“What the heck! You got an F!”
Felix flinched at the sharp exclamation that cut sharply through the air next to his ear. He had never hated his sister’s voice that much before. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t even notice her when she came into the room and sneaked up beside him. He was overwhelmed with icy dread.
Before Nelly could rush in, Felix had hunched over his desk, his right hand crumpling the pages of his physics textbook, where he had hidden a paper with a failed test days before. For the past two days, Mum had asked if they had got their results yet, and Felix muttered a vague, faint “no” on both occasions.
“I’ll just have to do it by the beginning of next week,” he thought “and then I’ll come clean.”
He was ashamed of the lie, but also of the F in physics: Felix was an excellent student and physics was his favourite subject. He simply forgot that they were writing a test, that’s all. He hadn’t even read the book the night before. When Professor Matusek handed out the worksheets, he was so shocked that he suddenly didn’t know what was going on.
And now, annoyingly, Nelly has spotted the F. Tragic!” “He closed the book with lightning speed, and stared at Nelly, who stretched triumphantly beside him, her usual strawberry lollipop in her mouth.
“Don’t tell, Mum… Please!” Felix’s mouth curled up to cry.
Nelly was not an easy case. Whenever possible, she would cross Felix, acting enviously, treacherously and gossiping. Felix felt time slowing down in the ominous silence, his hands and feet losing strength. It really is over, all over.
“I know why this is so important to you… so I’ll shut up for now,” Nelly said finally.
Felix felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.
“On one condition…”
Well, it wouldn’t have been Nelly if she just agreed to keep silent, so they had to play the game.
“What is it?”
“You will have to give me your mineral collection.”
Felix’s gaze skimmed over the desk, the TV, the bed, the wardrobe, and finally came to rest on the huge shelf of unimaginably treasured minerals and rocks he had collected, carefully sorted and arranged, meticulously arranged and categorized over many years. The apocalypse has come after all.” “It was not by accident that Felix had hidden his F-graded test paper, even though he knew that the truth would come out sooner or later. Professor Matusek was also furious about the bad test result, but if Mum found out about the F, first there would be a huge circus, and worse: he could forget about the trip he’d been waiting for years to take.
A few years earlier, Professor Matusek, Felix’s retiring, elderly physics teacher, had invented a way of filling the Moon’s atmosphere with oxygen, only to have the Moonwalker & Co. Ltd. company organise tours and take people in organized groups to the Moon in space shuttles.
It was a trip his parents had paid for weeks in advance: they were leaving on Saturday morning and returning on Sunday evening.
This was all Felix had been thinking about for weeks, and he hadn’t even registered the test was coming. Nelly, of course, wouldn’t understand any of it: ever since she found out where they were going, she’d been singing arias (despite having a lousy voice) about how she was going to take some amazing selfies up there. In one week, she had tried out four new hairstyles for her photos. She had no idea how big a journey this would be. And now she was making a big mess of it by blackmailing Felix.” ““You can have anything else! Ask for my X-Box… Or I’ll clean for you for a month! Or have my pocket money for six months! Let’s swap rooms! Anything, anything but not my minerals, please!” Felix tried desperately, but Nelly was adamant, rolling the sticky lollipop around in her mouth.
“The mineral collection, or I’m telling Mum right now.”
Of course, she didn’t want the damn collection. Nelly wasn’t interested in science; she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between a translucent rock crystal and a coal-black basalt rock of volcanic origin… She knew where it would hurt most, and that was exactly where he stabbed.
Felix had to make an instant decision. He reasoned that he could see the collection at any time, stroking his beloved stones in his sister’s room.
“Okay…” he wailed piteously.
“Good! After we get back, I’ll move the stones to my room on Monday. Oh, and of course you can never enter my room again!” that was the coup de grace. Felix broke down completely, tears silently streaming down his face. Nelly always teased him when he cried about something, but no one could see those tears now. ” “The two days leading up to the departure were relatively calm, with Nelly being kinder to him than ever before. At breakfast on Friday, Dad noted:
“How well you two have been getting along lately! I am so happy to have two such lovely children!”
Of course, thought Felix, who could see behind Nelly’s sly grin: the big, heavy secret and the ruthless deal he had been forced to strike with his sister.
Finally, Saturday morning arrived.
“Come on everyone, or we’ll miss the jet train!” shouted Felix, who had been up since 4 AM. Mum and Nelly were still brushing their teeth, but he had already dragged his suitcase out into the hall and was standing impatiently in the doorway.
“I love this tingling sensation so much!” He exclaimed later, when the vehicle was speeding through the powerful magnets at lightning speed.
“Twenty minutes and we’ll be at the hangar” Dad looked at his watch. Even though the hangar was at least 150 kilometres from their home, they got there crazily fast. As the jet train slowed down, the red tip of the giant rocket, to which the spacecraft was attached, was already visible.