Luciana by Erin Teagan

Author:Erin Teagan [Teagan, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2017-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

We squeezed back into our room and I watched through the peephole until Noah walked past again. When we heard the click of his habitat door, we started over, sneaking out of our room. As soon as we slipped into the hall outside, I immediately regretted that everyone had come along. With all the breathing and swishing of clothes and tip-tapping of slippers, five people walking stealthily together sounded far louder than I had imagined. I kept waving my hand to tell everyone to keep it down, until we were barely inching our way along.

Ella and I took the lead, Meg hanging off Ella’s elbow because we wouldn’t let her turn on her flashlight. And even though Johanna’s robe covered up the bright glowing of Meg’s shirt, it didn’t reach all the way down to the constellations on her pajama bottoms. If we ran into anyone on our mission, we’d be easily spotted.

“Watch the stairs,” I warned, slowing the group down, taking each step carefully. If one person missed a step and stumbled, it would be a five-kid pileup at the bottom. And it would be really hard to explain to Mallory why we were all piled at the bottom of the stairs in the middle of the night.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we all safely got to the bottom. We had to go the long way around the common area, staying in the shadows, because the galley’s lights were still on above the drink station and we knew the nighttime crew trainer was around somewhere. We paused for a minute by the wall of Space Camp graduates.

“Did you hear something?” Ella asked.

We held our breaths listening, but no, there were no sounds anywhere. Space Camp was sleeping, all except for the five girls from Habitat 4b.

I motioned us toward the displays of meteorites and space rocks, past the pillows and beanbags against the wall for after-dinner movies, and stopped in the gaping dark entrance to the hall of artifacts.

Meg buried her face in Ella’s chest.

“There are no stuffed monkeys. They are not real,” Ella said.

“We can’t just stand here, Meg,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.

“It’s not her fault,” Ella said, glaring at me. “She’s scared.”

Johanna stepped up. “Meg,” she said, leaning over. “You are so brave. Look at you. You’ve gotten this far without a flashlight or anything! Come on, let’s make socks.”

Meg looked at her. “Let’s make … what?”

“Socks,” Johanna repeated. “Like, let’s go! We can do this! It’s what we say in Germany.”

And with that, Meg straightened up. “Okay, then, let’s make socks!” She grabbed Ella’s hand and led us into the dark hallway. My face burned. Johanna knew how to talk to a little sister. I had so much to learn.

Empty astronaut suits loomed over us in display cases. Face masks hung from the walls and we stepped around a roped-off exhibit of old space equipment.Suddenly, a light went on, flooding the common area. We froze, pushing glow-in-the-dark Meg into the middle of our circle, bending and squeezing into a little group.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.