful of pens and a smile.
“God, he makes it so easy.”
{}{}{}{}{}
“—last sample I’m going to pass around is some orange soil. Do you remember earlier, when we were talking about the volcano that erupted billions of years ago? When the lava cooled down, it formed tiny little pieces of orange glass, and that’s what gives it its color.”
Five had his head propped up on his elbow and his left foot was swinging impatiently, but Dave looked interested.
“And then I’d ask if they had questions,” Luther said. He put the sample down and fiddled with the button on his coat. “So, how was that? Do you think kids would like it, or…?”
“I have no idea,” said Five. “I haven’t spoken to a child in my entire adult life.”
“Right.” Luther paused. “I talked to Claire once.”
“In this timeline?”
“…No.”
Five flipped open his book. “Thought so.”
Dave settled back into the sofa. “I thought it was good,” he said. “I liked the part about Mars.”
“Alright, thanks.”
Luther looked him over. Dave had gone to normal school, hadn’t he?
“How did this stuff work when you were young?” he asked. “Do I need to have some kind of activity for them to do? Or, like… hand out business cards?”
Oh, crud, what would he put on a business card? He was unemployed and their fax machine was broken. All it would be was a phone number.
Dave’s lips twitched at the corners. “You know, I don’t remember anybody ever giving me their card when I was in third grade, but it was a long time ago,” he said. “And I don’t remember guest speakers coming to visit us, either, honestly. I think that’s a modern thing.”
Luther tried not to let his disappointment show. “Oh.”
“Sorry.” Dave picked up the newspaper he’d abandoned when Luther had asked them to be his test audience. “I’m sure they’ll love it, though. I was always down for anything that interrupted regular class.”
Luther stared at him as a terrible realization dawned. “Do… children not like school?”
Five lowered his book, frowning.
“Well…” Dave glanced between them. “Some do and some don’t. I guess it sort of depends on the kid.”
Neither of them responded, and he spread out his hands. “Guys, come on. Pretend you’re twelve—would you rather go goof around with your friends or learn geometry?”
“Learn geometry,” Five said without hesitation.
Dave smiled. “Okay, bad example.”
Luther rubbed at his forehead. He hadn’t liked all of their lessons when they were young, but he’d enjoyed most of them. Especially science. There was so much to do and discover and it was always happening, everywhere around you.
Who couldn’t love that?
“Okay,” he said, already trying to formulate a plan, “okay, what didn’t you like about school, specifically?”
Dave hummed. “We-e-ell… I guess the part where I had to learn geometry instead of goofing around with my friends?”
Five sniffed in derision.
“I wasn’t much of a student.”
“So you didn’t like school because it wasn’t fun?” Luther questioned. “Science is fun, though.”
Dave gave him a polite smile.
“It is,” he insisted. “Like, uh… Chemical equations. They’re basically a secret code for every single substance that exists. That’s sort of cool, right?”
“I really don’t understand what you have against geometry,” said Five. “Have you tried Non-Euclidian?”
“Or… Oh, if you like geology, you can dig up rocks and then use a field guide to figure out what exactly they are. Sometimes you can find garnet around here, you know—it’s like going on a treasure hunt.”
“How about fractals? Do you like fractals, or have they also offended you in some way?”
“And building telescopes is always fun. You can build your own telescope and then use it to make your own star map, like an explorer.”
Dave rubbed his hands over his knees. “I was more of a recess fan, myself.”
Five sighed through his nose and re-opened his book.
Luther frowned at the table. He thought his presentation was getting better, but… if he was about to walk into a classroom of kids who thought that science was boring, was he going to change anybody’s mind?
He figured he had to try.
“I’m going to go make some revisions and then I’ll be back,” he told Dave. “You’re not going anywhere?”
“I’ll be here. But, Luther, man, your talk is really fine the way it is,” he assured him. “Don’t change anything on my account.”
“Except maybe adding in a quick hopscotch break,” Five muttered.
Luther began gathering up his soil samples. He had to find a better way to convey how cool they really were. One of them was literally billion-year-old lava. That was awesome.
Dave laughed. “Aw, recess was the best. I’d still be playing Off the Wall, except Klaus kind of panics when you throw stuff at him.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“And I don’t know what’s a fractal,” Dave said cheerily. He picked up his newspaper. “Call it even.”
Five closed his book on his finger. “Fractals are a type of figure—“
“Oh. No, you don’t need to explain, I’m good on—“
“Fractals are a type of figure—“
“Be back soon,” Luther promised.
Dave smiled at him wearily.
{}{}{}{}{}
“—formed tiny little pieces of orange glass, which gives the soil its color. So really, what you’re looking at is moon lava. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”
“Really cool!” Allison agreed.
Luther stopped. “No, Allison—you have to raise your hand, remember? Because that’s how school works.”
“Right,” she said contritely. “Sorry, I keep forgetting.”
He shrugged and scuffed a shoe across her bedroom rug. “It’s fine. That’s basically the end, anyway.”
She folded her legs up underneath herself on the bed. “It’s really good,” she told him. “You’re going to do awesome tomorrow. See, aren’t you glad you agreed to this?”
Was he glad? He was more invested in it than he’d expected to be. He was satisfied with how his presentation had turned out. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the more he talked about space and his travels there, the less painful it got.
“Ask me afterwards,” he said. “Right now I’m mostly nervous, I think.”
“Aw. Stage fright.” She leaned forward to give his arm a squeeze. “What else do you need to do to get ready? You know what you’re wearing and all that?”
“Oh.” Luther glanced down at himself. “Ah. Probably this?”
Allison studied his overcoat-gloves-turtleneck combo without expression, then her eyes rose to meet his. She smiled.
“Let’s go see what’s in your closet,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.
There wasn’t an awful lot. He’d spent most of his life in workout gear, with a few business casual type outfits on standby for being interviewed. These days, his wardrobe was a hodgepodge of whatever fit.
“We need to get you to a tailor,” Allison commented as she whisked through the hangers of shirts. “Get some things that are a little more sty—Oh, how about this one?”
She pulled out a white button down with red pinstripes and tossed it over his shoulder like he was a clothing rack.
“No,” she decided after examining him for a moment. “Too Christmassy. You look like a candy cane.”
“I could wear a T-shirt,” he ventured.
“You could wear a T-shirt,” she said, already rifling through his closet again, “but should you wear a T-shirt?”
He could tell by her tone that the answer was no.
“Alright, let’s see how this looks.” She threw a navy blue shirt on top of the white one and pulled the fabric up close to his face to inspect it.
“Well, I like the color,” she said critically, “but I could do without the anchor pattern. I can’t stand nautical themed clothing, it always looks like you’re trying to convince everyone you own a yacht.”
Luther rubbed his chin as she dove back into his closet. “I’d really be fine with a T-shirt.”
“No, no, we’ll find you something better,” she promised, making a face at a yellow sweatshirt that he actually sort of liked. “Don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worried, I just—“
Allison gasped and spun around on her heel. “A sports jacket!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me you had this? Does it fit?”
“Oh.” Luther shifted his weight, feeling awkward. “Yeah, it fits, but… Well, Klaus found a bunch of clothes in my size at a yard sale over the summer, but I haven’t worn any of them. They were selling them because the guy they belonged to died.”
She gave the jacket a cautious sniff. “It smells okay.”
“I didn’t mean he’d died wearing it,” Luther told her, aghast.
“Then what’s the problem?” she asked with a laugh. “If you can trust anybody not to buy you haunted outfits, it’s Klaus.”
Luther eyed the jacket uneasily. “It’s still creepy.”
Allison made a rude noise with her mouth and tossed it over his head.
“Creepy or not, it’s a nice jacket,” she told him as he freed himself. “Aaaand… Okay, let’s go with this one!”
She whirled around with a sky-blue button down and held it to his chest. “Yeah, that’s a great color for you,” she declared. “And it goes well with the jacket, too. You’re going to look so good!”
He accepted the shirt from her hand and toyed with the hanger it was on. “I don’t know about good,” he demurred. “I’ll look okay, I guess.”
“No,” she said with conviction. “You’re going to look good. I have an eye for these things.”
Luther studied the clothes heaped on his shoulder, suddenly self-conscious. Allison was forever trying to make everybody feel better about everything, but with him, she didn’t lie. When the two of them were alone together was when she was at her most candid.
He swallowed. “Allison. Can I get your honest opinion on something?”
Her brows pinched together, just for a second. “Of course,” she said, laying a gentle hand on his elbow.
“Do you think I would look weird with glasses?”
“...What?” Her mouth twisted into a frown. “Do you need glasses?”
“I think so,” he confessed. “I’ve been noticing that it’s hard to read—I have to hold stuff father away or I get a headache. They say that being in space for a long time can mess up your vision.”
“But—Luther, you’ve been home almost a year,” she said with a hint of exasperation. “This has been going since you came back from the moon?”
“I think it actually started while I was still there.”
At the look on her face, he hunched his shoulders.
“The moon doesn’t have optometrists,” he said sheepishly.
“No, but Earth does, and you need to see one.” She smiled. “How about this—tomorrow I’ll schedule you an appointment somewhere, and then before I fly back to L.A., we can go pick out frames and do some clothes shopping.”
Luther hesitated. If and when he started wearing glasses, Diego was going to have so many comments.
“Maybe we can go do all that the next time you’re visiting?”
“Maybe we can go do all that this time I’m visiting, or else when I come back to town I’ll invite Klaus to tag along and bless us with his fashion advice,” she countered sunnily. “Your choice.”
Luther took a second to weigh his options. “Okay,” he agreed, with no small amount of reluctance. “You can make an appointment. Thanks.”
Allison patted his arm. “Great. Being able to see things is good for you, trust me.” She turned back to his closet and lifted the yellow sweatshirt off the rack. “For instance, you would have thrown this away ages ago.”
“It’s comfortable,” he argued.
“It’s hideous,” she informed him.
Luther watched balefully as she tossed it onto his bed.
Maybe he couldn’t see stuff up close all that well, but at least he could handle making a grilled cheese sandwich.
“Hm? What was that?”
“Oh, I—nothing. I said nothing.”
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Late that night, Luther sat squeezed into the child-sized chair at his desk, looking over the questions he had been sent.
He’d tried to sleep, but his mind was buzzing. Tomorrow would be his very first day of school, after all.
He set aside ‘What would happen if you took off your helmet?’ and paused at the next scrap of paper.
‘Why did you want to be an astronaut?’
Luther rubbed his thumb over the words.
He’d wanted to be an astronaut because while his brothers and sisters were staying up past their bedtime to read comics or play with toys, he’d been huddled under the covers with a flashlight and a book about Neptune. He’d wanted to be an astronaut because he used to be so impatient to uncover the secrets of a black hole that waiting around for someone else to figure it out felt like torture sometimes. He’d wanted to be an astronaut because he’d spend hours and hours stargazing on the roof, half drunk on the wonder of it all.
He’d wanted to be an astronaut because there was a whole universe out there, maybe too big to ever be fully explored but God, would it be the adventure of a lifetime to give it a try.
He turned to look out of his bedroom window. Where had that kid gone?
To the moon, he guessed. And that was the problem wasn’t it? There were a lot of ways to have something you loved taken away from you.
Luther rose from his seat and drifted across the room.
The night sky was dark and inviting above the city. Somewhere up there, he knew, stars were dying and galaxies were being born. Saturn’s storms were raging on while a planet that had never been seen with human eyes orbited a foreign sun in peace. There was, he suspected, a living being someplace out there in the cosmos, billions of lightyears away.
He’d never discover any of that himself now. The adventure was over for him, and he didn’t miss it. But for someone else, maybe, it was just starting.
Luther pressed his fingertips to the pane of glass. There were a lot of ways to have something you loved taken away from you. But he thought that there were ways, too, of taking it back.
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“—moon lava. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”
The little girl sitting in front of him nodded her agreement, already reaching for the tiny jar he held. The thick hair on his hand was visible for a second as he gave it to her, but to his relief, her attention was fully focused on the orange dust.
“Be very, very careful with Mr. Hargreeves’s things,” the teacher warned again from off to his left. “Don’t drop them.”
Now that all of his samples were being passed around, Luther took a second to survey the classroom.
The kids seemed interested overall, he thought. There was a girl who’d spent his whole talk doodling on a textbook covered with brown paper, and a pair of boys in the back were flicking bits of an eraser at one another, but for the most part, they’d looked as though they were listening. Maybe even having fun.
If Allison asked him again if he was glad he’d agreed to this, he decided the answer would be a solid ‘yes.’
“Does anyone have a question for me?”
A few hands went up. He gestured first to a boy who was vibrating in his seat with his eagerness to be called on.
“How do space toilets work?”
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Dear Luther,
Thank you again for coming to visit us. The class really enjoyed hearing from you—so much so that we didn’t get much accomplished for the rest of the day. Long division doesn’t hold a candle to moon rocks, it seems. I know you were on the fence about giving a live presentation, but I think you have a bright future on the elementary school science class circuit!
If you feel up to making the trip to Millard Fillmore next year, know that my door is always open.
Sincerely,
Jazmin
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Dear Mr. Hargreeves,
Thank you for your interest in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Due to the large volume of materials we receive, it is not possible to provide updates on the status of your submission at this time.
However, one of our Senior Researchers would like to speak to you further regarding your data on lunar soil composition. To schedule a telephone conference, please call…
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Dear Mr. Hargreeves,
I recently ran into a professional acquaintance of mine who mentioned that you had come to speak to her third grade class about astronomy. I am a fifth grade teacher at George H. Babcock Elementary School, and I was wondering if…