1 ILLEGAL BASEBALL

1 ILLEGAL BASEBALL Earth year 2041 Lunar day 252 Really freaking early in the morning For my thirteenth birthday, my father gave me the greatest present I could have ever hoped for: He took me outside to play catch. Now, before you start thinking that my father was the biggest cheapskate on earth, there are a few things you need to know: For starters, my father couldn't have been the biggest cheapskate on earth, because we didn't live

on earth. We lived on the moon. We were some of the first lunar colonists. Along with a handful of other scientists and their children, we lived at Moon Base Alpha, the first human settlement in outer space. When NASA had recruited us, they had made it sound like MBA would be the most exciting, amazing, incredible place in the universe. It wasn't. It turned out, living on the moon was far more difficult than anyone had predicted. But as hard as it was for the adults, it was even worse being a kid there. Not only did we have to deal with the same lousy dehydrated food and cramped sleeping spaces and sadistic toilets as the adults, but there were a host of other problems for kids. Like making friends. There were other kids at MBA, but I hadn't been given any choice in selecting them. I was just stuck with them, and the only other boy my age, Roddy Marquez, wasn't much fun to hang out with. You know how, on earth, parents will sometimes drag you to their friends" house for the night and ask you to hang with their friends" kid, even though they know the two of you don't really get along? Well, imagine

that, instead of going over to their friends" house for one night, you've gone over for three years. And you can't leave. That was another problem with being a kid on the moon: You couldn't go outside and play. Ever. Leaving Moon Base Alpha was extremely dangerous. There were a hundred ways you could die on the lunar surface; we had already lost one person out there and nearly lost another. For this reason, NASA forbade children from ever going outdoors, meaning that we were supposed to spend our whole time on the moon inside a building smaller than your standard Motel 6. Despite it being against the rules, I had experienced the dangers of the surface myself. I had been outside on the moon four times: once while walking to MBA from the rocket that had brought me there and three times due to emergencies. I had nearly died on two of those excursions, which was a 50 percent near-death-experience rate. The same as flipping a coin. Not great odds. And yet I still desperately wanted to go back outside again. I was going nuts cooped up inside Moon Base Alpha. So were all the other kids. Even my six-year-

old sister, Violet, who was normally as cheerful as an animated cartoon chipmunk, was starting to go stir-crazy. After eight months on the moon, she had watched every episode of her favorite TV show a thousand times and was constantly hounding Mom and Dad to let her go outside and play. To which they'd inevitably have to reply, "You can't." "Whyyyyyy nooooooooot?" Violet would whine. "I'm bored inside. There's nothing to do on the moon." "That's not true," my parents would tell her. "You could play a game. Or read a book. There are thousands of books we could upload." "I want to ride my bike," Violet would say. "Your bicycle is back on earth." "Then I want to go out in a lunar rover. Dash got to go out in a lunar rover." "That was an emergency. And Dash was almost killed by a meteorite shower." "At least he got to have some excitement. I never get to almost die. I never get to do anything. I hate this stupid base!" At this point my parents would get a little flummoxed. Ideally, they should have argued that

"hate" was a strong word and that the base wasn't stupid, but the fact was, neither of them was a big fan of MBA. I think both of them were feeling really guilty about having volunteered our family for service on the moon. Which would also explain why Dad ended up waking me at two a.m. on my birthday to play catch. "Dash," he whispered, shaking me lightly. "I have a surprise for you." I sat up groggily on my inflatable mattress and promptly bonked my head on the low ceiling of my sleep pod. Even after eight months at MBA, I still hadn't gotten used to the fact that our sleeping areas were as tiny as coffins. I glanced at my watch and groaned. "Dad, it's the middle of the night..." "I know." "... on my birthday." "Sorry. It's just that this is the only time I can take you outside without Nina noticing us." "Outside?!" I exclaimed. "What for?" "Shh!" he warned. "I thought you'd like to try out some extreme low-gravity sports." I blinked at my father in the darkness, trying to figure out if this was a bad joke or a good dream. "It's illegal for me to go outside."