Lovell Station: Thursday, April 12, 2170 13:58 UT
Geri Kerwin drummed her fingers on her desk as she watched the clock. Two minutes. There was no way—Lila was going to be late, and Mr. Lousma would justify giving her a bad grade in the class with that alone. Not that he needed anymore fuel than Lila's inattentiveness to the subject, anyway.
A minute passed, and Lila came flying through the door and threw her bag to the ground, panting. Geri smiled. "Finally," she said, and Lila raised a hand in greeting. "Why is it always this class you're late to? You know Mr. Lousma doesn't like you."
Lila shrugged. "Long line in the girls' bathroom."
"That's a lie."
"A lie that no man will argue against, and I haven't used it yet."
"But you still haven't answered my question."
"Does it matter, Geri? I'm on time. Barely," Lila conceded with a half-smile. "Anyway, I hear we're getting our essays back today, on the astronauts? After the tragedy of the Calc exam, I'm not sure if I'm ready to take another ego hit today."
Geri stared incredulously at her. "You're late because you thought about ditching?" Not that Geri really could say anything. Where Lila's worst subject was history, Geri's was math, and more often than not Lila would have to send her quick messages warning her of a pop quiz she was going to miss if she did not get to class now. And at least Lila's record was otherwise perfect; she had this weird sense of pride in never having a single absence on her attendance record, not even when sick.
Lila sighed. "Yeah… researching my astronaut was not easy. Even though he does have an old vid about his last mission, and a book he wrote about it. Better than most of the others." She paused. "He did have an incredible career though."
Geri grinned. "So you're done complaining about not getting Alan Shepard?"
Lila threw her hands in the air. "Well, if the girl who was born on Borman Station got Borman, you would think I would have been assigned Shepard."
Geri laughed. "That's a no, then."
The bell rung, and the rest of their classmates hurried to their seats, with Jack Mattingly barely beating Mr. Lousma into the room and hopping to his desk with the teacher glowering after him. In a rare turn of events he let the students continue to converse as he punched in some numbers into the console, and Geri saw her essay, unmarked, staring at her on her screen. Mr. Lousma slammed his fist into the whiteboard at the front, and the students simmered, and Lila turned away from conversation with Jack with a final, 'I'll talk to you after class' smile that Geri had gotten used to seeing the past four months.
"Your essays have been graded, and in a few minutes I will show you your scores," Mr. Lousma said loudly after a final narrowed eye shot at an oblivious student in the back corner. "Most of them were mediocre at best. What, was an entire school year not enough time for sufficient research?"
Lila cringed in her seat and slumped over her desk, and Geri offered her a sympathetic smile. Lila, like most of the rest of their classmates, had put off the essay until the weekend before it was due, and had exiled herself and quickly learned to like coffee those two and a half days. Geri had fared better and had started two weeks beforehand instead, and sure enough, Mr. Lousma showed Geri her score first.
"Congratulations, Miss Kerwin, for getting the high score again," he said with an unusual smile. "To be fair, though, to this day we still celebrate Polkovnik Gagarin's achievements annually at Yuri's Night, which I expect all of you to attend in the school's gymnasium tonight?"
Geri glanced at the little calendar in the corner of her computer screen and wondered if Mr. Lousma was doing this on purpose. The next words out of his mouth confirmed it. "Since Miss Kerwin's essay is so stellar, I will ask that today she recite it to the class."
And by 'ask,' Geri knew, he meant 'order.' Lila smiled at her, and she couldn't tell if it a smile of congratulations, or of pity.
"And Miss Shepard," Mr. Lousma continued, "would you care to discuss the significance of tomorrow's date, as it relates to Captain James Lovell?"
"Uh… sir?" Lila started hesitantly.
"Well, in a surprising turn of events," said Mr. Lousma begrudgingly, "you have the second highest score on this assignment. I want to see if it was a fluke that your essay was so well-written, and if you've earned it."
Lila glanced at Geri quickly, who shook off her elated surprise and nodded for her to continue. The essay had been due three weeks ago—surely she could not have forgotten everything already!
Lila sighed. "Well, tomorrow is April 13? That was the day of the oxygen tank explosion that crippled the Apollo 13 spacecraft, which Lovell was the commander of. But my essay focused on his contributions to the Apollo 8 mission—"
"And as such," Mr. Lousma interrupted, "tomorrow night at the community center, there will be a showing of the old vid about the ill-fated mission, which, again, I expect all of you to attend. It is the two-hundredth anniversary, after all, of the ingenious engineers and technicians who showed that anything is possible despite the odds." He turned back to Lila, whose face had turned into one of confused curiosity.
"Miss Shepard," he continued, "I wish you had spent a little bit more time on the Apollo 13 mission in your report, but I suppose that is not what I had asked for in the assignment. My own personal successful failure." He grinned. "Your essay impressed me with your interpretations of his leadership qualities. I suspect that you have some of those traits inherit within yourself. If so, I expect great things of you one day, Miss Shepard."
He turned back to his console and quickly typed in the codes to display everyone else's grades, and Lila sat still in shock. Geri, too, was unsure of what to say, or how to feel.
"What the hell just happened?"