I should have come down at dawn, like I meant to. Maybe this is the Moon Shadow’s way of telling me it doesn’t belong to me anymore. My heart sinks, but rises a bit when I see Bree sitting a few feet away, on the slope that leads up to the Star Garden. As usual she’s wearing her iPod. I don’t think I’ve seen her without it for the past two days. She’s watching the men lift the telescopes onto carts. They’ll be set up in various places in the field, each one fitted with a special solar filter. The guests will be able to take turns looking at the eclipse through them. Dad put my favorite one aside for the family. I have specially fitted binoculars too.
I call Bree’s name, but she doesn’t hear me. Ever since the other night when she looked through Mr. Silver’s scope at the moon, she’s been stranger than usual. Not as angry as she used to be, but sort of in her own world. Jack’s been a little strange too, but only about the eclipse. Every time I go to take care of one of the Unusuals, he’s there. Or he’s row-boating with that little boy Pete’s family. Or he’s babysitting the twins. But whenever I try to talk to him about the eclipse, he gets all weird and changes the subject. Maybe he’s just anxious that Mr. Silver isn’t back yet. He hasn’t mentioned the whole “me being really pretty” thing again, and I’m beginning to think I heard him wrong. After all, who could possibly think I’m prettier than Bree? I’ve been paying more attention to my appearance though, or at least trying to make sure my clothes aren’t covered in stains.
Static bursts through my walkie-talkie, and I grab it from my waist. Bree doesn’t even look up, so I turn back onto the road and press the talk button. “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
It’s not Dad though, it’s Mom. “Come back to the house, Ally,” her voice cackles through the air. “I’ve got special news for you.” There’s so much interference from all the other walkie-talkies people brought with them that I have to ask her to repeat herself three times. When I finally understand her, my heart leaps! My fingers stumble over the right button to press. “We’re not moving?” I ask, holding my breath.
“Of course we’re moving! Just come —” She says more, but I turn it off and stick it back on my shorts.
When I get back to the house the first thing I see is Melanie doing cartwheels across the lawn. She runs up when she sees me. “Did you hear? Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
Kenny comes running down the stairs to meet us, with Ryan a few steps behind. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Mr. Silver called!” Kenny says, shifting from one foot to the other like he can barely contain himself.
“He’s still not here?” I ask, thinking of Jack.
Kenny shakes his head. “He’s on the road, but it’s pretty crowded. He might not make it in time. But listen —”
“We actually did it!” Ryan breaks in, laughing. “The huge telescope in Hawaii used our data and confirmed the planet!”
I gasp. “Seriously?” I had been convinced since we didn’t hear anything right away that we had messed up somehow. And after getting my hopes up with the SETI project, I hadn’t allowed myself to get too excited. But this is amazing!
“Not only that,” Kenny says. “But we’re famous! Mr. Silver said we’re the youngest people ever to have found an exoplanet!”
“We didn’t really find it, exactly,” Ryan corrects. “We just monitored it. But he said this proves amateur astronomers can play a really important role in confirming exoplanets.” His enthusiasm dampens a little. “At least for now. Until those planet-finding telescopes are launched into space in a few years.”
“Let’s not think about them,” Melanie says. She looks so happy, with her cheeks so bright that it’s impossible not to catch her enthusiasm.
“That’s right!” I say. “And no matter how many planets they find, they didn’t find this one!”
“We gotta tell Jack and Bree,” Kenny says. “Does anyone know where they are?”
Still feeling like I could float a foot off the ground, I tell him I just saw Bree a few minutes ago by the Star Garden.
“I’ll go find her,” Melanie says. “I have to give her something anyway.” She takes off running, does two cartwheels, and continues.
I ask Ryan if he’s seen Jack.
He shakes his head. “Not since last night. I just went by his cabin but he wasn’t there.”
Kenny says, “He came by this morning to pick up the eclipse glasses for his group. I haven’t seen him since though.”
We all promise to keep an eye out for him. Ryan goes off to find his grandfather while Kenny and I head inside. I give the sky one last glance. Still a few too many clouds for my liking, but clouds move fast, and there’s no way of telling what will happen this afternoon. I notice Kenny eyeing them nervously too, but he shakes it off as well and gives me a huge grin.
Mom and Dad each give us a big hug as we walk into the kitchen. “There they are,” Dad says, beaming proudly. “The groundbreaking planet-finding astronomers!”
“Isn’t it amazing?” Kenny says, bouncing around the kitchen. “We’re famous!”
“And you’re finally talking to us again!” Mom says, clapping her hands.
“Oops!” Kenny throws his hand over his mouth, then brings it down in defeat. “Oh, all right! I give up.”
“That’s good,” Dad says, turning to the huge dry-erase board they’ve set up on the table. “Because we have a lot to go over and the seconds are ticking away.”
According to the board, Kenny’s job is to finish printing the flyers and then to hand them out as people arrive at the site. He’s also in charge of making sure no one is disturbing the peace or littering. For a ten-year-old with a sunny disposition, he can be very persuasive. People listen to him.
Dad’s job is to oversee the technical aspects. Making sure the video cameras and projection screens are working, that the P.A. system is loud enough, that sort of thing, so that everyone can hear when it’s safe to look at the sun without protection. Mom is on crisis duty—if anyone gets stung by a bee or faints, or if a kid gets lost, she’s the one to take care of it. And my job is to go through the group and make sure everyone’s eyes and equipment are properly protected during the partial phases. Besides listing the stages of the eclipse and telling the guests what to watch for at each stage, Kenny’s flyers have a warning in big letters about not looking directly at the sun.
The security crew Dad hired will also be overseeing all these things, and even though every guest who registered signed something agreeing to take precautions, we want to make sure everyone has a positive experience. Dad tells us to meet in the roped-off area he reserved for us before totality hits. Otherwise it will be too dark to find each other. Ryan, his grandfather, and Bree’s family are meeting us there too. I invited Jack, but he said he might have to be with his group. Then he changed the subject, as usual.
“This is it,” Dad says, actually getting a little teary-eyed. “What we’ve been waiting for—planning for—all these years.”
A lump forms in my throat. Kenny stops bouncing. We can hear shouts of excitement and anticipation drift in through the open windows as two different groups of campers run by.
“We should all be really proud of ourselves,” Mom says. “We’re making a lot of people very happy. We’re giving them a memory they’ll never forget.”
“That none of us will ever forget,” Dad says firmly. He glances out the window. “No matter what happens.”
“No matter what happens,” we all repeat, placing our hands on top of each other’s like a team before a game. Then we gobble down an early lunch and go our separate ways. I run up to my room to get my supplies, stepping over the empty boxes like they’re bumps in the rug and nothing more. My backpack has been ready for days. Binoculars, logbook, red flashlight, camera, solar glasses, and a screen made of welder’s glass. I’ve also packed many extra sheets of the solar filters in case people don’t have them. I’m already wearing the t-shirt Mom had printed for us. It’s bright yellow and has a pic
ture of the sun during totality. On the front and back it says, in glow-in-the-dark lettering, moon shadow staff. ask us anything.
As I turn to run back out I take one last look at my room. The next time I’ll see it, I’ll have witnessed a total solar eclipse. How crazy is that?
By the time I get up to the field, it’s half full. First contact isn’t for another two hours, but clearly people want to stake out their claim to a prime spot. Not that any one spot is really different from another. The eclipse begins at 3:09 (and 42 seconds), when the sun will be high enough in the sky that none of the trees will block it. I drop off my backpack in the roped-off area that my parents set up for us. I watch one couple set up a huge pair of binoculars on a tripod, a telescope, and a video camera. They also have a collection of eclipse glasses, handheld screens, digital and regular cameras. If everyone has this much stuff, there will be no room left for the actual people. I do a quick survey to make sure they have the right lenses on the binoculars and the scope. They do.
But the next two families have forgotten to cover their viewfinders. You don’t need the viewfinders to observe the eclipse, but someone could look through them by mistake. I give them a sheet of the specially-coated Mylar and watch to make sure they stick it on correctly. One of the families has a daughter who looks around eight years old and clearly doesn’t want to be here. I can tell because when Kenny comes by and hands them a flyer, she makes a big show of spitting her gum into it. He hands her father another one without missing a beat.
Some people have gotten really creative. Instead of worrying about protecting their eyes, they’ve built these contraptions out of cardboard boxes that project an image of the sun inside of them. Some are six feet long! I see a lot of people with two pieces of cardboard, one brown, one white, with a pinhole through the brown one. I watch one kid as he holds them about a foot apart, with the pinhole facing the sun. A small yellow glow appears on the white one.
Along the west side of the field some enterprising eclipse chasers have set up booths selling solar glasses, bottles of water, disposable cameras, and other eclipse-related merchandise. All the venders had to get their wares pre-approved by Mom though. My parents decided a long time ago the only thing they would sell themselves are commemorative mugs and two t-shirts. One says i saw the moon’s shadow at the moon shadow. The other says i saw the moon cover the sun and all i got was this lousy t-shirt.
Every few yards I see a familiar face. Most of the guests who have come to the campground over the years have returned for this event. I get a lot of comments like, “Oh, you’re all grown up!” and “Wow, the place looks great!” It makes me feel good, and proud of what we’ve achieved, like Mom said.
The time passes in a blur of activity and noise and careful concentration on the faces of those setting up their equipment. Totality will only last for a little over three minutes, and while that’s a pretty solid duration for an eclipse, it’s not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. One eclipse chaser wearing a t-shirt of all the eclipses he’s been to is timing himself with a stopwatch. He shifts from checking his scope to his binoculars to his cameras and back again. It looks like a frantic little dance.
With half an hour to go before first contact, there is barely enough room to walk. I’m not the only one keeping an eye on the clouds. A light breeze keeps them wafting by. I wonder if it’s too late for another anti-rain dance. I start to head back to my family’s area when a tug on my shirt stops me. It’s Bree. For once she doesn’t have her earphones on. “What’s that noise?” she asks, pointing to one of the big speakers. “Is it supposed to be music?”
I laugh. “It’s a type of music, but not the kind you can dance to. It’s the sound of the sun.”
She squints. “Huh?”
“Astronomers can record the vibrations and echoes of all the activity inside the sun. The sun is like a huge musical instrument. My dad’s playing a recording of it.”
Bree covers her ears. “It just sounds like static to me.”
“Don’t worry, he’s going to take it off soon. It’s almost first contact.”
She reaches into her shorts pocket where I see her earphones dangling. But she thinks better of it and follows me back through the crowd to our families. We get there to find Ryan, Melanie, and Kenny do-ing the anti-rain dance. Ryan’s grandfather and Bree’s parents are trying to follow along. I recognize the old woman with Ryan’s grandfather as being on Jack’s tour. “Have you seen Jack?” I shout over the increasing noise.
She shakes her head and holds up her glasses. “He handed these out about two hours ago. I haven’t seen him since.” She notices Bree and says, “Hello, future cover girl. Walked the labyrinth lately?”
Bree shakes her head. I look from one to the other, wondering how they know each other. For some reason I can’t picture Bree walking the labyrinth. It hits me that once we’re gone, it’s going to be up to Bree’s family to keep the Unusuals up and running. But will they? Bree’s parents seem really nice and responsible, but still, they could get caught up in their own work and let things slide. Right now though, they’re putting their all into the dance, arms and legs flying. It’s pretty funny.
There’s only one cloud now that can do any harm if it passes right over the sun.
Soon the solar music turns off and Dad’s voice booms across the field. “Everybody ready?”
The crowd whoops and hollers. Kenny and I look at each other and giggle. It’s weird hearing Dad’s voice coming out of nowhere and filling the air.
“Glasses on!” he commands. In unison, a thousand people put on their glasses or goggles or hold up their solar screens. “Ten seconds to first contact!”
I look around for Jack, but still don’t see him. I don’t see Mr. Silver either.
Everyone starts counting down along with Dad. “Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . .”
My heart is pounding so fast I bet everyone can hear it, even over the din of voices. There’s no sign of the approaching moon in the bright sky. An eclipse can only happen when the moon is in the new moon phase, when we can’t see the sun reflecting off of it. So it’s like looking for something invisible.
“Three . . . two . . . one!” everyone shouts, then collectively we hold our breath. All I hear is the loud chirping of the birds. Nothing happens for an endless second. My mind races. Were the astronomers mistaken? Is this the wrong day? What’s going on?
And then I see it. A tiny nick out of the right side of the sun, like someone nibbled on it to see how it would taste.
“There it is!” people yell from all over the campground. The whoops and hollers start up again, but quiet down as everyone watches the tiny nick gradually increase into a thin crescent. It’s going soooo slowly. Kenny’s eye is pressed up to the telescope, so I peer through the binoculars. I can see tiny dark sunspots on the face of the sun. Through the welder’s glass I had attached to the binoculars, the sun looks green. I put on the solar filtered sunglasses, and it’s orange instead. I check my watch. There’s still over an hour until totality, and I need to do a quick run through the crowd.
“Do you want to come check people’s eyes with me?” I ask Bree, who is standing very still. “We’ll be back in time.”
She shakes her head, not tearing herself away from the sun.
“Okay. Be sure to give your eyes a rest though. The sun’s still very bright.”
She nods, half listening. Melanie and Kenny are excitedly going over the flyer and Bree’s parents are holding hands and giggling like teenagers. I snake my way through the crowd, careful not to bump into anyone’s scope. Under their glasses, one eclipse-chasing group is all wearing eye-patches over one eye. They look like a bunch of pirates! I’ve heard of people doing that, but didn’t expect to see it. It’s supposed to help your eyes adjust to the dark better when you take it off. “Ahoy, matey,” one of them says as I pass.
“Ahoy!” I reply.
I pass by the girl who had spit her gum into Kenny’s flyer in
time to hear her say, “I don’t get it. What’s the big deal?”
It’s true that besides the fact that the sun is slowly being eaten away, nothing looks any different on the ground. The light is just as bright. I’m forced to chastise two people shielding their eyes with their hands, but other than that everyone is being really safe. I pass the mother of the red-haired twins trying to calm down one of them, who is insisting that his brother is somehow responsible for what’s happening above. I can’t imagine living in a time before eclipses were predicted and suddenly the sun disappeared. How terrifying!
About half of the moon is covering the sun now, and the shadows of the people around me are starting to get shorter and sharper. The light still seems as bright, but the birds must sense something’s going on. Their usual gentle tweeting and chirping is becoming more erratic, almost pleading.
I pass by the shrine to Ho and Hsi. It is now covered with little tokens, including a green Matchbox car, and about twenty of Kenny’s flyers.
I climb up onto a bench near the side of the field and scan for Jack. My heart gives a leap when I see Mr. Silver racing across the field. A shout goes up from his tour group when they catch sight of him. Jack’s not with the group though, nor with Mr. Silver. Where IS he? He must have found someplace else to view the eclipse.
I make my way back to my family. Mom is there now, looking in the scope. Bree is still standing where I left her. The sky is turning a darker, almost navy blue now, a color I’ve never seen it before. I feel a slight chill in the air and shiver. It’s definitely at least ten degrees cooler. The sun is about eighty percent covered and it’s noticeably darker now. My heart starts pounding hard again, as Dad gets back on the loudspeaker.