The Girl On the Moon [#Watty2015]

Chapter 2: Samuel Thomas

 I groan deeply, attempting to muffle my mother's cries for me to get dressed. My pillows are too inviting to leave, and my blankets are holding me against my will. I begin to drift off again in a blissful dream until I hear my mother's yells gaining in sound. Any louder and she'd burst my eardrums, as well as all of Nova II.

 Uh-oh.

 I shoot up, running my fingers through my long tawny hair and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "I'm getting up, Mom!" I yelled, shoving off my blankets with a wistful glance. Only ten more minutes, that was all I needed. . .except those would probably be the last ten minutes of my sleep if my mother got her way. And she always did.

 I grab my oxygen mask—an old habit I developed a few years ago when the bubble was temporarily faulty—and leap through the (now open) door. To save space, we had no hallways, but the doors led from one room to another. "Yees, Mom?" I groan, dragging out the vowel in 'Yes'. "Today is a day off—no school for once!" Due to extra studies and experiments, we had twelve hour school days, from 6:00 to 6:00. I had heard from Aaron—whose sister left for Earth three years ago, so he knew what he was talking about—that they only had seven hour days. Lucky.

 She smacks my hand with a spatula as I try to snatch some food, and hard too. I grimace, my hand instinctively retrieving. I don't even know why we have that thing, since we aren't exactly allowed to cook very often. Apparently NASA had trouble with a fire in space over a hundred years ago—and they're still nervous around flames. Touchy much?

 "Ow, Mom! Harsh!" I flash on a mask of hurt, then return to sneaking by her iron—actually, plastic—defenses.Rolling her eyes but not reprimanding me, she begins explaining. 

 "We're having a celebration of sorts, a way to remember."

 "Aaaand, who are we remembering?" I ask, munching on a butter cookie—or two. Not good nutrition or a balanced breakfast, but who really cares? 

 Exasperated, she sighs dramatically. "The fortieth anniversary of the destruction of the original Nova, of course. That was way back in 2035—I was only ten years old then, but I knew I wanted to go to space." A wistful look drifted into her eyes—blue, just like mine, or so she had told me. I didn't look in a mirror a lot—not that I wanted too! I wasn't a girly guy, just interested in seeing how I looked for once.

  "What is it exactly?" I lick the remaining crumbs off of my fingers, savoring the morsels for about 0.002 seconds.

 "It's a ceremony, basically." A small grin appears on her face as a taunt plays into her voice. "You'll hate it, Samuel. It'll be so boring for you, and you probably won't know any of the names." Then a shadow falls across her face. "It's also the day the Smith girl disappeared. You remember Rowan? She was a year younger than you, but you two played together often during preschool. Poor child," she starts mumbling as she tidies the kitchen. "And you are going, no getting out of it, Sammy."

 I immediately start planning ways to get out of it.