172 Hours on the Moon Read online

  The letter was true to its word. A Japanese-speaking NASA representative called Midori three days later and popped the question:

  “Do you wish to say yes and be part of this mission?”

  Midori didn’t hesitate before answering, “Yes.”

  “And have you discussed the matter with your parents?”

  She was taken aback for a second at how formal and businesslike the representative sounded.

  “Um, yes,” Midori replied. “Of course.”

  “Good. I’ll need to speak to them now after we’re through talking. With their consent, one of our representatives will come to Yokohama next week to meet with you and your family and discuss the details.”

  She felt dazed as she handed the phone to her father, who immediately began confirming arrangements with NASA.

  No going back now, she thought.

  Sure enough, a week later a deep-voiced American man wearing a suit showed up at the door of their fifth-floor apartment a few minutes after seven p.m. Midori’s parents had probably been expecting the representative to give them more thorough information about what their daughter could expect, but it was obvious that the purpose of his visit was totally different.

  The man brushed aside their questions with a few curt, vague answers before opening his briefcase and taking out reams of paperwork. Midori and her parents had to sign countless documents, insurance forms, waivers for this and that, release of liability forms in the event of this or that, and so on. It would have been completely impossible to read them all; all they could do was sign where the man pointed with his well-manicured finger, over and over and over again until he seemed satisfied, smiled, and bowed deeply before thanking them and leaving, just as quietly and emotionlessly as he had arrived.

  Midori and her parents just sat there on the floor around the coffee table, slightly confused by everything they had experienced in the last hour. But the man hadn’t left a business card or a phone number. For all they knew, he was already on his way back to the airport, headed for the next country and the next teenage astronaut-to-be.

  That feeling lasted for the next several months, as if everything was going too fast. When the calendar finally said March, it felt like only a few days had passed. Suddenly it seemed to Midori that she didn’t have enough time for everything. She turned in her application to postpone her finals at school, which was granted. She said a hasty farewell to her friends in downtown Tokyo. And now that she was on her way to becoming a celebrity, she had to make several rounds of visits to her relatives in Yokohama, along with the neighbors and her dad’s colleagues, before everyone seemed satisfied.

  Takumi Watanabe was the last person Midori said good-bye to, the very morning she and her parents left. Like many other neighbors and relatives, he was waiting outside their building when the Yoshida family was ready to head to the United States. Takumi was standing at the very back of the crowd, so he wouldn’t be in anyone’s way, and Midori had to push her way through the throng to reach him.

  “Well, have a good trip, Midori-san.”

  It was the first time he’d ever used the grown-up suffix “-san” with her instead of the diminutive “-chan” suffix that people used for kids. She was sure probably no one else noticed it, but to Midori it meant a lot. Like they were really friends now. After all, they had shared the historic moment when she opened the envelope containing the letter. Maybe he knew more about her plans than she realized, because the last thing he said was, “Don’t forget your way home. Your mail will be waiting for you here.”

  Midori didn’t respond. Instead she bowed to him and started walking toward the car that was waiting outside the building.

  Seconds later it started moving toward Narita International Airport.

  ANTOINE

  The letter had arrived three days ago, but he already felt like he’d always had it, and he couldn’t remember anymore how he had reacted when it arrived and he realized what it was.

  You’re going to the moon, Antoine.

  That’s what it said.

  Obviously he had been surprised. Happy, too. But there was no getting around the fact that part of him had been expecting it. Because the way he saw it, he needed it more than anyone else.

  But he hadn’t said anything to his parents yet about the letter. It wasn’t because he couldn’t trust them. Actually, they were nice people who both worked at the Sorbonne University, where they hung out with young people every day. Antoine was sure that helped them be virtually normal. They rarely embarrassed him, and he could also talk to them about pretty much anything. But telling them about this — that could wait. He wanted to keep it to himself for a while longer, enjoy the feeling of knowing he was the only one in Paris who knew about it.

  He wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself for very long, though. He had been told by phone that once his parents formally agreed to the plan, a representative from the space organization would be coming to visit them one day the following week. And it was already Monday now. So, it was time.

  He found his jacket and decided to go for a walk before showing the envelope to his parents.

  He had told his mother he was going over to see Laurent, who lived just behind Montmartre. But he wasn’t planning to go there, not even in that direction. He was going to where he’d been the last several afternoons until late in the evening. He was going to see Simone. The initial shock of her leaving him had subsided a good month ago and been replaced by a sense that he would survive, although he would never be truly happy again. That sense of acceptance had come over him very suddenly.

  But, strangely, the feeling had somehow vanished over the last week and been replaced by something worse. A relapse. It was as if his emergency anesthesia had worn off, and now there was just excruciating pain again. And the only thing that helped was thinking about how he would soon be as far away from this two-timing city as he could be.

  The rain had picked up in strength, and Antoine shivered as he walked the short distance to the Eiffel Tower, paid a couple of euros, and took the stairs up to the first observation level. In a way he was lucky with the weather, because there were hardly any tourists there now. The first level was also the best for his purposes, because here there was very little for the tourists to aim the telescope at, aside from the neighboring buildings.

  Which just so happened to be exactly what Antoine was planning to do.

  He took out his bag of two-euro coins, slid the first one in, and adjusted the focus. He pointed the telescope at the third floor of one of the apartment buildings on avenue de Suffren.

  She was home. Simone was sitting in her room playing her guitar.

  If he really concentrated, it almost felt as if he weren’t standing half-drenched on the first landing of the Eiffel Tower but in the warmth of her room. He stared at her hands, stroking the strings, and imagined that he knew which song it was. Every once in a while she would set down her guitar and put her head in her hands. Antoine hoped she was doing that because she suddenly realized that she missed him. But it could just as easily been because she was having trouble with one of the chords. Or because she had a headache …

  Suddenly everything went black.

  For a moment he was gripped by panic, but then he snapped out of it and realized that his time on the telescope had expired. He put in a new coin, and Simone came back into sight in the window.

  She was wearing his favorite sweater. The blue one, which, along with her hair, made her face even more magnificent. He had been with her when she bought it on a freezing day in January. They were out walking around after school and she was cold, so they hurried into one of the big department stores. They were actually just planning to warm up a little, but then she felt like trying on some clothes, and he didn’t have any other plans. As if he ever had any other plans when he was with her. Being with her was the plan. He was the one who’d found the sweater and …

  Blackness. Again.

  He put in a new coin.

  Wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! What was this?

  Someone had just walked into Simone’s room.

  Antoine pressed his eyes even closer to the telescope. A branch from one of the trees lining the street outside her building hid the right side of her room, and he could only see half of the person.

  Surely just her mother. Or her father.

  No. It wasn’t one of her parents. He’d have recognized them by now. And she was putting her arm around his neck….

  Was she kissing him?

  What the hell?

  Everything went black again.

  Antoine desperately took his eyes off the scope and stuck his hand into his bag of coins. But he was too eager. It slipped out of his hands, and all the coins rolled across the deck.

  Without paying any attention to the guards, who were laughing at him, Antoine got down on his hands and knees and swept the money into a pile. He pushed a coin into the machine and took up his post again. Now he could see the other person clearly. He didn’t recognize him, had never seen him before, but he still knew immediately who it was. Noël. The new guy.

  Asshole! For a brief second Antoine seriously considered waiting outside her building and murdering the guy when he came out. But it wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t even worth touching.

  Simone sat down to play the guitar again, and the guy wormed his way in behind her. He put his arms around her and laid his head on her shoulders. She kept singing for a while before suddenly stopping, turning her face to his, and kissing him. The guy wrapped his arms more tightly around her and carefully tipped her off the chair and down onto the floor so they disappeared from view.

  He stepped back from the telescope and gave it a shove so it whipped around in a circle with remarkable speed, slamming into the railing with a cracking sound. Enough.

  At home the next morning, Antoine woke up with his parents standing next to his bed, looking worried. For a few long moments, no one said anything.

  Then their faces melted into enormous grins.

  Antoine stared at them for a second, not understanding, before his mother pulled out the envelope from NASA. They had found it.

  “Congratulations, son. Bon voyage!”

  The next several minutes were a single, long blur of hugs and cheers, plus a few nervous questions about where he had been in recent days.

  But those questions went unanswered.

  NARITA

  It seemed like half of Japan was at Narita International Airport. But most of them weren’t actually going anywhere. They had all come to see Midori Yoshida say good-bye to the old country on her way to the moon. The lightning storm of flashbulbs going off had started as soon as her taxi slowed down outside Terminal 2, and Midori suddenly felt claustrophobic. But in a way it was fun, too. All of these people were here to see her.

  She had actually wanted to wear a shiny, futuristic-looking silver outfit that Yoshimi had helped her sew. She had worn it for a while down in Harajuku, and it had been a really big hit. But at the last minute, her father had pleaded with her to wear something more formal, and she eventually conceded and put on a long, thick gray skirt and a snug-fitting black jacket with a black shirt underneath. The only things that didn’t go were the grubby Onitsuka Tiger sneakers she’d been tromping around Tokyo in for the last several months. They were her favorite shoes, and even though her father thought she ought to wear boots, or at least nice shoes, she had insisted that sneakers were the only way to go for New York City.

  But even though a part of her was fascinated by the enormous crowd of people surrounding the taxi when it stopped in front of the entrance, another part of her didn’t like it at all. It had happened too fast. One second she had been her totally normal self, hanging out with her friends in Harajuku and dreaming of someday moving to a place where she could do exactly what she wanted. And the next she was transformed into Miss Midori Yoshida, a national icon whom every newspaper and TV station in the country dreamed of landing an interview with. Soon she would sit down on the plane, land on the other side of the world, meet the international media, and shake hands with who-knew-how-many new people.

  And then there would be … the moon.

  The moon. There was no turning back now. Every single one of the thousands of e-mails she had received in recent months just confirmed it: The machinery was in motion. And it would be impossible to stop it. Midori was in a cold sweat in the back-seat and tried to focus on breathing calmly, ignoring the constant flicker of the flashbulbs outside and the hands pounding on the windowpanes.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” she heard her mother say just before they opened the door and got out of the taxi. “They came just for you, Midori. Just to see you.”

  Midori opened the door and set one foot on the asphalt. The clicking from the cameras increased.

  Now it’s really happening, Midori.

  She climbed out of the car and forced herself to wave to the smiling hordes of people watching her.

  The exploding flashbulbs blinded her, and she shielded her eyes with her hand, trying to block the blinding lights. She made her way around to the trunk, grabbed her suitcases, and smiled at her father, who was bursting with pride. Then she fought her way forward with her parents in tow and vanished into the swarm of journalists calling out to her.

  “What are you thinking right now, Yoshida-san?”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Have you talked to the other two winners?”

  “What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get to the moon?” “Are you scared?” “Do you have anything to say to the people of Japan?” “How have you prepared for this?” “What do you think this will mean for you personally?” “How much did you know about the moon before is there anything you’re dreading are you ready to go will it be sad to say good-bye to Earth are you scared are you happy what are you thinking right now what are you feeling howareyoudoing doyouhaveanylastwordsfor-theviewingaudienceradiolistenersfriendsfamily whatareyougoing-tomiss?”

  When they emerged on the other side of the security checkpoint, it was finally quiet. There was only a lone photographer to be seen. He must have bought a plane ticket just to be allowed into the international departures hall. He took a few pictures from a distance before shuffling off, satisfied. The switch from the overwhelming throng before security was discombobulating but nice. In here there were pretty much only sleepy businessmen on their way to or from insignificant meetings, and they were preoccupied with their own affairs, not even glancing up at the press photographer who passed by them an arm’s-length away.

  Midori’s father stopped in front of a screen showing the gate assignments for departing flights. He looked vaguely confused.

  “J5?” he mumbled to himself. “J5?” He gave Midori and her mother a puzzled look. “Where in the world is J5?”

  Behind them to the right were gates 61 to 67. To the left, gates 71 to 77. Ahead of them to the left, gates 81 to 88 and ahead of them to the right, gates 91 to 99. There was no sign of gate J5.

  “Are we in the right terminal?” her father asked of no one in particular, scratching his head. His face was turning red, and sweat was beading up on his forehead. Midori’s father didn’t like situations like this. He liked being in complete control of what was going on and where he was supposed to go. He pulled out a map of the airport.

  “Well, we’re in the right terminal,” he declared. “I just don’t get it. It should be here.”

  A group of Japanese men in suits passed the family, and Midori’s father bowed to them and asked for help.

  But they just looked at him with a puzzled expression. “I’m sorry,” one of them said. “There’s no gate with that number here.”

  “We’re at Narita Airport every week. We’d know if it existed,” one of the other men said before they continued on toward gates 91 to 99.

  “What are we going to do?” her mother exclaimed miserably, just loud enough to make people turn around and look at them. Midori was embarrassed.

 
“I’m sure it’s here somewhere,” Midori tried. “We just have to ask someone who works here.”

  But there were no airport employees anywhere to be seen. Had they all decided to take their lunch breaks at the same time?

  Midori’s father was now beet red in the face and losing his composure. “Wait here, wait here, wait here,” he panted, studying his map one more time. “I’m going to take a little walk around and see if I can find someone who can help us. Don’t go anywhere.” He rushed down one of the hallways.

  Midori and her mother stood next to the large departures board without talking to each other. This is so typical, Midori thought. Every single time those two don’t understand something, they totally freak out. We’ve got hours until the plane leaves anyway. There’s no reason to get all worked up.

  The last several weeks she had been almost dreading saying good-bye to her parents. After all, she had been living with them for fifteen years and was used to having them around every single day. But now she knew that she was looking forward to it, too. Everything would be calmer without them. They were like two propellers just spinning around and around for no reason, spewing unnecessary advice and warnings.

  How long did it take to fly to New York anyway?

  Eight hours?

  Nine?

  Longer?

  She was going to have to find some way to get through this.

  Twenty minutes passed without any sign of her father. Midori’s mother started talking in falsetto, fretting about what might have happened to him.

  “I’m sure he’s probably just talking to someone or waiting in a line or something.”

  “Don’t you CARE that your father is missing?” Midori’s mother practically yelled.

  Midori immediately looked down, her face red. “Chill out, Mom. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “But something’s WRONG, don’t you think?” Her mother was on the verge of hysteria.