Luciana: Braving the Deep

by Erin Teagan

  I sat in my chair. I ate my yogurt. I tried to enjoy the warm breeze off the bay, but my brain wouldn’t let me. I could still see a little bit of Claire without turning my face. I could hear her voice in my head from the night before, calmly telling me how to work through my panic and fear. She may have been the reason why I had a freak-out in the first place because of what happened in the pool, but I couldn’t ignore that she was also the reason I was able to brave through it.

  So, when I stood up to throw away my yogurt container, I headed for the trash can on the other side of the beach by Claire instead of the one by the hangar. She sat up when she saw me coming, and I knew there was no turning back now, even as much as I wanted to bolt after tossing my yogurt container in the trash can. I had to be the bigger person.

  “Hey,” I said. “I just wanted to say thank you for helping me last night.” I dug my feet into the sand, which was still cold and damp from an overnight shower.

  “Don’t thank me,” Claire said. She snorted. “Not after what I did in the pool.”

  It was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said.

  I watched a snail sliding in the sand. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Can you sit for a minute?” she said. “I mean, I understand if you don’t want to but …”

  Facing the water, I sat in the sand, but put some distance between us.

  “I know it won’t mean much, but I’m sorry I left you in the pool.” She sniffed. “Like, really sorry.” She shook her head. “I got carried away by everything and …”

  She paused like she wanted me to fill in the blank, but I didn’t.

  “… messed things up big time,” she said finally.

  We were quiet for a minute and I wished the rest of the team would show up already so I didn’t have to sit in awkward silence with Claire. I thought about how she could have ruined my entire dream of being an astronaut. What if I always panicked in small spaces from now on? Then what?

  I spoke up, angry all of a sudden. “Anyway, what did you think was going to happen when you left me down there?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “When you do something on purpose, it means you thought about it. Hasn’t your mom ever told you that—”

  I stopped. I didn’t know about Claire’s mom, only that she never talked about her. Maybe she didn’t even have one.

  “My mom died when I was a baby. It’s just me and my dad,” she said. “And his assistant, I guess, and the housekeeper and cook, and I had a nanny until I was ten.”

  I didn’t have a cook or a housekeeper or an assistant, but I did have a family who loved me, and a baby sister with a fixed-up heart, and a best friend—two actually, if I counted Raelyn and Ella—and that was worth more than anything.

  “Sorry,” I said, quietly. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s how it’s always been,” she said with a shrug. “Just me and my dad. And I got really excited when he said he’d come and do the dive to Cetus with me. He barely has time to do anything with me these days and I …” She drifted off, looking at the water instead of me now. “I let things get out of control. I mean, everyone knows I’m competitive. It’s not my best quality.” She buried her feet deeper into the sand. “But the thought of having to call my dad to tell him not to come because I didn’t make the dive team … that just wasn’t an option for me.”

  I fanned my face, the sun starting to feel too hot, imagining then what it must have felt like to call her dad to tell him she got disqualified from the dive team. “Did you have to tell him what happened?”

  She nodded.

  “What did he say?”

  She sighed. “Nothing.”

  If I did something like that to one of my teammates, my parents would have gone on and on and on and then insisted on talking to the camp counselor and then also grounded me for eternity. “Nothing at all?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s what he always does when I get in trouble,” she explained. “It’s like he’s so disappointed in me, he doesn’t even have any words. I wish he would just yell at me, though, because when he’s mad sometimes it feels like he might never talk to me again.”

  A silent house. Before Izzy, when my parents had to work late, sometimes it was just me at home and the silence was what I hated the most. That would probably be the worst punishment for me too.

  “How’d you know how to do that calming-down trick yesterday?” I asked, changing the subject.

  She smiled at me. “I’m scared of flying. And since it’s how my dad likes getting around, I had to learn some things about not freaking out.”

  I laughed. I didn’t mean to, it just came out. “Between me being afraid of small places, Ella nervous about heights, and you scared of flying, we’d make quite the space team.”

  I felt better when Claire laughed too. “You’re right. Not exactly the greatest fears to have if you want to be an astronaut.”

  “But we can work through them,” I said, because if I had realized anything through the Cetus ordeal, it’s that everybody was afraid of something.

  “Well, I’m going to find a way to make all of this up to you someday,” she said, getting up, because Buzz and the rest of the boys were coming across the grassy area now, ready for the morning meeting. “If you ever need or want anything, call me, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, hoping she really meant it.

  We saw Ella bounce down our cottage steps, the meeting about to start in the hangar. When she saw Claire, she stopped mid-stride.

  “Ella?” Claire said. She popped up, and I followed as she ran to her even though Ella looked super intimidating with her arms crossed and her face all pinched. It was clear that she was still mad at Claire, and sometimes when Ella was mad you never knew what she was going to say.

  “I’m really sorry about messing up your timer,” Claire said as we both finally caught up to her.

  “I just want to know one thing,” Ella said after a second. “Did you do it on purpose?”

  And I crossed my fingers, hoping that Claire wouldn’t lie to Ella or make up an excuse. That she’d tell the truth even if it meant fessing up to something so mean. Sometimes it was the difference between the whole truth and a little lie that could make or break a friendship for good.

  “Yeah,” Claire said. “I purposely threw the stopwatch in the water. And I’m sorry.”

  “Oh,” Ella said, looking surprised. “I … I just can’t believe you’d do that to me. When we were friends.”

  “I can’t either.” Claire looked down, like she was studying the grass. “I’d understand if you didn’t want to be my friend again.”

  Ella didn’t have anything to say, but I could tell by the way she was picking at her nails that she was thinking about it and it was probably something she’d have to think about for a while. And maybe one day after she’d thought about it enough, Claire would get a postcard in the mail.

  “Look, guys,” Claire said, standing in front of us. “I know it’s going to take more than an apology to make all of this better, but I just want you to know that I feel awful about what happened and how I acted. And from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry.”

  I stared hard at Claire, not totally sure if I should believe her words. But her face looked calm and honest, and I couldn’t see a speck of bragginess or untruthfulness there. So, for the first time, I believed her.

  We spent our second-to-last day at camp cleaning up our project stations. Ella handed out a bunch of scraps she printed off the 3-D printer, and I got a coin-shaped trinket with a slice through one side.

  “It could be like a good luck charm or something,” Ella said. “See? I have one too.”

  “Like a friendship charm,” I said.

  “Yes!” She seemed very pleased. “Exactly like that.” She kissed her coin and then left to help Buzz slide a giant trash bag across the floor.

  Claire and I took final pictures of
the plants we hadn’t harvested for Cetus, measuring their shoots once more. I couldn’t believe how much our butter lettuce had grown in such a short time and with so little water. It made me think that growing food hydroponically was a great way to have fresh food up in space. Astronauts millions of miles away on Mars could even make their own salads.

  With our projects finished and our Cetus mission a success, we used our last day and a half at camp for fun. Pirate Pete let us snorkel in the bay, collect snails and hermit crabs on the shore, and even take the camp paddleboard out when the Rocket Science kids weren’t using it as a platform to shoot off rockets in the water. At first Claire stayed on the beach, but eventually she joined us in the water, and I was proud of my teammates because even though she had made a big mistake, nobody could deny that she was still part of our Cetus team.

  On Friday night we had our final bonfire on the beach, a camp send-off before the parents came in the morning. The International Space Station would be in view again, and everyone agreed that I’d get the first look through the telescope this time.

  The moon was a tiny sliver when Ella, Claire, and I stepped onto the dark beach and looked up at the sky. The stars were glowing so bright, I felt as if I were floating in space. With the beach and ocean the only things to see for miles, it was like being on a different planet and I felt like a tiny speck in a giant universe.

  We sat around our bonfire and snacked on roasted marshmallows. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see the launch pad next door. They were rebuilding now, construction vehicles and scaffolding and giant pieces of metal scattered around the complex.

  “When are they going to finish fixing that up?” I said, pointing my marshmallow stick toward the flight facility.

  Sarah looked at it over her shoulder. “Pretty soon actually. They’ve scheduled a launch in the spring.”

  “They’ll be ready by then?” Ella asked.

  “Yep,” Marcus said. “When it comes to space travel, there’s no time to wallow in failure. They pick themselves up and move on.”

  Just like that? They were ready to move on?

  “Aren’t they worried it’s going to explode in their faces again?” I asked.

  “Well, now that they know what went wrong the first time,” Sarah said, “they’ll do everything they can to avoid it. But they also know that science and space flight are not always certain. There will always be failures.”

  “And there will always be discoveries,” Marcus added.

  I thought about my own failure on Cetus and how if I hadn’t freaked out, I may have never discovered that Claire’s trick really worked when I needed to calm down. “It’s kind of like without failures there would be no discoveries,” I added.

  Marcus reached over Ella to give me a high five. “Exactly.”

  Buzz stood up. “I discovered something.” All eyes turned to him. “I thought I’d love scuba diving because I love swimming so much but it turns out I don’t. But it’s okay because I got to realize that mission control is pretty cool. In fact, I want to work in mission control when I grow up.”

  Sarah and Marcus smiled at him. “Did anyone else discover anything?” Sarah asked, sliding her toasted marshmallow between two graham crackers.

  Thomas stood up. “I liked building robots.”

  Dominic popped up next to him. “Me too. And I discovered that I want to build a lot more robots.”

  Ella stood up. “I realized that I love scuba diving. And that if you feel like you can’t do something, it’s just because you need more practice. And don’t give up and stuff.” She sat back down, her face reddening.

  I was trying to think of what to say when, to my surprise, Claire stood up. “Uh.” She bit her nail. “I realized a lot this week, including that I can be a jerk.” She laughed, so we did too. “I thought I really wanted to go to Cetus. I thought I wanted to be an astronaut.” She looked at me. “But my favorite part of camp was working in the lab with the plants. So, maybe my future is here on Earth instead of in the stars.”

  She quickly sat back down, and even though not everyone had forgiven her for what happened in the pool, they clapped because out of her failure, she had made a discovery.

  When it was my turn, everyone stared, waiting to hear what I had to say. But I had discovered so many things that I didn’t even know where to start.

  I stood up, holding three fingers up. “I discovered that rehydrated shrimp cocktail isn’t as bad as it sounds, that I can sleep on a teeny-tiny bunk bed without falling out, and that stingrays are related to sharks.” Everyone laughed and Buzz threw a marshmallow at me, which I professionally deflected into the bonfire.

  The truth was, I wanted to keep my real discovery close to my heart: that even after all that had happened, my dream to be the first girl to Mars hadn’t changed.

  We heard the chime of Sarah’s alarm. She stood up and checked her watch. “It’s time. The International Space Station is in view. But only for a few minutes.”

  We lined up at the telescope, me at the front, my team making sure I didn’t miss out this time.

  “Go ahead, Luci,” Sarah said. “Have a look.”

  At first, all I saw was the black sky. I bent lower, changing my angle on the lens and all at once it came into view. The International Space Station with all of its modules and solar panels that looked like giant wings. It was right there, so close through the telescope it was like I could reach out and touch it. There were real astronauts living there right now. Eating Chicken Fiesta and rubbery little shrimps.

  At one point, maybe they were eleven- or twelve-year-old kids looking at the night sky through a telescope just like me, dreaming about going to space. And maybe it was hard at times and sometimes felt impossible, and maybe they had to brave through it more than once, but in the end, they reached high enough for their dream and they made it.

  And all that meant that I could make it too.

  Erin Teagan is the author of The Friendship Experiment and worked in science for more than ten years before becoming a writer. She uses many of her experiences from the lab in her books and loves sharing the best and most interesting (and most dangerous and disgusting) parts of science with kids. Erin lives in Virginia with her family, a ninety-pound lapdog, and a bunny that thinks he’s a cat. Visit her at www.erinteagan.com.

  To write the Luciana series, Erin went to the real Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where she learned about hydroponics, watched kids build their own rockets, performed a soil experiment, and even scuba dived in the underwater astronaut trainer. Although the activities in this book were inspired by Erin’s experience at camp, this second book in the Luciana series takes place in a fictional location loosely based on NASA’s flight facility on Wallops Island in Virginia. Unlike in the story, children are supervised during activities and at all times at Space Camp.

  With gratitude to Dr. Deborah Barnhart, CEO, and Pat Ammons, director of communications at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, for guiding Luciana’s journey through the extraordinary world of Space Camp; astronaut Dr. Megan McArthur; Dr. Ellen Stofan, former chief scientist at NASA; Maureen O’Brien, manager of strategic alliances at NASA; and the rest of the NASA Headquarters and Johnson Space Center teams, for their insights and knowledge of space exploration.

  Meet Tenney Grant! Her biggest dream is to share what’s in her heart through music. Turn the page to read an excerpt from Tenney’s first book!

  My left hand shifted down the neck of my guitar, fingers pressing into the frets to form chords, while my right hand sailed over the strings with my favorite pick. I knew every note of “April Springs.” I didn’t have to look at my sheet music or think about how to play the song. I just let go and played, feeling the music as if it was flowing out of my heart.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Dad waving me down from a few feet away.

  Startled, I clamped my hand over my guitar’s neck, muting its sound mid-chord. It took me a moment to reali
ze I didn’t hear the buzzy twang of Dad’s bass guitar. I glanced around. The rest of our band wasn’t playing, either.

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling my cheeks turn hot pink.

  “No worries,” Dad said, winking. “I know you love that one. And you were singing with so much heart that it nearly broke mine to stop you.”

  I blushed. When I play a song I love, it’s easy for me to get swept up and forget about everything but the music. “April Springs” has a slow, sad melody that fills me with warmth every time we rehearse it. And when I sing its romantic lyrics, I can’t help daydreaming about what the songwriter must have been feeling when she composed them.

  “That transition out of the chorus still sounds a bit rocky,” Dad said to the band. “Let’s try it again.”

  Our lead singer, Jesse, wrinkled her nose at him. “Come on, Ray. This is the fifth time we’ve gone over the chorus. Let’s just move on to the next song.”

  My seventeen-year-old brother, Mason, rolled his eyes from behind his drum kit. Mason isn’t Jesse’s biggest fan. He thinks she’s stuck-up because she never helps unpack gear at our shows. Also, she only drinks bottled water from France, even though the tap water is perfectly fine here in Nashville, Tennessee. Despite all that, I couldn’t help but admire her. Jesse definitely had what it took to be a lead singer for a band. She had a great voice, she loved performing, and she was happiest when she was the center of attention. Every time I watched her perform I wondered: Could that be me someday?

  “Let’s try the chorus once more,” Dad replied calmly. “We haven’t practiced in ages. And with our next show around the corner, I want to make sure we have this down.”

  Jesse pouted, but she knew she couldn’t say no because the Tri-Stars were Dad’s band.