Luciana

by Erin Teagan

  My mind was whirling. Would James want to win so badly that he’d risk everything?

  “But we’re not even a threat to their team,” Ella said, apparently also thinking that James’s team was the culprit.

  “Maybe we had the part they want,” I said. “Maybe they want to make a walking robot too.”

  “Actually,” Johanna said, “a gyro sensor would go perfectly with a walking robot. He could make it a biped and then use the rest of the legs to hold tools.” She nodded. “Brilliant.”

  Ella sighed. “I hate to say it, but maybe you’re right. All he talks about is winning.”

  “These are some serious accusations,” Mallory said, unhooking Orion from a charging station on the wall. “I want you guys to think this over before you assume the part was stolen. Okay? Look everywhere.”

  Orion zoomed toward Leo in the parts closet, Mallory following him.

  I heard what Mallory said, but we had already looked everywhere. The only logical answer was that James and his team had stolen the part. “We can’t let him get away with this,” I said to the group as soon as she was out of earshot.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Ella said. “Without the motor module, we’d have to start our robot from scratch! There’s no time for that! I mean, have you even seen any wheel sets we could salvage from the junk closet?”

  We shook our heads. Most of the broken wheels and treads were beyond repair.

  “So then, where would we get the bolts to buy all the parts we’d need?” We looked at the screen. We had one million bolts, and completing the programming challenge for the day would only bring us to four million.

  My mind spiraled. I should have hid the motor module, and not let Meg put it in our bin, in plain sight.

  “Seriously, guys,” Charlotte said. “What are we going to do?”

  Really, there was only one thing to do. That motor module was ours, and as the captain, I couldn’t let my team lose because of a cheater like James. And since Mallory didn’t believe us, we’d have to fix this on our own.

  “I know exactly what we’re going to do,” I said. Everyone stopped and looked at me. “We’re going to get that part back.”

  The rest of the day, we worked on our Motor Module Take-Back Plan.

  “Should we do it during the Mars viewing?” Charlotte asked.

  We were performing soil experiments, looking for different soil components, in the greenhouse, surrounded by leafy green hydroponics. Afterward we were going to have a picnic dinner under the Pathfinder. Mars was in the perfect position for viewing tonight.

  “We can’t all go missing at the same time though. That would look totally obvious and suspicious,” she continued.

  “Hand me the soil sample,” Meg said, her safety goggles too big on her face.

  Johanna handed her a tube of soil marked “Regolith A.” “I’ll stay at the Mars viewing if you want me to,” Meg offered.

  “Maybe just you and Ella should go,” Charlotte told me, holding a beaker full of water in her hand.

  I looked at Ella and she actually smiled at me. “Yeah, okay.”

  “You can’t leave me,” Meg said. “Not outside in the pitch-black dark.”

  “Charlotte and Johanna will be there,” I said, but Ella and Charlotte both shook their heads.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to have a little sister,” Ella said, but then her ears turned red. “I mean … not because you—”

  “I know you didn’t mean it like that,” I said, but if I was being honest, she was right. I didn’t know the first thing about being a big sister. And then I started worrying about Isadora all over again. “You can come with us, Meg,” I said, pushing the bad thoughts from my head.

  Meg looked at the ground. “I know I’m kind of old to be scared of so many things; it’s just, I can’t help it.”

  Charlotte and Ella squeezed Meg into a hug. “We love you. Scaredy-pants or not.”

  “Hey!” Meg said, swatting at Ella, but then they were both laughing and falling over on each other and I felt a pang in my belly. A left-out kind of feeling, a missing-home-worried kind of feeling.

  Johanna dumped the “Regolith B” sample into a beaker and added a few drops of ethanol, swirling it around to mix. “I think that’s too many people, though. If you all leave for so long, Mallory might go look for you.”

  “What if we waited until after lights-out?” I suggested.

  Everyone went quiet, clearly not a fan of my idea.

  Ella looked up from her sample. “That would be totally breaking the rules. And we would already be breaking the rules by wandering around alone, without our trainer.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “What about the nighttime crew trainers that will be everywhere and also the security guards? We’ll get kicked out—”

  “Charlotte’s right,” Johanna said. “All of this sounds too risky.”

  “Then let me do it alone,” I said.

  Charlotte held out a tube for Ella and she scooped in some of the soil sample.

  “No way,” Ella said. “We do it together. We’re a team.”

  Charlotte smiled at Ella. “Wow, listen to you, team player.”

  Ella rolled her eyes.

  “We’ll get caught for sure,” Meg whined.

  Johanna looked up from the sample beaker. “Actually, we could go the back way to the lab. It’s kind of secret.”

  “There’s a back way?” I said.

  She finished pouring water into a graduated cylinder and then snapped her gloves off. “Through that hall across from the Space Camp store in the common area.”

  “The hall of artifacts?” Ella said.

  Meg whimpered, and in all honesty, this new information did not thrill me either.

  “Yes, that’s the one. It leads to the hallway behind the galley and robotics lab. There’s a back entrance. Alex took me that way once when I needed a pair of pliers.”

  “Time’s up,” Mallory said, poking her head into the greenhouse. “Clean up and we’ll head to the galley and then outside for the Mars viewing.”

  We were quiet as we cleaned up our soil experiment, all of us probably thinking about sneaking out that night. It was risky for sure and even I knew it was against the rules big time. But, as their captain, was I supposed to just let James steal from us like that? It was my job to get us those “Best Rover” patches at the end of the week, so really, what choice did we have?

  We barely ate anything off our trays that night and while the boys wanted a thousand looks through the telescope, we only took one each.

  “Come on, girls,” Mallory said, tugging on Meg’s ponytail. “Are you all getting sick on me?”

  It sure felt like that actually, my stomach churning and my heart beating too fast. We looked at one another.

  “Just tired,” Ella said.

  “Yep,” Meg said. “I’ve never been so tired in my whole life.” She yawned dramatically and stretched her arms out wide.

  The Mars viewing took forever and when it was finally lights-out, we said good night to Alex and Mallory and Orion and watched them close the doors to their own rooms next to ours.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” I whispered in the quiet room.

  Meg flicked on one of her flashlights. “I’m getting sleepy,” she said. “How long do we have to stay up?”

  Ella peered down into my bunk. “What’s the plan?”

  I rolled out of bed, tiptoeing to the door to peek through the peephole. Light was still coming from Mallory’s room, illuminating the dark hallway.

  “We have to wait until Mallory goes to sleep,” I said, and Johanna was beside me, nudging me over to see for herself, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, wearing a rainbow unicorn robe.

  “That could take a long, long time. I just want to get this done with.”

  I patted Johanna on the shoulder. “It will be fine. We can do this.”

  She nodded her head, shuffling back to her bed. “Yes.” She yawned. “We can d
o this.”

  I grabbed her and redirected her to the carpet. “You’ve got to stay awake, Johanna. It won’t be long.”

  Ella took her turn looking out the peephole. “Come on, Mallory, lights-out,” she whispered as if Mallory would be able to hear her.

  Charlotte padded over to us on the rug, hooking a thumb in Ella’s direction. “I’m proud of her. I never would have believed she’d be sneaking out of the bunk at night to steal back a rover part.”

  Ella turned away from the door, whispering, “It’s all about justice, you know? Luci is right.”

  That was nearly three times now that Ella was nice to me. Almost friendly, even. Maybe it was from all my friend advice in the gift shop or the fact that we were taking down her nemesis together. I was fine with either of those scenarios if it meant we could all start being friends.

  “Mallory won’t do anything about it, without proof, and James will never admit he’s cheating. So it’s up to us to set it right.” Ella looked back through the peephole. “Um. Guys? Mallory’s light is out.” She looked pale even in the glow-stick-lit room.

  I swallowed hard, my heart thumping all the way up to my throat.

  “If we get caught, do you think they’ll call our parents?” Meg said. “What if they send us home?”

  I stood up. “We don’t have to do this, guys. It’s okay. I can go by myself.”

  We stood in a circle. All of us were strangers a few days ago, and now we were a team. Friends. Unlikely friends, some of us, which made it feel that much cooler. Whatever they decided would be okay with me. I couldn’t ask my team to take such a risk. Not as their captain.

  “We’re all going,” Ella said.

  And so it was decided.

  “Are your pajamas glowing in the dark?” Charlotte said to Meg as soon as I put my hand on the doorknob. “We can’t have us glowing down the hall like that and also we’ll get caught for sure.”

  “Oh.” She flicked off her flashlight. Her shirt lit up with green stars in the darkness, constellations drawn together in bright white. “Yep.”

  “We need to do something about that,” Ella said.

  “Here.” Johanna pulled off her robe and handed it to Meg.

  “I love-love-love unicorns and rainbows!” Meg said.

  I inched the door open. “Shhh!”

  The hallway was empty, so I signaled for everyone to move forward with me. Halfway out of the room, we heard a door slam. I turned around, waving frantically for everyone to push back into our room, except we were so clumped up, we got stuck in the doorframe and I was still in the complete open hallway when Noah shuffled past.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping and squinting at me. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. “Luci?”

  “Um, hey,” I said. “Just getting a drink of water.”

  He lingered for a moment longer before starting back down the hall again. And with one more look over his shoulder in my direction, he disappeared into the bathroom.

  We squeezed back into our room and I watched through the peephole until Noah walked past again. When we heard the click of his habitat door, we started over, sneaking out of our room. As soon as we slipped into the hall outside, I immediately regretted that everyone had come along. With all the breathing and swishing of clothes and tip-tapping of slippers, five people walking stealthily together sounded far louder than I had imagined. I kept waving my hand to tell everyone to keep it down, until we were barely inching our way along.

  Ella and I took the lead, Meg hanging off Ella’s elbow because we wouldn’t let her turn on her flashlight. And even though Johanna’s robe covered up the bright glowing of Meg’s shirt, it didn’t reach all the way down to the constellations on her pajama bottoms. If we ran into anyone on our mission, we’d be easily spotted.

  “Watch the stairs,” I warned, slowing the group down, taking each step carefully. If one person missed a step and stumbled, it would be a five-kid pileup at the bottom. And it would be really hard to explain to Mallory why we were all piled at the bottom of the stairs in the middle of the night.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when we all safely got to the bottom. We had to go the long way around the common area, staying in the shadows, because the galley’s lights were still on above the drink station and we knew the nighttime crew trainer was around somewhere. We paused for a minute by the wall of Space Camp graduates.

  “Did you hear something?” Ella asked.

  We held our breaths listening, but no, there were no sounds anywhere. Space Camp was sleeping, all except for the five girls from Habitat 4b.

  I motioned us toward the displays of meteorites and space rocks, past the pillows and beanbags against the wall for after-dinner movies, and stopped in the gaping dark entrance to the hall of artifacts.

  Meg buried her face in Ella’s chest.

  “There are no stuffed monkeys. They are not real,” Ella said.

  “We can’t just stand here, Meg,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.

  “It’s not her fault,” Ella said, glaring at me. “She’s scared.”

  Johanna stepped up. “Meg,” she said, leaning over. “You are so brave. Look at you. You’ve gotten this far without a flashlight or anything! Come on, let’s make socks.”

  Meg looked at her. “Let’s make … what?”

  “Socks,” Johanna repeated. “Like, let’s go! We can do this! It’s what we say in Germany.”

  And with that, Meg straightened up. “Okay, then, let’s make socks!” She grabbed Ella’s hand and led us into the dark hallway. My face burned. Johanna knew how to talk to a little sister. I had so much to learn.

  Empty astronaut suits loomed over us in display cases. Face masks hung from the walls and we stepped around a roped-off exhibit of old space equipment.Suddenly, a light went on, flooding the common area. We froze, pushing glow-in-the-dark Meg into the middle of our circle, bending and squeezing into a little group. I watched the common area with one peeking eye and sucked in a breath, because someone was zipping around the crew galley.

  I tapped everyone on the shoulder, fast and furious, because the guy, now standing still in front of the coffee machine, had a robotic unicycle, glowing in purple and blue neon lights. If we weren’t huddled together in criminal secrecy, I would have jumped up and down like a maniac.

  Everyone’s eyes got big and we shuffled as a group farther into the shadows of the artifacts, watching the mystery guy zip back out of the galley and down the hallway in the opposite direction. Johanna tugged on my sleeve when he stopped at a door at the far end.

  “What’s that say on his door?” she said.

  I squinted, but the sign was too far away, and he opened the door and disappeared inside.

  “Who drinks coffee at this hour?” Charlotte asked.

  We shushed her and took careful steps down the rest of the hall until we turned the corner, safe from being seen by a random glance in our direction.

  We fast-walked the rest of the way through the artifacts. “I think this is the door,” Johanna said in a whisper. “Give me your flashlight, Meg.”

  I looked at my watch, getting nervous. We’d been breaking the rules for nearly twenty minutes at this point and still didn’t have the motor module. Not to mention there were quite a few doors in this hallway, and how were we going to find the one that led to the back of the robot lab without taking forever?

  “Nope,” Johanna said. “Next one.”

  It wasn’t that one either, but at the next one Johanna finally stopped. “I have a feeling this is the one. Here. I can see the wall of plastic bricks.”

  I looked up at the ceiling and even though there were no twinkling stars, I wished that the door was unlocked. Please, please, let the door be unlocked.

  Click.

  “It’s open,” Ella whispered.

  We pushed into the robotics lab, shutting the door behind us and piling in. We stepped over boxes and half-built towers of connectors and a giant beach ball made entirely of beams and struts. The bui
lding area of the lab was tinged in red from the blipping of the computer monitors. Our scores were displayed on the screen on the wall and we were still in last place. But not for long, I hoped.

  We entered the supply closet and searched for the RoboEngineers’ plastic tub. Most of the tubs had rovers inside of them at this point in the week, with the final competition so close. One of the teams had a rover so tall, the lid to their tub didn’t even fit.

  “Found it,” Johanna said. She slid the tub from the shelf and put it on the floor, the rest of us kneeling beside it.

  Their tub was full of robot parts, claws, and wheels, and even a hammer made out of bricks. “Cool,” Johanna said, pulling out a scooper attachment. “Someone made this.”

  “Wow, they’re pretty good at building,” Charlotte said.

  So far there was no sign of our motor module. Johanna put down the flashlight and she and I carefully lifted their robot out of the tub and laid it on the floor to better see the rest of the parts in their tub.

  “Someone grab our tub off the shelf, please?” I said.

  Ella and Meg both stood up.

  “Watch out,” Charlotte said and I heard something hit the floor, the beam of light flicking off.

  “Was that the flashlight?” I said. “Someone pick it up. I can’t see any—”

  And then there was a different sound. A clattering and splintering sound beside me.

  “No.” It was Ella. “No-no-no-no …”

  “What was that?” Charlotte asked.

  I groped the floor for the flashlight until I found it at someone’s slippered foot. When I turned it on, we found Ella standing over what was left of James’s team’s rover.

  “I …” She covered her face. “I lost my balance … I didn’t mean …”

  “Ohno, ohno, ohno, ohno …” Charlotte said and the rest of us froze. What had we done?

  Ella dropped to the floor, her head in her hands.

  Meg stood there, holding tub number eight. She popped the lid off the plastic bin. “Uh, guys? Isn’t this the motor module?”