by Sheela Chari
Behind him, Mr. Q had been typing into a console. Now he was done, and he said to Oliver, “Ready. All systems check.”
“Excellent,” Oliver said. “You may go.”
“Mr. Q?” Mars called out as his teacher walked toward the door. “You’re leaving me here?”
Mr. Q smiled faintly. “Actually, I think you’re the one who’s doing the leaving,” he said before closing the door behind him.
“Huh?”
“Mars, I need you to take a seat in the orange chair right now,” Oliver said.
“I’m so confused,” Mars said. “Mr. Q says I’m leaving, and you’re telling me to sit down.”
“Listen to what I tell you. Remember, you’re here to find Aurora.”
Hearing Aurora’s name was like a jolt. Mars looked at the big orange chair, which was more like a sleeping pod bolted to the ground. For a moment he contemplated opening the room door and leaving just like Mr. Q had. Maybe the school doors were still open, the ferry still docked, his friends still waiting on the other side. But they were safe. It was Aurora who was gone. He climbed into the giant chair. Around him the room had started to hum.
“Unit has been pressurized,” an automated woman’s voice announced.
“Good,” Oliver said to Mars. “Sit back; get comfortable. I know these choices haven’t been easy, Mars, but life is filled with difficult choices. And where you’re going, there will be many more.”
“Where I’m going? What’s going on? Where’s Aurora? Where are you?”
The mechanical arms next to Mars stirred to life. Swiftly they strapped him in, with buckles clamping around his ankles and wrists.
“Hey! Stop! Why am I being strapped in like this?” Mars wriggled, surprised by the sudden movement of the mechanical arms.
“For your own safety, of course,” Oliver called out.
“Launch sequence activated,” a second automated voice announced overhead. “Countdown commences.”
Oliver’s hologram abruptly flickered off, but his voice continued to boom across the speakers in the room. “Five, four, three . . .” He was counting along with the automated voice.
Around him, Mars’s world started to shake. But this time the shaking didn’t stop. There was a giant roar, and Mars felt as if the room was being wrenched from the ground.
“Two . . . one,” Oliver finished.
“Liftoff. Launch Pad Three.”
A force unlike anything Mars had ever felt in his life seemed to be sucking him up, pulling him from the inside and the outside. Was he dying? Was he being reborn?
“Mars, when you look back at this moment,” Oliver’s voice cut through, strangely tender, “you’ll know this was when your life changed. You’ll realize this was the start of your destiny. Press the red button on your right and look out the window. Then you’ll see what I mean.”
Window? What window? Mars reached mutely for the button. Immediately the ceiling opened up, revealing a world receding fast. Gone were the titanium walls and even the twin towers of Pruitt Prep, leaving nothing behind but an open field. The shores of Gale Island grew faint, as the shining lights of Seattle became dots along the ocean, and then nothing.
Mars found words at last. “The school is flying? We’re in the air?”
“Not for long,” Oliver said. “You’re about to break through Earth’s atmosphere.”
“The Earth? Pruitt Prep . . .” Mars’s mind was agog. “Pruitt Prep is a spaceship?”
“We call it a spacecraft,” Oliver said. “The towers and wall were built to retract, allowing our state-of-the-art rocket to enter space. That’s why I wasn’t there last time you came.”
“But . . . but,” Mars sputtered, losing his grip on both reality and Earth. “Where’s Aurora?”
“She’s right here with me,” Oliver said. “Say hi, Aurora.”
Through the speakers a familiar voice rang. “Mars? Is that you, Mars?”
“We’re signing off,” Oliver called out. “Sit back and say goodbye to Earth, my friend. I can’t wait to see you. It seems I’ve been waiting my whole life for the day I’ll see you here . . . on Mars.”
As Mars traveled in space, he traveled backward and forward in time. He remembered the playground with Caddie, where they built sandcastles with plastic buckets and twigs; he remembered JP’s sparkly scarf fluttering in the wind; he remembered Aurora’s spiky wristbands and missing father and the promise he’d made to her standing outside the back door; he remembered Toothpick’s survival matches and Jonas’s Mariners cap. He remembered his mom’s jingly bangles and throaty laugh. And he remembered the snow. It would be months and months before he reached his destination. He would be six months older but a lifetime older, too. And nothing would ever be the same again when the hatch finally opened and Mars emerged, setting foot on frozen-solid red ground.
It has been a gift to live and breathe the world of Mars Patel. I thank Benjamin Strouse, Chris Tarry, David Kreizman, Jenny Turner Hall, and the entire cast and crew who worked so hard to create the original podcast series of The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the magic by putting this story down on paper.
Thank you to Marietta Zacker for expertly shepherding this project from the very beginning, and to Steven Malk for all his guidance and support, and for knowing that working on Mars Patel would be perfect for me. I couldn’t ask for a better team!
And thank you to Susan Van Metre, my esteemed editor! I’m beyond happy and grateful for your excellent editorial eye, for knowing where I needed to go deeper and where to pull back, and how to always keep sight of my characters. And yay for more meals, more ideas, more sparkle, and more insight I got to experience with you. You’re out of this world! Thank you to the rest of the Walker Books team, including Maria Middleton, Maya Myers, and Maggie Deslaurier for making sure this book turned out perfectly and beautifully in every possible way.
Thanks to one of my favorite people in the world, Sasha Ericksen, and to her family for inviting me to stay in their beautiful home. What better way to return to Washington State than to spend it there, looking out quietly onto the water? A special shout-out to Ben, who spent the day with us going by ferry to Seattle and wandering around Pike Place Market. Hanging out with him gave me much inspiration for Port Elizabeth and the young people living there.
Thank you to Emmett Donovan, who read over chapters and gave me such astute and thoughtful feedback. We should all be so lucky to have as careful and generous a reader as Emmett.
Lastly, thank you to my cherished family, Meera, Keerthana, and Suresh. You are all the reason why I can and do write. You are my sun, moon, and all the planets. Special gratitude to Meera for her intelligence and wit, and for keeping my writing real. To the stars!
SHEELA CHARI is the author of Finding Mighty, a Junior Library Guild Selection and Children’s Book Council Children’s Choice Finalist, and Vanished, an APALA Children’s Literature Award Honor Book, an Edgar Award nominee for best juvenile mystery, and a Today Book Club Selection. She has an MFA from New York University and teaches fiction writing at Mercy College. Sheela Chari lives with her family in New York.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2020 by Mars Patel
Published by arrangement with Mars Patel LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2020
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
Walker Books US
a division of Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
www.walkerbooksus.com
