Colonel Shanks voiced no objections.
“Well, lads,” Kosmo announced, “looks like I’m earthbound once again. Anybody care to join me?” All through the fort, hands shot into the air. “Right! I’ll take Davy C. Rocket, and . . . Oy, Pando! Have you ever had an away mission?”
Chef Pando shook his head sadly.
“Well, no better time to start,” said Kosmo. Pando hopped with joy.
“That leaves room for one more.” Kosmo turned to Lily. “Lupino, you’d make a right-useful navigator, being an ex-Earther yourself. What do you say?”
“Hmm . . . Can I drive?”
Kosmo smiled. “Right, crew! Gear up, and make ready for launch in . . . Uh-oh, hang on.” He tapped his chin, watching Davy and Pando gleefully pick out their space helmets.
“Is it me, Lupino,” said Kosmo, “or are we all looking a bit scruffy for a mission? Any chance you’d be up for giving us a preflight trim?”
CHAPTER 31
Earthbound
“All aboard!” hollered Kosmo, beaming with his freshly trimmed hair, standing beside the freshly wound Mildred. One by one, the mission crew slid down the fire pole into the hangar, each sporting a handsome new do from their new expert barber.
Zhoop—First came Davy C. Rocket, King of the Final Frontier, trimmed close around the ears and the back, but wavy on top with a nice clean part. He climbed through the hatch, into the back seat, and sat beside Agent Argos, who had Colonel Shanks on his lap.
Zhoop—Next came Pando the Chef, hair slicked straight back with a mirror sheen. He crawled in, and sat beside Davy.
And finally—zhoop—came Lily Lupino, Barber-Navigator. She took a look at her reflection in Mildred’s windshield. Her own short and shiny do—the “Trip Darrow”—was as dapper as it was practical, and perfectly complemented the Spacetronaut star freshly stitched to the tummy of her nightgown.
Kosmo climbed in, and crawled across to the passenger seat. Lily sat in the pilot’s seat, closed the hatch behind her, and buckled her seat belt. Kosmo pounded on the dashboard, and the controls blinked to life.
“Evening, Mildred!” said Lily. Mildred answered with a confused chirp.
“No, Mildred,” said Kosmo. “Lupino’s gonna drive.” Mildred chattered in protest. In the back seat, Davy and Pando turned a little green, and buckled their seat belts.
“Well, she’s got to learn sometime, eh?” said Kosmo. “Fire up scramjets and make ready for liftoff. Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . .” The engine whined. Their seats shook and turned hot.
Lily gripped the joystick. Through the windshield, and through the small, square portal out of the hangar, space beckoned.
Kosmo finished his countdown: “Three . . . Two . . . One!”
Lily found a big red button on the dashboard marked IGNISHUN.
“Blastoff!” she shouted, over the engine’s roar, and hit the button. “Ffffwwoooosshhh!!”
CHAPTER 32
Brooklyn, Earth (Revisited)
By the time they made it out of Outer Outer Space, through Outer Space, and all the way back to Regular Space, Lily had gotten the hang of steering the rocket, and Mildred had only one or two fresh dings to show for the journey. The stars looked puny and far away, and no longer whizzed by, so it was hard to tell if the rocket was still getting anywhere. In the back, Davy, Pando, and Agent Argos snored. In the passenger seat, Kosmo’s head bobbed onto his chest.
Lily’s eyelids had just begun to droop when, dead ahead, one of the stars flared up bigger and brighter than the others. It was the sun, Lily’s sun. Scattered around it, like an abandoned game of marbles, were Pluto, Neptune, Jupiter, and the rest. The streaky blue-green marble of Earth nudged the others aside, and swelled up to fill the windshield.
• • •
Lily’s guts twisted into a knot, as she pictured Mr. and Mrs. Lupino standing guard over Argos’s empty crib, ready to seize her on sight. Maybe the cops would even be there too, at the scene of the crime. After all, Lily had earned herself quite a rap sheet since that little incident with the scissors. Now she was a runaway, too, a fugitive, a delinquent. And there was that giant hole in the living room ceiling—they’d probably pin that on her too, and the busted fridge, and maybe throw in the blown-up moon to boot. If they nabbed her now, she’d be lucky if she ever set foot outside her own home again, let alone her home planet.
“How long were we away?” Lily asked.
“What, Earth time?” said Kosmo, shaking off sleep. “Beats me. Space time runs a bit stretchier than on Earth.”
Whatever that meant, it didn’t make Lily feel any better. She wanted to yank the hand brake, hang a U-turn, and rocket straight back to the fort.
No!
She was a Spacetronaut, and Spacetronauts see their missions through. She steered Mildred into Earth’s shadowy half, and pierced a layer of clouds, until a grid of golden lights simmered up out of the dark. She eased back on the joystick, coasting low over dim streets, spiny churches, and dark, clustered buildings. Only a few windows here and there were lit.
“Look familiar, rookie?” asked Kosmo.
“Um . . .” It didn’t. Lily wasn’t used to seeing Brooklyn from this angle, definitely not this far past her bedtime, and without a moon in the sky to light the way.
A wide, flat black patch slid below them, with little white squares in neat rows.
Gravestones!
It was the big, spooky graveyard across from Lily’s school. She steered along Flatbush Avenue, then turned left at the fire station, and spotted her own brick building ahead.
“Mildred, make ready to land.”
Mildred eased off on her thrusters, as Lily circled the rooftop in a mellow, downward spiral, aiming for the big crater in the middle of the roof, where Kosmo “landed” last time.
Why make a ruckus, punching another hole in the building?
“Setting down in three . . . two . . . ,” said Lily, as Mildred’s underbelly skimmed the rooftop, right on track for a hole-in-one landing. . . .
But a jutting pipe snagged Mildred’s grille, launching her into a forward somersault right off the roof. She slammed against the trunk of an old maple, and would have dived four stories straight into the pavement, if something hadn’t broken her fall; a branch caught them in its gnarled grip, sagged under the weight of five Spacetronauts and one windup tin rocket, sprang up again, and finally bobbed to rest outside a dark, top-floor window.
Lily opened Mildred’s hatch. There, at the end of the gently bobbing branch, were the gauzy curtains of her very own bedroom.
“All in once piece back there?” she asked, but the back seat Spacetronauts had barely lifted an eyelid; this was a smoother landing than they were used to.
“Rise and shine, lads!” shouted Kosmo. “Time for Operation Nappy Drop. Pando! Davy C.!” Pando and Davy sprang up in their seats, ready for action. “You two flank the window. Lupino, you ready ‘the Package’ for delivery,” said Kosmo, nodding toward Argos. “Me, I’ll scout ahead for unfriendlies.” Smiling his wolfish smile, he drew his ray gun.
“Maybe I should deliver the Package alone,” Lily suggested.
“Aye, a stealth mission. Good call,” agreed Kosmo—only a little let down to have to holster his ray gun. “Davy and Pando, sit tight.” Davy and Pando were already nodding off again.
Lily unfastened her seat belt, and shimmied across the branch, trying to ignore the four-story drop below her. She tugged at the window frame, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Locked!” she whispered.
“Fear not!” answered Kosmo, tossing her his ray gun. Lily fired a quick pulse through the glass, melting the latch into a hissing, glowing puddle, then tossed the ray gun back to Kosmo. She slid the window open, peeked through the parted curtain, and gave her eyes a couple seconds to adjust. There was no one inside, and the room looked just as she’d left it. Her bedcovers were still rumpled, from where she hopped out of bed to investigate Kosmo’s crash.
“All clear
!” she whispered. “Cue the Package.”
Kosmo guided Argos out of the hatch. Gripping Colonel Shanks in his mouth, Argos scooched along the branch, across Lily’s lap, through the parted curtain, and into the darkened bedroom. Lily was about to hop in after him, when a horrible thought occurred to her: What if, when the curtain closed behind her, the rocket, all traces of Outer Outer Space, evaporated like a dream into the Brooklyn night air?
“Don’t go anywhere!” she whispered. “Promise?”
“Spacetronaut’s Honor,” said Kosmo, with his hand on his chest. “If you run into any unfriendlies, just give a whistle!”
Lily hopped through the curtain. Argos was already half-asleep, leaning against his crib.
“You sure about this, Argos?” Lily whispered. Argos tossed Colonel Shanks into the crib, raised his arms toward Lily, and let out a drowsy whimper. She kissed the seasoned Spacetronaut’s sleepy head, hugged him, and with all her might, hoisted him up over the railing. Argos flopped onto the mattress, and in three seconds flat, was fast asleep.
Click!
The room lit up, bright as day. Scowling in the doorway was Mr. Lupino, in his bathrobe, with his finger on the light switch.
Lily froze, with her hands still on the railing of the crib. She puckered her lips to whistle for help, but there was no breath in her chest to push the sound out. She was caught! She had made it all the way to Outer Outer Space and back, only to wake up in the starlessness of her old bedroom.
“Lily Lupino!” her father growled. “Hands off the crib. Now!” Lily dropped her hands to her sides. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight, but the next time I catch you terrorizing your poor brother . . . !”
Tonight?
There was probably more to that sentence, but Lily didn’t hear anything past the word . . .
Tonight!
“What’s the matter, hon?” Mrs. Lupino asked, shuffling up beside Mr. Lupino, tying her bathrobe. There were faint black stripes on her cheeks, left over from where tears had dragged mascara down her face, then dried into a crust.
Of course! Because here on Earth, it was still “tonight,” Trip Darrow night, scissors night.
Space time runs a bit stretchier . . .
Indeed! It had stretched like a rubber band across the stars, and snapped Lily right back to the night she left.
“Nothing,” answered Mr. Lupino. “Just more monkey business. Go back to bed.” Mrs. Lupino did just that, and Mr. Lupino was about to follow, when something caught his eye. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” asked Lily.
“That, on your nightgown.”
“A star.”
“Well, what’s it doing on your nightgown?”
Lily shrugged.
“Tomorrow that’s going right in the trash with all the other space nonsense. This astronaut baloney ends now, you hear me?” Looking at the floor, Lily nodded—anything to get him to leave, so she could make her escape!
“You’re not an astronaut, are you?” said Mr. Lupino. Lily shook her head. Triumphant, Mr. Lupino switched off the light and turned to leave, but before he could pull the door shut behind him . . .
“I’m a Spacetronaut,” Lily declared, because she couldn’t bear not to.
Mr. Lupino turned, to find his daughter standing in the dark, meeting his scowl with a thousand-light-year-stare of her own. His scowl melted into something different, an expression Lily recognized, but couldn’t put a name to, which she had only seen him give to people taller than himself.
“Bed,” he managed to say, and pulled the door shut behind him.
In his crib, Agent Argos opened his eyes in time to see Lily step onto the windowsill, smile back at him, and vanish through the parted curtain. And the last thing he saw, before the deep, downy sleep of Earth took him, was the outline of Lily Lupino, Spacetronaut, standing proud with her fists on her hips. Then the night breeze rippled the curtain, and she was gone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my literary agent, Mark Gottlieb, for inspiring, guiding, amd welcoming me into the world of publishing.
I’m grateful to my editor, David Gale, for his keen storytelling instincts, which enriched this story immeasurably.
And I’m fortunate to have worked with designer Krista Vossen, who crafted this book into a beautiful work of art.
And I owe a specal thanks to The Shelter, the theater workshop where Lily Lupino and Kosmo Kidd were born and raised. This story wouldn’t exist without this warm, wise, and immensely talented family of artists.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT © 2016 MEGHAN E. JONES
JONATHAN ASHLEY is an author, playwright, concept artist, and filmmaker from Arizona. He studied fine art at Boston’s Museum School, and filmmaking at NYU. His illustrations and designs have been featured in films, commercials, comic books, and puppet shows. He lives with his wife and daughter in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, on the Brooklyn side.
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Ashley
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Book design by Krista Vossen
The illustrations for this book were rendered digitally, in pen and ink.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ashley, Jonathan, author.
Title: Lily & Kosmo in outer outer space / Jonathan Ashley.
Other titles: Lily and Kosmo
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Summary: Lily Lupino yearns to be an astronaut, so when Kosmo Kidd crash-lands in her Brooklyn kitchen in 1949, she will do almost anything to prove herself to him and his crew.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017042020| ISBN 9781534413641 (hardcover)
| ISBN 9781534413665 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Astronauts—Fiction. | Space flight—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Sex role—Fiction. | Humorous stories. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A84 Lil 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042020
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