The pencil nearly stabbed Kath in the leg. “Careful,” Kath said, laughing, and reached for Lily’s hand.
“Sorry,” Lily said, blushing.
Kath eased the pencil from Lily’s fingers and set it down on the bench. “Let’s say you invent a rocket that can do it—”
“It’s a fuel problem,” Lily said.
“Right, fuel. Let’s say we get that right, and we can get people onto this rocket. What do you think it would be like to go to the moon?”
“Hmm.” Lily still felt the ghost of Kath’s hand on hers. She tried to focus. “Well, we’d need to develop space suits too. Arthur C. Clarke said they might look like suits of armor—wouldn’t that be funny?”
“Why suits of armor?”
“Because of the pressure. There’s no pressure on the moon, so the suit would probably have to be rigid.”
“So we’d be wearing suits of armor on the moon? Like King Arthur and his knights? I guess if you meet some aliens, then you’d be prepared.” Kath reached for the pencil and brandished it as if it were a sword. “En garde, aliens!”
Lily burst into laughter, and her notebook slid off her lap onto the floor. Kath picked it up to use as a shield, standing to strike a heroic pose. Lily covered her mouth, still laughing, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the group of men again. She had almost forgotten about them. Now they seemed somewhat pathetic; they were middle-aged and balding, dressed in ugly plaid shirts. There was a desperation to the way they were eyeing the girls. Whatever danger she had sensed from their attention had turned to pity, and with a burst of inspiration she stood up and went to the ball rack.
“You see, I’ll show you—it’s physics,” she joked to Kath. There was a certain pleasure in knowing that Kath was watching her, that Kath would keep her eyes trained on Lily’s body as she released the bowling ball to spin down the lane—inexpertly, to be sure—and when the ball struck only one of the pins on the left side, she shrugged. “I’m not good, but it’s still conservation of momentum. The moment the ball strikes the pins is exactly like the moment a rocket launches from the ground—it’s an explosion.”
Kath came to pick up her bowling ball. “I think you’ve lost me with your analogy, but I don’t think I need to know how it works. You’re the one who’s going to build the rockets, right?”
Lily smiled. “Right.”
She stepped back to give Kath room to bowl, and also to block the men’s view.
18
Kath came to Lily’s locker first thing on Monday morning, her eyes bright with excitement. “I have it,” she said, and Lily felt her stomach drop. All around them students were putting their jackets away, gathering their books and pencils, heading off to class. The bell would ring at any moment, and there was no time to talk about it now. “I’ll show you after school,” Kath promised.
All day the minutes crawled past. In Senior Goals, with Kath in the next row, time seemed to slow even further because they couldn’t speak about it. She noticed Shirley, who had barely spoken a word to her since the dance, eyeing her suspiciously. She tried to suppress any trace of her impatience, but she couldn’t stop her knee from bouncing beneath her desk.
By the time the day came to an end, Lily was exhausted from waiting and from keeping quiet, while Kath seemed filled with nervous energy. As soon as the last bell rang, they left school together, taking Chestnut Street up Russian Hill. At the bottom of the steps they paused to make sure they were quite alone, and Kath removed a small card from her book bag.
“I didn’t think you’d have it yet,” Lily said, almost afraid to look.
“Jean got it from a friend in the Western Addition. We went and saw him together on Saturday.”
“How much did it cost? Do I owe you money?”
“No, don’t worry. He owed Jean a favor. Here you go.”
It was a little bigger than a business card, with white lettering on a dark background. The words OPERATOR’S LICENSE CALIFORNIA were printed across the top, along with the expiration date and a number. The name on the card was not Lily’s; it read MAY LEE WONG. In a box on the lower right was a fingerprint, and a signature was scrawled across the bottom. It looked startlingly genuine.
“I told them you were Chinese,” Kath explained. “They thought that was a good name. Is it all right?”
Lily held the card gingerly, as if it might burn her. “Whose fingerprint is that? Who signed it?”