That was going to be him someday.
Desmond Lewis, Astronaut.
At age seven, it was all very certain. He could see his whole life ahead of him. First, he was going to graduate high school as a Valedictorian and then go to Stanford, where he would double major in Astrophysics and Engineering. He was going to get an internship at NASA and then go right into their astronaut program right out of college. He would move to Cape Canaveral, that beautiful place he and Mommy and Daddy and Georgie had visited two years ago, the place with all the palm trees and the beach, the place that was only an hour’s drive to Disney World, the place where he’d convinced them to buy the plush space shuttle.
The space shuttle was his favorite thing in the whole wide world. He took it everywhere, except school. The kids there were mean and might try to steal it or throw it in the garbage because they knew he loved it so much. He wore NASA t-shirts and talked endlessly of space and Star Wars and sci-fi. Some of his other friends were into that stuff too, but the other kids made fun of him for it. It didn’t matter. One day he was gonna blast out of this world and leave them all behind.
And when he did come back from his adventures colonizing the Moon and Mars, and establishing space stations at Lagrange points so that they stayed in the same spot relative to Earth, everyone was going to think he was so cool. His science teacher said she was impressed he even knew what a Lagrange point was at his age.
He was going to marry his friend Virginia who once kissed him on the cheek and said she loved him. They were going to have a big house on the beach with lots of palm trees and have kids and a dog and a wonderful life. And at Christmas, Mom and Dad and Georgie would all come to his place because it would be the nicest house out of all of theirs.
Lowering his plush space shuttle from the window, Desmond looked around the car. He was sitting in the rear left seat of his mother’s Ford Explorer. Georgie sat to the right of him, staring out the other window. His mother was up front behind the wheel, one elbow propped against the door beside her. The Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” played at a low volume on the radio.
Desmond looked over at his brother. George Lewis was three years younger than him and 100 percent more annoying. He hated how Georgie always came into his room and trashed his stuff, then ran out laughing. He was such a little jerk. One time, he’d grabbed one of Desmond’s favorite action figures and flushed it down the toilet. That’s why he now kept his most sacred toys and stuffed animals up high on a shelf in his closet. Georgie wouldn’t be able to reach that high for years. He dreaded the thought of his little brother trying to shove the space shuttle into the toilet.
Right now, Georgie was playing with his seatbelt. He always liked doing that even though their parents always told him not to. Georgie was so stupid sometimes. And annoying. Sometimes he wished Georgie had been given up for adoption. After Georgie flushed the action figure down the drain, Desmond had screamed “I hate you!” and spent an entire night wishing Georgie had never been born, that his parents had never had another child. Or if they had, that they would’ve given him a sister. She would’ve recognized he had cooties and kept her toys separate from his. She would be too busy playing with Barbie dolls to try and steal his action figures and toss them down a whirlpool to a watery grave.
“Mommy, how long until we get home?” he asked impatiently. They’d spent the weekend at her sister’s place, and she lived off in the middle of nowhere, which was why they were driving through a dimly lit forest road late at night, instead of on the highway like ordinary people.
“Another hour or so, baby,” she replied, sighing. It had been a long day. She’d argued with her sister a lot. Desmond didn’t understand why she kept hanging out with her relatives if she didn’t like them that much. He didn’t want to hang out with Georgie when he got older. Georgie was such a drag. Desmond was going to move to Florida and become an astronaut, and Georgie could go flush his own toys down the toilet then.
The weekend hadn’t been that fun. He and his brother had sat around and watched old VHS movies from the 80s, but he’d already seen them before. Aunt Nicole hadn’t given them much to do and was either very patronizing or rude to them. Desmond guessed it was why she never got married and had kids. Their dad was lucky; he’d spent the whole weekend at home with the dog.
Desmond looked back outside. Beyond the road’s edge, the forest stretched off into the black. It gave him the chills just thinking what could be lurking in there: mosquitoes, bears, maybe even an axe-wielding lunatic. He liked space because it was open and the stars lit up the dark no matter which direction you looked. And, like the horizon, it went off to infinity. You could never reach the end of it. There was always something new to explore.
Suddenly, he felt the space shuttle wrenched from his hands. He turned to see Georgie, triumphant, holding it up like he’d won a prize.
“GIVE IT BACK!” Desmond screamed.
“Des,” his mother said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. “Stay calm.”
“Make him give it back!” he cried.
“Georgie, you know that’s not yours. Give it back to your brother.”
“No!” Georgie cried, hugging it tightly. “It’s mine!”
“Give it back!” Desmond reiterated. His hands were shaking now, watching the space shuttle carefully.
“George Lewis, give that back to your brother this instant!”
Georgie giggled and leaned farther away. “Never!”
Desmond turned forward. “Mom, make him stop it!”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “Look Des, I’m driving. I can’t deal with it now. Georgie, just give it back.” And then she continued in a lower voice, thinking her children couldn’t hear her, “I don’t have the energy for this shit right now.”
Georgie kept laughing and Desmond’s blood began to boil. He watched anxiously as his brother carelessly swung the plush shuttle around and bashed it against his knees, the window, and the back of the seat in front of him.
“Stop it!” he hissed.
Georgie turned toward him and, with a taunting laugh and an evil gleam in his eye, dug his fingernails into the plush and began pulling, trying to tear it open.
Desmond flipped. “STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!” He leaned over and grabbed the toy spacecraft, and tried to pull it out of his brother’s hands, but George tugged back.
At this point, Desmond did the only thing he could think of: he screamed at the highest pitch he could. Then Georgie started screaming the same way, too.
Their mother whipped around to face both of them in the backseat. “For the love of Christ, would the two of you shut the fu–”
Had she still been looking at the road then, maybe she would’ve seen the Chevy Trailblazer that had accidentally drifted into their lane and was now heading for a direct collision. Lewis saw the headlights grow brighter and brighter as the other car tried to course correct by swerving off the road at the very last second. His own mother turned around, her hands flying to the wheel, but about a third of the fronts of each car still collided with each other.
Desmond closed his eyes as he felt the vehicle spin around and then the wheels lost touch with the ground, the entire steel body of the SUV started rolling over and over–
He blacked out.
When he came to he was dangling upside-down, blood trickling across his forehead. Slowly, he tilted his head down at the ceiling. Georgie lay unnervingly still on his back, his eyes wide open. The space shuttle lay overturned beside him about a foot away.
It took Lewis a while to fully process that his brother was dead. When he finally did, he began to cry, quietly, alone there suspended in his seat. He cried for what felt like eons before a figure, sobbing loudly, opened the door beside him and unbuckled his seat belt. After making sure he was safely on the ground, she crawled over to Georgie and wept over his body for some time.