“Atmospheric readings indicate zero oxygen, Commander Jacoby. I recommend we proceed with caution.”
Oliver turns to me, his cardboard helmet askew. Through the crooked visor, he beams. “Dude. This is awesome.” He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the center of the basement. “Okay, we have to walk slowly.”
His right foot peels off the ground, knee rising to waist level as if fighting through invisible molasses. For a full three seconds, his bare foot hovers mid-air before descending in a graceful arc that ends with an exaggerated toe-first landing. His arms drift away from his body, fingers splayed, the cardboard helmet wobbling with each glacialmovement.
I follow suit, imagining the fine gray dust of the lunar surface puffing up around my polished loafers. My arms drift to my sides, and for a moment, I feel it—the weightlessness. The silence of a world with no atmosphere to carry sound. The vast, empty beauty of a place that only a handful of human beings have ever touched.
“Abrams.” Oliver’s voice drops to a whisper, barely audible over the humming furnace. “Look.”
He points at the far wall of the basement, where his mom has hung a framed poster of a beach at sunset. But through my visor, through the lens of whatever magic Oliver has conjured in this damp, cluttered dungeon, it’s Earth. Impossibly fragile in the black sky above the lunar horizon.
“Overview effect,” I whisper.
“What?”
“It’s called the overview effect. When astronauts see Earth from space for the first time, they experience a cognitive shift. A sense of awe as it dawns on them that all of human civilization exists on one singular planet.”
Oliver is quiet for a moment. “Do astronauts cry?”
“Some of them have reported becoming emotional, yes.”
He nods solemnly. “I cry sometimes. I’d be a great astronaut.”
He would, actually. Oliver possesses a quality every astronaut needs: the ability to look at the impossible and say,Yeah, let’s do that.
“Hey, Ryan?”
It isn’t lost on me that he called me by my first name this time. “Yes?”
“You know what we haven’t done yet?”
“Collected soil samples?”
“Experiencedtrueweightlessness.”
Before I can explain that true weightlessness requires either orbital freefall or a parabolic flight trajectory aboard a modified KC-135 aircraft—neither of which is achievable in a suburban basement—Oliver moves behind me. His hands land on my waist,fingers gripping the fabric of my button-down shirt, and without warning, he lifts me straight off the ground.
My stomach drops. The cardboard helmet shifts on my head, and for one disorienting second, I’m suspended in the air with nothing beneath me but Oliver’s stubborn refusal to let gravity win. My arms fly out instinctively, the basement ceiling closer than it’s ever been. I pretend the bare lightbulb is a blazing white star inches from my face.
“You’re floating!” Oliver grunts, his voice strained but triumphant. “Abrams is experiencing zero-G!”
I want to protest, tell him that it’s not actually happening. But I can’t. Because I’m airborne, being held aloft by a boy who barely knows me. A boy who’s red in the face because he decided I deserved to know what the moon feels like.
He spins me slowly, a quarter turn, and the basement wheels past in a lazy panorama of the lunar surface. Through it all, Oliver’s hands remain firm and steady on my waist.
“How is it?” he asks through gritted teeth.
My eyes sting behind my visor. I blink hard and fast because I am not going to cry in Oliver Jacoby’s basement while he holds me in the air. I’mnot.
“It’s adequate,” I manage.
Oliver barks out a laugh and sets me down. My feet touch the concrete, and the weight of Earth settles back into my bones. My legs wobble, but Oliver steadies me with a hand on my shoulder.
“That was sick,” he says.
“You lifted me two feet off the ground.”
“That’s two whole feet closer to the moon than you’ve ever been,” he says smugly, puffing out his chest.
