172 Hours on the Moon Read online

  She knew all too well that eventually these boys would end up having lives that were totally different from the ones they were hoping for. Every last one of them would end up a salaryman, wearing a suit, just pushing papers from nine to five, before falling asleep, exhausted, on the train home to their bitter wives. And those bitter wives? Well, they were all those drab girls in her class who were throwing their lives away by going to this school to begin with. Deep down, in spite of everything, they knew that the same thing would happen to them as to so many Japanese women. They were expected to get married by the age of twenty-five. They were expected to quit working and take care of the home. And then they would sit there, neat and tidy in their cramped apartments, doing dishes and waiting for their men to finally make it home after hours of overtime and a visit to some cheap hostess bar for a couple of overpriced drinks with random girls who didn’t have saggy boobs that hung down to their knees. They would sit there wishing they were somewhere totally different, living a totally different life.

  Midori was not going to be one of them. No question about it.

  She had other plans.

  And the young people down in Harajuku were her ticket. They helped her remember that they all had choices and that they were free to do what they wanted with their lives.

  Midori’s sister, Kyoko, who was seven years older, had certainly never been a part of the Harajuku scene, but she’d done what she could to avoid winding up in what she called “the Japanese trap.” She’d escaped. She moved to London when she was nineteen to study, and since then she’d come home to visit only twice a year. But there was something else, too. She seemed happier every time she came. It’s very simple, Midori, Kyoko had told her. There’s more than Japan, you know. There’s a whole world out there. You can go where you want. You just need to make up your mind.

  And that was exactly what Midori had done. The day she turned eighteen and was done with school, she would leave Yokohama, leave Tokyo, leave this whole noisy country that was desperately trying to be modern while still clinging firmly to its conservative past.

  New York, she thought. It has to be New York. Obviously. But she didn’t know why. Maybe it was the movies she’d seen. The pictures. The music. She pictured how she, Mizuho, Yoshimi, and maybe even more of her Harajuku friends could travel across the Pacific together. They’d be the neo–modan garus, the new modern girls. They’d find a big loft in an old apartment building, and they’d have to ride a rusty freight elevator to get to it. They’d have people visiting all the time, friends who popped in from Japan. They would make art, clothes, music, movies, everything. And they’d get old together, never get married, and never dry up into boring middle-aged women. Of course they’d date people, and their boyfriends would certainly come and live in their little commune for a while, as long as they made sure they left again before they really settled in.

  That’s how it would be. In less than three years.

  She just had to make it until then.

  “Midori!”

  She turned toward the sound and saw her girlfriends walking out of Shibuya 109 behind a load of shopping bags. They could just barely walk normally. She smiled at them and strolled over to meet them.

  “Did you guys leave anything for the other customers?” she asked.

  “Well, we didn’t buy the dressing room. Or the cash register. Here, can you take a couple bags?” Yoshimi held out her arms, and Midori relieved her of part of her load.

  “I’ve been waiting for you guys forever. If I were a man, I’d have a long beard by now.” Midori laughed.

  “It’s your own fault you finished so fast, you lightweight, not ours,” Mizuho protested.

  “Hey, three hours is not ‘so fast’!”

  “Okay, so it took a little longer than we thought,” Mizuho replied. “But maybe this will make up for it.” Mizuho handed her yet another bag. They’d bought her the boots she’d been wanting for months.

  “You guys are crazy!” she exclaimed happily, and hugged them.

  “Should we go get coffee before the train?” Mizuho asked.

  Midori hesitated. “I don’t know; it’s starting to get late. My parents called and …”

  “You’re supposed to be home already?” Yoshimi asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “But then it doesn’t matter. If you’re already late, it’s not like you can make it home on time, right?”

  “I guess not,” Midori said. “Okay, then, a quick coffee.”

  They headed for the Starbucks and sat by the big windows on the second floor, where they had a panoramic view of the gigantic neon advertising billboards on the buildings across the street. Below them thousands of people scurried over the big crosswalks.

  “Coffee actually isn’t good for people like us,” Yoshimi said. “But it tastes good, so what can we do?”

  “Why isn’t it good for us?” Midori wanted to know.

  Yoshimi and Mizuho replied in unison: “Because it stunts your growth.”

  Midori took a big gulp. “We’re Japanese. It’s not like there was any big risk we were going to be six foot five anyway. Cheers!”

  They raised their disposable cups and clicked them together. And that was the exact moment Midori heard the music.

  It was classical music, dramatic and loud. She saw how people clearly stopped out on the street and turned toward them.

  “Quick, they’re going to play it again now!” Yoshimi squealed enthusiastically, already on her way down the stairs.

  “Play what?” Midori managed to ask before grabbing her cup and running after her friend.

  “The NASA ad!” Mizuho called over her shoulder, and disappeared out onto the street.

  The huge video screen located on the side of the building was playing a Hollywood-style ad.

  “It’s been nearly fifty years since the very first moon landing took place,” it began. With pictures of the historic 1969 event as the backdrop, the voice-over explained that NASA was ready to send people back to the moon for a longer stay. Then the action sequence began. A rocket hurtled out into space with dizzying force.

  The voice-over paused for effect as the pictures showed a computer-generated image of a landing module quietly setting down on the moon. Small astronauts climbed out and went to work. In the background could be seen the contours of a large moon base.

  “For this exceptional expedition,” the overly dramatic voice continued, “NASA has decided to make an equally exceptional offer to the next generation. Three young people between fourteen and eighteen will have the opportunity …” pause for dramatic effect “… to be part …” another pause for dramatic effect “… of this return to the moon!”

  Midori couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.

  “You could be the first teenager in space,” the voice urged. “Sign up at www.nasamoonreturn.com and be part of the most important lottery in history. You. Are. Invited.”

  And with a vigorous fanfare, the NASA logo flashed onto the screen for a few seconds before it went black. And then a stupid car ad came on.

  “Had you really not seen that before?” Mizuho asked incredulously. “They’ve been playing it nonstop on TV. It’s everywhere.”

  “I signed up already,” Yoshimi said. “Are you guys going to?”

  “No way,” Mizuho said instantly. “What the heck would I do up there? There’s nothing to see, nothing to buy, nothing to do. Pretty much like Roppongi during the day.”

  “What about you, Midori?”

  But Midori was already too lost in her own thoughts to even hear them.

  This is my ticket, she thought. It’s three years earlier than my plan, and it takes me a little farther than I’d thought, but this is my way out. This is the way to New York.

  Yoshimi tugged on her arm and said, “Isn’t it cool?”

  Midori snapped out of it. “Totally,” she replied. “Totally. We should definitely sign up. Definitely.”

  DUPLEIX

  Sixteen-year-old An
toine Devereux found himself waiting alone on the Dupleix Métro platform. It had been a long day, one of the longest. The kind of day that just kept going and going no matter how much time you tried to kill. But the morning had been different. The morning had been just as beautiful as every single morning had been for the last five months after he had met Simone at that party at Laurent’s up on Montmartre. Ever since they hooked up the following week, he’d pretty much given up sleep altogether. He didn’t need it. Being with her was like being connected to an enormous battery. She was the kind of girl people could fight a world war over. And he almost wished he could move with her to a deserted island that no one ever visited, just so he could be sure no one else would discover how amazingly perfect she was.

  But now it was too late.

  Some idiot guy named Noël had shown up out of nowhere and put better ideas in her head. Well, different ideas anyway.

  And in April, damn it, of all months. In April, in Paris! Could it be any more tragic? If someone decided to hand out a prize for being the biggest failure, he was guaranteed to win just by showing up.

  He looked at his watch. The train should have been here ages ago.

  Resigned, he left the station and decided to walk home. He headed toward the Eiffel Tower first. It was starting to get dark, and the tourists were cramming themselves into its elevators like sardines for the ride to the top. One time he and Simone had done that, too. It had been a little cheesy, obviously. No Parisian with any self-respect would go up to the top of that tourist trap. But you couldn’t ignore the fact that there was something romantic about it, and Simone had loved it.

  It had been a few weeks before Christmas. He’d waited for her in the bitter cold by the north foot of the tower. She’d been half an hour late, and his hands were almost blue when she finally showed up. Luckily she’d let him warm them up in her sweater while they rode the elevator to the top. Antoine had waited until the other tourists finished looking at the view and disappeared back down to pull a bottle of wine out of his inside coat pocket. They’d shared the ice-cold bottle of red and then she’d told him she loved him. But then that must have been in November.

  Five months earlier.

  Relationships should really come with expiration dates stamped on them so at least people would have a chance to get out before the whole thing turned totally rancid.

  He kept going along rue de Rivoli. Most of the shops were closed for the night, and aside from the incessant, loud traffic, the long street was pretty much devoid of people. He thought about what she was doing right now. It had only been an hour since he was sitting on her bed in her apartment on the beautiful avenue de Suffren, but that was all in the past.

  Was he there yet?

  Was Noël sitting in her room? Had Noël just walked in and replaced him?

  Was she happy, or was she still thinking about him? Not that knowing would do him any good. Part of him hoped she was sobbing and miserable, that she was regretting how she’d acted, that she would be run over by a train on her way to school tomorrow. Part of him hoped she would fall down onto the tracks and that the train wheel would slice her skull in half, that her guts would ooze out her mouth and her blood would spray up onto the terrified commuters. And then there was the other part of him, the part that still loved her with all his might. The part that wanted her to have the best life possible, whether with him or with someone who made her happier than he could.

  Antoine painstakingly ran through the last several months to understand why she’d broken up with him. Was it something he did? Something he said? Or something he didn’t do or didn’t say? He desperately racked his brain for the answer, an obvious, clear solution that would make him turn around and go back, ring her doorbell and say, Yes, I’m sorry for what I did.

  But sometimes it’s already too late before you open your mouth.

  The boat had simply sailed on their relationship. And it hadn’t just left port. The whole pier had been torn down, the water drained, and the whole place converted into the world’s loneliest parking lot.

  Suddenly Antoine wished he could just disappear for good and never see Simone or this city or this world again.

  “Pardon me. Do you have a light?”

  Antoine stopped. A man in his forties in a suit was standing on the sidewalk in front of him, blocking his way. He was fumbling with a pack of cigarettes.

  “Just a sec.” Antoine searched his jacket pockets and found a lighter. He passed it to the man, who lit it.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, too?”

  “Sure,” Antoine replied, perplexed that the man didn’t just take one out of his own pack.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  The man nodded at an enormous billboard over the shop across the street.

  “Don’t forget about the deadline, eh?” he said, and started walking away. Antoine didn’t have a chance to respond before the man disappeared down the street.

  Antoine glanced at the billboard. It was black, with an enormous moon half hidden in shadows:

  DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE MOON?

  He’d heard about the mission and that NASA was going to take three teenagers on a trip to the moon; a bunch of people at school were talking about it. But he hadn’t given it a second thought.

  And it was right about then that it hit him: What were you just wishing a second ago? You wanted to get out of here. Well … you can’t get farther away than that.

  He’d already decided. He would sign up. As soon as he got home. Damn it, he would go to the moon, as far away as he could possibly go.

  Then she could sit there in her room holding hands with Noël until she got arthritis, for all he cared.

  When he finally reached home, he didn’t say anything to his parents, pretended like nothing was up, and forced a smile from deep down in his gut when they asked how Simone was.

  “I was just thinking about Simone,” his mother said. “Maybe you’d like to invite her over to dinner soon? Maybe this Sunday? We haven’t seen her for ages, and she’s such a great girl. Don’t you think so, Arnaud? Arnaud?”

  “Huh? What is it?” he heard his father yell from the living room, his newspaper rustling.

  “I was just saying we think Simone is such a great girl, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, yes,” his father’s voice said from the living room after a brief pause. “A really sweet girl. You have to take care of that one, Antoine. You hear me?”

  Antoine felt his heart rising into his throat and realized he might throw it up at any moment, bloody and useless.

  “Yeah,” he forced himself to say. “Yeah, I’ll ask her.”

  Then he went into his room. He powered up his Mac and entered the address: www.nasamoonreturn.com.

  With a few clicks of his mouse, he found tons of pictures and film clips from the old moon landings in the sixties and seventies, interviews, and information about the contest. Applicants had to be between fourteen and eighteen to enter, but of course he already knew that. He also knew he probably would have no problem at all passing the medical and psychological examinations. After all, he was in good physical condition, and no one in his family had ever been mentally ill or anything like that. His parents and relatives were kind of strange, true, but that wasn’t the same as saying he was likely to suddenly snap and start hunting down his crewmates with an ax.

  NASA’s rigorous three-month training program was another thing altogether. Would he have the stamina to go through with it? From what he understood, it included daily running sessions, logic tests, stress tests, and a number of flights in the Vomit Comet, an aircraft that quickly climbed to thirty thousand feet, only to point its nose straight down and dive for the deck, giving passengers a chance to experience weightlessness for twenty-five seconds at a time. Or nausea for two hours straight, if they were really unlucky. Then there were the high-altitude flight chambers used to familiarize trainees with the symptoms of oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, a
s it was called. And finally they would have to spend a substantial amount of time in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson Space Center, where a 202-by-102-foot pool, complete with a mockup of the spacecraft and landing module, would train them to enter and exit the modules at a depth of forty feet, simulating zero gravity. This was definitely no joke. Not to mention the hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of theory they would have to read and learn before they left the ground.

  But first he had to apply, of course. And then just wait. The three winners would be notified in mid-July, he read. They would have to be absent from school from April until June of the following year for the training and final mission.

  The winners would be flown first to New York to appear on The Late Show and then to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where they would undergo the training before the launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in mid-July. He’d have to postpone a few finals, but that shouldn’t be any problem. Besides, it’s not like he could have a better excuse.

  According to the information, the three winners would spend 172 hours on the moon plus the trip from Earth and back, which would take just over a week. They would stay at the DARLAH 2 moon base (weird, he’d never heard anything about a base being built on the moon, and he knew a few things about space travel), and from there they would perform a number of experiments on the surface. Top-notch astronauts with years of experience would be with them at all times and ensure their safety every step of the way. And then there would be media coverage, of course. The contest winners would have to be prepared to do interviews on TV, on radio, and online before, during, and after their trip. They would have to answer questions online, write blogs, and go on an international press junket afterward.

  Antoine looked at the list of cities they’d have to go to: New York, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, and so on.