This Place Has No Atmosphere by Paula Danziger

twenty-eight.” The captain’s voice is now coming through the space egg set.
    I think of all I am leaving behind and wonder what I’m heading for.
    “T minus fifteen.”
    I feel so many emotions that I can’t sort them out. I can only hold onto my seat and try to stay calm.
    Captain Letterman says, “Blast off.”
    The shuttle does.
    Over the sound system, music is playing: oldies like “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder,” the sound track from
2001
, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and then new music—Rita Retrograde’s first megahit, “Cosmic Cruising,” and the Scarabs’ latest, “Space Monster Hop.”
    Space.
    It takes only about eighty miles to leave the earth’s atmosphere and enter space.
    I can’t believe it.
    From earth to orbit—eight minutes, fifty seconds.
    We’re going to stay in orbit for one day to see the earth from space, to do some medical experiments, and to launch another communication satellite. Then it’s on to the moon.
    I really do have trouble believing that this is happening. What’s going to happen next?

CHAPTER 14
    W e orbit the earth. There will be twenty-four hours with sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. One sunrise or sunset every forty-five minutes. If I were at Alan Shepard High School right now, that would be the amount of time it takes to sit through a class. It’s truly incredible.
    Looking out, we see the earth—the land, the seas, the sailing clouds. It’s so quiet: no sound of wind or anything.
    “Are we there yet?” Starr sits next to me on a couch in the observation room.
    I pretend that I don’t know her.
    She repeats herself. “Are we there yet?”
    She thinks she’s so cute.
    “Go play in traffic,” I tell her.
    “You want me to go outside and get hit by an asteroid?” She acts hurt.
    I nod.
    “Play with me, Aurora.” She squirms on the sofa. “It’s getting boring watching the sun all the time. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like on the moon with daytime and nighttime each lasting thirteen and a half days?”
    “You’re kidding.”
    She shakes her head. “Didn’t you realize that’s what happens? Because it takes the moon twenty-seven days to turn once.”
    “No. I want to be an actress, not a scientist. Why should I know stuff like that?” All of a sudden, it dawns on me. “How do they work it out on the moon? Do we have to go to sleep with the light on for half a month?”
    “You always do like to sleep with a night-light, so what’s the diff?” Starr grins at me.
    “Shh.” I punch her lightly on the arm. “Don’t say that out loud. What if someone should hear you?”
    She just keeps smiling. “That’ll teach you to tell me to go play in traffic. If you hadn’t daydreamed in class, you would have heard Buzz explain that solar energy is used to power the environmental bubble. Lights can be turned off and on.”
    “But how can that work during the weeks when it’s totally light outside?”
    “They use antilights to dim and darken.”
    “This is too much for me.” I shake my head. “Leave me alone with all this scientific stuff. I’m trying to figure out where the Monolith Mall is. That’s about as much as I can handle.”
    She points. “I think it’ll be easier to find the Pacific Ocean. Take a look.”
    All that water. Maybe someone will invent a giant straw that will bring water from the earth to the moon.
    Straws. I think of Juna and wonder who she’s blowing wrappers at this week . . . how many days of detention she’s gotten since I left. She’ll probably have so many that by the time she graduates she’ll have to go back to after-school detention even though she’sin college . . . . I wonder whether Randy’s gone out with her yet . . . if she’s wearing an article of my clothing to school every day.
    The observation room gets boring after a while.
    “Exercise time.” I get up.
    Starr stands up too.
    As I walk to the exercise room, Starr