Borrowed Light by Anna Fienberg Page B

Don’t tell me you’re becoming all fanciful like your mother! The moon is wired gravitationally to this planet, without which it would sling off into space like a stone from a catapult. Don’t you remember that experiment we did with the bucket and the rope? Can you describe any object in our solar system without reference to its relationships to other bodies? Come on, Callisto!’
    I could feel my cheeks burning as I read. I slammed the letter face-down on the bed.
Shut up!
I wanted to shout. Shut up and let me talk! I know all that, what do you think I am, a member of the Flat Earth Society? This is just the way I see it, right, it’s my own world, it’s a fantasy, get it? And I’m not anything
like
my mother. I winced. I had a sudden picture of Mum sitting round the living room table at her ladies’ meeting, talking to dead spirits.
    I picked up the letter again. I wanted to cut my grandmother off, like scissors to paper. But the letter had its own magnetic field, and my eyes raced down the page. ‘I know, I know,’ I kept chanting as I read.
    The language of the universe had never been like this. I could feel tears burning my lids. Since I was twelve the cosmos had been a world of infinite space, permissive, elastic, consisting of exotic materials, wild chemicals. Suddenly it had boundaries of brick, and they were shuttingme out. Or maybe it was just my Grandma. Why did she have to be so damn rigid?
    â€˜There is even some evidence, Callisto, that the moon is made from the same stuff as Earth,’ she wrote in her deafening scrawl. ‘When the earth was very young, it was hit by another mighty planet, and the vapour created by the heat of the collision spurted out into space, settling into orbit and condensing as the moon.’
    â€˜I know, I know,’ I chanted to myself. But Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge, remember?
    â€˜Practically speaking, the moon isn’t so remote, so unearthly, so angelically different, my dear. Its face is pocked with craters, like someone suffering from acne. I’m sure you’ve seen them with your telescope.’
    I groaned. I tried to remember the bold A+ that Mrs Graham had marked in red on the last page of my essay. ‘And really, Cally, how can a satellite with no wind, no water and no air be invulnerable? Every trace of history remains like a scar on its landscape.’
    I stopped chanting. I held my breath, as if to hear better. ‘Just think, the footprints left by astronauts will never be worn away! Isn’t that remarkable?’
    Yes it was. I didn’t know that. Or at least, I hadn’t thought that far. I was not good on consequences. I closed my eyes. I saw tracks left by birds in wet sand, tyre marks in dusty roads. I saw myself lying still on Tim’s floor, out of the weather. There was a silence in my head, like the moment after lightning, when you’re waiting for thunder. I pulled up my T shirt and looked at the white lunar landscape of my stomach. No atmosphere meant no protection. Inside, there were footprints.
    I believed it now. My mind stopped skipping and the thought dropped like a stone into my body. I was heavy with gravity, and I lumbered into the bathroom to throw up.

Part Two
    C ALLISTO DOESN’T LIKE me any more. I don’t know what I’ve done. When I go into her room she says, ‘I’m busy, Jeremy.’ Yesterday was so hot, but she wouldn’t take me to the pool.
    â€˜It’s the only place we’ll be safe,’ I said. ‘The man on the radio told us we’re having a heat shave.’
    â€˜I’m busy,’ she said.
    What I want to know is, how can she be so busy lying on her bed? Maybe she doesn’t like me because I wear a helmet. Sam Underwood at school said I should be locked up. Why? Only bad robbers are locked up. I haven’t hurt anyone. I told Sam that helmets protect you against flying