“You hit a teacher.” Drewin’s expression was blank.
Looking at him, I think it might have been shock. He clearly didn’t understand what happened, so I began to explain that part as well, although I did feel guilty and it must have shown. “Actually, it was the model of Jupiter that hit him when it was on its standard rotational orbit. He just happened to be standing too close to the display and was in the wrong place. If he’d understood more about how Jupiter acted then he wouldn’t have stood where Jupiter was heading. We were debating the discoveries of Kuiper Belt Objects with masses roughly comparable to Pluto, such as Quaoar, Sedna, and Eris, and he didn’t understand and it appeared to push the issue to a tipping point. He shoved me into the rocket display, then due to the laws of opposite reaction and the unfortunate physics of place and time, he stumbled back, and Jupiter hit him.”
I sat back in my chair, because no one could argue with that explanation. I didn’t have a lot of patience with people who didn’t see past the nonsense and find the raw science. If a fruit is orange in color, tastes like orange, and is kind of round, then it’s an orange. It’s not an apple. And Pluto was not a planet, it was a distinctly different dwarf planet. Any science teacher worth their salt should’ve known this if they were shaping the minds of future generations. Wasn’t that why the planetarium had hired me to join in conversations and incite discussion which would lead to learning? They’d jumped on me the first year of my planetary science degree, and wanted my knowledge and enthusiasm, and when visitors would disagree with me I would encourage debate and everyone went away happy.
Sometimes they were stupidly wrong, like the time a dad with his kids called a quasar a quantar. Hence my desperate need for a quasar installation to educate anyone else who didn’t understand. Of course, the dad hadn’t gotten in the way of Jupiter, so no paramedics had to be called to that argument.
“You’re fired,” Drewin blurted out.
“What?”
He couldn’t do that. I needed the money from this gig, and who else would do the crazy night shifts but me? Certainly not Andy-I-know-nothing from the café with his stories about how he’d once been abducted by aliens.
“I need you to leave your security card and clear out your locker.”
Maybe I heard wrong. “My card?”
Drewin held out a hand. “Your security badge—”
“Wait, no, I need this work—”
“You’re a liability, Joseph, badge now, get your stuff and leave.”
“But tonight’s Wonders of the Night Sky show—”
“Andy will do it—”
“Andy told everyone that asteroids don’t have moons in the last show—”
“Andy doesn’t hit teachers—”
“It wasn’t me who hit the teacher, it was Jupiter—”
“Fired.” The door opened, and there stood Jim from security, a man so tall and wide that he filled the entire doorway, and whose face was schooled into a stern expression. “Jim, can you please escort Mr. Leigh to the lockers, and then off the premises.”
I met Jim’s steady gaze. Surely Jim wouldn’t do that—I babysat his kids. Hell, I’d even taken a nanny job for his cousin Bertha and her five children—but he didn’t smile at me, he simply stood back so there was room for me to move through. I looked from him back to Drewin, who still had his hand out for my card.
I had one last thing to say. “Please don’t let Andy mess up the show—”
“Out.”
“Remember, he said he’s been abducted by aliens, but think about it. If aliens did land they’ be abducting the intellectual masterminds of our planet, not Andy. Unless of course they were looking to repopulate their planet, but surely even then, Andy wouldn’t be their best choice.”
Drewin stood so fast his chair hit the wall, “Out!” he thundered, and I scrambled back and out the door so fast I swear I left burn marks in the carpet.
Jim pulled the door shut so we were alone in the hallway. “Shit, kid, what did you do now?”
I pulled my shoulders back and looked up at the bulk of him from my five-ten disadvantage, then pushed my glasses up my nose.
“I didn’t do anything,” I defended, but couldn’t continue. It was me. I had lost my cool. I’d gotten into a childish fight about whether Pluto was a planet, and instead of using science I’d provoked a teacher into shoving me and then ended up watching as Jupiter swung round and knocked him to the floor. I should have been more specific when I called out to warn him, but my garbled “watch out for Jupiter” had done nothing to move him. In fact, it had made him shove me into the Apollo display. And now I’d lost the one job that meant I could earn money, study, and work around everything else. Regrets flooded me as Jim pulled the security door closed after me and I was standing on the sidewalk at the rear of Tucson planetarium.
I had my backpack full of school books, the half-finished model of the Titan 1 rocket that I’d been working on in my breaks, and my cell phone. I also had an hour’s walk back to the pull-out bed I slept on in my sister’s place in Santa Rita Park. I could have gotten a bus but there was a reason I was in shock at losing this job, not only did they need me, but I needed the money—it was the one thing between me and my final year’s
