The upstairs bathroom had a tub long enough to stretch out in. The kitchen always smelled of fresh-baked brownies or banana bread and the color television had a remote control. Most rooms had wall-to-wall carpeting. There were lots of windows through which the sun shone.

It was too much like a home.

Nova didn’t want it to start feeling like home. Bridget always warned, “If it feels like home, it’s harder to leave.”

Nova hugged her teddy bear tighter, trying to picture her big sister in the bedroom beside her. What had Bridget been thinking, deciding to run away like that? It was already January 1986, and in August she’d be eighteen. Then Bridget could raise Nova herself, like they’d always planned.

Only Bridget was gone.

And Nova was lonely.

“You’ll start school on Monday,” new foster mother Francine warned during breakfast.

Nova hated new schools more than she hated new foster families. New schools always spent the first week or two testing her and always came to the same conclusions: “Cannot read. Does not speak. Severely mentally retarded.”

Bridget hated the word retarded.

“My sister’s not dumb,” she’d tell anyone who’d listen. “She’s a thinker, not a talker.”

The truth was, Nova rarely spoke and when she did, she had difficulty controlling her volume, so sometimes she’d be whispering on a crowded playground and other times she’d be shouting in church. Even when she did manage to find the right sound, forming a whole word was its own challenge. She could say “Oh” or “Kay” but not “Okay.” She could say “Wah” or “Ter” but not “Water.” She could say “Coo” or “Kee” but not “Cookie.” And sometimes when she’d try to say a simple word like “Cat” an entirely different word would come out, like “Boo,” which didn’t make sense to anyone, not even Bridget.

Most of the time Nova didn’t bother to speak at all.

Rocking back and forth on top of the fluffy blankets in the bedroom she had all to herself, Nova wondered for the two millionth time where Bridget had gone and whether she would keep her promise to return in time to see the first teacher skyrocket into space.

“No matter where we end up,” Bridget had said, “even if we have to be separated for a while, I’ll come back to see NASA make history, okay? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Both sisters had been dying to see Challenger launch ever since President Reagan announced the contest to find the perfect teacher over a year ago. Nova was glad the waiting was almost over. She wondered if Bridget was glad too.

Nova kissed NASA Bear’s belly. His plastic bubble astronaut helmet pressed against her forehead. He had been a gift from their mama, who had very strange ideas about how the 1969 moon landing actually happened.