Mum would have kept on ranting, but Dad cut in:
“Give them a break. Just think how cold and scared they must have been! Come on, let’s get on the bus and warm up a little. We were terribly worried about you!” Dad said, as he helped the children up to the tall shuttle.
When they were safely wrapped in warm blankets and staggering back on the way, Dad asked:
“Whose idea was it to run away like that?”
“It was a joint idea… we didn’t want to run away, just to have a look around… and then we got lost, but Felix figured out that if we could reach the tower, we could surely ask for help there,” Nelly said, winking at her brother.
“I have to tell you something”. Felix sighed, and then he told the story of the F in physics, Professor Matusek in the spaceship, the fake tummy pains, and the escape that stemmed from panic. But he did not tell them that Nelly knew all about it. This would remain their shared secret.
By the time the story was over, the moon shuttle had parked at the hall, where a larger bus was waiting to take them to their hotel. ” ““Felix, are you aware that this didn’t make any sense at all? If you had told us about your F, none of this would have happened. And what if something very bad had happened to you?” Mum was cranking herself up again, but Dad poked her in the side.
“The world won’t fall apart if you get an F,” he continued in a much gentler tone.
“I’m only angry if you get a lower grade because I know how smart you are, you don’t even need to study, and you still get an A in everything… I just want you to succeed. But I seem to have overstepped the mark a bit”.
They were scooting towards the hotel when suddenly Dad exclaimed.
“Wow! The physics teacher who helped us find you must have been your professor!”
“Very tall, bald, chubby?”
“Exactly!”
“Then it was him,” sighed Felix, still a little afraid of the teacher’s wrath.
“You can meet him soon, he’s staying at the hotel, he said he’d look out for you anyway,” Mum smiled.” ““What a genius move!” Dad continued. “You’ve caused a huge commotion, everyone has been looking for you for hours, first inside the hall, of course. Your name was repeatedly announced on the loudspeaker, then your teacher came and took action. He asked the people standing there if anyone had seen you run out, how fast and which door you had run out of, and in which direction. Then he asked for a pen and paper, and from the time when the plane landed, as well as the information that the witnesses provided, he calculated roughly where you had run off to and where you were heading. It was amazing!”
“Yes, he is very smart indeed…” Felix muttered. Nelly took his hand and smiled encouragingly at him, then walked forward to the driver.
“Excuse me, Mr Driver! Could you slow down a bit so we can see the scenery?”
The driver of the moon shuttle slowed down, and as they arrived at the hotel; Felix enthusiastically told his sister everything he knew about the Moon.” “In the hotel lobby, the teacher was sitting in an armchair reading a magazine, his long legs crossed. He was anxious about the children, too, and wanted to wait until they got back. He was very surprised when he saw Felix, who confessed the whole embarrassing story to him. By the time he got to the end, Professor Matusek was clapping his knees laughing, tears of laughter in his eyes.
Felix and Nelly stared at him in confusion, and Mum and Dad couldn’t understand what was so funny either.
“Felix! You know that the whole class got an F on that test, right? I couldn’t make sense of it, I was so angry that nobody had studied for it. I know this was a pop-up quiz without any prior announcement, but believe me, you are not the only ones who were disappointed by the results. For future reference, study for every class”.” “The two days went by in two ticks. Professor Matusek was their guide, but he made Felix swear that he would not take any minerals home.
“Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints!” He said.
Those two days on the Moon were the best in Felix’s life.
On Sunday evening, he was getting ready for bed in his own room when Nelly knocked on his door.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I brought you something.”
As her brother stepped closer, she couldn’t believe her eyes: a moonstone the size of a child’s palm was in Nelly’s hand.
“I knew you would follow the rules, but nobody asked me to, so, look, I’ll put it in the most prominent place, on the middle shelf! She said, as she fiddled with the large, shiny grey stone”.
“And don’t forget to tell me tomorrow about all the stones in your collection,” she said, before marching out, slamming the door behind her as usual.
“Some things never change.” Felix smiled to himself under the blanket, and decided that the next day he would give Nelly one of his most beautiful amethysts.