Escape Velocity

Chapter Eleven

It's a sign of a bad day when not doing something is the highlight. Mr. Hopkins ran out of time—our 3D print presentations went too long —for a trust exercise he'd planned for today's class. Surprising that the Fates missed such a perfect opportunity to play with my head.

He didn't say what the exercise was specifically, but there's not a chance the outcome would have been anything other than a gigantic fail for me. Trust not being my strong point and all.

That time in middle school when we had to fall backward and trust our partner to catch us still holds a place of honor in my Bad Experiences Hall of Fame. A growth spurt the summer before seventh grade took me from a Girls size 12 to a Junior 7. Unfortunately, without the boobs to fill in the front darts. I was taller than half the boys in our class. It could have been worse. My partner could have dropped me. But the fake-whispered words climbing up from the recesses of my mind stuck with me: "I'm glad I didn't have to catch Savanna. She must weigh a ton now." That, plus the laughter. The laughter felt like tiny electric shocks as I forced myself to block the memory. I hated my brain sometimes, the way it wouldn't let go.

The whole Parallax thing seethed with potential disasters. Trying to anticipate them was killing me. Not to mention, there wasn't much room left in my Bad Experiences trophy case.

I hope I don't have to build a bigger one.

The narrow escape from a trust exercise was a bit of good luck, but it didn't cut it when it came to softening the blow of not winning. Melisse and Olivia's extendable gripper was more complex in its design than the cup holder designed by Kate and Liz, so Mr. Hopkins gave them first place. Then he scolded me and Christina for not sticking to the spirit of the rules by using electronic parts for our clock.

Christina reacted with a half-hearted shrug when I said we should've stuck with the key adapter. It was at least as good as the cup holder.

And now here I was, further than ever from being a Junior Astronaut.

The NASA program was key to becoming an astronaut—to do what the women in my family had always wanted but had never achieved. Gram told me she cried at the TV image of Sally Ride, alongside the men, striding to her flight aboard the Challenger in 1983. She didn't begrudge Ride's achievement; she felt the ache of her missed opportunity. Then there was my mom. Every time we watched a space launch together, she sighed so deeply it sounded like moaning.

Even though my mom seemed to love her job as a microbiology professor, I knew she regretted her choice to leave astronaut training when she became pregnant with me. I wondered if she would cry when I finally shot into space, not with the worry that she might not see me again, but instead with the resentment it wasn't her floating out above the Earth.

No, she would never let me see her cry. Saying goodbye had never been the problem for her it was for me. Every summer I was left behind when my mom and dad traveled to do field research. No matter what, they took off with their students to some exotic location to examine specimens under a microscope. They didn't see how much it hurt to matter less to them than their students.

It was obvious my mom wouldn't let me hold her back again. When Lucy and I were still friends, I used to joke that to attract my mom's attention, I needed to be an extremophile, a life form surviving under super harsh conditions. That was her microbiology specialty, the study of extremophiles. By going to the severe environment of Mars, that's what I would become—an extremophile. If I wasn't one already.

I buried myself in my notes on FetchBot while Christina lingered at the door for a few moments after everyone else. Finally, without a word, she ran off to catch up with the group. I wanted to be the last to leave the classroom, to have a moment without the pressure of judgment and avoid the safe little group that would never be safe for me. But I knew I'd only have a minute. The Green Bank driver wasn't making a second trip to Hidden Springs for lunch just for me. Not again.