1. Saturday, 5:28 p.m. Saturday, 5:28 p.m.
Space Center Houston: front lawn.

There’s a 99% chance that today will be the BEST day of my life.

In T-minus 62 minutes, my best friend, Sunny, and I will be shaking hands with a real NASA astronaut. And not just any astronaut but objectively the coolest, smartest, most competent astronaut who has ever existed on Earth (I can’t speak for undiscovered exoplanets):



Inspiring and informative fact #1: Jackie Grand has piloted 11 space flights, completed 7 space walks, and collected over ONE THOUSAND intergalactic dust particles.

She’s signing autographs at the NASA Fun Fair for a whole 45 MINUTES, even though she definitely has a jam-packed training schedule before her next mission.

Inspiring and informative fact #2: Jackie Grand 3D-printed the first pizza in space. Flavor: cheese.

I know that if I don’t have an airtight plan, I’m going to say something stupid in front of Jackie, or worse, freeze up and say nothing at all like I sometimes often do. Fortunately, Sunny and I came up with Operation Airtight Plan, which is just our way of saying we wrote a speech in advance. Well, I guess I wrote all of it, but the point is, we’re going to say it together.

OPERATION AIRTIGHT PLAN

(DO NOT THROW AWAY)

Sunny: Greetings. Jackie Grand. (Shake hand.) My name is Sunny Gwon, and this is my bes+ friend and scientific collaborator:

Maple: Maple McNutt.

Sunny: It is an honor and a privilege to stand in your presence. Maple wants you to know that you are pretty much the entire reason that she wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. find why she has attempted multiple times to make a pizza on her dad’s 3D printer.

Maple: It’s true.

Sunny: Maple also wants you to know that she watched your ScienceRocksRadio interview on YouTube, and it inspired her to request a journal EXACTLY like yours for Christmas, which she received. It even has graph paper like yours, which is essential for recording FACTS.

Maple: find drawing ACCURATE diagrams.

Sunny: I would be honored if you would give me a high five so that I may high-five a hand that has gone to space.

Maple: Whereas I would be honored if you would please sign your autograph right here very neatly.



Sunny and Maple: Thank you. (Hand over journal.)

I feel way better about the speech since Sunny’s doing it with me. He should be here any minute.

5:40 p.m.

I texted Sunny (actually his dad because Sunny doesn’t have a cell phone yet):



One… two… three… maybe he meant one MINUTE away.

5:43 p.m.

Now it’s been exactly THREE minutes. I’m starting to wonder if something happened. Maybe they got a flat tire?

5:44 p.m.

Or maybe they parked next to the roller coaster the exact second it derailed and the roller coaster car smashed into Mr. Gwon’s sunroof? I’m looking up whether that’s even possible.

5:46 p.m.

Okay, according to an extremely legitimate website SPECIALIZING in theme-park disasters, it’s not very likely. But not impossible.

5:47 p.m.

My mom asked why I’m sitting by myself, “doodling,” instead of being first in line to meet Jackie. She pointed out that some of my other friends, like Mahogany Perez and Ovi Nagar, are already lining up. I told her, yet AGAIN, that I have to wait for Sunny to execute Operation Airtight Plan, which won’t be so airtight if he did in fact get smooshed by a derailed roller coaster.

Also, I’m not “doodling.” I’m drawing accurate diagrams.

5:50 p.m.

My mom keeps looking over my shoulder at my phone.



I should mention that my mom works in the NASA PR department, planning educational events for Rocket Grrls, a club that’s supposed to “get girls excited about science.” My mom set up this paint-your-own-rocket booth because she FALSELY believes that girls won’t be interested in space exploration unless she slathers every rocket in pink sparkly paint.

I told her for approximately the twelfth time that sparkles would be disastrous in zero gravity because debris as small as one millimeter can severely disable subsystems on board a spacecraft. She said I need to “take a deep breath and have fun.”



You know what? I’m not going to let it bother me. Not on the best day of my entire life. I wonder if Jackie Grand has entered the premises.

I’m also wondering if Sunny’s alive.

5:57 p.m.



Ugh. Jared again.



Sunny and I started sixth grade this year at a new middle school that has a special science program. I was kind of nervous about meeting a bunch of new kids that I didn’t know from elementary school or preschool or NASA day care (where Sunny and I met as babies). Fortunately, most of the other kids are really nice and/or smart.



Unfortunately, there’s also Jared Grody.



I really wish Sunny wouldn’t carpool with Jared. Jared has NO RESPECT for getting places on time, or for anything, really. He’s in computer science with us, and all he does is draw butts in DigiPaint. Jared even got Sunny to participate in the butt painting, which caused Sunny to get his first B+. Mr. Gwon and I were not pleased.



6:06 p.m.



6:10 p.m.



6:13 p.m.

We’re in line! Sunny and I are going to run the speech one to three more times. Jared went off to ride the roller coaster, thankfully.… Maybe it will get stuck upside down for the rest of the night. Or, no, I take that back—I don’t want the blood to sink to his brain and his head to explode. Taking it back!!

Despite my facts about the dangers of glitter, my mom still let Sunny take a whole bottle from the paint-your-own-rocket booth so we could “sparkle up the evening!” I think my mom is a bad influence on Sunny.

6:15 p.m.

Sunny just poured glitter in my hair.



Yes, he did. I’m no longer permitting Sunny to record mistruths in this journal.

I can’t let Jackie see me like this, even if Sunny says I look “mega-fancy” with glitter hair. Picking out each glitter particle as we speak.

6:18 p.m.

Operation Airtight Plan is ready to go. I’m only about 36% nervous now that Sunny’s here. I hope I make a good impression on Jackie so that when we one day become colleagues in space (hopefully), she’ll remember me fondly.

6:22 p.m.

Ugh, Jared just showed up in line. I guess the roller coaster didn’t get stuck. He said he saw a girl further up with the longest ponytail he’d ever seen. Specifically “one billion feet long,” which is highly unlikely, given that the world record is 18 feet. (I looked it up.) Jared clearly doesn’t believe in FACTS.

Jared tried to convince Sunny to get out of line and go get dino nuggets instead of waiting and waiting to meet “some lady.”… SOME LADY???

Inspiring and informative fact #3: Jackie Grand went to the Olympics for jujitsu and came in fourth place. Which means she could 100% kick Jared’s butt extremely hard if she wanted to. (Which she wouldn’t. She obeys laws.)

I almost told Jared that, but then Sunny stepped in.



One of the WORST things about Jared is that he makes Sunny act all weird and say stuff that I don’t think he really means. For example, why would Sunny call meeting the most important person in the world “this random thing,” and why would he want the best moment of our lives to be over really quickly?

I probably should be more careful about who sees my journal now that I’ve written all this sensitive material. Changing my journal status to HIGHLY classified.

6:26 p.m.

Jared asked why I was doodling so much in my coloring book instead of “living in the moment.” But before I could correct him, he wandered off.

6:27 p.m.

I just saw Ponytail Girl up ahead of us with my own eyes, and I can confirm that the ponytail is in fact very long. Although not “one billion feet” like Jared falsely claimed. Sunny dared me to touch it, but I said no, so he dared himself to touch it. Right before he made contact, the girl turned around and said, “If you touch my ponytail, it will eat you.” We couldn’t tell if she was kidding, so Sunny didn’t do it.



6:30 p.m.

I’m probably 48% nervous now. Apparently, Jackie’s gravitational simulation practice is running overtime so there’s a five-minute delay. I hope I don’t forget the speech and say something embarrassing.

6:32 p.m.

I wonder if I should tell Jackie about the birthday cake I had two years ago with her face on it. Is that weird?



6:33 p.m.

Sunny says it’s probably weird. I’m going to play it safe and stick to our script.

6:34 p.m.

They said it’s going to be more like ten minutes.

6:35 p.m.

SO EXCITED. CAN’T WAIT.

6:36 p.m.

SO EXCITED x 100!

6:38 p.m.

Sunny said maybe I should put my journal away so we can “live in the moment” like Jared said. Even though I do not respect Jared’s opinion at all, I guess I should be FULLY PRESENT when I meet Jackie. Old Maple signing off. Get ready for Maple 2.0!



9:12 p.m.

Maple 1.0 here.

I know I said there was a 99% chance that today would be the best day of my life. I guess that also meant that there was a 1% chance that today would be the WORST day of my life.

We were standing in line to meet Jackie Grand when Sunny got a text from Jared on his dad’s phone. (I thought I was the only person allowed to text his dad’s phone?) From what I could see, Jared’s text said something like:



Jared insisted that the line for the bouncy house was “real short” and the obstacle course “doesn’t even look hard” and “they’re closing really soon so stop being a poop in the boring line and COME ON.”



Then Sunny said “pleeeasssse” in at least four languages (English, Korean, Spanish, and binary). He even did the puppy-dog eyes, which made it really hard to say no.



Since they told us Jackie was still changing out of her space suit, I figured we had at least fifteen minutes until she got there, and the line behind us wasn’t that long. So I said, “Fine, I guess,” in English only.

We went over to the bouncy-house obstacle course, and SURPRISE! Jared had misrepresented not one but two aspects of the “experience.” (1) The line was extremely long, and (2) the obstacle course looked EXTREMELY treacherous.



While we waited in line, I did some emergency research about bouncy houses on my phone. Did you know:

1. 1. It’s not unheard of for bouncy houses to pop.
2. 2. The average bouncy house gets cleaned ONLY ONCE every three years.
3. 3. Bouncy houses were the cause of 300 injuries and 11 deaths last year. (Source: Bounce House Horror Stories)

Jared thought all that was HILARIOUS. What is hilarious about injury and death?!?! Sunny was also laughing, which was completely out of character since I know for a FACT that he bawled when his fish got squished in the tank filter and died last year. I don’t know why Sunny thinks he has to go along with everything Jared says.



The line was moving extremely slowly, so I pointed out to Sunny that we might be cutting it close to do Operation Airtight Plan, a.k.a. say our speech to Jackie.



Sunny pulled me aside and assured me that the line moved wayyyy faster than it seemed because they took three people at once, but if I was really nervous about the time, I could go do the speech without him and he wouldn’t be mad. I didn’t really know what to say because that would defeat the WHOLE point of Operation Airtight Plan. So I decided to wait it out with Sunny.

But then one kid had an accident on the rock wall, so they spent a whole five minutes sanitizing it with wet wipes. Don’t people know that those only kill 99% of germs? What about the remaining 1%? What about the SCENT PARTICLES? I tried to distract myself by rereading the Bounce House Horror Stories death statistics.

Jared and Sunny came up with a strategy for how to execute the “sickest triple bounce of all time,” although I was very distracted by my research. It started to feel like there was something squishing my lungs, and barely ANY air was going in. Then my fingers started to tingle. Then my whole body went numb. When we finally reached the front, I couldn’t take even one step closer to the obstacle course. At first I thought maybe I was panicking, but then I remembered this bone-fusing disease I’d seen on the internet called ankylosing spondylitis and felt pretty sure that I had that. My pediatrician has told me on multiple occasions that I don’t have ankylosing spondylitis, but seeing as I was COMPLETELY frozen in place, I’m not convinced.

My face must have looked even paler than usual, because the bouncy-house guard offered me some of his PERSONAL water bottle. (Which I refused. That’s gross.)



I could tell that Sunny really wanted me to participate in the triple bounce because he pointed out that “even four-year-olds are getting on the ride—I mean EXPERIENCE!” I tried to clarify that four-year-olds don’t have fully developed brains, but Jared interrupted as usual:



I wanted to remind them that THEY were the ones who’d LIED about the difficulty level of the obstacle course, and never did I sign a contract to plummet to my DEATH. The words weren’t coming out of my mouth, though, so all I said was “I can’t do it” really quietly.

I guess Jared didn’t hear me, because he elbowed Sunny and said, “Whatever, babysitter,” and started laughing, which made Sunny shoot up to 99% red (the reddest I have ever seen him). I think Sunny kind of snapped right then, because he looked me right in the face and shouted:



The bouncy-house guard interrupted before I could get my voice box working again and told us to go ahead, but since I was paralyzed in place, I obviously couldn’t go anywhere. Jared and Sunny went with the random four-year-old in line behind us, who probably already had ten broken bones from the triple bounce. I didn’t know what else to do except wait until the numbness went away, which took forever. At least twenty-one kids went on the bouncy house before I could move my ankles at all. When I finally recovered, I hurried back to the line for Jackie Grand, but by the time I got there, the booth was empty and the line was gone.

I missed it.

I guess I lost track of time while I was waiting for my ankylosing spondylitis to go away. I ran around the entire perimeter of the Fun Fair, and I even checked in all the bathrooms (they really should have hand sanitizer in there), but Jackie Grand was definitely gone.

That was probably the only chance I’ll ever get to meet Jackie. I can’t believe I missed it. I can’t believe I RUINED it.

I barely saw Sunny for the rest of the night, and for all I know, he died in the Suffocation Tube and nobody bothered to call his emergency contact (me).

I’m hiding in the car right now to avoid rocket-booth cleanup duty with my mom. Since my dad is traveling for work, my sister and I are her only source of unpaid labor. I’m not exactly in the mood.

I keep thinking about what Sunny said in the bouncy-house line.

Why does he think

Why can’t I just

What did Sunny mean when he said I “always” do this?

Maybe he’s referring to the time I had to go home early from his laser-tag birthday because of a flash-flood warning? Would that count? Or the time I made him throw out a whole box of Fruit Roll-Ups because the expiration date was within two days and I didn’t want him to get toxic-mold poisoning?

My mom just got back to the car with about 30 sparkly rockets and the unshowered cavewoman who lives with us, a.k.a. my older sister, Juniper, a.k.a. my second-least-favorite person after Jared. My mom looked at me VERY judgmentally and said that her rocket booth was an absolute hit, aside from when I almost spoiled the fun with my explosion statistics. Juniper said that “everybody always has fun when Maple leaves,” and now my mom is yelling at her for making fun of me.

Why does everyone keep saying the F word?

FUN.