May 19th, 1996

How are mouse ears gonna fit in a space helmet?

I slowed to a stop and raised the nubby black crayon off of the page. My greatest work—my magnum opus, if you will—was almost done: A drawing of our solar system. I was never the type to take my art seriously, but this particular drawing was important. I'd burned through two free activity periods, and up until that moment, I was feeling pretty proud of it. Even though I had become aware of some… small errors. Like how Jupiter and Mars were the same size.

So, my art was a little off scale. No biggie. But it was when I couldn't come up with an answer to such a simple question as where my ears would go that I hit my first roadblock. I stared at the page, like it would tell me something I wasn't getting. The spheres of distinctly different colors were sidelined by a doodle of a man in a space suit. He was about the same size as the blue-green marble captioned 'irth', (even though the right spelling was there in my textbook.) And the astronaut had a round helmet with a tinted black window—the kind you might picture when you think of a spaceman.

But traditional spacesuits didn't exactly have room for mouse ears, (or tails, now that I thought about it.) I'd worn doll sized baseball caps now and again, but I couldn't imagine having my ears crammed inside my helmet while exploring the cosmos. That just wouldn't work.

It was here that I made a point of drawing two colorless semi circles poking outside of my helmet, and a single stroke of black outlined by white to be my tail. Problem solved. I'd have a special space suit made just for me. I could afford it by then. Maybe I was just a poor orphan now, but fifteen years from now, they were gonna pay me for the bravery of going into space.

I mean, astronauts are rich. I thought everybody knew that.

"Ow!?"

On my knees, I turned, ears shooting up in alarm. A tall, highschool girl reached down to pluck a lego from the bottom of one of her thinly soled buckled shoes. She showed it to me. "This from the ballista?"

"Oh, yeah!" I said, remembering. "So, that's where that piece went!"

Behind me, between the table and the classroom door stood a warzone of paint-smattered tables, easels, and at least a dozen six year olds running around with fingers all colors of the rainbow. The twelfth grader managed to cross it untouched, her blouse and plaid skirt spotless, before landing on the mine-trap tiny cube. "Hm."

"Ah, hehe… sorry, Solara."

"It's cool. Always hard at work." She placed the tiny, offending piece of plastic block on the table, to my right. Her hand crossed over the various scraped sheets of notebook paper, scattered books and crayons that made up my workspace before leaning against the tabletop. "Always something new."

I laid the crayon down, nubbed-edge away, pretending it was an ink quill, and I was some cool, well respected mapsman from the old world. But in reality, I was buzzing with anticipation. "Y-You like it?"

"You've gotten a lot better at staying in the lines." She reached over the table and pointed to the full sized paper under my knees. For as long as I'd known her, she'd been pretty thin, and so were her arms. Yet she still had to be at least ten times stronger than I could ever hope to be. Being safely within her reach gave me more security than just about anything else in the world.

The table I was using was pushed against the far left side wall, under the windows. From this room, you could see the tops of smaller buildings in the neighborhood, and usually, not much else. It felt like the clouds almost always controlled the skies above the orphanage. But today, the sun fought its way through, along with skies that were perfectly blue. When it caught the light, the mass of her hair glowed, glinting like gold where the frizzy hairs came together in curls. I'd never seen it ironed, and understood her insult whenever she was asked to consider it. It was fine just the way it was.

I scrambled to my feet, and she tapped the corner of the page and dragged it towards her. I could see her expressions shifting. Calculating. I knew this face so well. It is one of the first faces I ever came to recognize as a friend. The first face I ever really loved. Chestnut brown with a long, gently sloped nose, almond colored eyes, and thin eyebrows. Her finger slid right across spacemouse and his exposed appendages, to the big orange ball on his right. "Forgot Jupiter's moons, though."

"Moons?" I only knew about Earth's one moon. In my last two days of fixating on space, I hadn't realized that planets could have more. "How many moons does it have?"

"Like eighty." She tipped her head back, batting her eyelashes thoughtfully. "Or seventy nine? Some odd number like that."

"What?!" I snatched up the bottom edge of the paper, checking over the lonely, moonless Jupiter. "Huh. Those weren't on the mobile."

My eyes drifted to the paper mache model of the nine planets hanging on strings on the other side of the room. It was made by a first grader who graduated years ago, back when Pluto still counted as part of the main pack. Seeing the model in its 3D grandeur made me frustrated. As if a couple dozen poorly drawn moons on this one planet would make the difference between an unfinished grade school drawing, and real celestial cartography.

"Is this the piece for show and tell this week?" she asked. "What's the story about?"

"It's not a story. I'm mapping out our solar system. Ms. Reading did a talk last week about the Kennedy Center, and the guys at NASA." I hooked my thumb behind me. "I'll go there, someday."

"To… NASA?"

"To outer space!" I leaped onto to my feet, spinning to face her. "I'll get my own team and soar past the stars! I'll see black holes— I always wanted to see them with my own eyes!"

"Always?" Solara's eyes slid to the left corner of the room, and then to the right. "As of… today, you mean?"

"As of always! I mean, haven't you ever wanted to see outer space?"

"Space kinda freaks me out." She 'clack'ed her nails on the table nervously. Fake nails and polish weren't allowed, so the girls grew out their natural ones. It seemed contradictory, since I was already trained to file mine down. More so than the other boys. "I just know that I plan on living for at least another hundred years. And I hope the ozone layer isn't so messed up that we gotta e-vac the planet by that time."

"But that's part of why I wanna go! It's not just a world beyond New York, and these windows. There's a whole universe out there!" Under the right weather conditions, New York's air pollution was concerning, to say the least. Growing up in the nineties, that and climate change was taught about exhaustively, in every grade. "I wanna be the expert on the next frontier before we go! Plus, there's so much to explore, just in our galaxy! I wanna put my hand through Saturn's rings—didja know they're not solid? They're a bunch of rock and dust and stuff just holding there. A-And then I'm gonna be the first spaceman to ever surf on Neptune! … As long as I don't get caught in Saturn's gravity, anyway." I bent down near my book and flipped a few pages back to images of NASA and their tech labs. "Hey, Solara, how long do you have to be in college to become an astronaut anyway?"

But instead of answering my question, she slowly reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. Like she'd gotten a headache all the sudden. "Okay, back up, child," she said, finally. "Two days ago, you were trying to recreate a medieval catapult. Before that, you were obsessed with seeing the Aztec Temples. The week before that, you swore up and down that the first thing you did out of school was getting on the Pacific Ocean to work for Greenpeace. And the week before that… oh, you have got to be kidding."

I forgot all about the lecture and peeked around to the right of Solara's hips, as we were joined by another one of the highschoolers. Six and a half feet tall, in his 3x sized uniform, fedora and wrung out leather jacket, it wasn't hard to pick Tom Lunala out in a crowd, especially here. He looked a bit like what I imagined Gulliver looked like, carefully weaving his way around a bunch of excitable, tiny people. The sight amused me, maybe because for that moment, I didn't feel like the only Lilliputian around.

Tom acknowledged us both with a tip of the gray hat, and tiptoed through the throngs of first graders on hand-me-down Nikes, more yellow than their original white.

Solara took a deep inhale from the nose that puffed up her chest, and spoke on the exhale. "Well," she said, "If it isn't Mr. 'Oh man, thank ya so much for the math tutoring, bro! I promise I'll pay ya back with Gatsby notes!'" She crossed her arms, and it looked as if the wall was more worthy of her eye contact than he was. "I waited for you for over an hour today!"

"I know, I know." Tom swept a hand through his greasy brown hair before replacing his hat. "I forgot I'd be running late. Tony Thatchah's doing that lesson on carbonation and wanted me to do that bottle rocket demo for the third gradahs like last year."

"Well, I see where I rank."

"C'mon, don't be like that. You're important." He produced a dollar from the inside of his jacket. "But a twenty's a twenty."

Her head swiveled back, and she gasped. "You jerk!" And she made a single, principled swipe for the dollar.

"Ay, ay, ay, easy!" Tom scolded. While she was tall, he was taller. He thrust his hand out behind him, and kept it out of her reach. "I need this!"

Solara dropped her arm. "The only reason you know how to make those stupid rockets for Mr. Thatcher's class is because I taught you how to make them!"

"Untrue." Tom replaced the dollar inside the lining of his jacket. "Check the inside cover of that Eyewitness DIY book. I checked it out a dozen times. You just taught me a trick to keep 'em from flying all over the place." He spun his finger in haphazard circles in the air." Besides, you hate helping with the kiddie lectahs, the antisocial hermit you ah."

Solara groaned, but didn't argue with him. Even I knew at the time that he was probably fibbing, at least about the first part. I'd known Tom almost as long as I'd known Solara, and they'd both come to the orphanage around the same time. Though it seemed to me only recently like I was getting the chance to get to know the guy better. Solara was his study partner, and… that's about the only way she referred to him to me, actually. He was also the oldest student in the school, allowed to stay at the orphanage to retake some classes and walk for graduation the following year. What most people didn't know was that he used his work money to sneak in comic books, small toys, and candy from the local shops. Every Christmas, Andrew, Derry and Flynn and I were pretty sure that our Secret Santa was him, if only because he was one of few students who went to the comic shop. Though none of us could figure out what made him want to do this. It wasn't like he was desperate to please a bunch of squirts, and it definitely didn't win him any brownie points with the staff.

"Either way, I'll make it up to ya," Tom told Solara, patting the pocket with the twenty. "You know I always do."

"Alright. But what about the Gatsby homework? You were supposed to help me with an essay prompt. You said you read the book already in Mr. Ferral's class."

"There's not much to it. All ya need to know is Gatsby's a suckah, Daisy's a gold diggah, and Nick is definitely ovah fixating on long, bulbous things for a reason." Tom brought his palms together for a finite clap. "There ya go! Just saved ya seven hours of ya life."

"You barely remember the book. Don't you?"

"It… pays to pay close attention in class."

She turned away with a look of disgust. "Only the grossest parts of the lecture, and—" Then her head swiveled back to him. "Seven hours? You think it takes that long?"

"Ey, don't judge me! You're in this mess because you never read it eithah"

"Yeah, because it's awful! I'd rather copy the first hundred pages of the phone book by hand! Now what am I gonna do?"

He came closer and pressed his hands over her shoulders. "Relax, will ya? We ain't letting that perfect 4.0 GPA get ruined right before finals over Dr. T.J. Titty-Eyes. Someone in Ferral's class has'ta have the cliffnotes."

"Hm." Solara slipped out of his embrace, her eyes fixed scoldingly at him, either over his pandering tone about her hard earned grades, or in hindsight, the profanity. Thankfully for Tom, Ms. Reading always seemed to have her hands too full with the other students to take notice of the visiting upperclassmen. She took on a softer tone. "How'd you know where I was, anyway?"

"If not in the den, the lion will be on the prowl.'" Tom tried to make his voice raspy like an old man. I guess he was quoting a wise old master from one of his favorite mangas. "If you weren't still elbow deep in some quantum time theory book in the library, you're probably down here creeping up on the kiddos, like this guy." Tom flashed me a smile, then turned his attention to my drawing, leaning on the edge of the table with both hands. "So, this week you're an astronaut, then, Barbs?"

"It's not 'this week'." I could hear the disappointment in my own voice. I thought if anybody would understand, it would be him. "I always wanted to go to space!" As soon as I said this, though, I cringed and rubbed my lower back. "And I'm… just taking a break from the balance beam 'cuz I got really bruised up. That's all."

Solara's wild eyes flew from me to Tom. "What balance beam?"

"It's a chopstick on a couple of cans of corn. Remember when he wanted to be a gymnast? He fell off a few times, but he got up okay. Ay, ay, don't give me that look! He's fine! I'm looking out for him, too! It's ain't like we're back to tightrope walking across shoestrings above the front stoop."

"I see…"

"Plus, I gotta get in shape!" I added. "I read right here—" I turned the book on the table a page backwards, "—that it takes years to get in shape to walk in space. They have machines that throw you around, put you upside down—" I started spinning in circles. "And make you super dizzy."

"I wouldn't try that after lunch," said Tom. "Then again, it might give the adopters another incentive to take a kid away if they see the slop this place dishes out on low budget days." He turned to a balking Solara and shrugged." What? I'm joking. And it's not like his upchuck can't be picked up in two seconds with a napkin, anyway."

"You say things like that, and then you wonder why the teachers have a beef with you."

"They gotta be havin' a beef with someone, 'cause it ain't us."

"Oh, dear lord…" She grimaced, probably wondering how she walked into that. "It's good that you're taking a lot into consideration for this, Stuart. I just…"

I stopped spinning. Well, easier said than done. I'd only been spinning for a minute, I wobbled on my legs until they regained control, blinking until my eyes stopped making doubles of her face. Only the slightest hint of a qualm was there to match her tone, but it worried me. "You just what?"

"Well, hello, happy humans!" A newcomer, another first grader had wandered over to us. As if his greetings was permission, he wedged himself right between the teens, and the desk where I stood. He had a broad smile, with holes where his baby teeth were still missing.

My tail involuntarily recoiled. "Oh. Hi, Mikey."

"Whatcha workin' on? Lemme see, lemme see!" He was pale, tall for his age-his head rising above their waists-and thin enough that his slacks needed to be held up with a belt. Apparently he'd forgotten it this morning. When he leaned over the table to get a closer look at me, Solara shielded her eyes.

"Mikey, pull up your pants!"

"Sorry." Not seeming embarrassed the kid stood up straight and reached behind himself and yanked up his pants in a great big, obnoxious yank that made me wonder how he didn't give himself a wedgie. He did this one handed, while the other was squeezing the life out of a mostly empty orange juice box. It was the good, sugary stuff, too, not the flavorless cups they sometimes give out at snack time. The school nurse keeps a separate supply for the kids with certain health conditions. The consequence was that they sometimes wound up in the hands of kids like Mikey who may not have actually needed them. "I didn't feel them fall down again. I was playing Confusious vs. Socrates with Timmy-John, and we were wearing togas made of bedsheets. Obviously, I was Confusious, even though Mary said I should've been Socrates, 'cause I got some Greek in me. Oh well. You know in those days, nobody even wore undies? It wasn't until the Revolution… Wait. Is that supposed to be you, Stuart?"

At first, I didn't know what he was talking about. Not sure if the teens got anything out of Mikey's sugar-fueled ramble. Even I was struggling to follow it. But then my eyes followed his gaze to the table, and with horror, to my drawing. The drawing where I had intentionally placed both my ears and tail on the outside of the spacesuit. It lay exposed on the table for anyone to see. "No… Not…me…"

It was too late for me to turn over the paper, or throw myself on top of it. But I didn't really want to talk about this with him. I didn't know why he was even here. Mikey barely ever talked to me, and when he did, he had this incredible way of making me feel strange.

Or maybe it was how he looked at me. Nobody had a class pet in this school, but that didn't stop him from staring at me like one. If my sleeping arrangements had been left up to him, I wonder if he wouldn't've put me in a cage filled with cedar chips and food pellets. "So you wanna be an astronaut now?" he asked.

"N-no!" I thought I could play it off. Act like I didn't know what he was talking about. He was the kind of kid you might picture with glasses. But there was no question how well he could see. With how huge his eyes seemed to get as he stared at me. Soaking in every unfascinating detail about me. Making me feel smaller and smaller by the second. At least his hands were occupied. I felt sorry for the crushed juice box, but I sure didn't wanna be in its place. "Uh… I mean… sort of."

"Gee. That's gonna be kinda hard, isn't it?"

"Whadda you mean?"

"Care to elaborate on that," Tom pressed, turning over a palm in the air. "Oh, wise one?"

"I just mean…" His bright green eyes rolled around his head. It was like he was giving me a few seconds to figure out something I should've already known. "...You're a mouse. That's why."

"That doesn't mean anything," I argued, though my voice was weak.

"I mean, sure it does," said Mikey. "You can't fix the station. You can't put the first flag on Mars. You can't-"

"Okay, Confusious." Solara stepped closer to the table, cutting off whatever Tom was going to say, and putting her body between me and him again. "Buzz off. Didn't anybody teach you? Don't have anything nice to say?" She zipped a pretend zipper across her lips. "Keep it closed."

"Whatever." Mikey balked at the dismissal. "You guys aren't the teachers. You aren't even allowed to be here, anyway."

I didn't want to admit it, but he had a point-or, several. Upperclassmen weren't technically allowed to wander into random classrooms, but nobody had stopped them before, and at this point, it was unlikely to happen in the future. Nevertheless, the boy hiked up his pants again—this time yanking them up over his belly button, and marched over to an already crowded table across the room.

"And get a belt from the clothes pantry!" Solara shouted after him.

With Mikey gone, Tom turned back to her, eyebrows raised. "Uh, I coulda handled that."

"Yeah, sure. Keep letting the know-it-all walk all over Stuart like that."

"I wasn't letting him-!"

"Guys?" I came between them, standing on the table adjacent to both their hips. "Is… he right?" I hugged the upper arm of my sleeve and squeezed, staring wistfully at the paper mache model across the room. "Is this stupid?"

To think I was begging to feel good about myself. Like my two days of reading all about space had made me the one go-to expert in our school. For longer than I could remember, I wanted to find that one little thing that made me useful. Something that took away from the areas where I came up, well… short, I guess you could say. I couldn't run very fast, couldn't draw very well, and never saw a game of backgammon I could actually win. After tumbling through and trying on a dozen interests and hobbies, I thought I'd finally found something that was truly for me. Something I might actually be able to do when I grow up.

Mikey had punctured the dream with the sharp blade of reality. Once again, 'Cause you're a mouse proved to be a devastating combination of words.

"Hey. Don't listen to him." Solara told me. "He's just jealous."

"Of what?" I asked, hearing the disbelief and insecurity in my voice.

"Those who don't have ambition for the future," Solara said, "like to make others feel bad for their own." She turned to Tom. "Right?"

"What're you looking at me for?"

"Wha-I just thought you would agree with me, that's all."

Tom folded his arms across his chest. "Oh. So this is how the truth comes out, is it?"

"What are you on about?"

But Tom talked right over her. "Stuart, let me give ya my own bit of wisdom. Something my Granddad said to me: The road to happiness ain't just for high achievers. I know that doesn't sound like much, coming from me, but-"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I dunno, you tell me!"

Solara put her hands on her hips, and gave him a challenging look. "Do you got a problem with me right now?"

"I could ask ya the same question."

Without so much as a goodbye, Tom and Solara went back together weaving through the many obstacles of first grade's watercolor Thursday, heading for the door. Neither spoke.

I walked along the table, following them as best as I could with my eyes. "Where are they going-?"

I tripped, falling right on the front of my face. I got on my knees, my nose and muzzle throbbing. "Ow…"

I grabbed my face, turned on my side, and I saw it. The black crayon.

This wasn't like any other fall. It felt like I was being mocked by the same tool that had helped me map out my dreams.

The embarrassment came down on me, all at once. I wanted to break the crayon across my kneecap, to take back some semblance of dignity, to prove I was capable of something.

But it wasn't even mine to break. We all shared the art supplies. So I squeezed my hands closed in firsts until my knuckles hurt instead. Until my nails made dents in my palms. They weren't sharp, but they grew fast. After just two days, they already needed to be filed down again. At least that aspect of me might somewhat resemble the rest of the boys again.

A loud series of claps rang up over the room's audible chaos. "Kids! Kids!" Ms. Reading shouted. "Five more minutes, everyone! Finish up your games and drawings! Put away all your art supplies, and then meet me on the rug for the next lesson! If you need to wash your hands, line up at the sink…"

Five minutes.

My eyes went back to the door. The teens had left the classroom door and closed it behind them. I left Spacemouse and all the crayons on the table, hopping down onto the seat of a nearby chair, and then onto the floor. I swerved around the legs of tables and chairs, screeching to a last minute stop before a stampede of feet in a game of tag, climbing up and around the pieces in an erector set. By the time I reached the door, I was panting.

Eyeballing the narrow crack beneath, I could tell I wasn't small enough to slip under it, even though a few years ago I would have been. But if I got down on my stomach and putting my chin down onto the floor, I had a clear view two familiar sets of shoes standing on the other side of the hallway: A beat up, well worn pair of white sneakers with a hole in the left toe, and a carefully polished pair of size 8 buckled Mary Janes.

I had a feeling they hadn't gone far. Highschoolers could be fairly predictable sometimes. Even with the playroom commotion in the background, I could make perfect sense of their hushed voices. "I didn't need your help in there," Tom was saying. "Ya know, you can be kinda rude to the other little kids sometimes."

"You have to lay down the rules, or how else will they learn?"

"So you just automatically know more than I do?"

"I should, because I…" Her body pivoted slightly to the right. "…I just do, alright?"

"Right. Just like you know everything, and I don't know nothing."

"That's not… ugh."

I feel my blood go cold. I may not have known all the context, but I knew what she was thinking, then, and she couldn't say it. She knew little kids well because she had a little kid brother, once. I knew because she had told me all about him. They were separated before she came here, but he was out there, somewhere.

She couldn't throw that in his face. Unlike her, Tom had no brothers or sisters. He didn't have anybody to go to, anyone to reunite with, after he was done with this place.

Tom sighed. "I think you talk down to Stuart more than you realize. He's just trying to share something that excites him. He's only six! Can't you fein enthusiasm for the little guy?"

"I did! I gave him feedback on the drawing!"

"Oh, whatevah."

"Tom, did it ever occur to you how hard it is to get into the space program? I mean, it takes years of training, and-and convoluted essays, and technical studies—"

"That's not what this is about."

I turned my cheek onto the cool floor, trying to see if I couldn't see them any better. By that point recess could be over and I couldn't be pried away from that door with a crowbar.

After what had to be a century, Solara responded. "Alright, yeah! I'm worried about him, Tom! I don't know if any of these jobs are feasible for him. Or even anything else. I'm scared of what his life is going to look like after this place."

"What makes you scared of it? Do you know anybody else like him? Do you have a crystal ball? 'Cause if you do, I know a coupla guys in a pool who'd love to know if Keeper is ever gonna ever gonna ditch that ugly beehive!""This is why I can't talk to you! You turn everything into a joke—"Something loud crashed behind me, inside the classroom. My nose picked up the distinct scent of watercolor acrylic. A group of kids were doing paints, and a big water bucket had crashed to the floor.

I never even flinched.

It was one thing for kids like Mikey to make light of the things I was hyped up about. To talk about how weird it would be for a mouse to beat the Flying Wallendas' World Record, or to put a mouse in zero gravity. Most students didn't know me as much as that kid who found seven new ways to faceplant a week, so I didn't take their opinion all that seriously.

But Solara was the person who saved me from my box. She was the first person in the entire orphanage who ever treated me like I could be just like the other kids. Like all I needed was a boost, a helping hand, to participate in everything. If she didn't believe I could be an astronaut, why should anybody else believe it? Why should I?

"You're not the only one who's looking out for him," Tom murmured.

One of Solara's buckled shoes shifted slightly. "I mean, yeah, making sure he doesn't get hurt—"

"That's not what I mean. Jeasus—" I couldn't see his expression, but Tom sounded… annoyed. Exasperated. This was unusual. Tom had tons of friends for a reason. He was the epitome of chill—maybe the most easy going guy I knew.

Several of his words were downed out by Ms. Reading's anguished cry, and a group of students chorusing 'oooh's.

"—put those insecurities on him. Ya had your eyes locked on UCLA as long as you can remember. Nowhere else is gonna cut it."

"I…" Solara's tone was different, now. Whatever was said during the paint crash had a great effect on her. Her voice sounded humbled, almost beyond character. "…I didn't know you knew about that."

"I do. 'Cause I'm your friend. At least I thought I was." Tom gave a great big sigh, his sneakers rocked back and forth on the soles before he spoke. "Ya might think I'm stupid, Solara. But I know how the world works. I know it's the kids of politicians and bureaucrats who get into places like that, over kids like us, any day. Most of us schmucks would be lucky to go anywhere else but community college, let alone Ivy League. Forget about scholarships. And contrary to what you think, you're not alone. People look up to ya. Stuart idolizes the ground you walk on, all 'cause you were the first person around here to look at him like he's somethin' more than a mouse. If YOU can get outta this condescendin', racist shithole, maybe, just maybe, the rest of us can! But when that little letter comes in the mail from Berkley sayin' somethin' like, 'sorry, best wishes to ya and your futuah endeavahs', or whatevah, THEN you can come and tell me how stupid I am!"

"Rejection letter? Wait a minute… Tom, you didn't know that I—?"

He turned away. "Whatever. I'm nobody. No ambitions, no nothing."

Only when Tom was walking away did Solara reply. "Tom! Hang on! When I said that, I wasn't…!" She started following, but stopped after just a few steps. Before she could finish, those yellowed sneakers shuffled to the right and out of my line of sight.

Her last words came out tender, sorry, and way too quiet for him to hear. "...thinking about you."

I watched Solara linger there, frozen in that same spot until the bell finally rang. Ms. Reading promptly, and loudly, announced to the class over the noise that Free Activity Hour was over. I heard her move about the room frantically, sounding as if she was still getting over the water spill earlier, and dreading the task of helping clean up the messes made by the kids who ignored the five minute warning.

I sat up, parts of my body sore from where I had been laying. When I turned to face the middle of the room, where several of my classmates were rushing in with paper towels to help finish cleaning up the paint water. As well as other things, which only seemed to stress the teacher out more. "No, no, Oscar, don't use your shirt!..."

I had to go, but I didn't wanna leave Solara all alone. When I went to peek back under the door, though, the Mary Janes had disappeared into the waves of other shoes criss-crossing the school.

Tom wasn't wrong. Solara was my world. She taught me how to respect others as well as how to earn it. I let her scold me, mold me, into the best version of myself I could be. Heck, it was her who trained me out of wiping my nose into my sleeve.

And I listened to her. And I guess why I did it was because she believed in me. Even if I was too young to comprehend the kinds of problems I'd have in the future, I knew enough to understand that I was alone with them. A mouse in an all human world. So I held her tight. Her conviction when she spoke captivated me. It made me believe in the impossible. It gave me hope that I could actually be adopted someday.
I cared so much about her. Tom too. They were the closest thing I had to family, and their words had impacted me more than they might ever know. But it was listening to that conversation under the door that made me understand why Mikey talked to me the way he did. In his blunt way, he was trying to help me.

I wonder if she has any idea that I remember her so well. That almost every time I climb onto the living room table to reach for the Kleenex, there Solara is. Giving me this curt nod, as this transparent figure in the doorway of my imagination. I wonder if she ever found her brother. If her life was every bit as wonderful as I used to imagine it would be. If she's ever has a passing thought about me

I wonder about Tom, too. Heavy, manga-loving, rusty bearded, laughs loud enough to shake the foundation of the building, Tom. While I didn't understand the things he said at the time, I do, more and more, as I get older. Tom wore his on his sleeve. He talked proudly about his grandfather and the good times he'd had before he was removed from his violent, abusive parents. Everybody knew he was struggling in school, lived in the moment, and had only made it to graduation by the skin of his teeth. Rather than rush towards a finish line, he wanted to enjoy life in the moment.

That argument in the hallway may have been the last time two of them ever spoke to each other. It still haunts me to think the blow up that ended their friendship started all because of me. By the time he found out he had been right, that she had been accepted to Berkeley after all, she was stepping into the cab, heading for the airport.

Somehow, I just know that that twenty was spent on a parting gift for her. One that stayed in his hands as he watched her leave. I don't know if she ever thinks about him, but I feel confident that whenever he is now, if only when the moment is right, something will trigger a memory. Somehow I know he still thinks of her.

I do, and I wasn't the one in love with her.