Chapter Text
Rekha had always been an exhausted teacher’s worst nightmare. Whether it was a first-grade teacher telling her she was too young for the Percy Jackson books and to stick with The Magic Treehouse, or her parents talking to their dinner party guests about the latest trouble she got into, Rekha knew what they thought. Precocious, nosy, too smart for her own good, she could count all the ways adults told her she was too much.
Sure, she asked sometimes awkward questions and didn’t accept people dodging the answers, but all she wanted was to understand what was going on. Some teachers scoffed at her questions, but occasionally, she got one willing to indulge her. Dr. Grace was one of them.
She had waited the entire day to ask him about the Petrova line after overhearing her parents whisper about it from the staircase of their townhouse. Even though he didn’t want to try, Rekha managed to find the loophole with the lava game. Of course, learning that the earth would probably die before she turned fifty wasn’t great, but she didn’t care. The smug satisfaction of getting an adult to tell the truth was enough for her.
When the bell rang, kids immediately raced out. Rekha hadn’t packed her bag, so it took her a bit longer. As she put her purple pencil case and notebook decorated with cartoon stickers into her backpack, everything spilled out of her unzipped case. She got on her hands and knees and started to pick everything up. Dr. Grace scolded Kevin for running, but he didn’t notice Rekha quietly scooping up the mechanical pencils and strawberry-scented erasers back into her pencil case.
She heard the click-clack of heels on the tile floor. Rekha peeked out from under the desk. A woman dressed in all black stepped into the classroom. Her expression was severe as she reached her hand out to shake his.
“Eva Stratt. I’m with the Petrova Task Force,” she said with a thick accent that sounded like the European films Rekha’s snobby older cousin loved.
Rekha had a gut feeling she needed to be silent. She curled up in a ball as Eva Stratt talked to her science teacher about needing his help. Dr. Grace threw on his banana-yellow raincoat. After the two of them walked out, Rekha left the room. As she stepped out into the courtyard, her mother jogged over to her.
“Where were you, Rekha?” she scolded, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I had to pick some stuff up,” Rekha muttered as her mom ushered her over to the car. As the buildings zoomed by her window, Rekha let her mind wander. She was frankly very confused. Why would a random European lady walk into a middle school science classroom? She knew he had a special degree since they all called him Dr. However, was he really that special? And what did he have to do with the Petrova Line?
Rekha stewed on those questions for the rest of the night. The next day, she tried talking to her friend Olivia, but Olivia reassured her that it was probably nothing. As the class settled into their seats, Dr. Grace wasn’t there.
Instead, an older woman with greying hair and a floral sweater stood in front of the projector. She spoke in a monotone like she had already died inside decades prior.
“Hello class,” she said, “I’m Mrs. Jones, and I’m filling in for Dr. Grace today. He left me some worksheets and a video to watch, so….” Mrs. Jones trailed off as she passed out the worksheets and hit play.
“Just fill out the worksheets and put them in the basket when you're done.”
Rekha raised her hand. Mrs. Jones pointed at her and sighed.
“What is it?” She said bluntly.
“Um… I was wondering when Dr. Grace is coming back?” Rekha stammered.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Jones said with a glare that told Rekha it would be in her best interests to be quiet.
Rekha slumped back in her seat and just did the worksheet. She hoped he would come back tomorrow.
He wasn’t back the next day.
She hoped for next week.
He was still gone.
Maybe next month?
No.
Eventually, it was announced that Dr. Grace wasn’t coming back. Rekha and her class made a good luck quilt with the help of their parents. The class picked a variety of things from ladybugs and four-leaf clovers to evil eyes, but she chose the Om symbol. They sent it off and never heard anything back.
She started high school and tried to forget about it. It worked for a while, but it nagged at her. In her senior year of high school, Project Hail Mary was announced to the public.
It turned out Dr. Grace was working with them. He was headed off to the cosmos to keep the sun from dying. A few months later, Rekha watched her old teacher blast off into space from Oliva’s couch. As the astronauts woke up and sent in video logs, Rekha felt an odd mix of emotions as they cheerfully said that they were going to help the world.
Of course, it was cool that her teacher was saving the Earth. Rekha quite enjoyed being alive and didn’t want the world to die.
But when one of your favorite teachers randomly leaves in the middle of the year, and you never get complete closure?
It really hurts a kid.
**********
A Few Years Later
“Levi, sit down,” Rekha said to a squirmy seven-year-old. It was almost dismissal time on a Friday, and all the kids were about done with trying to learn. They wiggled and moved, poking and talking to each other. Wrangling 24 2nd graders wasn’t for the weak, but Rekha managed it the best she could. Rekha clapped to get their attention and managed to get them to quiet down.
Rekha pulled out a chapter book with a hamster on the cover. The kids, even if they insisted that they were too old (despite being only seven), still loved story time. It was one of Rekha’s favorites, too. Even though teaching sucked sometimes, it had its high points. Reading to them was one of them.
“What chapter were we on, friends?” Rekha asked the class.
“Nine!” They cheered.
“Hannah was a very brave hamster,” Rekha read aloud, “but she was scared of one thing. The janitors’ loud, noisy vacuum.”
The kids laughed. As the chapter went on, the kids sat rapt, enjoying the story. Rekha managed to finish the chapter as the bell rang. The kids jumped up and put on their Minecraft backpacks and fleecy jackets.
She pulled up the dismissal software on the smartboard and herded her bus riders to their line. After all the kids left, she spent an hour on grading before heading to her car.
As she drove through downtown Williamsburg, she thought back to her old teacher. She had taken the fall break to fly back to the Bay Area and attend the renaming of her old middle school. She wound up crying with her old friend, Olivia, on a bench outside, about her mixed emotions. They ended up eating some sandwiches together and sharing their memories from school.
After she graduated from college and started teaching, she truly couldn’t imagine leaving her class behind without a goodbye or even a white lie of a reason. That was the way she and Dr. Grace differed. Despite him being her inspiration, she would never abandon her kids just for some glory.
************
After Rekha got home, she took off her shoes, hung up her lanyard, and poured herself a glass of white wine. It had been a particularly rough week since she flew home to San Francisco for the fall break, and she was dealing with a mixture of jet lag and emotions after she returned. Scrolling the internet was her guilty pleasure, and she needed it.
Rekha pulled out her laptop and logged into Reddit. She browsed a few cat picture subreddits, smiling at a few kittens dressed up as Pokémon, before she saw a new subreddit. R/ProjectHMTruthers. Rekha sighed. Conspiracy subs were a dime a dozen, but this one had lots of members.
Most people thought the conspiracy theorists about Hail Mary were idiots, but Rekha wasn’t sure. Sure, some of them were convinced that it was completely fake, but occasionally, they pointed out the truth.
Users found a potential scientist, Martin Dubois, who reportedly dropped out of the project, but found an obituary for him saying he died in an accident right before the televised liftoff. They raised such a fuss that the government had to respond and say that they didn’t murder him and reveal an accidental explosion at the testing site.
The post had nearly 50,000 upvotes and 4,000 comments. It appeared to be a video titled, “found this really odd footage guys”. Rekha clicked on the play button and watched.
It was blurry, but Rekha could still make out the figures. A blob in a yellow jacket ran frantically as a group of soldiers followed. It appeared to be almost to the fence when it was tackled and held down to the ground. Two men, one in a suit and the other in a white coat, stood over, and the white coat poked something into the stranger, who was trying to wiggle free.
Rekha paused. The video disturbed her deeply, but she felt an urge to keep watching. She finished the last sips of wine in her glass and poured another.
After a minute, the stranger stopped struggling. The soldier picked them up and heaved them over his shoulder. The group carried him out of the camera’s view, and the video stopped.
Rekha looked down. She had been clenching her hands so tightly that her fingernails left a line of moon-shaped indents in her palm. Taking a sip of her drink to settle her nerves, she scrolled down to the comments.
Some were talking about how brutal it looked. Others used memes. But most of them were trying to figure out who it was. Rekha wondered as well.
Suddenly, the realization hit her like a bolt of lightning. The yellow raincoat. Dr. Grace always kept his jacket on a hook by the door in his classroom. That last day, even though the memory had gone fuzzy, he brought his bright yellow raincoat.
Rekha rewound the video and zoomed in. She saw a flash of light hair poking out of a dark beanie when they passed closer to the camera. The only person with light hair on the Hail Mary was Dr. Grace.
Dr. Grace didn’t look like he wanted to be there. It almost looked like he was being taken against his will-
Oh.
Oh.
The thought had never really occurred to her, but what if he didn’t want to go to space? Rekha’s brain spun with the new possibilities. She had always liked knowing the real answers, but this time she almost regretted it. The pinch of annoyance she had carried towards him had melted, and she was left to deal with this information alone.
Immediately, she moved to learn how to download. Rekha knew it was pretty easy to take down videos, especially if powerful people wanted them down, so she needed to save it. After downloading, she could feel her heart pounding. Rekha needed to talk to someone.
Her colleagues and bosses would think she’s crazy. The friends she made in Virginia didn’t care as much. Her mom and dad would just shake their heads and tell her to focus on something else. But there was one other person…
Rekha opened her email and typed out Olivia’s username. After pasting a copy of the post link, Rekha started drafting her email to her friend.
Hey Olivia,
How’s your week been? It was really nice getting lunch with you (I missed good sourdough so bad!). But about what I said last week. About how you would have to shove me on the rocket to go to space? I think I might have been closer to the truth than I thought…