All I have from home right now is a large suitcase and my telescope. I put my telescope beside the window, but I don’t have the heart to look through it tonight. Instead, I drag the desk chair to my bed, and then—very carefully so I don’t fall and break my neck—I tack my poster with the image of the Helix Nebula on the ceiling above my pillow.

But that only takes five minutes.

I wish I had homework to do. Calculus. Physics. But we don’t start school for two more days.

I don’t mind being far from friends at school. We all would have had to say goodbye in June, anyway, if I got into Annapolis. Plebe Summer begins on the first of July—navy hazing, my dad calls it. Called it. I do mind being far from Dad and Mom and Hannah, though. I didn’t realize how much time we were all together until they were gone. Hannah’s only technically here. We share oxygen. On occasion. It’s been thirty-six hours since I took her pills, and every time I try to talk to her, she walks away. So.

I think my dad was my best friend.

Why did it take this long for me to figure that out?

This is not a line of thinking that is conducive to becoming an astronaut, so I lie down, put in my earbuds, and hit PLAY on my phone: “Starman.”

When I wake up, the room is dark. I haven’t taken a nap since kindergarten. Perhaps it’s jet lag. Nate has texted me three times, and when I take out my earbuds, I can hear him laughing downstairs. Home from MIT for the weekend.

I think he might be my mission control now. The person who will answer if I say, Houston, we have a problem.

When I reach the bottom of the staircase, a boy I’ve never seen before is sprawled on the couch next to Nate, staring intently at a laptop on the coffee table.

“Yeah, but the aerodynamics are all off,” Nate’s saying. “There’s no way I’m getting that past Paulson.”

The boy next to him looks up, and I think I maybe gasp a little because MY FAVORITE MANGA CHARACTER IS IN MY NEW HOUSE.

It’s as if Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach decided to come over for dinner. This boy specimen even has the same messy orange hair.

“You, I don’t know,” he says.

“That’s my genius cousin,” Nate says. “Be nice to her and maybe she’ll give you a shout-out on Twitter when she’s up on the International Space Station.”