172 Hours on the Moon Read online

  Silje came out of the bathroom. She and Mia were the only ones who hadn’t gone back inside yet.

  “Cool boots,” Silje said.

  “I’ve been wearing them all day,” Mia replied drily. “Didn’t you notice?”

  “Not until now. Where’d you get them?”

  Mia looked down at her worn, black leather boots that laced up just above the ankle. “Online. Italian paratrooper boots.”

  “Awesome,” Silje said. “Well, should we go in?”

  “What do you have now?”

  “Math,” Silje said.

  “I have Deutsch. With ‘the Hair,’” Mia said with a sigh.

  They went back in and took the stairs up to the second floor.

  “Are we rehearsing tonight?” Silje asked right before they went their separate ways.

  “I think so. Leonora’s going to call me as soon as she knows if she can.”

  “Let me know, okay? I can be there at seven. Not before.”

  “Seven’s fine. Hey, I wrote a new song yesterday.”

  “You did? What’s it called?”

  “ ‘Bomb Hiroshima Again,’ I think. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Cool,” Silje said with a laugh. “See you later.”

  Mia continued on to the third floor and walked into the classroom. The teacher wasn’t there yet, so she skimmed through her German book to figure out what in the world she was supposed to have read the night before.

  The Hair came sailing into the classroom with an inflatable beach ball shaped like a model of the moon in her hands. Mia rolled her eyes. Oh my God, not her, too.

  But, yes, the Hair — this tiny lady with the freakishly big hair — had caught moon fever. She disappeared behind her desk and started blabbering on in German about how exciting the whole thing was and how great it would be if one of her students ended up being selected.

  Mia rolled her eyes again. It was a known fact that the Hair had been at this school too long. She only taught German and home ec. And then there was her big secret, which everyone knew but which she thought was well kept: The Hair had never been to Germany. She had only ever left Norway once, to go to Sweden. And that was back in the summer of 1986 or thereabouts, and she had come home again after four days.

  But maybe the fact that she was now standing in front of them with that inflatable moon under her arm wasn’t as strange as one might think. The whole world had come completely unhinged this winter. The newspapers, the radio, the TV, and the Internet were flooded with moon mania every day, from trivia and data spouted by experts and professors and astronomers to competitions where you could win all sorts of stuff just by answering a few simple questions about space travel. Meanwhile, millions of teenagers were busy logging on or standing in long lines at registration desks in malls or grocery stores in just about every single town in the whole world to make sure that their names had been entered.

  For safety reasons, NASA had decided that the three young people who would be chosen to go must be at least fourteen and that they couldn’t be older than eighteen. They would also need to be between five feet four inches and six feet four inches tall, undergo a psychological examination performed by a certified practitioner in their hometown, and pass a general physical examination in order to obtain a medical “green card.” All applicants should have a near and distant visual acuity correctable to 20/20 and a blood pressure, while sitting, of no more than 140 over 90. And then there were all the tests and training they would be put through in the unlikely event that they were among the selected few.

  While these requirements restricted the number of candidates somewhat, millions of names had been submitted for the big drawing, and as the days and weeks went by, people were close to bursting with excitement. Gamblers put money on which countries the lucky three would come from and on whether the winners would include more boys or girls. Talk show hosts invited experts to speculate about nonsense like the effect of seeing Earth from space on people so young. And then there were the debates that were as numerous as they were endless about this moon base that no one had ever heard mention of before now. What was it? Why was it there? What did it do? Could people really trust that it had been built with peaceful intentions?

  The Hair reached the end of her speech and switched into broken Norwegian, which often happened whenever she spoke German for too long. “But listen to this. Someone representing NASA — yes, the NASA — called our school to check in with our students about signing up for the lottery. As I’m sure you’ve heard, any school with one hundred percent participation by their eligible students will be entered in a sweepstakes for a grant for technology upgrades. The representative from NASA said that a whopping ninety-one from your grade have already signed up and asked us to encourage the rest of you to do so as well. But only five of you from my German class have taken advantage of this incredible opportunity.”

  No one said anything.

  “Well done, Petter, Stine, Malene, and Henning.”

  The four students who’d signed up smiled at her smugly.

  “And Mia, what a nice surprise. Congratulations.”

  Mia stiffened completely and said, “I didn’t sign up for anything.”

  “Well, according to NASA, you did.”

  Mia leaned over her desk and said loudly, “Well then, they must have made a mistake! I totally didn’t sign up for that stupid-ass lottery.”

  “Calm down, Mia. It’s nothing to be self-conscious about.”

  “I’m not embarrassed about it. It’s just not true. And even if it were, NASA shouldn’t be releasing that kind of information to anyone.”

  The Hair waved her hand dismissively and winked at her, as if they were both in on some secret. “Evidently it was a condition of the sign-up procedure that you give NASA permission to reveal your name as a participant in the lottery. But we don’t need to dwell on this. It’s up to each individual to decide if he or she wants to consider doing it or not.”

  “What’s your point?” Mia railed, rage welling up inside. “I told you I didn’t sign up for that thing. What the hell would I do in space, anyway? Don’t you think I have better things to do? Screw the moon!”

  “We don’t use language like that in my classroom, Mia!”

  “No, we don’t talk at all in your classroom. You just go off on hour-long monologues about whatever bullshit you feel like!”

  The teacher stood and pointed to the door. “You’re excused from the rest of the class, Mia. I don’t want you here. You can wait out in the hall.”

  Mia didn’t protest. She brushed her German book off the edge of her desk so it landed in her backpack, got up, and left. The hallway was empty, and from the surrounding classrooms she could hear snippets of Norwegian, math, and English classes going on. Without thinking, she opened the door to her classroom again and stared straight at the Hair.

  “Besides, everyone knows you’ve never been to Germany. Maybe that’s something you should be embarrassed about?” For half a second her teacher’s face became long and sad, as if she’d been sentenced to life in prison for a nasty crime she forgot she’d committed.

  Mia heard cheers starting to erupt from the other students before she slammed the door shut and headed down the stairs and out onto the school grounds. She strolled over to the track next to the gym, sat down on the railing, and took out her phone to call her mother. An uncomfortable suspicion had started to take shape in her mind.

  Behind her, about thirty students were running around the track. Mia didn’t even need to look to know that this was their crazy PE teacher’s doing. She was almost fifty, had a mustache, and had been teaching there since the dawn of time. She didn’t accept the concept of excuses; even if you were paralyzed from the waist down, she demanded that you perform to Olympic standards. Several of the panting students in the back were obviously pale, a couple of their faces were light green, and it was only a matter of time before they keeled over and vomited.

  Mia’s mother answered just as t
he first stomach emptied its contents onto the track.

  “Mia, hi. What is it? Are you at school?”

  “Mom, did you sign me up for that trip to the moon thing?”

  It was quiet on the other end of the line. Very quiet.

  “Mom?”

  “I … we, your dad and I, we … thought you’d regret it. Later. So, well, we, um …”

  Mia interrupted her harshly. “Did you sign me up?”

  There was another pause, but shorter this time. “Yes.”

  Mia groaned. “What were you guys thinking?”

  “Mia, everyone else your age thinks this is an amazing opportunity. Why —”

  “But I’m not everyone else, am I? You have absolutely no respect for the fact that my opinions are different from yours. Why don’t you guys go yourselves if you’re so excited about it? Because that’s what it’s about, right? Since you guys aren’t eligible, you’re signing me up as the next best thing. What do you think, that it’ll make us all rich and famous? Is that it?”

  “Mia, I think you’re being unreasonable now.”

  “Unreasonable? What’s unreasonable is doing it behind my back.”

  “Mia …”

  But Mia had already hung up. Two students collapsed with a dull thud onto the grass behind her. Seconds later the PE teacher was over them, hauling them up as the vomit ran down their gym clothes.

  Gym.

  Mia didn’t even like the word. And it didn’t have anything to do with the kind of shape she was in. She could have easily outrun most of the kids on the track. She could swim laps in the pool with her clothes on and retrieve those lame dummies from the bottom or whatever they were being asked to do, without getting tired.

  But it was all just a waste of time. Actually, compared to gym, a trip to the moon kind of made sense.

  MR. HIMMELFARB

  The old man sat shaking on a sofa by the window and looked around the room in confusion. There were old people sitting everywhere, on the sofas, on the chairs. A woman who was almost a hundred dragged herself across the linoleum floor with her walker in front of her.

  What in the world are all these old people doing at my house? the man thought.

  His name was Oleg Himmelfarb. And if he weren’t profoundly senile, he would have understood that he wasn’t at his own house anymore, and that the old people were there because they all lived in the same nursing home he did. And obviously he would have understood that he was an old man himself, and that he had only a year left to live.

  But he didn’t know that. Oleg Himmelfarb hardly knew anything anymore.

  At one time, less than six years ago, he had been a fully functioning person, a charming grandfather and a man who still loved his wife and gave her flowers every single Saturday. During his long professional life, Himmelfarb had been a custodian with the highest security clearance at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

  But all of that was forgotten now.

  Safely tucked away and preserved at Parson’s Nursing Home outside Miami, the previously quite intelligent Himmelfarb had been reduced to a bag with eyes, a box no one really knew where to send.

  He sat there on the sofa with his hands in his lap for a few minutes, until the aides came into the room. One of the nurses lifted him off the deep sofa and into a standing position.

  “Do you have your balance now?” she asked him, without waiting for a response. Himmelfarb stood there, straight up and down with his hands at his sides as he waited to be told to move. The nurse waved at him and he started walking in the direction her finger was pointing. It was best that way. Don’t resist, just do what they ask. At least that let him avoid thinking, because every time he did that, he got a headache. It was like his brain could no longer tolerate the strain of deciding what his body should do.

  “Are you coming, Mr. Himmelfarb?”

  The old folks were rolled into the room and arranged in chairs in a semicircle around the TV. Several of the residents jumped nervously when the screen lit up. One of the aides rose and said, “My dear residents, today is an important day, so we’re going to watch something we don’t usually watch. Is that all right?”

  No one responded to her question. There was a bit of grumbling among the residents, but it was impossible to know for sure if that had to do with what she’d said or with things only they were aware of.

  “Good,” the aide continued. “I’m sure you remember the moon landing in 1969, right? Well, we’re going back there now. As we speak, a global lottery is being held for all the teenagers in the world. NASA has set aside three spots on the upcoming flight for them. My son Scott already entered. So, cross your fingers — my son may be selected to be an astronaut this year!”

  “Turn on the Weather Channel!” one of the old people whimpered.

  The aide pretended she didn’t hear that and smiled. The speech the president was about to make, and especially the chance that her son could be one of the lucky winners, meant a lot to her. She clenched her fists in her pockets and waited.

  Then the president’s face appeared on the screen. He talked about the dawn of a new era in the history of space travel. He talked about the three young people who would travel to the moon aboard the spacecraft Ceres, and he showed sketches of the moon base DARLAH 2, where they would live during their stay up there. He did his best to make it seem completely unremarkable that the government had kept the base a secret for all these years.

  Mr. Himmelfarb straightened up in his chair and concentrated on the man giving the speech, but he couldn’t quite follow what he was saying. Still, it was like something minuscule clicked deep within his brain when the president showed the drawings of the moon base. He’d seen those drawings before. But where? And why did it make him so nervous?

  Suddenly, his whole body stiffened. He couldn’t breathe.

  In that instant, it was totally clear to him where he’d seen those drawings before, and his face changed from an empty, apathetic expression to one of blinding, white fear.

  He screamed.

  And his scream could be heard all the way out on the street.

  It was the sound of a person who’d just realized that all hope was lost.

  SHIBUYA, JAPAN

  Midori Yoshida was standing outside the Shibuya 109 shopping center in Tokyo with her bags between her feet, checking her phone for messages while she waited for her girlfriends Mizuho and Yoshimi to finish their shopping. It was a little past five, and the warm April air was a pleasant change from the stuffy clamminess in the dressing rooms.

  Her mom had called. Midori was just about to call her back when she changed her mind. No. She would call her later. It surely wasn’t anything important anyway. It never was. When her parents did call, it was just to nag her about something they thought she should’ve done. Or they called when they were mad because she wasn’t home yet. Not so strange, given that they lived all the way out in Yokohama and it took almost forty minutes to get there by train from Shibuya or Shinjuku station. And that was when it wasn’t rush hour.

  Ever since she’d turned thirteen, almost two and a half years ago, Midori had made the trip into downtown Tokyo at least twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. After school on Wednesdays she went hunting for clothes — used or new — and also fabric, shoes, hats, bracelets, and small knickknacks she knew she didn’t need but that she wanted anyway. Every single yen she earned from her evening job in the warehouse for her uncle’s supermarket went toward these purchases. Her parents thought she was throwing away money she would need in a few years. But the way Midori looked at it, it didn’t make any sense to think like that. What was the point of her doing well in five or six years if she wasn’t doing well now?

  The truth was, Midori had only just begun to feel like she was doing well, and she wouldn’t give that up for anything. She had never understood why the bullies targeted her specifically from the very beginning of elementary school, because there really wasn’
t anything to justify it. Without any false modesty, she was much prettier than most of the other girls in the class. She didn’t talk differently or act in any way that made her stick out. Her taste in music was maybe a little different from most kids’ preferences, but it’s not like she made a big deal about it.

  The harassment continued all the way through elementary school, and when she switched to junior high, it just followed her, like a part of her identity. It’s not that the bullying was particularly serious; they never bothered her physically, and at least it was only the girls who took out their frustrations on her. The boys pretty much didn’t care one way or the other. But it was enough that Midori could never totally relax while she was at school. She could never be quite who she wanted to be.

  But since she’d become a teenager, that had changed. She’d heard about a place in downtown Tokyo called Harajuku, where offbeat teens gathered on Sundays and completely took over the area for a few hours. They came from all parts of the city, and all they had in common was the need to show that they were different. Most of them wore clothes and costumes they’d sewn at home, a chaotic blend of colors and outfits. Some looked like they came from the future; others were dressed like European maids from the nineteenth century. There were rock-and-roll types from the 1950s, superheroes, hippies, and teenagers wearing suits or with hair dyed all the colors of the rainbow. Everyone who didn’t fit in anywhere else was here. Together.

  After just a couple of months she had made more friends there than she ever would have dared to dream and, just like that, her life had changed radically. Now whatever those anonymous girls in her class thought or said to her, she didn’t care. And better yet, she started getting back at them. She struck where they were weakest: boys. It was fun to play baseball with the guys and go to cafés with them during lunch break. She could talk about music with them and swap the latest news about bands that were coming to Tokyo.