A Long Way From Home

A Long Way From Home — page 1 — Do not look at stars as bright spots only Try to take in the vastness of the universe Maria Mitchell astronomer 1818 1889

A Long Way From Home — page 2 — 1 T minus 62 days to launch The summer I turn twelve Mom and Dad finally let me have a phone Dad buys me an old model supposedly refurbished I have my doubts and the thing is glitchy right from the very beginning Once in a while I receive weird text messages from long streams of digits longer than any regular phone number I’ve ever seen They’re not even messages really Just words Single words that don’t make any sense But I don’t delete them and I don’t say anything anything about them to my parents who are worried enough about me as it is The first word I receive is HOUSE I stare at it for a while confused I text back You’ve got the wrong number but the reply says Message failed to send 1

A Long Way From Home — page 3 — This is what happens when your parents won’t spring for a new phone I think to myself I have more important things on my mind though Things that aggravate the knot in my stomach stomach which has its own unpredictable personality Sometimes when Mom asks me about it she does this thing with her eyes that makes my obsessive thinking seem like an extra member of our family I’ve been to a few different doctors and psychologists psychologists though none of them really help They do try It’s their job to try But no therapist in the world can actually change any of the things that are making me worry because they’re big things problems no one seems to know how to fix No one can even agree on what the main problems are Things are just not okay I find out we Mom Dad me and my cat Jones are moving because Mom got a new job It isn’t just any job either Mom’s a physicist A PhD She’s always saying she wants to do something astonishing and significant with her life And she wants the same 2

A Long Way From Home — page 4 — for me That’s why she’s always bugging me to finish finish my math homework and apply myself because the world needs my talents So now she’s going to work for this aerospace company that’s trying to get humanity farther into space faster and cheaper than has ever been done before using a new kind of rocket called the Athena Heavy The company SpaceNow has a big plan to strap twenty-seven of these rockets together and eventually eventually get humans to Mars in something like comfort The SpaceNow engineers are exceptionally good at applying themselves so Mom wants to help them And since my mother is an overachieving genius she’s been invited to do just that Which means she won’t be working from home anymore like she’s been doing most of my life and we’ll have to leave Pennsylvania Pennsylvania for Florida specifically Merritt Island along the Space Coast in the middle of my summer break I wonder if maybe the SpaceNow engineers and I have something important in common We look around at Earth right now at the burning rain forests and rising seas and say Bring me my rocket please I have an 8 15 f light to Not Here 3

3

PAGE 3 OF 283

The only kids' eBook subscription service that offers thousands of high-quality books from well known publishers like HarperCollins, National Geographic and others.

JavaScript Required

Whoops! We're sorry but Epic doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Check your web browser's settings to make sure it's enabled.