172 Hours on the Moon (8 page)

“Look, you found it,” he said with a smile, nodding in the direction of the sign. “Let’s go, then.” Midori was so bewildered
that she couldn’t say anything about what had happened in the bathroom. She didn’t even notice that her father had bought
a ridiculous T-shirt that read fly me to the moon. He found it at a gift shop while he was looking around the terminal and
had put it on right away, as a sort of last-minute declaration of support for his daughter. He hurried off toward the door
at the end of the corridor, and Midori and her mother followed along noiselessly and obediently.

The corridor was empty and devoid of any signage. Midori felt uncomfortable and longed to tell her parents what the person
in the bathroom had said, and that maybe they should go back, but she was scared that they would just start wondering if she
was even healthy enough to travel to New York. Besides, her father was moving down the corridor so fast there was no time
to think.

“This has to be it,” her father announced optimistically. “This gate must be totally new, since they haven’t put up any permanent
signage. No wonder it was nearly impossible to find.” He pushed the door at the end of the corridor and held it open for Midori
and her mother so they could enter first.

To their great relief they stepped into a departure lounge that looked just like all the others up in the terminal. But all
three of them were surprised to see that it was full of passengers, waiting impatiently to board the flight.

“How did all these people get here?” Midori asked, noticing that she could hear a little nervousness in her own voice.

But her father, who was taking the whole thing with remarkable calm, said, “I suppose they came a different way. I think we
must have come through some sort of service entrance. Don’t you think?”

Midori nodded absentmindedly and racked her brain trying to understand what had happened in the last few minutes. But it didn’t
make any sense, none at all, and she decided to just put it out of her mind. They were at the gate now; that was the most
important thing.

But that person in the bathroom said …

Don’t think about it, Midori. Don’t think about it. You’re going to New York now, think about that. Your life starts now
.

Antoine was sitting on the stairs outside his family’s summer home in Cherbourg-Octeville, on the Normandy coast. There was
only one day to go before he was supposed to leave for Houston with his parents. The training course at Johnson Space Center
with the other two teenagers would start, and from there they would be busy nonstop until the big launch.

The day he had gotten the letter from NASA felt so long ago now. He had really acted like a crazy person with all that business
at the Eiffel Tower, hadn’t he? Luckily, that was all behind him. He turned his eyes up toward the sky, but it was too light
out to see the moon. It was just the sun, the white March sun that shone down on the little coastal village, making everything
look as if it were in black and white.
It begins tomorrow
, he thought.

Antoine picked up the photo album he had brought out onto the steps and opened it. His father had been the one to suggest
they go out to Cherbourg-Octeville for the last week. It was almost impossible to be in a bad mood out here, where you always
felt the ocean, breathed the fresh air coming off the Channel. And then there were the colors, the light.

The only thing that didn’t fit in this idyllic picture was the worn photo album that had been sitting on the bookshelf in
the living room and that he was now holding in his hands. As a child Antoine had avoided the album like the plague. He had
flipped through it once, without knowing what it was, and after that he couldn’t sleep for days. The album was from 1945,
and an American soldier had sent it to Antoine’s great-grandparents as a gift. When the Allied forces came ashore on the Normandy
coast in World War II to start the final push against the Nazis in the summer of 1944, Cherbourg had been hit hard. Like many
others, his great-grandparents had taken in soldiers and let them recover for a few days. One of the sheltered soldiers had
later sent an album of photos that he and his division had taken while they were there.

Most of the pictures just showed jubilant scenes of soldiers hugging the local population, eating together, and smiling for
the camera — but there were also a few pictures that showed the gruesome consequences of the war. The picture that had terrified
Antoine as a child showed the entrance to the summer home with a bullet-riddled soldier slumped against the front door, his
blood trickling down the two front steps. One of his fellow soldiers was sitting next to him with his helmet in his hand,
looking sad. Antoine’s parents had tried to tell him that
the soldier was just sleeping, but he knew that wasn’t true. The soldier was dead. As a boy Antoine had been sure that the
soldier, or his ghost, was still sitting out there on the steps, and for two summers in a row he had consistently gone in
and out of the house through the back door. But as he got older, he instead made a habit of browsing through the album each
time he came, studying the bullet hole that was next to the door, reminding himself that his own problems paled in comparison
to what horrors happened here more than seventy years ago.

He sat there looking at the picture of the soldiers leaving their landing vessels, coming ashore on the beaches not far from
here. But the picture could just as easily have been taken on the moon. The soldiers waded ashore onto an unknown beach completely
shrouded in smoke and fog. Somewhere behind them you could just make out a dark hill. And that was when it hit Antoine that
he didn’t know what was waiting for him where he was going either. Not that anyone was going to attack him up there, but still
… Was it really as safe as his father thought it would be? How many other people had done this before him? Ten? Twelve? It
couldn’t be more than that, he was sure.

An uncomfortable thought — that maybe it had all been a mistake — started growing within him.

Antoine looked at the time. It was almost five. In an hour his relatives from the city would arrive at the summerhouse, and
they would all spend the last night before his departure with his parents. His mother was already in the kitchen, preparations
in full swing for the many courses she would serve. Antoine set the photo album down and strolled the little way down to the
water.

That’s where they had come from, those poor young men who
had been sent to liberate France. What were they thinking on their way in? Were they scared or calm, convinced that they wouldn’t
make it back home alive again anyway? He mulled that thought over but realized he wasn’t able to fully process it. No, he
had to come back from the moon in one piece. He wasn’t doing it to put as much distance between himself and Simone as possible.
It was more that he hoped that she would follow his experiences on TV and realize she still loved him. If not that, this whole
thing would be a total waste.

And then he heard it, the sound of a plane. It struck him that the sound came practically out of nowhere, but now the rumbling
jet turbines were very clear. The engines didn’t sound normal and low, the way they should. They sounded more like a whine,
as if the pilot were desperately trying to correct his course. Antoine tilted his head back and spotted a passenger plane
…

… as it came crashing down from the sky
.

He sat there, totally paralyzed with his mouth open, watching the plane tearing through the cloud layer, down toward the ocean.

No, no, no, no, no
, he thought.

The next second seemed to take forever. He managed to stand up and turn around to see if there was someone he could call out
to. But there was no one there, not a soul. He was alone on the pier, and the plane was heading for the surface at full speed.
And then he saw that the tail was painted with the enormous letters qu.

That … that just couldn’t be
.

He had no time to think anything else before the plane
smashed into the waves a couple thousand yards farther out and exploded in a violent ball of flame with an infernal sound
that forced Antoine to cover his ears. Seconds later the wave of heat hit him, and he had to turn away for a second. And when
he looked back out at the water, he saw burning jet fuel floating on the surface. He heard distant screams and squinted out
into the twilight.

There were people out there. Survivors!
They were clinging to the wreckage of the sinking tail section.

What do I do now? What in the world can I do?

His whole body was trembling, the adrenaline was surging through him, and his pulse was racing so hard that he thought his
heart would split just from the pressure. His legs felt numb and he was sick to his stomach, cold as ice. One single thought
kept going around and around in his head:
I have to do something
.

But he knew there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have a boat and couldn’t swim that far into the turbulent water.

He stood there mired in indecision, staring out at the flames, where the plane’s tail section was disappearing down into the
depths. He thought it already seemed that there were fewer voices crying out. Maybe they were all drowning, all of them? He
turned and ran back to the summerhouse to call for help.

The first sign that something was seriously wrong was evident almost immediately.

He came storming into the kitchen and encountered his mother, who was standing by the dish drainer smiling at him.

His parents hadn’t heard anything.

How could they not have heard that? The sound had been deafening.

But they weren’t the only ones who hadn’t noticed it. No one else had, either. Antoine’s mother rather reluctantly called
the coast guard after listening to his story, but they reported back that there had not been any plane crashes in the area.
Antoine’s visiting relatives hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

Eventually Antoine stopped talking about it, mostly because he was afraid they were right. That it had never happened and
the whole thing had just been a far-too-lifelike hallucination. Because that would mean he was losing his mind, wouldn’t it?

But he knew he hadn’t imagined it. A plane
had
crashed into the English Channel, before his very eyes.

He had seen people die.

And he had seen those two inexplicable letters on the plane’s tail section:
QU
. As somewhat of an airline buff, he knew that
QU
was the symbol for East African Airlines planes, but … they never flew here. They operated exclusively in Africa — and, besides,
the company had filed for bankruptcy several years ago. The coast guard had been in touch with the airline’s former owners,
but they said the only plane they had ever owned had been sold to another company in Kenya, which had repainted the tail markings
with its own logo.

Antoine was deeply anxious when he woke up the next morning. But he didn’t mention it, and his parents also pretended to have
forgotten the whole episode. The newspaper and the radio didn’t mention a word about it, either. After breakfast he sat with
his laptop in his lap Googling information about possible accidents in the area but found nothing. He also checked Wikipedia,
where he read about topics like hallucinations and abnormal psychology, but none of what he read seemed to fit. The only
explanation he could come up with was that he had had some kind of panic attack.

Antoine was still worried a couple hours later when they boarded the large Air France plane that would take them to New York.
He couldn’t get away from the nagging thought that what he had seen the previous night was a sign. A sign that he should stay
away from the skies. A sign that it was dangerous up there.

He did his best to look on the bright side.
Think about the future
, he told himself.
Think about what’s ahead of you, all the experiences you’re going to have. The future begins now, you know
.

And with those words, repeated to himself until he could calm down at last, his plane took off over the French capital, destined
for America.

The sky was dark and grayish blue over Manhattan as the Nomeland family’s taxi sailed over the Brooklyn Bridge, heading for
the posh Four Seasons Hotel on East Fifty-Seventh Street. There was something dark and gloomy about the whole city; this wasn’t
how Mia had imagined it. Her parents, either, she thought. The mood in the car was tense, and the few words that were spoken
were colored by guarded nervousness. Until now it had all been like a game, like a great vacation awaiting them. But the seriousness
of the situation had slowly dawned on them all:

This was no vacation.

They were taking a risk. Sending their daughter into outer space.

What if she never came back?

What about all the things that could go wrong?

They remembered the pictures on TV of the space shuttle
Challenger
shown over and over again in 1986. It had exploded in a sea of flames seventy-three seconds after takeoff, killing all seven
on board. But not instantaneously.

The cockpit they were sitting in had not been torn to pieces in the explosion. There was a chance that they’d all lived for
the two minutes and forty-five seconds it took until they hit the surface of the water with two hundred times the force of
gravity — enough to annihilate them.

Did they know they were going to die?

Maybe.

Probably.

Actually, only her parents were thinking about that. Mia wasn’t aware of that infamous accident. She hadn’t even been born
when it happened. What she was thinking about, as the taxi slowed down and parked outside the hotel, was her friends.

What were they doing right now?

Were they together, without her?

She didn’t want to think about that.

Were they having fun?

But she couldn’t stop herself.

A hotel employee opened the cab door for her, and she took her first steps out onto a wet New York sidewalk. The rain soaked
her hair in seconds so it stuck to her face and made her look even sadder than she was.

“Well, here we are,” her father said with a smile, elbowing her gently in the side.

Mia didn’t smile back.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

She nodded.

They stood there for a second, both on the verge of saying something of what they’d been thinking about in the cab. But before
they had a chance, they were interrupted by a bellhop who came out of the hotel and stacked their luggage onto a cart.

“Welcome to New York,” he said, grinning. “Sorry about the rain. It’s not always like this.” He held an umbrella over them
even though it was only a few yards to the entrance. “Follow me, please.”

A couple of NASA representatives met them in the restaurant later that evening. It was surprising that they offered fewer
details about the moon mission itself than all the media interviews and online chats and video blogs and TV shows and ad campaigns
and the extensive world tour that would start as soon as they returned from the mission.

“Yes, this is an outstanding opportunity for her,” her mother said.

“We’re very grateful Mia was chosen,” her father said.

“Obviously, it will change her life forever,” one of the NASA men said.

“I’m going to bed,” Mia suddenly announced, getting up from the table. Her mother, her father, and the two NASA men looked
at one another.

“Now?” her father said. “You’re going now? But we’re talking about
you
here, about
your
trip. Don’t you want to talk about it?”

“It’s not like you guys will even notice whether I’m here or not.”

Her father came up to her room twenty minutes later along with Sander. Mia was just finishing brushing her teeth when he knocked
on the door.

“Mia? Are you going to open the door? There’s someone here who wants to go to bed.”

She walked over and let them in.

Sander smiled when he saw her and shuffled into the bathroom, where he started brushing his teeth right away. Toothbrushing
was his specialty and he was very proud of it. His technique wasn’t great and it always took him a while, since his toy lion
needed a good once-over with the brush before Sander was satisfied. But at least he could do it by himself.

Mia went back to the suitcase by her bed and got out her things. Her father followed her and sat down on a chair.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

“About what?” Mia asked.

“About … everything. That this wasn’t what you’d planned for yourself. But you know, John Lennon once said, ‘Life is what
happens when you’re busy making other plans.’”

Mia wasn’t about to argue with John Lennon. After all, she was a musician herself.

“So, what about tomorrow?” her father went on. “Is there anything special you want to do, Mia? It’s the last day before we
go to Texas, you know. Maybe we should go see the Statue of Liberty? That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

Boy, that would be ironic
, Mia thought. Visiting the Statue of Liberty when she didn’t even get to decide what she was going to do with her own life,
let alone her summer vacation?

“Sure, why not,” she replied, looking the other way.

Her father sighed and stood up. She felt bad for a minute. He was doing his best. It wasn’t all his fault.

“Sorry.” The apology tumbled out of her mouth.

He stepped closer and gave her a good hug. The intervals between hugs had gotten longer and longer in recent years, so it
meant a lot to Mia.

“See you tomorrow, then,” he said. “Good night, Mia.”

“Good night, Dad.”

Sander came running out of the bathroom and flung his arms around his dad, his mouth still lathered in toothpaste.

“Night-night!”

“Good night, Sander,” his father said, picking up the boy and giving him an equally vigorous hug back. And then he had to
hug the boy’s stuffed lion, too. The furry fabric around its mouth was almost worn through from intense toothbrushing over
the last several months. Grayish white cotton stuffing was poking out and made it look as if the lion was trying to cough
up a hair ball or two.

Their father walked over to the door and turned toward Mia.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “I promise.”

She helped Sander get into his pajamas, and then he climbed into bed. She pulled the covers up to his chin.

“Sleep well, Sander.”

It looked like he was thinking. “Are you sad?” he finally asked.

Mia nodded.

“Because you’re going so far away?”

“No, not because of that.”

“Then why?”

There was no point in trying to explain the problem to Sander. “Because I’m going away from you, of course,” she said, sitting
down on the edge of his bed.

“I could go with you. If you want. Lion, too.”

“Sorry, but that won’t work.”

Sander thought about it for a long time. “But!” he said suddenly, lighting up. “I can send you letters.”

She thought about how simple everything was in Sander’s world. There were no limits for him. Everything was possible. Mail
to the moon?

“Of course you can.”

“I could write you one now,” he said.

“But I haven’t even left yet,” she laughed.

“So you can take it with you.”

“Okay.”

Mia found a pen, some stationery, and an envelope and brought them back over to Sander. It struck her that she’d never seen
him write anything other than his own name. And even then he usually forgot the
E
. But she gave him what he needed, left the reading light on over his bed, and let him be.

Mia couldn’t sleep. Or had she slept? She fumbled in the dark for her cell phone and found it on the nightstand.

The clock said one thirty. That meant she’d been asleep for almost four hours. She thought she could hear her parents and
the NASA men in the room next door talking loudly. She heard them clink glasses and there was laughter — loud, shrill laughter.

What were they talking about?
Her?

She looked over at Sander’s bed, squinting to make him out in the dark room. His breathing was regular, calm.

Quietly she pulled the covers down and slid her legs onto the floor. Her boots were waiting by the door, and after pulling
them on and shrugging her arms into her jacket, she carefully let herself out of the hotel room and took the elevator to the
relatively crowded lobby. A group of Asian guests was checking in, and several men in suits were sitting in the bar talking
loudly to one another. She stood there watching them for a couple of minutes wondering what to do.

Suddenly it hit her that she could do anything. No one knew she was up. Sander was sleeping, and her parents were busy entertaining
the NASA guys. What if she just walked out of the hotel, left them all? They’d never find her again, not in this city. She
could disappear for good. Maybe she could go to Mexico? Find some new friends, start a new band, they could share a worn-down
apartment in the middle of Mexico City. Why not?

Just the thought was enough to give her goose bumps. If she left, no one would even realize for hours that she was gone. They
wouldn’t notice until breakfast at the earliest, or when they knocked on the door to her and Sander’s room. But by then she’d
be long gone.

Mia walked through the revolving door, out onto the sidewalk. The doorman approached her the instant he spotted her.

“Can I help you, miss?”

“No, thanks, I’m fine,” she replied quickly.

“Where are your parents, if I may ask?”

Mia turned and pointed to the bar. “They’re sitting in there. I’m just going to go buy a pack of gum.”

“I think they have gum at the front desk.”

“Not the right kind,” she responded.

“And what kind would that be?”

“A Norwegian kind. I doubt you’ve had it before.”

“Norway, huh? Well, just don’t go too far. This is New York City, not the best place for a tourist to be out alone in the
middle of the night.”

She nodded to him and started walking down the street, turning left onto Park Avenue. Above her towered enormous skyscrapers
where only the very richest people could afford to live. A few blocks later she spotted Central Park, which she recognized
from countless movies and TV shows. She knew it was enormous — much, much bigger than the park they usually went for walks
in back home in Stavanger, Lake Mosvannet Park. Central Park was Lake Mosvannet on steroids.

She found an entrance on Fifth Avenue, and minutes later she was in the middle of the park, following the path that meandered
along a little lake. Only the sounds of the traffic reminded her she was in the middle of a huge city. She started humming
one of the songs her band had just written, the last one before she left. And then it hit her.

Her friends
.

She looked at her watch. Two thirty in the morning. That meant it was about eight thirty in the morning in Norway. And that
meant the others were at band practice.

Suddenly the same feeling she’d had in the lobby came over her again. She felt powerful. Free to do what she wanted. And what
she wanted was to call them. Call them and find out how they were, maybe mention in passing that she was in Central Park.
Alone.
Well, I just felt like going for a walk. Needed to get a little fresh air. This city’s not bad, you know
. She’d sound sophisticated, pretend being here was the most easy and natural thing in the world.

She’d left her cell phone in the room, so she started looking around for a pay phone. There wasn’t much besides trees here.
Almost no people, either. Just the occasional jogger off in the distance and a pair of young lovers staggering home along
the path ahead of her. It took at least fifteen minutes for her to finally find a public phone.

She fished around for the coins she’d received as change when she bought a sandwich at the airport, and dialed Silje’s cell
number. Someone picked up on the other end. At first Mia just heard loud music, and a voice that was shouting to the others
in the room: “You guys want to be quiet? The phone!”

“Hello?”

“Mia?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

The voice shouted again, “Hey, everyone, it’s Mia! Shh! This is so cool. How’s it going?” Silje asked.

“Oh, fine.”

“
Damn
, you’re in New York City! That’s crazy! What are you doing right now?” Silje asked.

“I’m in Central Park.” Mia tried to sound all blasé.

“That is so cool. Is it amazing?”

“It’s totally awesome,” Mia said.

“Does it look like it does in the movies?”

Mia looked around at the park. “Yeah, actually, it does.”

“Sweet.”

“How about you guys?” Mia tried.

“Things are fine here. We wrote some new songs.”

“Really?”

“I think they’re really good. We’ve got to keep things going while you’re gone, you know. The future won’t wait even if someone’s
on vacation, right?”

Vacation?
Was that some sort of accusation? Did they really think she didn’t care anymore? Already? Or was Silje trying to make a joke?
Mia wasn’t sure.

“No, of course not,” Mia said. “But … well, who’s singing?”