by Nick Lake
i remember when Brown died, how i looked at space & thought it was endless & had no judgment in it but also no kindness, & yet now all i can c is a beautiful vastness full of love & music always & held together by it & full of all this all this all this yes.
all this yes.
“hello, Orion,” i say.
i go to the hatch. i wave at my mother, & she waves back.
a pause, & then she smiles. it is as if she is putting effort into it. as if she has thought about it, practiced in front of a mirror to get it right.
well.
that’s better than not.
i smile back. i hit the button next to me & the air lock starts to pressurize. oxygen hisses thru pipes, misting slightly. my mother removes her helmet. the other astronaut with her does the same. they hinge their suits & step out, both in their underwear, because of the heat.
i press the button to open the hatch, & it irises open, expanding, until there is a clear space for them to float thru & into the station.
“welcome to Moon 2,” i say.
not to my mother, of course. she has been here many times before. she was here for over a year, once.
not to my mother.
to the other astronaut.
Soto floats thru the hatch, with a marveling expression on his face.
“fancy seeing u here,” he says, smiling so his eyes crinkle at the edges.
something flips in my stomach, like a fish.
outside the window, the stars wink at me, in the darkness.
Circles feature prominently in this novel, so it seems appropriate that I circled back to an editor I had worked with before: the wonderful Melanie Nolan at Random House. Thanks to Melanie for agreeing to edit me again, and for improving the book with countless perceptive, wise, and clear suggestions. Emma Goldhawk, at Hodder in the UK, also improved the story in innumerable ways, seeing links I had missed myself. I am deeply grateful to both my brilliant editors.
Thanks to Ray Shappell and Jason Heatherly for the beautiful cover. And to all the people at Random House and Hodder who work incredibly hard to get books into the hands of teenagers.
As always, thanks also go to my agents, Caradoc King and Millie Hoskins, who made the story stretch further, before any editor even saw it, and to Jane Willis for convincing several foreign publishers to take it, even though it is written in mostly untranslatable poetic prose with silly orthography.
Finally, and firstly—we’re back to circles again—my profound gratitude to Hannah, my wife and first reader, who doesn’t just help to make the story better, but helps to make it a story.
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