Anna Armstrong’s plan was so simple, she wondered why no one had thought of it before. She stood at the edge of her bed with her arms held high and her knees slightly bent. All she had to do was find a high enough vantage point and then jump as fast and as far as she could. Her mom had taught her about gravity, and she had a vague idea about velocity. If she could leap fast enough and at the right angle, she could break free of Earth’s atmosphere, up and out towards the stars in the night sky. Her first solo flight into space.
Anna stood at the edge of her bed and began the countdown.
“5, 4, 3, 2, 1…lift off!”
The flight lasted exactly 0.86 seconds; enough time for Anna to make a noise like a rocket before falling to the hardwood floor with a thud. Dazed but undaunted, Anna rolled over and looked up at the stars she had glued to her ceiling and wondered if it was a trajectory problem or a lift problem.
Anna’s second launch came two years later. She had learned a lot from her earlier mistakes and realized that she, alone, did not possess sufficient energy to break Earth’s gravity. She smiled, thinking back to her younger self. No, she needed a lot more power and this time, no cape. It only added drag.
So what would provide enough power? A catapult? Helium balloons tied to a chair? No, where would she find that many balloons anyway? But, the trampoline in the backyard just might do the trick. There were times she had bounced so high, she was sure that she had reached the tops of the trees that circled her home. All she had to do was generate a little greater force and no telling how far she could go.
With the help of the neighborhood kids, Anna dragged the trampoline to the edge of her house. She climbed onto the roof through her bedroom window and looked over the edge. From her vantage point, the trampoline below looked like a small black dot. She licked her finger and checked the direction of the wind before inching her way to the edge of the roof. This time, she decided to countdown silently to herself.
“5, 4, 3, 2...just one small step....1...!”
Whoosh was the sound she made going down. Boing was the sound she made going up and out across the lawn. She tucked into a ball and spun a full circle before landing in a honeysuckle bush near the edge of the lawn. Dazed but undaunted, Anna rolled over and watched a jet fly overhead; the contrails made perpendicular lines in the blue August sky.
Anna’s third attempt to reach space never came to be. She spent the summer after seventh grade working in her father’s shed while her parents were far away on business. By now, she had learned of real space travel and solid fuels and rockets which could carry giant payloads to other planets. She might not be able to make it into space herself, but she could build a rocket.
And, she was close. So close. After a month of experimentation and spent fire extinguishers and the smell of burning plastic, Anna had landed on the right mix of corn syrup, sugar, rust and stump remover for rocket fuel. She had fashioned a rocket body out of PVC and fins out of balsa wood. There was even an attachment for her old digital camera to take video as the rocket shot into space. The launch was scheduled for July 20th, the anniversary of the first moon landing and the day her Mom and Dad would be returning from their long trip overseas.
Anna sprawled out on the grass in the backyard and waited for her parents to return. The launch was meant to be a surprise; a welcome home message written out across the sky. Time passed and the shadows from the trees stretched slowly across the lawn until the entire launch pad was covered in shade, but there was still no sign of her parents.
From inside the house, the phone rang. She didn't pay any attention at first. But, then she could hear her Aunt Claire talking loudly, which was rare. Worse was the crying sound that followed, no words and then silence. Anna counted down from five to herself and then closed her eyes as the screen door swung slowly open. She was floating in space.
Anna didn't believe in magic or the ability to read minds. She was a girl of science, after all. But, even before she saw her aunt walk across the evening lawn, even before the rare embrace, she had a sick feeling that the world she knew was over. Her parents wouldn't be coming home again.
Something had happened to her parent’s taxi en route to the airport. Roads are dangerous in that part of the world someone had said to Anna. She just couldn’t remember who had said it. So many people said so many things over the course of the past week, that it all blended together into a distant buzz. There was a funeral service for her parents, with more hugs from strangers who seemed to be lined up out the front door like people waiting in line at an amusement park. Then, the final guests left and the doors closed. The voices disappeared and the buzzing mercifully stopped.
The next day, Aunt Claire moved into the guest room across the hall and then into her parent's empty bedroom a week later. Anna and her aunt said no more than a couple of sentences a day to each other. Like electrons that repel each other, the two could never seem to share the same place or time. As one would enter a room, the other would leave.
More strangers visited through the long winter. Books and clothes were packed. Furniture was moved and pictures replaced until room by room, piece by piece, the house she grew up in was transformed into an alien landscape. She might as well have been living on the surface of the moon.
It wasn't that her aunt was a bad person, or even selfish, she was just a stranger and living with her didn’t seem to make things any better. On the contrary, it made things worse. So, when Aunt Claire sat her down one day the following spring and asked if she would like to stay with her Uncle Jack, at least for a while, Anna didn't even let her finish her sentence. She grabbed her Aunt Claire’s hand and smiled for the first time in months.