Untitled Murphy - 21104.01

By Maggie Murphy

“The first time I really did anything bad?” I asked, raising my eyebrows before taking a small sip of beer. “Well, I guess you’re not talking about ‘baby throwing the cereal against the wall’ type stuff.” I had to grin; my mother still swore there were milk stains on our walls. “Anyway,” I continued, signaling to the barkeep that I wanted another lager.

“I guess I was about… let’s say I about ten. It was a normal school day, nothing really special about it except we were set to have an assembly. One of those things where they talk to us about our future, even though the only ‘future’ you’re thinking about is lunch.

“At any rate, my dad poked his head in my door right before my alarm went off, growled at me to get my ass up, and even though I insisted I wouldn’t be late, my brother did manage to beat me to the bathroom. Living in that small house, you didn’t really have much privacy or time to yourself. Anyway, I did manage to make it out of the house on time, but once I met my friend –Delia– at the corner, we didn’t exactly spend much time with the big group going to school. See, being younger than everyone else, we usually walked to school with a big group of kids—our route took us past a bad part of town.

“However, as soon as we hit that corner that morning, we veered off. The ‘bad school’ was twice the distance of our own school, but we managed to catch up quickly. Of course, we had a detour or two on our way…” I paused for dramatic effect as the bartender handed me my pilsner glass.

“See, I grew up in South Philly- pretty safe by our standards, but it wasn’t too hard to make a wrong turn, and end up on the East Side. Halfway on our route was this bus stop that would take you to any part of town- our meeting place. See, the school closest to ours wasn’t exactly the greatest, but while we had our assembly, they had a class trip to the moon. I know, not the biggest deal, but my parents and Delia’s parents never let us go. Deel’s always said that she should be thinking about her future instead, and my parents were all too happy to agree that ‘The moon will always be there. Your future might not be.’”

I made a face as my voice rose a few octaves to fake-imitate my parents, and took a long swig of my drink to accentuate the point that I didn’t, and still didn’t, really care what their thoughts on the moon were.

“Every other grade had a class trip to the moon,” I explained. “Our parents explained to us quite clearly that we weren’t going, and weren’t going to go until we had perfect grades. Now, we were troublemakers, not the best students, but not stupid enough to cheat.

“So when we got to our meeting place, that bus stop, we had two friends waiting for us. The way we figured it, they were older than us, but we were all still little kids, and therefor looked the same. Our soon-to-be doppelgangers assured us that the chaperones had no idea which kid was which, and they handed us their ID cards.”

I caught a look from one member of my now-audience, and nodded with a smirk. “Yep,” I replied to them without them having to say a word. “We were pretty clever kids, even back then.

“So, the whole thing was, they’d skip school, we’d take their IDs, and go on their school trip as them. We’d get to see the moon, we’d owe them a later favor, they’d get a free day off from school, and we’d win all around.” I couldn’t help but grin deviously. “We’d never been to their school before, so I suppose we looked like two little deer in headlights when we walked through the front doors, though no one seemed to notice.”

I laughed. “All I remember is that I looked at Delia, and her eyes were as wide as dinner plates!

“So we kept out backpacks on, our heads down, and got onto the bus no problem.” I continued matter-of-factly. “The fact that all the kids on the bus knew they didn’t know us wasn’t an issues- they were used to weird people showing up and unusual things going on. They probably expected us to start a riot and prevent the trip, actually.

“For most of the ride to the base, we were too scared to even open our backpacks to make sure we had remembered our cameras. All we could do was look out the window and hold our breath. We were scared shitless! But when we all got off the bus, we realized the only thing these chaperones cared about was making sure that none of the kids destroyed anything, stole anything, or got in any sort of trouble. I remember it was so surreal… Deels and I had never been yelled at to ‘stay in a straight and orderly line or else’ one moment, and then completely ignored the next.

“So the shuttle ride had us all go up about ten at a time, and there being about forty of us, the teachers still hadn’t realized we weren’t who we claimed to be. Deels and I spent most of the shuttle ride trying to see what we could of the veiwscreen, and avoiding eye contact. When we landed, the teachers made us wait until the whole group could gather themselves together, and we could all go in whatever museum and take the tour as a whole. However…. Delia and I had other plans.”

I grinned wickedly.

“As soon as the last group landed, we waited for the teachers to confer, and as soon as they looked away from us, Delia and I took off like a shot. We must have looked ridiculous and obvious as hell, two little ten year old girls running for their lives, but in our minds… we had a mission. We actually looked back after about twenty yards –we had to stop, we couldn’t breathe– but no one even knew we were gone. It’s kinda sad, but it worked perfectly into our plan. We took the IDs and the cameras out of our packs and held onto them as tight as we could. It was a miracle no one asked us why we were all alone, but I guess there were enough kids there that day that everyone just assumed that we were part of another group that wasn’t theirs. As long as we had IDs, no one really cared where we were going.”

I leaned back against the bar and sighed, seeing not the inside of the bar, but the Earth.

“I remember the first time I saw Earth from the moon,” I continued. “We hadn’t even thought about it until we were halfway through the Moon Museum. I think we were looking for the bathroom actually… I was waiting for Delia to come out, and I was wandering. I remember pacing back and forth, running my hands along the windows. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that I had made a handprint, so I went to go clean it off.

“I looked up ever so slightly, and when I saw that little blue dot…” I shook my head in disbelief. “I’d seen pictures and holograms before of course, but in person? All I could do was stand there and stare at it. I hadn’t even realized Delia was standing next to me, her mouth hanging open like mine. I think we stood there for about five minutes straight, two little kids standing and staring at the Earth like it was the most glorious thing in the Universe.”

Still leaning back, I took a moment to pause. I still was seeing the bar of course, but in my mind’s eye, I was seeing myself and my best friend, just little innocent balls of hyper energy, looking out an observation window at the pale blue dot we all called home.

“I remember everything from that moment.” I said. “It’s like when you have an epiphany, and everything you thought was chaos suddenly makes perfect sense to you. I remember the weight of my bag against my back, the fierceness of light in which the Earth was glowing, and the misshapen half-circle of which the Earth was rising. It was so bright… and so blue… clouds wisping across the surface… Delia tried to paint it once, and it’s a fine imitation, but…” I trailed off and shook my head.

“I think we tried to take a picture too, but all that came out were the slight smudges I had made on the windows, and faaaar far away, this tiny little blue speck. The poster you get in the gift shop looks better. Of course, we couldn’t get the poster… then our parents would’ve known we’d gone.”

I rose the glass to drink, only to realize there was none left. Had I really finished it that fast? I set it down on the bar; the bartender would get to it when he could.

“Well,” I continued. “After that, Delia and I realized that whatever we had set off to do, it was all trivial as soon as we saw that little blue dot. We were in such awe, we went to rejoin the group of students about an hour and a half earlier than we had planned on doing so. I really don’t remember what we did after that; I know we stayed at the back of the group and that there was a tour guide… we all got pamphlets about the first colony that settled on the moon… but on the shuttle ride back, everyone was really quiet.

“We learned later that the group we had snuck into –remember this was a school from the ‘bad’ part of town– well, the group had apparently trashed the gift shop. The teacher that was supposed to watch them wasn’t paying attention, which gave them the signal to run rampant through the store. So they were quiet for a different reason.

“When we got back to their school, it wasn’t that hard to sneak away from everyone again. By the time we all got back, the school day was over anyway. We just simply walked home from there. The real trouble came later, though… our parents knew something was up.

“We got home, put our backpacks down, and hid our cameras under our pillows. I’m not sure what happened with Delia, but that night at dinner, my parents were way too interested in how my day went. My parents asked my brother how his day was first, and Jackson told them he got out of the assembly because of sports. They asked Molly then, my little sister, and she was really excited about it. I nodded along and pretended I knew what she was talking about, but I could feel my mother eyeing me the whole time. With my luck of course, Molly couldn’t remember who the speaker was at this assembly.

“Now, the way assemblies worked at our school, they vaguely told us what they would be about, but we always had a ‘special guest.’ With these ‘Think About Your Future’ kind of assemblies, it was usually a Professor from the Academy, or a Starfleet Officer on leave. They’d tell us about how life was gonna be when we grew up, or how exciting their field of expertise was or something like that. Standard stuff, really. However…” I shook my head disdainfully. “We really did have a ‘special guest’ that day, and my parents knew it.

“Well, who was it?” someone from my little audience asked, unable to stand my lame attempt at suspense any longer.

“Admiral Janeway.” I replied matter-of-factly, nodding as my listener’s eyes widened with surprise. “Yep. She’d be retired by then, of course, but was doing this little guest appearance as a favor to our Principal at the time, who had been a relative of an old friend or something like that.

“So when it was clear that I had no idea who had been at my school that day, my parents excused my sister and brother from the dinner table, and sat there and stared at me for a bit while I moved the peas around on my plate.

“My father finally asked me where I had been that day, and when I still didn’t answer, they took the plate of food away from me. My mother asked me that time, and all I could do was look up and give them my best ‘puppy dog eyes.’ Being the middle child, and already on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent, they kind of expected that I’d done something I shouldn’t. When I told them I’d been to the moon though, they certainly hit the roof!

“All my dad could do was shake his head and say, ‘The moon! They went to the moon!’ about a million times. My mother just stared at me.” I leaned back forward, grabbing my now-filled drink from behind me.

“I don’t remember getting in much trouble, to tell you the truth. I mean, I was grounded for about five months! But I think my parents were scared more than anything. I mean, how would you feel if your idiot ten year old skipped school, went to a bad part of town, and took a little joyride to the moon? I think I nearly gave my mother a heart attack.”

I raised my eyebrows, my father’s words still echoing in my mind.

“I think that trip was part of the reason I didn’t fight them when they told me they were making me enroll in Starfleet, though. I mean, I was a troublemaker most of my life …okay, okay, I know I still am, but I think my parents had that incident in mind when they were deciding how to give me some direction in life. Yeah, I disobeyed them, but at least I wasn’t out stealing a police shuttle.” I couldn’t help but smirk; I actually knew someone who had done just that.

“But that’s my story.” I concluded. “They first time I really did anything ‘bad’… I know, it was a good idea for all the wrong reasons, but hey! I was a pretty smart ten year old, in my opinion. After that, I think my parents and I understood each other a little better. A few years later, when they knew I had learned my lesson —about that at least– we started vacationing on the moon like a normal family.”

I folded my hands and put them behind my head.

“So who else has a story?”