Behind him, the door to his bedroom opened. He knew by the click of the doorknob, the distance the door swung into the room, a hint of lavender in the air, that it was his mother. She stood behind him without speaking for a moment, then sighed.
“Yes?” Dustin said.
She sighed again.
He turned his chair. Her hand cupped the doorknob with fingers so delicate that he wondered how she could pick up anything heavier than a pen or a book.
“Are you coming to dinner?” Her lips were colorless and thin, like her voice, but dark circles marked her eyes. He couldn’t remember when Mom looked like she’d had a good night’s sleep.
“Now?”
She blinked, as if his question was cruel.
“Unless you want to eat later. Your father is eating later.”
“I’m not hungry.” Almost half the image had appeared on the screen. Already he could see the planet’s curve. This could be a good one, he thought. He forced his eyes away from the picture. If he phrased the question just right, he could make a difference. “I don’t think I’ll have anything. Could we wait?”
She shook her head, and then slowly backed away, pulling the door with her. “I’ll put a plate in the refrigerator for you in case,” she said as the door closed.
Dustin shivered for a second in the room’s silence. She was like a ghost in her own house, drifting from room to room. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched him. Maybe she wasn’t even capable of it anymore. If he tried to hug her, would his arms pass through?
The planet on the monitor finished forming, a violet sphere with darker bands, like Jupiter, the arc of the terminator hiding a third of the surface. “Thank you for participating” popped over the image. He shook his head as he cleared the message. He hadn’t “contributed to man’s knowledge of the universe.” Other people had taken this picture and added it to the database. No rings on the planet that he could see. No moons. Still, how rare, he thought. Perfect trade material. The smaller the object, the less chance his friends would have it. Space wasn’t just mostly empty; it was depressingly, hugely empty. If all space was the size of his bedroom, the total mass of every galaxy and star and planet wouldn’t fill a thimble. Getting a picture of an object as small as a planet 240 light years away boggled the mind. He tweaked the coordinates and sent the Peek-a-boo again for a closer look, but the image came back black. The unit might have appeared closer to the planet but with its lens pointed the wrong way, or a number in the coordinates so far down the decimal line that he couldn’t imagine it ticked up or down one time too many, and the Peak-a-boo wasn’t in the planet’s range.
He sent it again. Black screen.
Again. Black screen.
Again.
His door opened. Dad said, “Dustin, I’m eating dinner in forty minutes. The dining room should be free then.”
“I’m not hungry, Dad. I’m working on something.”
Dustin could almost hear his Dad grimace. “You didn’t eat already, did you?” He stepped next to Dustin’s chair. Dustin looked at Dad’s feet, which were bare. The toenails were trimmed neatly, although they’d grown longer than he was used to seeing. “You didn’t eat with her, did you?” Dad said.
“No, really, I’m working on my computer…” Dustin drew in a shaky breath, “… but I’ll go down now, if you want.” Dustin tapped in an adjustment before sending the Peek-a-boo again.
Dad leaned in toward the screen, his hand on the chair’s back behind Dustin’s shoulder. “It’s a hoax, you know. That toy doesn’t go anywhere. It generates random images. Everyone knows you can’t travel faster than light, and certainly not with a half pound of plastic and a couple AA batteries.”
The computer indicated that the coordinates were ready. Dustin pressed the send command. “It’s aluminum, not plastic, and it’s not a hoax. Didn’t you read that stuff I gave you about Peek-a-boo theory? Interstellar distance is a mathematical conception or something like that. Wrinkly space, they call it. Just a little push the right way, and the Peek-a-boo bounces across the wrinkle and back.”
“It’s Crackerjack physics, son. Nobody believes it.”
“Scientists do. Every time I take a photograph, it downloads into NASA’s database. We’re expanding the knowledge of the universe! People all over the world are part of it! Amateurs have always been a big part of astronomy.”
Dad humphed. “You know what the scam is? Sporadic reinforcement. Every once in a while you get a pat on the back, and you keep trying. It’s why fishermen fish. You wouldn’t believe how many Pokemon packs I bought when I was a kid, just hoping for a first edition holographic rare. Hundreds of dollars lost, I’ll bet.”
“The pictures are real, Dad,” he said as a new image formed on the screen. At the very bottom a hint of violet curve filled in. “See, it’s the same planet. I’ve been peppering these coordinates for a couple days.” The image looked so authentic. Dustin thought, no way this is fake. No way!
Dad shrugged his shoulders. “I’m heating a pizza later. Come down if you want any.”
“Not tonight. Sorry.” Dustin punched the send button again. Maybe he could get a full globe shot for trade tomorrow.
Through Dustin’s open shades, the stars above the western horizon flickered behind the maple’s waving branches. Slowly, the nearly full moon slid through the last of the November leaves, then past each branch, lower and lower. Before it touched the top of his neighbor’s house, Mars joined the gradual descent. The planet and the moon appeared close in the sky, but he knew it was an illusion. Even if their edges touched, they were really millions of miles apart. Still, he liked seeing them so close. If only he could send the Peek-a-boo there! What wonders he might see, but wrinkly space didn’t wrinkle at that distance. The closest he could send the Peek-a-boo was about one hundred light years.
One by one, Pisces’s last stars disappeared, and Aries, its twinkling lights wrapped around the war god, followed the creeping parade.
The clock next to the bed flicked to 4:00 a.m. Dustin listened intently. Not a living sound in the house. His parents’ bedroom was directly below his. A year ago, he could hear them talking. No words, but a comforting, conversational rise and fall. Sometimes, even, laughter. Then, six months ago, it had been arguments. Shouting, to weeping, to nothing. Mother slept there still. If her shades were open like his, the moonlight would flood her space, but Dustin hadn’t seen her windows open for months. In the middle of the day, she’d be in bed in the darkened room, or she’d vacuum by the tiny vacuum cleaner’s light, like a dim-eyed Cyclops rolling along the carpet.
Dad slept in his study by the garage.
Dustin pushed his covers aside, crept down to the kitchen, and ate a piece of cold pizza. The milk tasted sour, and the label said it had passed its expiration by six days, so he washed it down with orange juice.
“I’ll trade you a shot from the interior of the Horse Head Nebula looking toward Earth for that planetgraph you have there,” said Slade. He’d dyed his Mohawk blue the week before but hadn’t touched it up since, so it had turned a coppery green. A spread of pictures covered the desk before him, and his CD carrier, filled with thousands of other images he’d either taken himself or traded for sat in the black case next to the prints. “Come on, it’s a good deal. All the UV bands are expressed. You could hang it in a museum.” In the hallway beyond the classroom door, voices rose and fell, the busy traffic of the middle school at lunch.
Dustin handled the print, a really lovely image marked by delicate curtains of pink and vermillion. A series of numbers printed at the bottom told him how many pictures Slade had taken, and how rare the current image was. The higher the number at the bottom combined with the rarity of the image and the prestige of the photographer determined its tradability. Peek-a-boo Monthly printed profiles of individuals who captured the most spectacular and rare shots. Both Slade and Dustin had been listed in the “honorable mentions” in past issues, which made all their prints more valuable. He put it down. “Nice picture, but it’s common. Peek-a-boo defaults to the nebulas. My grandmother could get it.”