School and Rock (Raptors Book 5)

by RJ Scott

  “Yeah, you think it’s funny but it ain’t,” I mumbled as my eyes watered. “I got you though, baby girl.”

  Two

  Joseph

  Mr. Johnson from Bluedown Heights Elementary was wrong.

  Actually, he’d been wrong a lot, ever since he’d turned up just after my break early afternoon with a gaggle of ten-year-old kids in tow on their field trip to the planetarium. He’d spent so long explaining the planets that orbited the sun that I swear a few of the kids had slipped into a coma, with one of them falling off the end of the hard wooden bench. No wonder kids weren’t interested in the solar system when the excitement was bored out of them at such a young age. I listened for as long as I could handle but when the idiot made a blatant ass joke about Uranus, I cleared my throat and let my inner geek fly.

  It hadn’t gone well.

  Which was why I was now in the site manager’s office, nursing the start of a black eye, sitting on a chair and waiting for the manager to calm down enough to talk to me. Lewis Drewin was a skinny guy with a shiny bald head and a hooked nose, who had the habit of wearing cheap suits with material so thin anyone could see which way he tucked. Not that I looked. I had standards that didn’t include him. He was the kind of manager that didn’t care about the place he managed, or the story of the infinite beauty of space. He was all about money. If something hit his bottom line then he was interested, but when we’d discussed my concept of creating an installation about quasars he’d started trembling and clutching the checkbook. I didn’t much like Lewis, and to be fair, he didn’t much like me.

  “You…” he began and pointed a shaky finger at me before glancing back down at his notes. For the first time in five years of working there covering shifts and hours no one else wanted, I’d made Drewin lose his ability to form words. I’d come close in the great Kuiper Belt fracas two years back, but I’d talked at him for so long that he’d sent me away and had never spoken about it again.

  “What did you even…?” Again, he stopped and buried his head in his hands.

  Ouch. This wasn’t good. Maybe I needed to start talking, get to the science part, and talk myself out of losing the only source of income I had at the moment. How the hell would I pay for college and rent if I lost this work? I’d fucked up, but right now I had to fall back on the science, and make Drewin see that I hadn’t been doing anything wrong.

  “The teacher said Pluto was a planet. I told him it wasn’t. He said it was—”

  “For God’s sake—”

  “So I was telling the teacher that a planet by definition is a celestial body in orbit around the sun. But he wouldn’t listen, so I pointed out that there are two other parts to that definition. I explained, very calmly, that it had to have sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so it can assume a hydrostatic equilibrium shape.” Drewin looked up at me, his expression blank. “That means nearly round.” I even drew the shape of something circular in the air just so it was clear, and winced internally, because I was prone to exaggerating things when I thought people didn’t understand me. This is so not helping my case.

  Drewin shook his head, “I can’t even—”

  “It doesn’t stop there though,” I forged ahead. “I also told the teacher, and the class, the third and most important part of the definition of a planet, because he was insisting we couldn’t exclude Pluto and he’s wrong.”

  “He’s a teacher—”

  “But he was wrong, and I was just—”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Drewin muttered, and I wasn’t sure if he was using my name as part of the curse. He probably was.

  “He had to understand that in the downgrading of Pluto it was the third part that was so important. To be a planet, the body must have vacuumed up or ejected other large objects in its vicinity of space, in other words, it must have achieved gravitational dominance.”

  “Get out—”

  I could see I was losing, so I upped the science. “Pluto shares its orbital neighborhood with other icy Kuiper Belt Objects, which means that it was stripped of its planetary status by the International Astronomical Union in 2006.” I spoke as if he knew that, but I was fairly convinced he didn’t know at all, and as he stared at me I ramped it up and added the big guns. “Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Hayden Planetarium unveiled an exhibit featuring only eight planets, and we followed suit.”

  “You hit a teacher.” Drewin’s expression was blank.

  Looking at him, I think it might have been shock. He clearly didn’t understand what happened, so I began to explain that part as well, although I did feel guilty and it must have shown. “Actually, it was the model of Jupiter that hit him when it was on its standard rotational orbit. He just happened to be standing too close to the display and was in the wrong place. If he’d understood more about how Jupiter acted then he wouldn’t have stood where Jupiter was heading. We were debating the discoveries of Kuiper Belt Objects with masses roughly comparable to Pluto, such as Quaoar, Sedna, and Eris, and he didn’t understand and it appeared to push the issue to a tipping point. He shoved me into the rocket display, then due to the laws of opposite reaction and the unfortunate physics of place and time, he stumbled back, and Jupiter hit him.”

  I sat back in my chair, because no one could argue with that explanation. I didn’t have a lot of patience with people who didn’t see past the nonsense and find the raw science. If a fruit is orange in color, tastes like orange, and is kind of round, then it’s an orange. It’s not an apple. And Pluto was not a planet, it was a distinctly different dwarf planet. Any science teacher worth their salt should’ve known this if they were shaping the minds of future generations. Wasn’t that why the planetarium had hired me to join in conversations and incite discussion which would lead to learning? They’d jumped on me the first year of my planetary science degree, and wanted my knowledge and enthusiasm, and when visitors would disagree with me I would encourage debate and everyone went away happy.

  Sometimes they were stupidly wrong, like the time a dad with his kids called a quasar a quantar. Hence my desperate need for a quasar installation to educate anyone else who didn’t understand. Of course, the dad hadn’t gotten in the way of Jupiter, so no paramedics had to be called to that argument.

  “You’re fired,” Drewin blurted out.

  “What?”

  He couldn’t do that. I needed the money from this gig, and who else would do the crazy night shifts but me? Certainly not Andy-I-know-nothing from the café with his stories about how he’d once been abducted by aliens.

  “I need you to leave your security card and clear out your locker.”

  Maybe I heard wrong. “My card?”

  Drewin held out a hand. “Your security badge—”

  “Wait, no, I need this work—”

  “You’re a liability, Joseph, badge now, get your stuff and leave.”

  “But tonight’s Wonders of the Night Sky show—”

  “Andy will do it—”

  “Andy told everyone that asteroids don’t have moons in the last show—”

  “Andy doesn’t hit teachers—”

  “It wasn’t me who hit the teacher, it was Jupiter—”

  “Fired.” The door opened, and there stood Jim from security, a man so tall and wide that he filled the entire doorway, and whose face was schooled into a stern expression. “Jim, can you please escort Mr. Leigh to the lockers, and then off the premises.”

  I met Jim’s steady gaze. Surely Jim wouldn’t do that—I babysat his kids. Hell, I’d even taken a nanny job for his cousin Bertha and her five children—but he didn’t smile at me, he simply stood back so there was room for me to move through. I looked from him back to Drewin, who still had his hand out for my card.

  I had one last thing to say. “Please don’t let Andy mess up the show—”

  “Out.”

  “Remember, he said he’s been abducted by aliens, but think about it. If aliens did land they’ be abducting the intellectual
masterminds of our planet, not Andy. Unless of course they were looking to repopulate their planet, but surely even then, Andy wouldn’t be their best choice.”

  Drewin stood so fast his chair hit the wall, “Out!” he thundered, and I scrambled back and out the door so fast I swear I left burn marks in the carpet.

  Jim pulled the door shut so we were alone in the hallway. “Shit, kid, what did you do now?”

  I pulled my shoulders back and looked up at the bulk of him from my five-ten disadvantage, then pushed my glasses up my nose.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I defended, but couldn’t continue. It was me. I had lost my cool. I’d gotten into a childish fight about whether Pluto was a planet, and instead of using science I’d provoked a teacher into shoving me and then ended up watching as Jupiter swung round and knocked him to the floor. I should have been more specific when I called out to warn him, but my garbled “watch out for Jupiter” had done nothing to move him. In fact, it had made him shove me into the Apollo display. And now I’d lost the one job that meant I could earn money, study, and work around everything else. Regrets flooded me as Jim pulled the security door closed after me and I was standing on the sidewalk at the rear of Tucson planetarium.

  I had my backpack full of school books, the half-finished model of the Titan 1 rocket that I’d been working on in my breaks, and my cell phone. I also had an hour’s walk back to the pull-out bed I slept on in my sister’s place in Santa Rita Park. I could have gotten a bus but there was a reason I was in shock at losing this job, not only did they need me, but I needed the money—it was the one thing between me and my final year’s study. It had taken me eight years to get this far and I was so close to getting my degree that I could taste it. I headed through Rincon Heights, my stride fast and purposeful, fueled by the fire of righteous indignation, but it wasn’t until I crossed the Parkway with the slap of wind from cars speeding past the sidewalk that it hit me what I’d done.

  That was possibly the most stupid thing I’ve ever achieved in my life. How was I going to cover rent plus tuition and loans without that extra six hundred dollars a month? I’d have to get a job flipping burgers, or at a twenty-four hour store, and they wouldn’t pay me on the same rate, I’d just be the old kid, the twenty-seven year old, who was still trying to get through college. I was hanging on with the tips of my fingers to a ledge that was out above one hell of a big canyon of debt and disappointment.

  The heat was overwhelming even in early evening, sweat trickling down my back, the nose cone of my model sliding where the glue was melting. I’d gone in to cover someone today, so excited about the Wonders of the Night Sky show that I’d designed and worked my ass off on.

  “You’re a freaking idiot,” I berated myself and continued walking, taking a left onto South Third and feeling lighter that I was only fifteen minutes from home. Self-pity burned in me, then I went through anger, and then acceptance, and by the time I turned into my sister’s street with its cracked sidewalks and dreary houses, I’d worked through every single emotion. There was no point in spending time thinking back on what had happened today. I’d get inside, make a drink, check on Emma, and then sit and work out what I could do.

  The front door was wide open, my big sister by two years, Natalie, sitting against an upright, a can of diet soda in her hand and a wide smile on her face. I’d learned over the years that the smile meant she was waiting to ask me something. She didn’t even let me get up the entire path.

  “The doctor called with my HBA which was a good level, the paperwork is on the table for you to read. Also Mick’s asked me to go up to LA in a couple of months, can we look at your diary and see what weekends you have free so you can watch Emma for me?”

  Mick was Natalie’s latest boyfriend, yet another guy who she thought might be like the man she’d married and lost, and who probably didn’t hold a candle to her one true love, Bobby Owens. God knows she deserved so much. After all she’d been pregnant, married, then widowed in the space of a month. Bobby had never met Emma but his memory was alive in a wall of photos in the front room. So often we would sit with Emma between us and tell her stories of Bobby and what an awesome dad he was. Natalie and Bobby had been childhood sweethearts, and to lose him so cruelly to cancer had rocked our tiny family to the core.

  Emma and this house were the only things she had left of the one man she’d loved, and now spent all her time trying to replace. She merited more than this broken-down home, and the specter of diabetes that controlled her life. She should have been in a nice house with a white picket fence with her beloved Bobby and their daughter, and have no need for injections or checkups. Losing Bobby had changed her, and it was her eternal search for something better for her and Emma that made me scared for her.

  “Cut to the chase, eh?” I asked, and sat on the stoop then held my hand out for the can.

  She passed it to me, but it was warm, and almost empty so I handed it back with a grimace—there was nothing worse that warm soda. Except for maybe losing my well-paid, scientifically-inclined, life-fitting job.

  She dimpled another smile, “Only if you can,” she murmured and leaned forward. “He wants to show me Hollywood, and I’ve never been there.”

  How neat was it that I’d lost my job and wouldn’t be working any weekend from now on planned? So neat. Not.

  “Of course I will, you deserve some alone time.”

  She lifted her can as a salute. “You’ve always been my favorite brother.”

  “I’m your only brother,” I reminded her as usual, the familiar banter enough to soothe my worries. A future weekend with my niece Emma sounded exactly what I needed, swimming, walks, and we could work some more on our lunar landscape which she enjoyed doing. She had a love for the stars, and I could spend all day explaining everything at her level. That was why I got so angry when teachers who said they knew science got things incorrect and ended up teaching kids the entirely wrong way.

  “Uh oh, why are you frowning? What did you do?”

  Shit. I wished she didn’t know me as well as she did. “I lost my job at the planetarium.”

  Her eyes widened and she placed a hand on my leg. “Oh no, what happened? Are you okay?”

  I could’ve explained, but now I was away from the planetarium, and with the benefit of hindsight I could see the entire incident for what it was. An absolute shit show of epic proportions. She glanced at me with such confusion, and I couldn’t help the guilt.

  “I’ll still pay rent.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t need rent.”

  She did. To afford the insulin, and the health checks, and the retinopathy investigations, but I didn’t point that out. I’d rather have delayed the final year of courses than see my sister ill. When I finally finished my degree I would get a job, and I may not have ended up rolling in cash but I’d have been able to look after her, get her away from there, somewhere cooler, close to a good school for Emma.

  “Maybe the nanny agency will have something.” Even as I said that, I doubted it. I’d done three emergency covers, and that was only because I’d been the only one available. Management at the agency had never explicitly said that, but I saw and heard more than they knew. I loved looking after kids, there was something so wonderful about their excitement for the world, and very often nannying a toddler meant being there for the toddler’s sibling. There was nothing like spending time rocking a baby and talking about the stars with the older sibling. I’d had both those things with Emma—caring for her as a baby, and now showing her the beauty of the universe, and it was my reason for being.

  I didn’t need a job at the stupid planetarium, I needed to get more nanny jobs until my degree was done—it was simple.

  “Earth to Joseph."

  I snapped out of my self-justification loop and sighed. “Or I’ll get another part-time job,” I said and watched as the nose cone of my model finally slip off with a plop to the step. It was so damn ridiculous, and I couldn’t help the nervous
snort of laughter that was expelled from me with force. If I didn’t laugh, I would cry. At my stupidity, my need to always be right, and mostly that I hadn’t used enough glue for the nose cone.

  “Come on, I left you dinner, and you’re home early so it might even still be edible.” She helped me stand and we headed into the cooler house. I shut the door, then poked my head into Emma’s room, seeing my sweet and sassy five-year-old niece sprawled on her bed, arms akimbo, and dead to the world. Somehow she made everything right and perfect.

  Even though I’d fucked up, she still loved me.

  I sighed and pulled the door shut, then stood for a moment in the hallway.

  What the hell have I done?

  Three

  Colorado

  The lyrics to one of the first songs I had ever written, at the ripe old age of eight, popped into my head.

  The heavens rained black rain and I got wet.

  Yeah, it wasn’t a great line. Too many uses of the word “rain” for starters. I was only eight. But this single chaotic moment in my mangled life fit that first attempt at being a lyricist well. I was soaked to the skin and needed an umbrella. Holding a baby to my chest as the world spun out of control around me, I yearned for a port in a storm. Hell, even a rope tossed into the churning sea of madness would’ve sufficed. So yeah, the line worked for the situation.

  “Yo!” I called over the din of screaming baby, irritated Russian, a team owner pacing inside and out with his phone to his ear, and a really aggrieved head coach. All eyes landed on me. “Can someone take her while I go shower and pack?”

  We were due in Vegas in two hours or something. Mark charged into the room, eyes as round as a kettle drum, and stepped right over what Vlad had been about to say.

  “You are not to take that child out of state,” Westman-Reid barked.