Clear Skies Read online

  Arno took the bait.

  “Fun fact. The word comet is very old. It comes from the Greek word meaning hairy, a hairy star. Comets are leftovers from the formation of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. They move around the Sun and are made up of ice mixed with dust. As they move past Jupiter, they begin to defrost, and when they approach the orbit of Mars, they start to form long tails. Blown by the solar wind from our sun, the tails of comets always point away from the heat. Halley’s Comet is famous because it returns within a human lifetime. Do you know when it will next come back?”

  “Beats me,” Buddy said. He winked at Robert, who stood with his eyes wide open, eyebrows raised.

  “Halley’s Comet appears to Earth about every seventy-five years. Right now it’s too faint to be seen, but it will return in 1986.”

  With that, Arno sat down.

  “And by then I’ll have left my footprints on the Moon.” Buddy smiled his toad smile. “Careful what you ask about around here, Robert,” he added, nodding toward Arno. “You’ll get way more than you bargained for.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Robert said. “Are you both outer space fans?”

  Arno nodded, and Buddy added, “My dad met John Glenn. I’m going to be an astronaut just like him.”

  “You, too?” Robert asked, turning to Arno.

  “No,” Arno said. “An astronomer.”

  “Astronomer. Astronaut. Cool. But it’s astrology that’s boss.”

  Arno and Buddy leaned forward, wrinkled their brows and together said, “What?”

  “Astrology. The study of the movements and positions of planets that impact us and our natural world.”

  “Do you mean like how the Moon pulls on the oceans to make tides?” Arno asked.

  “It’s far more than that!”

  Both boys looked at him blankly.

  “Our entire personality depends on the planets’ locations when we’re born.”

  This took some time to sink in, and then Buddy started to laugh.

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “Check it out. What’s your zodiac sign?”

  Buddy stopped laughing.

  “My what?”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “April Fool’s Day,” Buddy boasted.

  Arno could never understand why Buddy didn’t see how that was so funny.

  “So, April 1st. That makes you an Aries,” Robert said. “Aries are eager, quick, dynamic and competitive. Does that describe you?”

  Buddy widened his eyes. “You’re right!” he said.

  “And when’s your birthday?” Robert asked Arno.

  “September 18th.”

  “That makes you a Virgo. Virgos are practical, loyal, gentle and analytical.”

  Arno said nothing.

  I’m all those things, he thought.

  Still, Robert must have used some kind of trick. But how?

  “Nifty, huh?” Robert said smugly. Then he added, “Phew. I’m roasting.” He eyeballed Arno’s pitcher of lemonade sweating on the table next to the magazines.

  “Do you want some?” Arno asked, still trying to figure out how on earth Robert had got those things right. It sure wasn’t because of phony-baloney astrology, that’s for sure.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Where’re you from?” Arno asked, filling a glass for Robert after retrieving one from the kitchen.

  “London,” Robert said.

  “So, England,” Arno said. He was pretty good at geography.

  “No, Canada. There’s a London there, too. My dad’s from England. But then my parents moved to Canada. And now we’re here.”

  Robert took a sip of lemonade. “Mmmmmm,” he said.

  “It’s my mom’s recipe,” Arno said proudly.

  “It’s very … lemony,” Robert said carefully. He puckered his lips.

  Was that meant to be a compliment? Arno wasn’t sure.

  “Yeah. That’s because there are lemons in it,” Arno said, more defensively than he would have liked. “Fresh lemons.”

  “I told you Tang was better,” Buddy leaned over and whispered loudly into Arno’s ear.

  Arno batted him away. Smiling, Buddy poured himself another tall glass of lemonade, emptying the pitcher.

  “It’s primo,” Robert said peering into his glass. “Really. Only, I wondered if you might want to tone down the tartness of the lemons with a bit of ginger.”

  “Ginger?”

  “Ginger or cucumbers. Or vanilla. Have you ever tried any of those? Delicious.”

  Arno just stared at him, dumbfounded and annoyed.

  “Just a friendly suggestion,” Robert said cheerfully, setting down the glass on the porch railing. It was still mostly full. “Well, I’d better burn rubber. Sorry. Lots of unpacking to do. Nice to meet you both.”

  He climbed on his bike and pedaled home.

  Arno poured the rest of Robert’s rejected lemonade onto the lilac bush by the steps.

  Ginger? Cucumbers? Vanilla??

  He looked up at his new neighbor’s house, Robert’s bike now abandoned on their front lawn next to the Sold sign.

  “What a flake,” Arno said, sitting back down.

  “Polite, though,” Buddy said. “Can I borrow a bucket?” he asked.

  His innocent tone put Arno on high alert.

  “What for?”

  “Another astronaut test. They can keep their feet in ice water.”

  “Ice water?”

  “That’s an actual test. An endurance test that astronauts have to pass. Just like the balloons. So do you have a bucket or not?”

  “Under the kitchen sink,” Arno said, reaching for a Life magazine from the stack.

  Buddy dashed inside. When he came back out, he was lugging a bucket filled with water and ice. He set it down on the deck, sloshing contents that splashed Comet, it was so heavy.

  Comet grunted as he shifted to a drier spot.

  “Want to give this a try?” Buddy asked.

  “I do not,” Arno said.

  “Chicken.”

  “I’m not chicken,” Arno said. “You heard Robert. I’m a Virgo. And Virgos are practical. I don’t want to lose precious time drying my feet before I can run inside to the phone when they ask the last astronomy question on the radio.”

  “Point taken,” Buddy said. “The least you can do is time me.”

  “No problem,” Arno said, closing his magazine. He was genuinely curious about how long Buddy would torture himself. “Ready when you are.”

  “Hang on a sec,” Buddy said.

  He yanked off his idiotic boots, then repositioned the bucket of ice water. Taking a deep breath, he plunged one foot in right after the other. He made two clenched-white fists and began to screech immediately.

  It was ear-splitting.

  It didn’t sound human.

  Arno doubled over with laughter.

  Buddy only stopped when he stumbled out of the bucket, water slopping across the deck. Comet perked up to scavenge a few spilled ice cubes that skittered his way.

  “How many seconds?” Buddy asked after sitting down to rub his feet.

  “I forgot to count,” Arno admitted after he finally stopped laughing. “You sounded like Comet if he breathed in helium from a balloon and started barking at a cat.”

  “Buddy! Lunch!” Buddy’s mother hollered from the front porch of Buddy’s house, which was up the block in the opposite direction from Robert’s.

  “Thanks for nothing,” Buddy said, picking up his boots. He made his way barefoot down the steps and onto the boiling sidewalk. “Hot, hot, hot!” he yelped before he could jump on his bike and pedal home.

  Arno sat back in his chair just as the music on his transistor radio, along with his last chance to
win the contest, died.

  There was nothing but silence, followed by the buzz of grasshoppers.

  “Blast it!” Arno yelled, jumping up, the sweaty backs of his legs peeling off the seat. “My batteries!”

  FOUR

  Arno was rooting through every drawer in the kitchen in a frantic search for batteries when his dad arrived home for lunch. By then, Arno had emptied most of the contents onto the kitchen counters and pawed through everything, leaving a jumbled mess.

  “Whoa! What’s going on?” Arno’s dad asked while Comet leapt all around his legs.

  “My batteries died!” Arno cried. He held up the dead transistor radio.

  “Why the panic?”

  “There’s a contest for tickets to tomorrow night’s opening of the new observatory! They could ask an astronomy question any minute! I have to be the first to phone in, and I already missed out on the first two questions! This is my last chance!!”

  “I see.” Arno’s dad took the radio and popped off the back cover. “This needs a 9-volt. And I don’t know where your mother keeps the spares.”

  He went to the sink to wash his hands.

  “But I need one!” Arno said, close to crumbling.

  “What about your toys? Some of them take batteries, don’t they? Maybe your Show Me projector?”

  Arno had been given a toy projector two birthdays ago. It was battery-operated and came with short strips of cartoon cells with information written on them, set in cardboard so they could slide in and out of the projector. One of the sets that Arno bought later was a month-by-month depiction of all eighty-eight constellations.

  “No. That takes three D batteries. But wait!”

  Arno bolted to his room. The projector was sitting on his shelf next to the toy robot that shot missiles from his head and light from his eyes. Arno knew that his robot took a 9-volt battery.

  Arno slid the plastic cover off the back with shaky hands and removed the battery from inside. He tossed the emptied robot on his unmade bed and dashed to the kitchen to insert the battery into the back of the radio, fumbling in his hurry. He turned on the radio but accidentally knocked the front dial out of alignment so that all he got was static.

  “Blast it!” he cursed.

  He adjusted the dial and locked into his station just as the radio announcer was asking the last question.

  “… is the ninth planet in our solar system, the farthest one away from the Sun, which makes Pluto the coldest planet we know. Pluto got its name from the Roman god of the underworld. The PL in the name also stands for the initials of Percival Lowell, the astronomer who caught hints of the planet twenty-five years earlier.”

  Arno knew all about Percival Lowell from one of Jean Slayter-Appleton’s columns. An observatory named after him was now being used to create detailed maps of the Moon to prepare for a lunar landing.

  Arno stood beside the telephone and dialed six out of the seven numbers for the radio station, which he had memorized. He stuck his finger in the hole of the last digit and got ready to dial it as soon as the announcer asked the last question, confident that he would know the answer. All he needed was to be the first to get through.

  Meanwhile, his dad was laying slices of white bread on the only remaining clean counter to make ham sandwiches. Comet sat politely at his feet. He could smell the ham.

  The radio announcer continued.

  “First sighted in 1930, it turns out that Pluto is the smallest planet in our solar system. But which, dear listener, is smaller? Pluto or our own moon?”

  “Pluto!” Arno shouted as he dialed the last digit.

  Arno pressed the receiver to his ear and held his breath.

  His dad paused from spreading mustard on the sliced bread, but not on Arno’s slices because Arno hated mustard.

  Busy tone.

  “Nooooo!” Arno slammed down the receiver and collapsed against the kitchen wall. Comet perked his ears in alarm.

  “Maybe the caller will get the answer wrong,” Arno’s dad said.

  “Any dipstick knows that Pluto is smaller,” Arno said glumly.

  “I didn’t,” Arno’s dad admitted.

  Arno stared at him for a long minute, then redialed the phone number except for the last digit. He stood with his finger in position on the dial while they both listened to the radio.

  “Hello. You’re our first caller.”

  “Hello!” the caller answered.

  Arno’s dad turned up the radio.

  “Well, good luck to you because this is our last question for the contest. Now, which do you think is smaller? Pluto or our moon?”

  “Our moon, of course. Pluto is a planet.”

  “Wrong!” Arno whooped, and he dialed the last number.

  “I’m so sorry,” the announcer said. “That is incorrect. But thanks for calling. Who’s next on the line?”

  Arno couldn’t believe his ears. The radio announcer’s voice was speaking to him on the telephone!

  Arno cleared his throat. He could hear his own nervous breathing on the radio. His dad turned down the volume so that Arno could concentrate.

  “Arno. Arno Creelman,” Arno stammered.

  His dad gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  “And how old are you, Arno?”

  “Eleven, sir,” Arno said.

  “Eleven? My, my. With all this Space Race business going on, many kids tell me that they want to grow up to be astronauts, to be the first to land on the Moon. Is that your dream, too?”

  “No, sir,” Arno said.

  “Oh?”

  “I like telescopes. I want to discover new things that are way out there. Things that are so deep in space, it would take forever to reach them.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe exoplanets.”

  “Exo what?”

  “Exoplanets. Planets that might exist outside of our own solar system.”

  “Do you mean planets that orbit other stars?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Other stars, not our sun?” the announcer asked.

  “Yes, sir. I believe that many stars must have planets orbiting them. And once we discover them, there’s a good chance some will have intelligent life. Maybe even more intelligence than here on Earth.”

  There was a long pause. It was as if the radio announcer didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “That’s certainly food for thought, Arno.”

  “I have plenty more ideas about outer space,” Arno said. “I keep a list in my notebook, along with articles by Jean Slayter-Appleton.”

  “Wonderful! Speaking of which, how about we get back to the contest?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then. If you’ve been listening, you’ll know that our last caller got the answer wrong. Pluto is actually smaller than our moon.”

  “Yes, sir. I knew that.”

  “I’m sure you did. So, Arno, I’m going to ask you a related question.”

  Arno twisted the telephone cord around his hand and held his breath. What else was there to know about Pluto? He knew that Pluto moved on a different orbital plane than the other planets and that it actually crossed Neptune’s orbit from time to time. He knew it took Pluto 247 Earth years to revolve around the Sun and over six Earth days to rotate. He knew it was the only new planet to be discovered so far in the twentieth century —

  “Do you know how much smaller Pluto is than our moon?”

  “Yes, sir! Pluto is only two-thirds the diameter of our moon.”

  Arno’s dad’s eyebrows shot up.

  “And it’s less than twenty percent of Earth’s mass,” Arno added for good measure, untwisting the telephone cord around his free hand.

  Arno’s dad’s jaw dropped.

  “Correct!
” the radio announcer exclaimed. “You’ve just won the last invitation. We’ll see you and your guest tomorrow night to help Jean Slayter-Appleton cut the ribbon. She’s also promised to show visitors several of her favorite globular clusters from the new observatory’s telescope. I’m not even sure what that is.”

  “A globular cluster is a dense collection of stars that form a spherical shape and are tightly bound by gravity,” Arno said. “And when —”

  “Wow,” the radio announcer said. “Enjoy!”

  “Yes, sir!” Arno shouted while Comet joined in the excitement by dancing a tight circle around him.

  “Clear skies, Arno,” the radio announcer said.

  “Clear skies,” Arno replied.

  After he hung up, he beamed at his dad, who said, “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks, Dad!”

  Arno’s dad cut the sandwiches into triangles and placed them on plates. Then he dropped some extra pieces of ham into Comet’s bowl, which Comet devoured. “Who will you take as your guest?”

  Meeting Jean Slayter-Appleton was serious business, and Arno didn’t want anyone to spoil that. Especially anyone like Buddy.

  “You, Dad,” Arno said.

  “I’d be honored,” his dad said. He gave Arno a smile before placing the plates on the kitchen table. “What do you want to drink with the sandwiches?”

  “I made lemonade this morning but it’s all gone.”

  “Then ice water will do,” his dad said. He opened the freezer. “Hey! What happened?” He held out the empty trays.

  Arno explained about Buddy’s astronaut endurance test.

  “You should have heard him,” Arno said. “What a scream.”

  “I’ll bet,” his dad said, filling the trays with water and putting them back into the freezer. He poured two glasses of milk instead.

  “I also met the new kid on the block this morning. Robert.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s from London,” Arno said. “Not England. Canada.”

  He didn’t want to bore his dad by telling him about the astrology nonsense.

  The telephone rang. Arno answered.

  “Hi, Arno. It’s Mindy.”

  Mindy was in the same grade as Buddy and Arno. She also lived on Arno’s block. She had been Arno’s science fair partner, and they made a tool that calculated what latitude they were from Earth’s equator by measuring the angle of Polaris to the horizon. They came in second place.