Straying From the Path

That was our proof that we weren’t crazy. These things just didn’t happen. Not to us, not with our records. But Command wouldn’t see the situation that way. On the other hand . . .

“We can always tell Command.”

“Tell them what?” Alvy said, her voice strained with exhaustion and worry.

“Everything that’s happened. Then we’ll tell them something was affecting our perceptions.”

“Oh, they’ll love that. What kind of something did you have in mind? Gremlins?”

Sort of, but I didn’t say it. “Something that requires more study before Europa can be opened for mining.”

She opened her mouth to argue again, but paused. Understanding slowly lit her eyes. She turned to me.

“Do you really think you saw something alive out there?”

“Not alive. But something.”

“They might buy it. They might really buy it.” She settled back in her chair, smiling. Really smiling for the first time in weeks, though her expression looked awfully conspiratorial. “If we’re going crazy anyway, it couldn’t hurt to try.”

Behind us, receding now, the storms of Jupiter sang.

The Happiest Place

The worst part of my job is the terminally ill kids. The ones without hope, who get a wish from some charity or other, and they and their families come here. Sometimes, it’s a little girl who wants more than anything to spend her special day with her favorite princess. That’s way too much pressure to put on a twenty-one-year-old aspiring actress in a hoop skirt. I shouldn’t be responsible for making a dying child’s dream come true.

I’ve done it twice now. The first was two months ago. Elizabeth, age ten, suffers from the final stages of a rare blood disease. Her mother just sent the park a letter saying she’s in the hospital again and keeps a picture of the two of us by her bed to cheer her up.

The second is Abby. She has leukemia. She’s already had a bone marrow transplant, and it didn’t work. The cancer relapsed, and the doctors aren’t hopeful. Her family made the request to visit the park, and she asked to spend part of the day with me. Rather, I happened to be on shift the day that she asked to meet my persona. That’s all it is, luck

of the draw. It kills me, because I have to shut down that part of my brain that knows this kid is dying and wants to burst into tears at the unfairness of it all. I have to smile my princess smile until my cheeks hurt and pretend like everything’s going to be okay. And this kid smiles back at me and I think, how can you be so happy? How can seeing me dressed up in a blue satin gown and blond wig make you so happy?

But of course, that’s not what the kids see. They see Cinderella stepped out of a fairy tale, and they believe that dreams are real. I wonder, do they ever dream of staying alive?

Abby is like any other nine-year-old girl. When I step onto the sidewalk, her eyes light up and she gasps in delight. I’ve seen a whole crowd of girls gasp at the sight of me, and I’ll admit it goes to my head sometimes. It’s what keeps me here, when I ought to be spending my days at cattle calls in Hollywood.

I’ve been told her name ahead of time, so it seems like magic when I kneel by her wheelchair and say, “Hello, Abby.”

She’s bald as an egg, thin as a skeleton, and still she smiles, beaming so hard her face will surely break in two. Her brown eyes seem too large for her head, and they are gleaming.

“What would you like to do first?” I say. “Would you like to see the castle?”

She nods vigorously, and we go to see the castle, walking up the pathway, a whole crowd of us surrounding her wheelchair. Her family—parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle—follow behind us, Dad pushing the wheelchair, and all of them are smiling like this really is the happiest day of their lives. A park photographer runs alongside, snapping pictures. One of the pictures will sit by a hospital bed, no doubt. Abby holds my hand.

This is so exhausting.

I have a break at dinnertime. I’ve promised to return to watch the fireworks with Abby, and she’ll remember the moment for the rest of her life, however many weeks of it the doctors say she has. She’ll remember the moment through the needles, pain, and fear, and that’s what keeps me going. That’s what gets me through when what I really want to do is run screaming that I can’t do this, I’m not a princess, I’m not a dream come true, I’m just a kid myself and I quit college because I thought I could be an actress and my boyfriend just broke up with me and I’m in a thousand family photos with a thousand little girls, smiling like a Barbie doll. But Abby will think of me when she’s afraid, and maybe it will help, and maybe, just maybe, the magic is real sometimes.

After my break, I come back through the Cast Members Only door and find Christine, Abby’s aunt, sitting on the ground behind a trash can, sobbing. Christine, Abby’s mother’s younger sister, is in her late twenties, young and smiling herself, though today her smile is the plastic one people wear when they really want to burst and scream. Most of the adults around Abby have worn that smile for at least part of the day. Christine has cheerfully pushed Abby’s wheelchair and carried bags much of the time so Abby’s parents could be close to their daughter, hold Abby’s hand, and ooh and ahh with her at some new wonder. Christine is support staff. I understand the role.

And she’s broken. She hid herself away behind hedges and trash cans so she could break. I think of walking away. Let her put herself back together, rejoin the group, and pretend her eyes aren’t red and puffy.

But I kneel by her and put a satin-gloved hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“What? Oh—it’s you.” She looks up, startled, sniffles loudly, and scrubs a sleeve across her face. “I’m sorry, I just had to get away for a minute.”

“You can only pretend to be happy for so long.”

She nods, and I see the family resemblance with Abby, an earnestness that comes through in the gesture.