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I’m not … I’m not feeling any of that.”
    She considers me softly, with a subtle arch of her brow. So I continue.
    “I’ll make friends—or I won’t, I don’t know. People generally suck anyway—but my family won’t fit in. Mom’s anxiety’s gotten so bad she barely leaves home anymore, except to go walk around Prospect Park. And they’ve been fighting so much since Dad applied. The other astronauts are all on another level, and their kids are too. Am I a near-Olympic-level gymnast like Leon Tucker? I just feel so … inadequate.”
    “Calvin, you have like half a million FlashFame followers. You’ve given reports that literally helped sway an election. And even if you have to give it up, you still got the chance at a BuzzFeed internship as a seventeen-year-old—they don’t just give those out.” She places an arm on my shoulder and lets her words sink in. “You’re more than adequate, babe. You’ll fit in. All of you. But you’ll have to let them in too. You’ve got to get behind this mission—I mean, after the shitshow America’s become over the past few years, we all actually have something to rally behind and be proud of. We’re going to fucking Mars. And in whatever way NASA deems appropriate, you, your mom, and your dad are going to help us get there.”
    “I know,” I say. And I do.
    In this moment, just barely, the sparkle of the mission leaves me breathless. To be a part of history, to play a tiny role in this massive scientific undertaking.
    I keep my voice low so my parents can’t overhear. “I thought if I ignored everything that’s happened over the past year … I don’t know, I guess I thought that if I didn’t put any faith in it—”
    “Your dad wouldn’t get picked?”
    “No, not that. I thought if I could stay grounded and make this feel unreal for all of us, then I could be the realist who helped … put Dad back together when he eventually got the crushing no.”
    “Noble,” she says. “But that’s not your job.”
    “It’s a compulsion,” I say. “I want things to be … right. People to be happy.”
    “But sometimes that bites you in the ass. Like when you told me about Jeremy,” she says unflinchingly, “and then I had to hold your hand and coach your breathing after I found out you cheated on me. But you wouldn’t leave—you needed me to be okay, you needed to fix our relationship.”
    “Are you still pissed at me?”
    “Oh my god,” she says. “You’re doing it again! No, I wouldn’t be this flippant if I was still holding a grudge, Calvin.”
    Deb throws her arms around me, and I’m enveloped in a floral scent. Not like roses or lavender, but like a fall-scented candle in the middle of a potpourri bowl. It’s comforting. But I can’t bring myself to hug her back.
    She continues. “But you couldn’t magically fix us. I just needed time. And you can’t fix your parents.” When I lay my head on her shoulder, the tears soak into her shirt.
    “So let’s make a game plan,” Deb says after a moment of silence. “We’ve only got one year left of school, unless you fail out, which would fuck up all my planning, so don’t do that. Depending on when our graduations are, we can find a place as early as May. I’ve got a job, and maybe your family would be rich by then, so we could find a place together in Brooklyn.”
    “What kind of place are we going to find?”
    “I don’t know, some closet in Bed Stuy? We can live in Coney Island for all I care. I just need out.”
    The desperation in her voice hits me. “Deb, what’s going on?”
    There’s a pause, where my heart makes its way down into my stomach. She doesn’t hesitate. She’s not like this.
    “It’s just not great at home lately,” she says, and I get the feeling that’s the understatement of the millennium. She drops her voice to a whisper. “Okay, well, it’s awful actually. My parents have been around all the time since my pa got laid off. Unemployment is only going