The New Earth

by Molly Tompkins

The rush and roar of the wave crashes through Leila. Wind beats through her

imagination, and she plunges underwater to behold the kaleidoscopic shimmer of the sun

breaking through the membrane of the wave.

“The sun is rising,” her mother calls.

She ignores her mother. The sun will rise again in a few hours, and again after that. From

the space ship’s window, she could watch the sun rise sixteen times per day if she wanted to. She

prefers the sun in her memory, though, the sun that sends the droplets of ocean skidding off her

upturned eyes and face once she plunges up out of the water.

“It’s time for dinner. Come out.” Leila grunts and unbuckles herself from her seat in front

of the screen. Floating to the main cabin, she joins her parents to eat canned chicken and slurp

baggies of sweet potatoes. The crew will eat after the passengers finish. The only other couple on

board The New Earth discuss what they want to do first when they return to Earth: eat pesto

pasta at their favorite restaurant, go to Central Park, watch a Knicks game. They wonder where

they’ll travel next, and whether having children would keep them from visiting Japan.

Listening to their fellow travelers rehash their plans for the thousandth time, Leila’s

mother hugs herself. “I want to get myself elbow deep in dish suds,” she says.

“I want a sunburn,” says Leila. “All over my body.”

Leila’s father puts his chin in his hand and cocks his head, as if weighing their desires in

his mind.

“What do you want?” Leila asks him.

“I want what I’ve always wanted. For you to be happy.” He strokes Leila’s hair, “That’s

what I want most in the world.”

After dinner, Leila changes into one of her dad’s spare sweaters. She had long since

outgrown the Disney nightgowns and matching sets that she had packed for their journey. After

brushing her teeth, she joins the astronauts who control the satellites that film the people on

Earth. Sitting in front of one of the screens, she zooms in to find her own home in Florida. In the

Earth’s shadow, it seems like nightime on the ship, but the day on the screen is bright and sunny.

A brown haired girl in a pink bikini bangs through the screen door of Leila’s condo, carrying an

armload of pool noodles. Behind her trails a smaller boy dragging a fishing net on a wooden

pole. Although the girl appears a few years older than Leila, with a brother and brown hair

instead of blonde, she knows they would be best friends. Leila mouths alongside the girl, who

she has named Landry, as she says something to her brother that makes him run inside and

re-emerge with a plastic cup. Then, Leila talks to him as the siblings walk over the boardwalk.

Pulling the screen with her fingers, Leila moves to the ocean where the two ride the noodles over

gentle swells. She closes her eyes, pretending the ship's swaying is the ocean carrying her.

While she watches Landry, mouthing a conversation she holds with her brother, light

splits the darkness from the darkness. The sun pours out the Earth like paint, blues and greens

spilling over the blackness. Leila glances out the window for long enough to see the world

unfurl. Thin clouds feather the ocean, and Leila shudders to think of how vulnerable Landry is to

anything that could fall out of the sky.

Landry’s family eats lunch on the patio of their condo. They are the placeholders for her

own family—renters of their condo until they return from space. Leila imagines they must be

talking about school, and she answers the questions directed at Landry. She likes reading, but not

math. There was a bully in her class, but her friends protected her. Leila does not know how to

read well, but she imagines that Landry does. So she tells her father that she likes the book that

her teacher had read to them in class today. Leila thinks that the conversation is a casual one, but

then Landry throws back her chair and storms inside. Scrambling for a reason to be angry, Leila

decides that Landry’s father had called her stupid. So, when her own father appears to tell her to

go to bed, Leila snaps at him.

“When are we going home? You said we would go home soon. They’re living in our

house instead of us.” She gestures at the screen. “Landry is replacing me.”

“Landry’s not her real name,” he reminds her.

“Where will she live when we come back? Can she stay with us?”

“She has her own family. You’re having an experience that Landry wishes she could

have. You’re living her dreams.” He hugs her and unbuckles her from her seat. “Enjoy seeing the

world while you have the chance.”

During the fifty minutes that she’d joined the family’s lunch, the Earth had been erased

again. “It’s not there,” she says.

Turning back to the screen, where the daylight still blazes brightly, she points at Landry’s

empty chair. “It’s there.”

…

When Landry’s friends first began coming over to swim and make sandcastles, Leila had

named them Sarah and Ana. Now, while they lie tanning on braided mats on the sand, Leila fits

words into their moving mouths. First, they gossip about a classmate. Then, they discuss whether

Landry’s parents are fighting. Finally, Landry wonders about Leila, whether she’s still floating in

space. She hopes that Leila will reclaim her house soon, so that the two girls can become friends.

When Leila turns nine, her parents tell her to make a wish. They light a candle, but Leila

stares at it for so long that her mother blows it out for her before it burns down the wax stem.

“What did you wish for?” they ask.

“To go home.”

The couple applaud, and her parents nod. “We’re working on it, honey.”

“You’ve said that before. You said we would go to space for one year when I turned six.”

“It takes a long time to reenter the world. You have to wait for the perfect angle at the

perfect moment, and then you have to blast through without hesitation.”

“Why did we come here, if we can’t get back?”

“Space tourism was perfectly safe. No one has ever died. It's safer than being on Earth.”

“But we’re stuck.”

“Being stuck is safer than other things.”

“I wish for a birthday party. I’ll invite Sarah and Ana.” Orion fills the window, but the

ship outstrips his frozen stride.

…

Looking through the window at the ruffles and tendrils of clouds twirling around the

world, Leila remembers the Florida aquarium, where she stood in a glass tunnel while sharks

flitted around her. Exiting the aquarium, Leila had felt confused because she was sure her mother

had taken her into a tunnel carved into the ocean, but the sea was so far off that she couldn’t even

hear the rush and tug of waves. They hadn’t gone into the ocean, her mother explained. People

had moved the ocean into that building.

The pane of glass feels cold beneath Leila’s fingers, and she wonders whether a person

could put the stars and planets in an aquarium. Then, they wouldn’t have had to leave Earth to

look at them.

When Leila tries to take her plate to the viewing room, so that she can eat with Landry’s

family, her dad forbids her from watching Landry anymore.

“You can’t do that,” she protests. “I’ll miss what happens. I won’t know if my friends

come over, or if my parents fight, or if I do my first cartwheel.”

“Leila!” Her dad grips her shoulders, keeping her from floating past him. “They’re not

your family. I’m your dad. You live here.”

“Landry’s living my life! You let her have my bedroom and make my friends. By the time

I get back, I’ll have missed everything.”

Her mother joins her father, partially blocking the view of an orange Uhaul pulling away

from Landry’s house. “They’re moving! They’re leaving our house. You have to let me watch,

I’m going to lose Landry. I have to see where they drive to.”

The screen goes dark. “Landry’s not you,” her mother says.

“You took me away from my real friends, and now you’re taking me away from the ones

I’ve made. You can’t even let me pretend to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy. I thought you’d be happy up here, looking at the world and the

stars. Most people wish they could say they’d been to space.” Her father’s voice sounds thicker

and deeper than it usually does. His hands tremble on her shoulders.

Leila’s mother clears her throat. “That’s not the only reason,” she says. “I wanted to see

the heavens. After you were born, I felt terrified of losing you all the time. If we flew here, I

thought I might find out what happens when we die. Maybe there would be a god hiding in the

stars, or a peaceful oblivion in space. I’m sorry, but I wanted to see where you or your dad might

go if you left me.”

“We just become flaming mounds of dust.” Leila’s dad gestures out the window at the big

dipper. “That look like angels.”

“I thought,” her mother hesitates. “There might be something beyond Earth. Your dad

was sure there wasn’t.” Around them, the astronauts flip screens from farmland, to New York, to

a snowy tundra. “He was right.”

“I wanted to see the world before I die, Leila.” He folds her hands between his own.

“And I needed to see if there was a heaven before I kept living.” Her mother glides

backward and turns on the screen. “You’ll understand one day.” The moving truck had vanished

from the house. The condo stands still and vacant. Behind it, sand stretches into the gulf of the

waves that crash one after another, as if they rise and fall in time with an unheard rhythm.

For several days, she refuses to come out of her room. When she emerges, she floats

straight to the window. By pressing one cheek against the window and pulling her eyeballs

against the right side of her head, she can see the tip of their craft. The tarnished silver tail

reminds her of the crumpled tin soda cans that had sometimes bumped against her in the ocean.

When they had arrived in space, she’d hoped to meet aliens —small, friendly creatures like

rabbits, or tall green men who wobbled when they walked. Looking at the tail of the ship, grimy

and crumpled amidst the infinite trove of glittering stars, she feels small and ashamed.

…

The ship ignites. Leila thinks they will burn alive. Like a falling star, they re-enter the

atmosphere.

On Earth, a girl, whose name is not really Landry, stands on a Florida beach, listening to

the roar of the waves in the darkness. She feels like the vast emotion within her belongs outside

of her, with the infinite, churning darkness that cycles from sea to sky. Her skin feels like an

artificial barrier, a layer of paint poured to cordon her feelings off from the rest of the unshaped

darkness, the unformed yearning. She wades into the surf to make sure the water is real, and that

the sounds of molting darkness aren’t just issuing from her mind. Looking up into the heavens,

black water, cold and invisible drenching her ankles, she sees a star falling. I wish my parents

would stay together, she thinks. She hesitates to speak, not wanting to separate herself from the

sounds of spray, cries, and rushing that emerge from sources she cannot make out in the

darkness.

The star fizzles out, leaving its core, a metal ship. For a few minutes after the flames

fade, the family holds hands but does not speak. Finally, Leila asks if they had died.

“No,” the captain says. “We have successfully re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.”

…

After months of learning how to walk, performing physical tests, and filling out

paperwork, Leila’s family journeys to their home in Florida. When Leila meets Landry on the

doorstep of their condo, Leila calls out her name. Landry frowns and looks at her mother.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say!” Leila frowns at Landry. “You’re supposed to

say, ‘Leila! I missed you. I kept your room perfect for you to play in. I hope we can still be

friends when I move.”

Landry cocks an eyebrow and places her hand on her hip. “I don’t want to say that.”

Leila continues to talk to herself, demonstrating what Landy should be saying. Her

parents move to stand in front of her. She suddenly feels the falling sensation that she had felt

aboard the ship when she looked out the window expecting to see the world, only to realize that

it had vanished. She keeps feeling it while her parents converse with Landry’s parents. Landry’s

little brother makes faces at her as if she’s something strange, a creature that would alarm him if

his parents didn’t stand between him and the girl who somehow already knew that his swim shirt

had a crab on the front.

When her family climbs in the car and drives away, rather than move their few

possessions back into their house, Leila looks at the sun. Although she half expects it to have

vanished, it still hovers overhead, impassive to the sudden changes beneath it. They cannot

repossess their house, her parents explain, because they had made a one year contract. Their

plans had not accounted for being stranded in space for an additional two years.

Homeless, her family returns to the launch site to demand compensation for the two years

they lost in space. For a few months, they stay in the bunker-like headquarters of the world’s

foremost space tourism company. Spaceships dot the fields outside, some gleaming like defined

boulders, and others jutting up like apocalyptic pines. Eventually, her dad tells her they will

move to Houston. He does not mention that in Houston he can get treatment for the cancer that

first made him want to see earth and his wife need to find heaven. Leila only knows that there are

no oceans in Houston. She refuses to move anywhere except Florida. Her friends are there. She

wants to feel the sun through water, not glass. Her parents pack her duffel bag for her. She

refuses to look at any of the options for their future home in Houston, but they pick out one with

a pool for her.

A few days before they leave, the repaired New Earth launches again, toting a new crew

of tourists to space. Leila’s parents go outside to watch the launch. They assume she stays inside

sulking. Leila has begun having conversations with Ana and Sarah about how she wants to

celebrate her tenth birthday. Her parents have already scheduled an appointment with a counselor

in Houston. When the couple watch the craft dart like a bullet toward the stars, they have no idea

that Leila has snuck into her old bedroom onboard the ship. While the new tourists press their

faces against the windows, she straps herself into the sleeping bag and burrows beneath the

blankets. When the spaceship reaches cruising altitude, she emerges to watch Landry on the

satellite screen. Her friend sits on the beach, pushing the sand into mounds and pyramids that she

immediately knocks down. When the astronauts radio Earth to tell Leila’s parents that their

daughter will have to remain in orbit for the next year, she zooms in on the space station to watch

their reactions on screen.

Her parents stand in the bare patch from which the ship had launched an hour ago. They

hug one another. Her mother’s voice crackles through the radio.

“Is she watching us?” She asks.

The astronaut responds. Her mother keeps talking, but Leila doesn’t hear her. She

watches her parents' lips form words on the screen. Her mother says I love you. Her father

promises that they can move to Florida when Leila lands. She thinks she hears him say, “We’ll

start again.”