We Dream of Space

The next morning, Cash stays home from school. Bird offers to pick up her brother’s assignments, but her mother, Tammy, reminds her that she doesn’t have to take care of everyone else just because she’s a woman. Her father, Mike, objects to Tammy putting “all these ‘equal rights’ ideas” in Bird’s head (36).

In Ms. Salonga’s science class, Fitch notices that Amanda Piper, who sits next to him, is paying particular attention to him. His friend Vern teases Fitch, using the nickname “Chewbacca” given to Amanda by some of their classmates, a Star Wars reference that implies that she is not conventionally attractive. Amanda, calling Fitch by his given name Henry, gives him a Darth Vader sticker during class.

Bird admires Ms. Salonga tremendously, often wishing that her teacher was her mother. She is ecstatic that Ms. Salonga will be devoting the month of January to a curriculum centered around the upcoming Challenger mission, and Bird admires her for having applied for the teacher’s spot on the Challenger. The class is broken up into groups of seven to mirror the seven astronauts who will be aboard the Challenger, and Bird is discouraged when she draws the mission specialist role instead of her preferred role of shuttle commander.

At the arcade after school, Vern teases Fitch relentlessly, insisting that Amanda Piper has a crush on Fitch. Reaching the limits of his patience when Vern nudges him in the ribs in jest, Fitch grabs Vern’s wrist tightly and demands that Vern not touch him again.

At home, Tammy calls from work to say she needs to stay late. Anticipating conflict when her mother is not home to prepare dinner, Bird makes a sandwich for herself in order to lessen the burden on Tammy. When Tammy returns, a vicious fight between her parents ensues, rife with insults and expletives and shouting. Mike accuses Tammy of neglecting responsibilities that he expects her to fulfill as a wife regardless of her full-time job. He criticizes Tammy for neglecting the cleaning, cooking, and laundry, and launches slights against her for wanting a career, accusing her of putting them in debt so that she could earn her college degree. Bird is prepared to appear downstairs to diffuse the situation, but before she can intervene, Fitch shouts down the stairs asking why they got married at all and slams his door aggressively.

In his room the night before he goes back to school, Cash finds himself worrying about the prospect of failing yet another year of school and finding himself held back once again, left behind while his younger twin siblings pass ahead of him by a grade. He decides that the next day he will try to collect signatures on his cast, particularly from his crush, Penny Barnard.

At school, Amanda Piper continues to irritate Fitch by calling him Henry, even though he explicitly asks that she use his nickname. During his period of Ms. Salonga’s class, Cash is prepared with signatures on his cast already when Penny appears, asking that she add hers to the collection. Cash hints at his difficulty in taking notes with the cast on, but instead of offering to copy her notes for him as Cash had hoped, Penny reminds him that he was in Ms. Salonga’s class the year before, and he could simply use those notes. Cash is dismayed when he realizes that Penny has written on her cast that she loves her boyfriend, an honors student eighth grader named Charlie Gowan, and assumes that her lack of interest in him might have something to do with the fact that she knows he is repeating seventh grade.

In her section of Ms. Salonga’s class, Bird and her team members are tasked with learning about the roles of the counterparts they have drawn in the Challenger mission. Looking at a photo of the astronauts, Bird is struck by the physical similarities she observes between herself and Judith Resnik, the mission specialist. When she mentions this to the group, Jessica Diaz says “I guess, […] but she’s pretty” (88).

Jessica attempts to amend her statement by assuring Bird that it’s not as if she isn’t pretty, but “being pretty really isn’t your thing. […] Being smart is your thing” (88).

Ms. Salonga instructs the class to arrange their desks in their groups in the configuration in which the astronauts will be seated inside the cockpit of the Challenger. She asks them to close their eyes as she narrates the steps of the process from flight check through launch. Bird immerses herself in the experience of imagining what it would be like to be aboard the shuttle. At the end of class, Bird, who has not been invited over to a friend’s house in all her time in middle school, is surprised when Dani Logan, the shuttle commander in her group, asks her to come over after school some time.

At Dani Logan’s house, Bird is surprised by the sense of order and lack of clutter, a stark contrast to what she is used to at home. Dani offers Bird snacks, and Bird’s mother’s voice plays in her head, reminding her that “junk food adds up,” while her brothers “need it. They’re growing boys” (100-01). Bird is intrigued when Dani tells her about the family cat, Chekov, and marvels at the notion that Dani and her parents arrived at the cat’s name via “consensus” rather than engaging in an argument. When Dani suggests that Bird might like Star Trek and Bird counters that she’s not interested because it’s not “real,” Bird is self-conscious thinking that their difference of opinion somehow caused tension between them. She asks Dani if it was a “bad argument,” and Dani shrugs it off, unbothered, reassuring Bird that they were just joking around.

At the arcade, Fitch acquires an admirer in the form of a young boy named Marshall. Marsh, as he is called, has noticed that Fitch is especially skilled at Major Havoc, known to be a difficult game, and asks if Fitch might teach him to play sometime. Before he can reply, Vern arrives and begins teasing Fitch about Amanda Piper again. Vern is interested in a girl named Rachel Hill, who happens to also be at the arcade, and when Fitch casts doubt on his chances with a girl like Rachel, Vern lashes out and mentions Amanda Piper once again. Fitch is enraged by Vern’s insistence in teasing him on the matter, and it requires all of Fitch’s self-control and the stuffing of his hands into his pockets not to act out physically against his friend.

Before bed, Bird ruminates over Jessica Diaz’s opinion that being pretty isn’t her thing. The one person whose opinion Bird would most value on the matter Judith Resnik’s. Bird says aloud, “I wish I could ask you. […] It doesn’t make sense to only be one thing. Does it?” She hears a response in her mind from Judith saying “No, it doesn’t. Good night, Bird” (115).