This Place Has No Atmosphere Read online

  WAYS TO KEEP FROM GOING TO THE MOON

  1. Get married.

  2. Get pregnant.

  3. Pretend that I have amnesia and don’t recognize my parents anymore.

  4. Hide out at the Monolith Mall until I’m of age.

  5. Fall to the ground, grab my parents’ legs, and plead with them to change their minds.

  6. Discuss in a logical grown-up way how I will hold my breath until my parents give in.

  7. Promise not to ask for clothes for at least two years. (I better be more realistic and make it three months—or maybe one.)

  8. Make believe I have shuttlephobia and will have a major freakout once the doors close.

  9. Promise not to watch my television wristwatch until my homework is finished.

  10. Get my grandparents to convince their children not to leave. (After all, if I have to listen to my parents, they should have to listen to theirs.)

  11. Remind the parents that they aren’t the only ones involved in the move—that even though Starr, the creepling traitor, says that she likes the idea, she’s not the only kid in the family.

  12. Beg.

  13. Cry.

  14. Faint.

  15. Refuse to go.

  BOOKS BY PAULA DANZIGER

  The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

  The Divorce Express

  It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World

  The Pistachio Prescription

  There’s a Bat in Bunk Five

  This Place Has No Atmosphere

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA * Canada * UK * Ireland * Australia

  New Zealand * India * South Africa * China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Originally published in 1986 by Delacorte Press

  Published by PaperStar Books, 1999

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  This edition published by Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2014

  Copyright © 1986 by Paula Danziger

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by Ann M. Martin

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.

  You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PAPERSTAR EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Danziger, Paula.

  This place has no atmosphere.

  Summary: Aurora loves her life on Earth in the twenty-first century, until she learns that her family is moving to a colony on the moon.

  ISBN 978-0-698-11695-5

  [1. Moon—Fiction. 2. Moving, Household—Fiction. 3. Science Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D2394Ti [Fic]

  85-46070

  Puffin Books ISBN: 978-1-101-66585-5

  Version_1

  To Don and Ann Farber

  Whose place does have atmosphere

  And whom I love very much

  Contents

  Ways to Keep from Going to the Moon

  Books by Paula Danziger

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Note from Paula

  Introduction

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Special Excerpt from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

  A NOTE FROM PAULA

  The future has always interested me. What will it be like? How will it be different? How will it be the same? What will people be doing, thinking, wearing?

  After writing several novels that were labeled “realistic fiction,” I decided to write “science fiction.” In some ways, this made me very nervous because I had not been a great science student. (An understatement!)

  Research was necessary. Although I was setting the book on the moon, it was not possible to go there. So I visited Houston, saw the exhibits, and took a tour of the space shuttle simulator. I also went to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be stuck in one vehicle for so long. Then I remembered traveling for several days on a ferry boat that went from Seattle, Washington, to Sitka, Alaska. I adapted that experience and also used my imagination.

  I really enjoyed creating a new world . . . and I hope that my past, present, and future readers will too.

  —Paula Danziger

  INTRODUCTION

  If a Prince Charming or a Prince Semi-Charming came up to my door and said, “Rosie Wilson, you are the most beautiful, individualistic fourteen-year-old in the universe,” I certainly wouldn’t slam the door in his face.

  This is the first line of Paula Danziger’s hilarious and moving It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World. First lines fascinate me, and this one says a lot about Paula, her stories, and her characters. The author of over thirty titles for young adult readers, Paula was known for capturing her audience with her uncanny ability to tap into teenage psyches—to write realistically and unflinchingly about families, divorce, friendship, first love, insecurity, and injustice, and to do so with a wicked sense of humor. It’s rare for a reader to find herself laughing out loud, then just a few sentences later, searching for tissues in order to wipe away tears. Paula courted difficult, sometimes controversial subjects; her self-effacing characters and her love of humor made her books compelling reading.

  Paula herself was as memorable as any character she created. She made friends wherever she went and was passionate about them. Somehow each of us felt as if we were Paula’s best friend. She was flamboyant and flashy. She tied colorful scarves around her head, wore as many oversize rings as possible on her fingers, and shopped with great joy for glittery sneakers and sequined purses. She liked video games and slot machines. She once managed to light one of her fake fingernails on fire. The first time I spent a weekend at her house, she offered me a breakfast of Coke, M&Ms, and Circus Peanuts.

  Paula was a marvel of disorganization. I’ve never seen anything like the inside of her purse. It was a jumble of loose bills and coins, receipts, lipstick cases, candy, lint, notebooks, keys. She frequently lost her keys, or thought she had, and a dramatic search would ensue before they were located, surprise, at the bottom of her purse. Her desk was worse, overflowing with larger items.

  Yet out of this chaos sprang books that have resonated with readers for decades. Paula’s first book, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, was published in 1974. Thirteen-year-old Marcy, the protagonist, ma
y wear panty hose, buy records for her stereo, and never have heard of cell phones, but it doesn’t matter because she faces the same issues contemporary kids face:

  All my life I’ve thought that I looked like a baby blimp with wire-frame glasses and mousy brown hair. Everyone always said that I’d grow out of it, but I was convinced that I’d become an adolescent blimp with wire-frame glasses, mousy brown hair, and acne.

  Marcy’s story continues in There’s a Bat in Bunk Five when she experiences her first love while at summer camp:

  This thing with Ted isn’t a crush. . . . What if I let myself start to care and get hurt? I’m not sure I can survive a broken heart. I get hurt so easily anyway, so I’ve never let myself get too close to a guy, not that there have been that many opportunities. I’m scared. What if it turns into a real relationship and it’s as bad as my parents’ marriage?

  In The Pistachio Prescription Paula tackles divorce as Cassie Stephens’s family begins to crumble. In later books, other characters face the aftermath of divorce, but this story chronicles the Stephenses’ slide from dysfunctional, a theme Paula visits often, to separation. In a scene from the beginning of the book, Cassie visits her friend Vicki:

  We sit down with her parents. Nobody fights at the Norton house. At least not while I’m there. Vicki says that they do fight sometimes, but that it’s psychologically healthy to air feelings honestly. I don’t know if my family does it honestly, but if awards were given on the basis of yelling, we’d win the Mental Health Award of the century. I guess we’d probably be disqualified, though, on the basis of lack of sanity.

  I smiled when I read that paragraph. But later the tone of the story changes:

  [My father] walks over. “Cassie, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I guess your mother’s right. There’s no use pretending we can get along. It’s over and that’s all there is to it.”

  That’s all.

  As simple as that.

  Three kids.

  A broken-up family.

  Yet the ending is hopeful. Cassie realizes her family may not be the one she wishes for, but that she’ll survive.

  Rearrange the letters in the word PARENTS and you get the word ENTRAPS. This’s how The Divorce Express begins. Four years after the publication of The Pistachio Prescription Paula writes about Phoebe, who shuttles between her father’s home in Woodstock, New York, and her mother’s home in New York City. Travel is the least of Phoebe’s concerns, though. Now her parents are seeing other people:

  Maybe I’m a prude, but I don’t like to think about my parents having sex with anyone but each other.

  Phoebe analyzes the stages parents go through when they get divorced:

  . . . the fighting and anger—then the distance—and making me feel caught in the middle. After the divorce they try to be “civilized.” I know that there were even times that they missed each other. I know for a fact that after the divorce they even slept with each other once in a while. It was confusing. Now they act like people who have a past history together, but only a future of knowing each other because of me.

  By the end of The Divorce Express, Phoebe’s father has fallen in love with the mother of Rosie, Phoebe’s new best friend, and their story continues in It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World, told from Rosie’s point of view. All Rosie wants is a happy family, but Phoebe doesn’t make that easy. Furthermore, Rosie, who’s biracial, faces issues that Phoebe can’t fathom, and once again, Paula writes candidly about a sensitive subject, illustrated in this scene when Rosie goes on a date with a boy who’s white:

  While we look at each other, some guy comes up and says with hate, “Why don’t you stick to your own kind?”

  I can’t believe it.

  He repeats what he’s just said.

  Jason turns to him. “We are the same kind—human. You’re the one who isn’t our kind. You’re scum.”

  A year later, Paula’s next book, This Place Has No Atmosphere, was published and the setting is, of all places, the moon in 2057—a bold departure for Paula, who made the colony on the moon seem real and believable, and who drew us into the life of Aurora Williams on the first page. The book feels futuristic indeed, but Aurora’s story of adjusting to a move and finding a serious boyfriend is timeless.

  Paula died in 2004, but her stories have already been passed from one generation of passionate fans to another. Her many best friends miss her, but I like to think of the hope with which she ends her books. She wrote great last lines, too. If you take the letters in the word DIVORCES and rearrange them, they spell DISCOVER.

  Thank you, Paula, for showing us captivating beginnings, hopeful endings, and in between, how to look at life with laughter.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Harris and Marijo Mallon-Breiman;

  Annie, Chris, and Rosie Flanders; June Foley; Pat Giff;

  Susie Haven; Nancy Kafka; Holly Morris; Elyse Myller;

  Lois Myler; Nicky Nicholson; Francine Pascal;

  Buzzy Tischler; Jan Traum

  CHAPTER 1

  “I think he likes you,” Juna whispers, as Matthew sits down at the other end of the table and smiles at me.

  “Shh.” I look down at the school lunch of mystery meat and lumpy mashed potatoes. “Not so loud. If he hears you, I’ll just die . . . . Anyway, he smiles at everyone. He’s running for ninth-grade president.”

  As the rest of the group sits down at the table, the robot lunch monitor goes past our table, checking for litterers. It blinks its lights at Juna, who is blowing a straw wrapper at me from across the table.

  “DETENTION.” It makes a clicking sound at her. “This is the third time this week that you have been guilty of an infraction. Student 11481844, Juna Jamison, you will have to stay after school for three days.”

  Juna stares at the robot. “I guess that was the last straw for you.”

  The gang laughs.

  The robot doesn’t.

  It hasn’t been programmed to have a sense of humor.

  The blinking lights change from red to black and then back again. “RUDENESS. Now you have four days’ detention.”

  Juna smiles at the robot. “Thank you. Want to flip a coin and make it double or nothing?”

  “GAMBLING IS NOT PERMITTED ON SCHOOL PREMISES.” The robot beeps and leaves as it spots a table of boys who are trying to make a pyramid out of Jell-O.

  I look at Juna. “What did you do that for?”

  She grins. “Randy Brock got a month’s detention for using his telekinetic powers to put the vice-principal on the flagpole. I’ve been wanting to spend some time with him for a long while. Maybe now that we’ll be in detention together, he’ll notice me, even though he’s a senior and I’m only a freshman.”

  “Couldn’t you have just smiled at him in the hall or something?” Cosmosa Lloyd asks, as she takes the cellophane off a dish of peaches drowned in juice.

  “I tried that already. Now it’s time for more drastic measures.” She touches her hair. “I heard that his favorite singer is Rita Retrograde.”

  That explains why Juna looks the way she does.

  Rita Retrograde has straight one-inch-long hair on the right side of her head and shoulder-length curly hair on the other side. It is dyed purple on the right side and pink on the left. It is tipped with liquid silver and is braided throughout with tiny light bulbs.

  So is Juna’s.

  Her parents had a fit.

  I bet Rita Retrograde’s parents weren’t ecstatic either.

  I know that my parents would have a cosmic cow if I did that to myself. Maybe I should do it just to drive them nuts. But actually I liked Juna’s hair better the old way too.

  “You should have seen my mother’s face when I walked in the door. Maybe she’ll be so angry that I won’t have to be in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.” The light bulbs in Juna’s hair flash on and off as she talks.

  Juna’s a celebrity because she was the first child conceived in space. Her parents were honeymooning astronauts on a space
shuttle expedition. When they came back to earth, Mrs. Jamison was pregnant. Ever since then, Juna’s had lots of publicity. But lately she’s become kind of embarrassed that the whole world knew what her parents were doing when the cameras were off. Now there are lots of kids not only started in space but born there. But Juna was the first, so she’s in the news, kind of like back in the old days when the first test tube baby was born.

  “Couldn’t you just have told your parents that you didn’t want to ride on the float this year?” I look at her, even though the blinking lights are beginning to drive me nuts.

  “They never listen.” She sighs. “My mother’s really getting to me. What does she know about being a teenager? She hasn’t been one for years. It’s 2057 . . . and she was born decades ago.”

  Juna rants about her parents for a few more minutes, and then the rest of the gang starts complaining about their parents.

  While they do, I think about how I feel about mine. Even though they’re always telling me how much they love me, I really doubt it. They talk about it, but don’t really show me that they mean what they say. Even when I try to please them, it never seems like I can. I hate to think about it because I get so upset.

  Instead, I look around at the group that I’m part of, the Turnips.

  The Turnips. We’re one of the big groups at school. One of the kid’s parents gave us the nickname and it stuck. That’s because we always “turn up” at places, like to make appearances, hang out. I once heard someone say that we turn up like bad pennies and that we turn up our noses at kids who aren’t cool enough.

  The kid who made that comment was someone who tried to get into the group and didn’t make it.

  It’s a weird thing, groups. At our school, if you’re not in one, you’re a nobody. It’s kind of gross, actually. Sometimes I think that the only reasons I got into the Turnips are that my house is in the right neighborhood, a lot of kids think I’m kind of cute, and I’m in a lot of school plays. Secretly, though, I’m not always so sure I fit in. It’s a good thing that I can act, so that no one notices.