In the summer of 2009, we were twelve and all of us still believed in ghosts and only one of us was still secretly on the fence about unicorns. Summer in the Dells was all tourists and noise and buzz, but our parents still let us sleep out in the woods behind Deena's house in the tent that belonged to Jen's older brother Jeremy. He never used it and no one knows why he even bought such a giant tent to begin with, but it was our good fortune and we didn't take it for granted that he wouldn't take it back at any moment. In five years, Jeremy will die in Afghanistan, and Jen's family will move away and she'd leave the tent on Deena's front porch. Even though we hadn't had sleepovers in it for years, even though her and Deena didn't really talk as much anymore. Deena will call the rest of us over and we'll put the tent up in the woods behind her house. We'll climb inside one by one and notice that the tent isn't as giant as we thought. It used to be the perfect size.

But in 2009, when everyone was alive, at least one weekend night every week that summer, as long as it wasn't raining, we camped out at Deena's. Her mom bought snacks in bulk at Sam's club, and we'd take a barrel of cheese puffs and a 12 pack of off-brand cola to the tent. Mary brought cookies her mom baked sometimes and I'd bring some kind of fruit-bunches of bananas or grapes, a bag of apples, tupperware filled with chunks of melon that my mother cut up quickly as soon as she saw me stuffing pajamas into my knapsack. Vitamins, she said. And we all loved fruit, we ate handfuls of cheesy puffs and then fruit, until our hands were sticky and sweet. The cookies were always what we ate last, when our stomachs were too full for anything but our favorite things.

We ate cookies and watched the night sky. Lying on our backs in the clearing at the woods center, Deena pointed out constellations and stars that she knew the name of. I'd point at star after star and say, Is that Jupiter, and she'd sigh and say, no. If we listened, like really listened, we could hear the bars in the Downtown Dells, the rush of people's voices and distant music. But if we weren't listening hard, we'd just hear the woods and the stream and the thrum of insects and frogs, and maybe our own heart beats.

Deena would say, "I'm going to go to space one day." She said it so much it was a mantra of sorts, an incantation. We were twelve and wanted to be doctors and singers and actresses. But Deena never wanted to be anything but an astronaut. I'd known her the longest of all of my friends, our parents were neighbors and we took our first steps as babies one yard apart. I'd seen her astronaut outfits for Halloween at age 5, the cardboard spaceship she built one summer when we were seven. She showed me the control panel, all the switches she'd cut out of magazines and glued along the wall. She'd looked up pictures of the Apollo missions, had copied out each switch and toggle. So as much as I believed that Mary would be a famous singer, and I'd be the world's best movie director who also was a veterinarian, and Jen would be a millionaire surgeon, I didn't believe Deena would be an astronaut. I knew it.

Some nights, we told stories until we'd fall asleep one by one. I always told ghost stories and tried to scare everyone and Deena told space stories and Mary told jokes and Jen told the plots of movies that only she had seen. The last night of summer vacation, Deena told us about the moon landing and she told it so carefully that we were there, on the barren moon, the dust under foot, the crackle of the radio as Neil spoke. We were there. And the space around us was so dark and deep and all-encompassing. I walked past where Deena was telling us about, I walked towards a crater on the surface, I got so far away from the lunar lander that I couldn't even hear anything anymore. Just the silence of space and the beat of my heart, and I wondered what the moon remembered. The Earth was so far away from it, but they still were tethered. Every night we look up and the moon is still there. It's still there. I don't remember falling asleep while Deena talked, only waking up thinking about space. We all seemed slightly outside of ourselves, or maybe I just felt like that because I was.

But we trundled back to Deena's house, ate cereal, pet her dog, said our goodbyes to her parents and walked back to our separate houses. I lived closest, so I always stayed the longest.

I'd probably asked before, but I know that I asked again that morning, "Why do you want to go to space, Deena?" And she'd said, "Why doesn't everyone?"

At home, I asked my mom if she remembered the moon landing, and she said, "How old do you think I am?" and so I called up my grandmother and asked her. She did: "I stayed up for it. I think everyone must have watched it. What a moment. When Neil spoke, it was like all of us were there with him. Just for a second, you know. I could feel that expanse around him. It meant something and I couldn't quite grasp what. But... I suppose, nothing was ever like that again, was it? Maybe when we get to Mars, maybe that'll feel the same." I asked her what she meant, what it felt like, and she paused for a long time. "Oh, honey, it felt like everything was possible, like every dream, every idea, even to me. I was a housewife, kids, but at that moment, I thought it could've been me up there. Silly."

School started the next day and it was the start of junior high and we had different homerooms. Deena and I in one, and Mary and Jen in another, and I don't remember why but we started talking less, our weekends filled with extracurriculars and homework and everything that made up the life of a teen. I saw Jen's brother Jeremy more than her, almost, because he helped out at the library where I'd go after school to use the computer and read without my younger siblings grabbing the book. He'd ask what I was reading, do a finger gun at me when I walked in or left. I'm not sure that he even knew my name, but later I'd remember the kindness when he'd tell me there was a new book that he thought I'd like. Even now, I see a news article about war and I think about Jeremy. I think about Jen the last time I saw her: she kept staring off, trying not to look any of us in the eye, trying not to cry. "I've had enough with sympathy," she told me.

Mary got married right after high school, we stayed friends on social media. She has a gaggle of kids now. She posts a heart reaction to anything good about my life that I post. Every once in a while one of us will message the other and catch up in quiet bites of our lives.

And Deena? We stayed in touch off and on. In college she eschewed social media, but I'd send her long emails and she'd send me longer ones back. At Christmas break, we'd always meet up in her yard, we'd walk around no matter how cold it was. As it got dark, our breath would spiral from our mouths, and she'd point out stars and I'd ask, "Is that Jupiter?" and she'd laugh, playfully slug me on the shoulder.

And after college when we were in grad schools on opposite sides of the country, I'd send long emails and she'd send back shorter ones. And then shorter. And then she'd rarely respond and at some point I stopped sending them.

But, when I saw the potential crew list for the Mars Mission, I'd scanned the names anyway. Of course, she was on it. She was one of the older potentials selected. I wondered how many years it would have to be delayed before she'd age out. I hoped it wouldn't happen. I wanted her there. I wanted to watch the lander touch down on the Martian ground and see her step out.

The dust rising up from each step. I'd be there with her. We'd be staring at the sky and it wouldn't be our sky, but she'd say, "Look at this, all of this." She'd point out things I'd never have known the names of, and I'd look around and we'd be all there. The trees so tall around us, so strange against the red of the planet. We'd run into the woods, a tent too big waiting for us, we'd laugh and climb inside. It would still be the size of a planet, so impossibly possible that we didn't know it could change.


.