Squishy Taylor in Zero Gravity (2 page)

Finally, Alice gives me the iPad and I run to my bed with it. They tried to make us only use the iPad in the lounge room, but that didn’t last long. I tap through to Skype.

‘Hey, Squisho,’ Mum says. ‘What’s happening?’ She’s at her desk at work because it’s the start of the day in Geneva. Then she sees my
about-to-cry face
and leans in. ‘Oh, Squishy-sweet, what’s wrong?’

My tears come out, hot and throat-achy. ‘I fell,’ I sob, ‘off the monkey bars.’

‘Oh, honey,’ she says.

‘It was a really big thump,’ I say, ‘and then I couldn’t breathe.’

‘It sounds like you winded yourself,’ Mum says, with just the right tone. She doesn’t sound very worried, but she loves me a lot. I just want to snuggle into her.

That’s when I realise something. You can’t hug over skype. It makes me cry even harder.

‘Hey,’ Mum says, after a while. ‘Isn’t that meteor shower tonight?’

The meteor shower!
I’d forgotten about that. We’ve been talking about it all week.

‘What’s the plan?’ she asks.

My crying stops and I feel myself starting to smile. ‘The building people gave Dad a rooftop key this morning,’ I say.

‘
Woohoo!
’ Mum cheers.

The building people nearly said no to us going on the roof. Dad and Alice said we weren’t allowed to pick the lock either, even though we know how. But they did try really hard to get the key. And finally, yesterday, the building people said yes.

‘We’re taking the telescope and we’re allowed to stay up until
ten o’clock,
’ I say.

Mum has a special cheeky face for when rules get broken. She used to be a bit of a
rebel
and she still thinks breaking rules is fun. As long as they don’t get broken too badly.

Mum grins. ‘Ten o’clock,’ she says, with her cheeky face on. ‘No way!’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘On a school night!’

Mum laughs. ‘And I’m on a workday. So I should go, Squisho. Big hugs.’

She hangs up and my smile doesn’t last long. I start to remember how hard I fell. That
thump
was ginormous.

At nine o’clock, Alice and Baby go to bed. I don’t. And neither do my bonus sisters.

We’re watching
Lightspeed Kids
again while we wait.
Lightspeed Kids
is the best. It’s the movie that made me and Vee obsessed with being astronauts in the first place. Jessie was already obsessed with astronomy.

‘Righto, kids,’ Dad says. ‘Shoes and coats on. Let’s go.’

Jessie has packed the telescope neatly in its case and folded the tripod up small. We pull our coats on over the top of our pyjamas.

Dad takes out the rooftop keys and waves them like a prize. We all troop out the door.

There’s one more floor above ours, and after that, it’s the roof. Dad leads the way up. The last stairs are more like a ladder. They’re metal and steep. They also have a special gate on them to stop people getting out. (Not that it can stop me, or Vee. We are super
ninja-climbers
and got over it twice already. Easy.) After that there’s a door.

After that, the sky.

I follow Dad out onto the roof.

‘Woooo!’ I call. The big night makes me want to cheer and spin in circles. The city is
electric-sparkly
around us, reaching up towards the stars. The sky is completely clear. Vee spins with me, yodelling. Dad laughs. Jessie sets up the telescope, opening the tripod and lengthening all its legs.

Then the meteor shower starts.

It’s like fifty shooting stars all at once. Jessie’s watching through the telescope.

‘Amazing!’ Dad says. He’s got his arm around me and we’re both tipping our heads back.

The meteors just keep on falling.

‘My turn! My turn!’ Vee says, jiggling Jessie’s elbow.

Jessie moves aside and comes over to me. ‘The telescope isn’t that good anyway,’ she says.

‘Hey, where are the meteors?’ Vee says, squinting into it. ‘I can’t see them.’

‘Yeah,’ Jessie says. ‘They move too fast, so there’s no time to focus. Better without the telescope.’

Dad lies down on his back and I lie next to him on the hard concrete, looking up. My head leans into his warm shoulder. The meteors zoom across the sky. It’s like watching
magic
. Only it’s better than magic because it’s real. It makes my heart thump and my mind feel calm.

‘Imagine being out there, floating in space,’ I say. ‘
Z
ero gravity
.’ It’s so hard to imagine being somewhere there’s no down.

‘It’s not
zero
gravity,’ Jessie says, in her know-it-all voice. ‘It’s microgravity.’

I groan and Vee laughs.

‘But “zero gravity” sounds so much cooler,’ Vee says. So I don’t care about being corrected.

Vee wanders away from the telescope. Jessie has another turn, trying to focus it on Mars. I snuggle in closer to Dad.

Vee’s voice comes from the other side of the roof. ‘Hey, cool! Check this out.’

She sounds excited. When Vee has that voice, there’s usually an adventure on its way.

‘Squishy, come and look,’ Vee calls.

I leave Dad looking up at the stars, and Jessie trying to focus the telescope, and walk over to Vee.

She’s peering out, with her elbows on the wall that goes all around the edge of the roof. ‘Look,’ she says, and points.

Straight across from us is the really tall building where Boring Lady works. We always see her typing from our bedroom window. Next to it there’s a building that’s nearly the same height as ours. That’s where Vee is looking. Because on the roof of that building, somebody is moving around.

‘Probably watching the meteors, like us,’ I say.

‘No,
look
,’ Vee says.

I squint. The person is far away and it’s hard to see, but it seems like they’re wearing a space helmet. A dark one with a window over their face.

‘It’s practically midnight,’ I whisper. ‘Why is there an astronaut on the roof?’

The astronaut is standing next to something tall and cylindrical and pointed.
S
omething rocket-shaped?
I squeeze Vee’s arm. The astronaut hoists something up into their arms and leans over. Then there’s a massive shower of sparks. Bright white sparks, flying off the astronaut and up into the night.

‘
Whoa!
’ Vee and I say at the same time.

We lean against the wall, trying to make out what’s going on, but it’s too dark. All we can see is sparks. Finally, the sparks stop and the astronaut pulls off her helmet. It’s a woman with lots of red curly hair. She shakes her hair back off her face and leans towards her rocket. Is it
really
a rocket?

I can’t believe we were playing astronauts and now there’s one in
real life
.

‘Bedtime, kids,’ Dad says.

‘But Dad, you should see this,’ I start.

I can hear Jessie beginning to pack away the telescope.

On the roof, across the street, the sparks start flying again.

‘Squishy,’ Dad says, but I ignore him, trying to figure out what the spacewoman is doing.

‘Squishy, if you don’t come now, what am I going to say
next
time you ask to do something special?’

I tear myself away, but I’ve already made a secret promise: I’m
going
to find out who that spacewoman is. Dad can make us go to bed right now, but he doesn’t watch us every second of the day.

‘What
was
that?’ Vee whispers from the top bunk.

We’re lying on our triple bunk-bed in the dark, with me in the middle bunk.

‘It was a whole meteor shower,’ Jessie says dreamily from underneath us. She doesn’t seem to care that she didn’t see it through the telescope.

I try to bring her back to reality. ‘Jessie, there was a spacewoman on the roof and you didn’t even look.’

‘There was
not
a spacewoman,’ Jessie says.

‘There was so,’ Vee insists. ‘With sparks flying everywhere. We both saw it. Squishy’s not making things up.’

Jessie snorts like she doesn’t believe anything.

‘Seriously, Jessie,’ I say, using my most serious voice. ‘It’s true.’ I roll over and crane my neck, looking out our bedroom window to the building next to Boring Lady’s. ‘The spacewoman was right
… there
.’

Our triple bunk-bed creaks as the others roll over and try to look. The spacewoman’s floor is one above ours, so you can’t actually see the roof. Right then, a
fountain of sparks
shoots out, exactly where we’re looking. Jessie and Vee squeal.

I cheer like it’s fireworks and say, ‘I told you. I
told
you. Didn’t I tell you?’

Our bedroom door slams open and Alice is standing there. ‘That is
enough
!’ she growls.

I open my mouth. ‘But there’s an astro–’

‘Astro-
nothing
, Squishy,’ Alice snaps. ‘Not another
peep
. It’s
late
and you’ve got school tomorrow.’

Alice is being super unfair because she likes her own kids better than me. I wasn’t the only one looking at the astronaut. But there’s no point trying to tell stuff to grown-ups who are that cranky. As soon as she closes the door, we all creep out of bed and stand by the window where the telescope usually is.