“Ebony-Grace. We have to exit the plane now. Do you need help with your things?” The stewardess’s voice pulls me back down to Earth.
She is not smiling, so I quickly stop laughing.
When I step off the plane and walk through a long, narrow, dimly lit hallway, no one welcomes me, there’s no parade for E-Grace Starfleet, the granddaughter of the brave and powerful space hero, Captain Fleet. No cheers, no laughter, no joy.
Ain’t nothing funny in No Joke City, all right.
CHAPTER
2
I keep my eyes on a lonely blue suitcase as it rides the baggage carousel around and around, through the black curtain leading to the portal and back toward all the people walking away with their own suitcases. The bag is waiting to be claimed, just like I am. Soon, someone will come sweep it away, and then maybe, that spinning carousel will be all mine.
“Is that blue one yours, too, honey?” a new stewardess asks. She’d been nice enough to pull my two suitcases off the carousel while I just stood there and stared.
I shake my head no.
“Well, you’ve got two here so far, uh . . . ” She leans over to get another look at my name tag—Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman scribbled on masking tape with black Magic Marker. “Well, do I call you both names? Ebony-Grace, or just Ebony, or do you prefer Grace?”
“Cadet E-Grace Starfleet,” I say, placing both my feet together and giving her a sharp salute.
She cocks her head to one side and only says, “Okay. If that’s all, then maybe we should wait by the main doors now?”
I salute her again. But she turns away.
E-Grace Starfleet sees her chance! I stretch one skinny leg over the edge of the carousel and try to get my footing. I have to catch my balance really fast because, before I know it, I’m moving away from the stewardess. I crouch down and hug my legs before I reach the black curtains that lead into the portal.
I’m coming for you, Captain Fleet!
I squeeze my eyes shut really tight and brace myself.
“Hey, hey, hey!” I hear in the distance. But the portal is just a few seconds away . . . 5, 4, 3 . . .
It’s not sudden zero-gravity weightlessness that makes my arms and legs flail like a headless chicken. A man pulls me off the carousel and back onto the cold, grimy airport floor.
“Young lady! You could’ve gotten hurt,” the man says. He’s so close to my face that I can smell his cigarette breath. My glasses even fog up a little. He keeps a tight grip on my arm as the stewardess rushes over to us with her eyes wide and her face tight, making her glasses look bigger than they already are.
“Is that how you want your father to greet you?” she says. “Escorted out by security guards?”
I smile and nod. That would be outta sight! I think to myself.
But the officer man lets go of my arm, and the stewardess looks down at my clothes while shaking her head. My skirt is all twisted and bunched up. Stupid skirt. I’d spent the whole airplane ride trying to cover up my knobby knees. Momma made me wear it even after I had begged her to let me put on some blue jeans just in case I had to parachute out of that airplane. Now the whole world has seen my underwear as I got onto that carousel.
I look back toward the black curtains—Mission Portal →Home→Granddaddy aborted.
The stewardess grabs my arm. “Don’t even think about it,” she says through clenched teeth. Her narrowed eyes are hazel, almost the same color as her hair, which is the same color as sand, or as a dry, humanless planet. She’s an alien, of course, set out to deliver me to the ruler of this new world, master of no-laughter, leader of Planet No Joke City, the imperious King Sirius Julius: my daddy.
He’s like the star Sirius, all right—the brightest in the night sky. Granddaddy says that Sirius is also called the Dog Star. And since Momma sometimes mutters to herself that my daddy is nothing but a low-down, dirty dog, the name King Sirius Julius fits him like a crown.
Even after three years of not seeing him, I can still spot Daddy’s thick mustache. I can hardly tell whether he’s happy to see me or not since I can’t see where his lips are moving, his mustache is so doggone thick. So of course, he looks serious.
It takes him a long minute to spot me. And the stewardess isn’t even looking Daddy’s way. She would never think that the man in the blue coveralls with grease stains at the knees and the sweat ring around the collar was actually once married to my fancy momma. Daddy’s coveralls looks like Granddaddy’s NASA space-flight suit, except way dirtier.
Back at the airport in Huntsville, Momma had used her syrupy-sweet voice to ask all kinds of favors from the stewardess. She made sure that I’d have a full lunch and a nutritious snack, that I’d wash my hands each time I used the bathroom, and that I’d read Little Women instead of one of Granddaddy’s comic books I snuck into my bag. Momma smiled big and bright, showing her Vaseline-covered white teeth, and batted her blue-shadowed and mascaraed eyes before slipping a twenty-dollar bill to the lady. I pretended not to see. I’m very good at pretending not to see.
So when Daddy finally spots me and spreads his arms big and wide, the stewardess holds me back. “Who is that man?” she asks.
“That’s my daddy,” I say, and push her out of my way.
But she grabs my arm. “Are you sure?” she whispers, looking at my daddy sideways as if he were a kidnapper.
I pop my eyes out at her, something Momma would twist my ear for doing. It feels good to be a little insolent, as Momma calls it. She isn’t going to be around for a long while, and I can be as insolent as I want to be. I roll my eyes at the stewardess and pull away from her so I can run to my daddy.
His long, strong arms wrap around me almost twice, and I press the side of my face against his chest and smelly jumpsuit, and sniff and sniff.
“Baby girl!” Daddy says. He gently pushes me away from him. “Lemme take a look at you. Still my little broomstick. Taller, but not much wider.” His voice smiles, but not his face, of course.
The officer man who had pulled me off the baggage carousel comes over and pushes the luggage cart toward Daddy. “Is that your daughter?” he asks. “She almost got us all in trouble climbing onto that carousel like that.”
But before Daddy can ask me anything, the stewardess comes over and clears her throat. “I hope you enjoyed your flight with American Airlines,” she says to Daddy and not me. Then she turns around and starts to fidget with my white shirt. I quickly pull away from her again. “Don’t you want a pin?” she asks.
She shows me a brass pin with wings and the blue-and-red double-A logo for American Airlines. I grab it from her and pin it on myself. She just stands there in front of us when I’m done, and clears her throat again.