Stargazing for Beginners Page 18

  ‘Miss!’ I say.

  ‘I know, I know, I’m swearing.’ She grins and walks back across the hall towards the judges.

  ‘What’s going on?’ says Ed.

  I shake my head because Annie, Jackson and Rose have arrived. ‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’

  ‘Hey,’ says Annie, abandoning her crutches and taking the pushchair from me. ‘She’s asleep. Bonus!’

  I shrug off my coat and take a quick gulp of water. ‘So who’s gone to get my grandad?’

  ‘Ah,’ she says, ‘about that …’

  I stare at her. ‘Annie, please tell me someone’s gone, because if they haven’t, I am out of here!’

  ‘They’re about to go.’ Then I notice that Jackson and Rose are each holding a hockey stick and that Rose has a length of rope slung over her arm. ‘This is your grandad’s mountain rescue team,’ she says, nodding towards Jackson and Rose. ‘The only problem is his team consists of two unusually small people.’

  ‘Hey! I’m stocky, not small,’ says Jackson.

  ‘I’m definitely petite,’ admits Rose.

  ‘Whatever you both want to call it, you’re short,’ says Annie. ‘Meg, does your grandad happen to be one of those tiny wizened old people?’

  ‘No!’ I say, panic rising inside me. ‘He’s tall and he mountain bikes, so he’s got muscles … and he eats too much curry!’

  ‘Right, that’s what I was worried about,’ says Annie, looking critically at Jackson and Rose. ‘I don’t think these two could get a bike out of a hole, let alone a curry-stuffed man.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ says Jackson. ‘I know exactly where he is – gone down that hole myself a couple of times on my bike …’

  ‘And I’ve done a first aid course,’ adds Rose.

  ‘But it’s no good if you can’t get him out!’ I say. This is silly – they’re never going to get him out by themselves and I’m not going to abandon my grandad. ‘I’m coming with you. Three of us will be able to do it.’ I reach for my coat.

  At that moment, there’s a round of applause and all the talking in the hall fades away. I turn round and see a man wearing a white shirt, trainers and jeans walk on to the stage. He adjusts the microphone then leans towards it. ‘I’m Professor Hayes,’ he says, ‘and I would like to welcome you to Reach for the Stars, where teenagers tell us what space really means to them!’

  Wide-eyed, I turn to Annie, who’s tugging my coat out of my hands. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispers. ‘I’ll think of something. I’ve rung a couple of friends and I’m waiting for them to get back to me.’

  I look back at the stage. I’ve been dreading walking up there, but now I’ve come this close, it’s suddenly all I want to do.

  Professor Hayes continues. ‘Each of these young men and women will have just five minutes to convince us of their passion for space and astrophysics. Then we’ll pick one lucky winner, who will jet off to America this summer to visit the Space Centre at Houston!’

  Applause and a few ‘whoops’ break out across the hall.

  ‘It’s not OK, Annie,’ I hiss, turning back to her. ‘He’s already been in that hole for too long.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ says a voice behind me.

  I spin round and see Ed standing there.

  ‘But you can’t,’ I say. ‘You’ll miss the competition.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says, giving me a smile and a shrug. ‘I heard what you were talking about. I understand the problem. I can help.’

  ‘Please give a warm welcome,’ says Professor Hayes, his voice booming out of the speakers, ‘to our contestants!’

  Applause rings out and the contestants start to walk up the stairs that lead to the stage.

  ‘Right,’ says Ed. ‘Let’s go to the PE cupboard. There’s a first-aid kit in there and I know how to break in.’

  He starts to walk away.

  ‘Ed!’ I grab his arm. Half of the contestants are on the stage now. ‘This is my problem. You can’t just walk out of here and give up on your chance of winning the competition.’

  ‘Yes I can,’ he says, like it’s the easiest decision in the world. He looks straight at me. ‘Just show them Mega Knickers and you’ll blow them away.’ Then he turns and walks out of the hall.

  After a moment of hesitation, Jackson and Rose follow him.

  ‘They’re waiting for you,’ whispers Annie, pushing me forward.

  I stare up at the stage. Two seats in the row of chairs are empty. ‘He gave up his chance to go to Houston for me.’

  ‘I know,’ says Annie, smiling. ‘What a loser. Now get up there!’

  I touch Elsa’s head. ‘Thank you,’ I say to Annie.

  ‘No worries. I believe this is what friends are for.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  As I walk across the stage, I feel the eyes of everyone in the audience following me. My mouth goes dry and then my hands start to shake, but I force myself to keep going, clenching my buttocks all the way. I walk past Ed’s empty seat then sit down.

  One of the judges comes to the foot of the stage and has a whispered conversation with Professor Hayes. They glance up at Ed’s seat and suddenly I feel so sick I have to look away.

  Professor Hayes goes back to the microphone. ‘I’m afraid one contestant appears to have dropped out. That still leaves us with fourteen wonderful speeches to hear, though, so let’s not waste another moment!’

  I can’t believe that this is happening, but I don’t have time to think about what Ed’s just done because already, Professor Hayes is talking and explaining the rules of the competition. ‘A buzzer will sound to indicate the start of each contestant’s five minutes,’ he says, ‘and it will sound again at the end, when the speaker must stop talking.’

  One of the judges presses down on a button on the desk to demonstrate and a loud buzz rings through the hall. Nervous laughter ripples along the row of contestants.

  ‘Now,’ continues the professor, ‘it’s always intimidating to go first, so please give a warm and encouraging welcome to Scarlet Bedu from East Hoathly Girls’ School!’

  The audience claps politely as a girl in a bottle green blazer walks confidently up to the microphone. She stands staring out across the hall, a thin plait falling straight down her back. The buzzer sounds.

  ‘Stars,’ says Scarlet Bedu, lifting her chin, ‘are the fundamental building blocks of our galaxies, and space is the grand stage on which the drama of their birth, evolution and death are played out!’ Scarlet’s voice rings out across the hall, clear and assured, and as she talks, she looks at different members of the audience. I see them smile back at her. She’s not holding any sort of cards or notes, and she doesn’t hesitate as she describes how space has allowed her to ‘reach for the stars’.

  Suddenly, the buzzer sounds and applause fills the room. Scarlet does two quick bows, then turns on her heel and walks back to her seat, unable to hide her smile of satisfaction. Her speech was delivered perfectly, and she knows it.

  I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. Scarlet’s performance was so polished and accomplished, it’s taken me by surprise.

  After a few words from the professor, the boy sitting next to Scarlet goes to the microphone. He explains that, to him, space means fun, and that space exploration has led to all the best things in life: satellite TV, laptops, even air-cushioned trainers. He isn’t word-perfect, but his enthusiasm is infectious and he bounces around the stage and makes everyone laugh.

  And then the buzzer sounds again, and I listen to speech after speech about stars, black holes, new technologies, space exploration. Each time I hear the buzzer my heart beats a little faster and sweat prickles my skin because we are moving closer and closer to the moment when I will have to stand up.

  Then there are just two students left, and then one, and then there’s applause and the boy from Highbury Boys’ School is returning to his seat next to me. Professor Hayes stands at the microphone. ‘Please welcome our final contestant,’ he says, stretching his arm t
owards me, ‘Meg Clark!’

  There is a new burst of clapping and all eyes turn towards me. I stand up and take a deep breath. I feel slightly dizzy, but I make myself walk towards the microphone. As I cross the stage, I tell myself that today might have started disastrously, but I’m here and I’m ready for this. All I have to do is stay calm, speak loudly and clearly, and remember every single word of my speech. I clutch my cards in my hand. I know I don’t need them, but I have to hold them, just in case.

  I reach the microphone.

  This is it.

  FIFTY-THREE

  I stare out at the audience and the buzzer sounds. The cards shake in my hands and Professor Hayes smiles and nods encouragingly. I glance at my first card, reassure myself that I know the words, then look back up. ‘To me, space means freedom,’ I say, and I hear my shaky voice echo round the hall, ‘because space exploration gives us the chance to leave planet Earth to explore the wonders of the universe.’ I take a breath, and that’s when I see someone slip into the back of the hall; it’s a woman with white-blonde dreads, loose trousers and a rucksack slung over her shoulder. She sees me on the stage and a smile spreads across her face.

  And, just like that, Mum steps back into my life.

  In an instant, anger and hurt sweep through me and I’m taken back to the moment she rang from the plane. But my heart lifts too. It’s just so good to see her. My fingers tighten on the cards that I know I don’t need, and I force myself to carry on. ‘Scientists believe that a planet capable of supporting life might be orbiting Alpha Centauri B, and that within centuries we may visit that planet …’ My voice trails off. I feel my heart thudding in my chest. Somewhere in the audience there is a cough, followed by a whisper.

  I look back at the words written on the cards. With sudden and total clarity, I see that my description of space as my ultimate escape is completely wrong.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, shaking my head, ‘but I can’t do this speech … The words on these cards aren’t true.’ My voice is a whisper, but the microphone still manages to pick it up. ‘I mean, they are true, but they don’t come close to explaining what space really means to me.’

  Now the silence in the hall is complete. I look at my precious cards that have taken me weeks to write and memorise, then I put them down on the floor. My heart beats hard in my chest as I stand back up and stare out across the audience. Several seconds tick by and my heart pounds and my skin prickles. Can I do this? Can I show them who I really am?

  I know I can.

  I take Grandad’s bottle of rocket fuel out of my pocket and pull out the tiny cork. I lift the bottle to my lips and down the contents in one gulp. It’s sweet and spicy. I put the bottle back in my pocket and my now empty hand curls into a fist.

  I raise my fist into the air. ‘Poyekhali!’ I say. Let’s go!

  Down in the audience, eyes widen with surprise and giggles break out, but I keep my head held high.

  ‘When people look at the night sky they can feel tiny …’ My voice is still too quiet so I step closer to the microphone. ‘… And insignificant … and I do get that.’ I pause, trying to find the right words. ‘Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is made up of one hundred billion stars, but there are one hundred billion other galaxies in the universe.’ My words are slowing down, becoming clearer, louder. ‘Each of these one hundred billion galaxies also contain billions of stars. I mean,’ I shake my head, ‘that’s a lot of stars …’

  The laughter from the audience takes me by surprise and gives me the courage to carry on. ‘If you could look at a map of the universe, Earth wouldn’t even feature. You couldn’t draw a dot small enough.’ I wrap my hand around the microphone. ‘But when I look into space, I don’t feel scared or little, I feel … reassured.’ I feel my shoulders relax because my words are coming easily now, and I can tell they aren’t going to stop.

  ‘I guess I feel reassured because space is logical and it obeys the laws of physics.’ I pause, remembering when I was up on the Downs the night after Mum left, and how soothing it was to see that the stars were exactly where they were supposed to be. ‘Sometimes I think the movement of the stars are the only reliable thing in my life.’

  I shake my head. ‘No, that’s not true. I used to think that. To be honest, in lots of ways space makes more sense to me than life on Earth, which is why I was planning to talk to you about how amazing it would be to leave Earth and find a brand new, human-free planet.’ I pause. ‘But looking at space has never been enough for me. I want to visit space in the same way people want to visit Disney World. I want to walk in space. I want to spin around the Earth at seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour. I want my feet to touch the surface of another planet!’

  I’m smiling now and I see people smiling back at me.

  ‘I thought the only way I could get to space was by working ridiculously hard. By myself.’ I look around the room. ‘Other people – human beings – never came into it. I didn’t want their help and I just thought they got in the way. My baby sister screamed and stopped me revising, students at school seemed to care more about making each other laugh than lessons, and my mum forced me to plant carrot seeds on her community allotment when really I wanted to be doing my homework.’ I remember how grumpy I was, how I planted a few seeds then made up some excuse and left.

  ‘But a few weeks ago something happened.’ My throat feels tight. I look right at Mum and she holds my gaze; I need her to know that I’m saying this to her. ‘I had my very own big bang – and it changed everything. For the first time in my life, I felt lost in the universe … I was scared and I couldn’t cope on my own. Then I discovered my Earth crew.’

  I look back across the hall. ‘To put one astronaut in space requires years of training from thousands of highly educated, unbelievably skilled people. I had a bunch of teenagers – Rose, Jackson and Annie – and they lifted me up and got me here today.’

  From somewhere at the back of the room a loud ‘Whoop!’ rings out.

  ‘That’s Annie,’ I say. ‘No matter where I am, Annie is ready to help me work the problem. She’s calm and collected and has the sort of brain that can cope with any mission contingency; she would definitely have got Apollo 13 back to Earth.’

  ‘And I’ve got Ed – we sit next to each other in science. For a long time, I thought Ed was someone I had to compete against. But I got that so wrong. Everyone knows that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were the first people to walk on the moon, but they could never have got there if Michael Collins hadn’t been waiting for them in orbit. Ed is my Michael Collins. He put my mission first, which is why there’s an empty seat on the stage behind me.’

  ‘Before I met my Earth crew, I thought I could get to space just by studying – mathematics, physics, computing … I’ve even started to learn Russian –’

  Laughter bursts out from the audience.

  ‘No, really,’ I say, then to prove it, I add, ‘Ya mogu govorit’ po-russki! I forgot that an astronaut needs more than knowledge. They also need to reassure others and put others first. And they need to trust their team.

  ‘Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Yuri Gagarin, the first human to reach space, got there because throughout history, human beings, from Aristotle to Einstein, used their brains in crazy, incredible ways. Neil Armstrong could only take one giant leap for mankind because a crew of thousands stood behind him. I’ve realised that space isn’t an escape from the chaos of human beings, it’s something I have because of the chaos of human beings.’

  I think back to that afternoon when Elsa was ill and suddenly see so clearly what Grandad was trying to say. ‘Nietzsche said that we need chaos inside ourselves,’ I press a hand against my chest, ‘if we are to give birth to a dancing star.’ My eyes find Mum’s again. ‘And I have two particularly chaotic human beings to thank for filling my mind with curiosity and encouraging me to look up in the first place. My grandad gave me my first pair of binoculars and t
aught me how to use them. He made me a rocket that took me to the moon on a daily basis. My mum painted the Milky Way on my bedroom ceiling. She put an arrow on it pointing to Earth and wrote next to it, You Are Here. Mum said that Earth was just my starting point. She has always believed I could go anywhere.’

  ‘I’m still planning to visit space,’ I say, my voice steady and certain. ‘A countdown to lift-off is running through my life, like a heartbeat. This countdown started when I first looked at the moon through the binoculars Grandad gave me, and I can’t imagine it will stop until the day I leave Earth.

  ‘When I hold my baby sister in my arms and show her a twinkling star, I’m showing her where she came from. We come from elements that were formed at the heart of stars. The stars exploded, stardust was scattered across the universe and eventually formed this planet. Stardust made my sister. It made me and you. I don’t need to leave Earth to see the wonder of space because I am living the wonder of space.’

  I smile. It seems so obvious now that I’ve said it. ‘And that,’ I say, ‘is what space means to me.’

  Applause sweeps across the hall and I do a weird half-bow thing that I instantly regret, and as I walk back to my seat, I feel so light and free that I could be walking on the moon.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Ms Edgecombe grabs me as I walk off the stage. ‘Meg, you gave me goosebumps on my face!’

  ‘Is that good?’ I say.

  ‘Definitely. The only other time it’s happened was when I saw Benedict Cumberbatch at Luton airport.’

  Mr Curtis joins us. ‘That was an awesome – if slightly nerve-racking – improvisation, Meg.’

  ‘Sir! I forgot you were coming.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, although I’m slightly disappointed that I learnt how to manipulate fractional indices for nothing … Maybe it will come in handy one day.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to waste your time. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’