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I chose to smack Just Rahim upside the head with a bat at the start of one of the most momentous weeks of the century. Some would say, maybe ever. Who’d have guessed?

Inside David’s office, which he thankfully almost always forgot to lock, I drank down every piece of news.

This was the week where NASA’s telescopes, peering deep into space, spotted something moving through the edge of our solar system. Even as my family had all packed up to run for the hotel, press conferences were being scheduled. Because whatever it was, the smudge on their telescopes was moving so fast it would pass through the solar system in just a couple days. And it had come from well beyond our worlds.

And then, even as my family moved from room to room, arguing about what to do next, the object had changed course as it reached the edge of the solar system.

Scientists, usually nervous about drawing any conclusions, began to speculate about ‘extreme outgassing’ being the cause of the course change. But I have to bet some of them began to wonder if something else was going on.

And then yesterday it began to slow down.

With that, even the most cautious scientist began to wonder: was it a craft of some sort?

And then the good telescope pictures began to come in.

The object was artificial. It looked like a giant tree traveling through space. It was roughly as large as Manhattan, or St. Thomas. And by the end of today, it would be in orbit above Earth.

This morning, as I had walked around the beach, the craft, or whoever ran the craft, had started to transmit and talk with communications systems all over the world to anyone who would listen.

The star tree-thing offered improvements to our technology, even a few patents for things we hadn’t invented yet. Water filtration devices, cheaper hydroponics.

And of course, the sudden knowledge that Earth was not alone in the universe. That changed so much, just in those few hours.

In exchange for all that, all the craft wanted was the right to allow the aliens inside of it the right to come down and visit the Earth in peace. Just like they were on vacation or something, as if this starship was a giant cruise ship like the ones that came to St. Thomas all week.

This alien cruise ship was full of aliens from the stars, packed with various creatures that wanted to see a new, exotic place, instead of the usual pale tourists who wanted jewelry, beaches, and duty-free liquor.

And some of these aliens wanted to stay on Earth.

In exchange for letting them stay, the starship would randomly choose from Earth applicants to travel with it further into the stars.

It would be the voyage of a lifetime.

A lifetime, because, I read, it would be almost two years before it would return to Earth.

The door creaked open. I jumped. “Don’t get cross, David,” I said, as I turned and saw that he looked ready to yell at me. “I have to fill out The Application.”

He knew what I was talking about.

“It’s asking for volunteers. And we’d be a long way away from Just Rahim. This is how I can fix it,” I said quickly. “This is how I can change our lives. You understand?”

David nodded. “Keep the door closed. And don’t get caught, or we’ll all get kicked out and you’ll have even more trouble coming for you.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

***

What do you write on an application to a starship?

I’d heard people talking about college applications. Or job applications. But this… I had no idea.

I wanted to talk about all the reasons my family would be great on a starship. Then I thought: what would a starship want with us? My dad and I could paint buildings. Dad knew how to work on road crews, or construction. Or how to fish. Not exactly jobs a starship needed, I had to guess.

“Dear Star Tree. If that’s what you are called. I’m sorry if it is not,” I began. “I think the reason I’m writing this application is because of what happened not too long ago with Just Rahim…”

I poured out the story of my week and of the trouble we were in. Talked about how my parents talked in hushed whispers when they thought I couldn’t hear them. How scared they were. And how responsible I felt.

Then I realized that this had to be more than just a plea to run away. So I talked about St. Thomas, trying to explain where I had come from. I talked about Magen’s Bay and how we went there for a barbeque last year for my birthday. I talked about the time we drove to the very top of Crown Mountain on a rainy day and I walked through the foggy insides of an actual cloud. And what it was like to see Charlotte Amalie on a clear night, light up like a Christmas tree.

I wrote about food a lot. Walking down the streets getting johnny cakes, fresh and still dripping a little of the hot oil they were fried in. Even better with a tangy slice of cheddar slid in the middle.

Beef patties and a juice for lunch.

I explained how we had to wear school uniforms. Talked about the sweet cars driving around, mega-bass blasting out the back with polished rims and tinted windows, even though my family mostly used the dollar cabs to get around.

I tried to explain comics. New Spiderman, Batman, some of the cooler online comics I followed. I listed my favorite books. Anything I could think of that would help the starship get to know me and where I came from, how much I loved it, but also how much I needed to get away now because of what I’d done, until I ran out of things and stared at the pages I’d written.

And then I clicked send before I could change my mind and ran out of the office, my heart in my throat.

I didn’t sleep that night. On my back on a lounge chair on the balcony I stared up at the stars all night.

They danced with possibilities I could only dare to imagine.

***

I woke up bleary eyed and hurting for coffee, so I set out to hunt down some much in the same way I imagine a lion would. I had to steer clear of the main area and the manager, but I knew the guys who cleaned the pool had a coffee pot in the tool shed.

Half an hour later I sat on a chair with my toes dug into the sand, watching people play in the water. A boat’s sails flashed white in the morning sun. It was strange how, even after such a major event like yesterday, life still moved on the next day. Just as it always had. Nothing actually come to a stop.

We were still hiding from Just Rahim. We were still going to have to move rooms tonight. I would still eat lunch from the vending machine.

“Kadie, Kadie Stephens?” someone asked.

I froze. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the man walking the beach and calling my name wore a brown UPS uniform and carried a small box in his hands.

He looked legit. And I could see the delivery sticker on the box. But it could be a trick, I thought. Just Rahim could have found out where my aunt worked. Could have had a package delivered to track me down.

But it didn’t seem likely.

I gritted my teeth and stood, holding the hot coffee off to one side. I was ready to throw it at him and run if I had to.

“Yes?”

The deliveryman smiled. “You hard to find, but the package says you, and only you, can sign for this box here and that you were at this hotel.”

I nervously signed for it and took the box.

Then I slowly opened the box. Nestled inside the packing was a golden medallion. The moment the sunlight hit it an image shimmered into place in the air above the box. A galaxy spun in front of me, stars shifting around and whirling until they melted into a view of Earth from orbit.

“Welcome Kadie Stephens,” the medallion announced in a deep, voice-over. “You and your family have been accepted aboard the All Tree and can begin boarding in three weeks at Mitad El Mundo, in Ecuador. We look forward to meeting you. Please stand still for just a moment.”

I froze as a brief flash of blue light surrounded me, then faded away. I was stunned. The starship had… used UPS to overnight a package to me?

Then the realization settled deep into me: I had been chosen!

Me.

I’d done it. Somehow. I’d been chosen. I could go.

I’d won.

I closed my mouth and swallowed.

Then I noticed the crowd around me. They were taking pictures with their phones and applauding.

This was the sort of thing that ended up on the news.

And Just Rahim would certainly know where to find me.

All the elation and excitement popped like a pricked balloon.

I closed the box and held it up to my face as I shoved through everyone, ignoring the calls and questions. As dazed I was, I knew to randomly jig and duck through every corridor and service area I could, trying to lose the tail of followers I’d picked up as I tried to get safely, and anonymously, back to my room.

All I could think about now was Just Rahim. The three weeks before we could go to Mitad El Mundo (and how would we afford that?) was a long time. Trouble would find us sooner than that. Did Auntie Lynn have anyone at any other hotels who could help us?

She only worked at one. I doubted it.

I’d won, but put us in even worse trouble.

How did I manage to make things worse by winning?

***

My parents didn’t understood me when I burst through the door shouting “The starship sent me a message!” and just kept repeating it.

Then I ran to the balcony to look outside, convinced that people would be gathering somewhere down there, ready storm the stairs with cameras.

But we were alone.

So I kept shouting about the starship.

“Kadie, child, slow you-self down,” my mother said. “I can hardly understand a word.”

I stopped hyperventilating, and leaned against a wall. Then I spazzed out again and ran for our suitcases. “We have to pack right now,” I said. “We have to get out of the hotel right now.”

That scared them, I realized.

“What is it? Did they find us?”

I forced myself to stop bouncing around. I was terrified about Just Rahim and his dad finding us. And I was freaking out in the best way possible about the medallion.

That! Which I hadn’t even shown them.

“It chose us,” I babbled, and held the box out in front of me. “Look!”

I stopped, ran to the curtains and pulled them shut, ran back to my parents. “Look!”

And then I opened it again.

The air in our room exploded in light, just like at the beach. The whirling galaxy filled the space between us all and the box began to speak again.

“Hello once more, Kadie Stephens,” the medallion said in its deep voice, recognizing that this wasn’t the first time it had been opened . “You and your family have been accepted aboard the All Tree, and can begin boarding in three weeks at Mitad El Mundo, in Ecuador. We look forward to meeting you.”

I quickly shut it.

Both my parents looked dazed. I remembered that feeling from just moments ago.

“That the thing in space?” my dad asked. “For real? It could be a prank?”

“Who would do that?” My mother said softly, sounding shocked. “Who would even know to do that?”

They were stunned. Amazed. Bewildered.

“I opened it on the beach,” I said softly, reaching for a suitcase. “In front of everyone.”

My dad looked down at the box, then back at me. “Everyone?”

“I didn’t know. They were taking pictures. I ran.”

And then they understand why I was scared.

But would my parents want to take the ride up to space? To leave friends and family. The island? I didn’t ask. Couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t want to hear the answer right now. I had weeks to figure that out.

Because I’d won!

I shook myself. Right now, we just needed to get out of here as fast as we could.

Then I could ask them. Then I could beg. Then I could figure out a way to get to Ecuador.

We had everything packed into these ratty old purple suitcases that Auntie Lynn had rescued from a room where they’d been left behind. We were ready to call her to help get us out of the hotel, maybe to a cousin’s house for a temporary night as we figured out what to do, when someone knocked the door.

For the first two days we enjoyed the luxurious beds and powerful, hot showers. Auntie Lynn snuck us into the hotel’s cavernous and gleaming stainless steel tabled back kitchens late at night to eat, and we snacked from vending machines during the day.

It was in the kitchens where Auntie Lynn, seated at a table with a mostly melted ice sculpture of a dolphin in a large crystal bowl of red punch, looked at me sideways. “I know we all angry, Kadie. But you should know, it wasn’t your fault. Sometimes, you parents tell you things the way they truly want them to be for you, and not the way they are.”

“I know,” I said glumly.

“And sometimes, is best to get away to fight some other day. Or think of it as retreating in a different direction.”

And that was all she would say about Just Rahim and me. From then on she kept calling what was going on ‘Our Situation.’

On the third day we had to move to a different room because a tourist was scheduled for our room. We shuffled ourselves off to a different empty suite. That’s when it really sunk in that I wouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed for very long. That, as comfortable as the room was, we had basically become homeless inside a luxury hotel by the beach.

My parents argued while holed up in the room together. Not loudly enough to get us in trouble from people in the other rooms, but in a sort of stressed out constant hissing at each other.

They couldn’t go to work. Rahim’s father might still track us down. And we were using up what little savings our family had on soda and chips during the day.

“How long can we keep this up?” my mother would ask. “How long?”

“Just let me think, Tiffi,” my dad would say, holding onto the rails of the balcony and looking out over the beach for an answer.

We couldn’t do this forever, I knew. It wasn’t a life. And St. Thomas was only fourteen or so miles long and a few miles wide. A hundred thousand people lived here.

Eventually we would get found. They were right to worry.

So what was going to happen?

Would Just Rahim’s father eventually cool off? Would they let it go?

What would he really do when he found us, anyway?

I’d never been sure exactly how dangerous he was. Was he really a dangerous drug dealer? It was almost worse, not really knowing for sure.

I wasn’t supposed to, but to keep myself occupied I would pull on a ball cap and a pair of sunglasses and wander the beach, kicking up sand and watching people.

The tourists always provided some entertainment. Families on vacation arguing over something ridiculous. Drunk men shouting or staggering. Sometimes they seemed to be working too hard at having fun.

I made friends with some of the hotel staff. David, the assistant manager who owed Auntie Lynn a big enough favor to look the other way, would buy me a soda and chat when he came out of his office. I avoided the hotel manager, though.

At the end of our first week at the hotel, when the atmosphere in our now third different room grew so tense I thought my mother was going to snap, I bugged out to the beach in my simple disguise.

For a long time I walked along the edge of the water, dancing my way back from it as the ocean surged and licked at my feet.

It took me a long time to notice that no one was swimming. It was the constant rings and dings of cellphones and texts that started out slow, but then exploded into a background noise all their own that made me realize something weird was happening.

I looked around and saw that all the tourists had their over-red faces turned down to stare at their devices. Several people clustered around a family with a tablet.

I walked over to an older man with silvered hair on a beach chair. He’d let his drink tip over into the sand, completely ignored.

“Why’s everyone on their phone?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

The man looked shocked, but also had a strange grin on his face as he held up his phone to show me what looked like a faint blur against a dark background.

“What is it?” I asked.

He leaned back and looked up at the cloudless, blue sky. “You remember where you are, right now, and what you were doing right before this very moment. Because you can never forget it.”

I was starting to get a bit freaked.

“They’re saying it’s a starship. An alien starship,” he said. “An honest-to-God starship.”

“How do they know?” I asked, not believing him. Not really. But still looking up into the sky with him, my day’s problems suddenly forgotten.

“Because it sent a message,” he said. “It’s coming to Earth, and it has passengers on board.”

“Like… tourists?” I asked incredulously.

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess so, kid.”

“My name’s Kadie,” I corrected him. Then regretted it. I didn’t need anyone knowing who I was.

“That’s not all it’s saying, though,” the man said. “In exchange for the chance to drop some of its passengers off, it’s offering a chance for people on Earth to get on board and join it.”

“Be a lucky millionaire who gets that,” I said.

“It’s free. An exchange.”

“Who?” I asked, now super curious. Those lucky people, I thought. To leave everything behind. To see whole new worlds. Whole new peoples. I’d always hoped to see more of the world.  To get off the island.  How lucky was someone who would get to get off the whole world. And leave all of a world’s problems behind.

“Anyone! That’s why everyone’s on their phones, sending messages. Anyone can apply. The information’s online…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, because I was off. Running across the hot sand as fast as I could.

I needed to find a computer.

Two weeks before I became an astronaut I had a lot of problems. And those problems all started with Just Rahim.

People always tell you to stand up for yourself. That’s what my dad, Damien, told me. “Don’t let no man shove you around, Kadie,” he said to me once, somberly. “Because then they think you always someone they can push around.”

Looking back, I believe there was bitterness in his voice. I think he’d been wishing he could push back at his job on the road crew. Because he’d always look vexed when he came home and sat in his armchair to watch TV and drank cheap beer.

My mom always said the same thing, though. “Don’t let them boys give you no trouble, hear?” That was the response when I was younger and complained about someone shoving us around and not letting us play basketball down at the court.

You would have thought I heard their voices talking to me when I turned the corner on a bright Saturday morning and found Just Rahim standing there with a cricket bat. But I didn’t. I didn’t hear anything. I just stared.

First off: who all has a cricket bat just lying around? St. Thomas is part of the Caribbean, but we’re also a part of the United States of frigging America. A territory, yes, but still a part. We drive on the left, sure, but the dollar’s green down here.

Just Rahim came from somewhere down island, and he wasn’t about to let you forget that. So he had that cricket bat.

We called him (behind his back, right?) Just Rahim because he never would tell us his first name. He was ‘just Rahim.’ I heard one of the old ladies on the street call him ‘Rahim Jr,’ though. His father supposedly ran a dog-fighting ring. And dealed drugs. And was mixed up with some gang or the other. All depended on who you talked to.

Either way, everyone knew to avoid Just Rahim. Because he was training hard to be just like his dad. And I’d had my head all up in the clouds, not paying attention to nothing, when I’d turned the corner and found him standing there with a grin just above his newly grown, curly chin-hair.

“Pass me you money and I won’t bust you up,” he said.

And just to make sure I understood, he poked me hard in the ribs with the tip of the bat.

Wasn’t the first time he’d done this. Avoiding Just Rahim had been a part of my routine for a long time, now. I knew ways to climb over barbed wire fences and hop yards to avoid the places he patrolled. I’d climbed over many walls, and knew most of the guard dogs in the neighborhood. I pretty much thought of those paths as the ‘other way home.’

“I don’t have no money,” I said. I worked a bit this summer helping paint some warehouses. A job my dad had gotten for me through a friend. But I had to give all the money I made over to the family, because things were tight.

Things were always tight.

I’d skipped lunch for a couple days to use the money Auntie Lynn gave me every day to get a book from the small bookstore down by the cruise ship docks and jewelry shops. Down where I was surrounded by the pale or sunburned tourists who pointed at my dreadlocks and acted like I was a part of the scenery.

I had been tearing home, thinking mainly about locking myself inside for a few hours to get through the book, which I’d spent hours choosing: poring over the opening chapters of each possible purchase before, reluctantly, deciding to gamble on this one.

And Just Rahim could care less.

“What you mean you got no money?”

“I ain’t got nothing.” I pulled my pockets out to show him. All I had was the book.

Just Rahim had the bat raised in the air between us, holding it lightly with one hand, and he was frowning.

As he looked at the book and realized why I had no money I knew what was going to come next, It was no secret I always buried my nose in pages, reading about wizards, or starships, or anything that let me escape from… people like Just Rahim.

Most of the rest of my family always took over the TV. If I wanted to control it all it was with a book and a room and some headphones for me. It was then I had whole universes to myself.

As Just Rahim shifted the bat, I realized in a rare moment of clarity, that all I had to do was reach out and pluck it away from him. His grip was loose because he was still mentally working through what he was going to do next.

Just Rahim, for one thing, wasn’t quick in the head.

So I dropped the book and grabbed the bat with two hands and yanked.

And to my everlasting surprise, and especially to Just Rahim’s, I pulled it free.

I was committed, now. I couldn’t take this back. If I did, the beating to come would be epic beyond anything I’d ever suffered at Just Rahim’s hands.

The only way was forward.

And forward was me screaming, “I don’t have no money, dammit,” and swinging the cricket bat like a baseball bat into the side of Just Rahim’s face.

He dropped. Just like that. Straight to the ground.

I threw the bat away and sprinted for home, terrified.

*****

Things back home exploded like when you toss a rock into a beehive. There were no secrets on the block. It was like the hot sun always burned them up and blew them back out into the wind with the heat and dust.

One of the old ladies on the porch of one of the bright yellow, concrete houses who saw the whole thing called ahead, and by the time I’d sprinted the half a mile down to our gate and shut it, my mother, Tiffany stood in the doorway. Her shoulders poked the top of the blue polo shirt as she crossed her arms.

She looked at me, horrified, trying to decide what to do, and then just gave up and leaned against the door. “What you done, child? What you done?” she kept saying as I pushed past her, panting.

I wanted to get into the cool dark of the house, where it was safe.

Because it wasn’t safe here out in the open. Just seeing the fear in her eyes told me that. She was more scared than I was.

My dad rushed home early and shoved his way into my room. His dreadlocks were tied back in a ponytail, but one of them slipped forward as he shook his head.

I knew some of my friends who got belted, and hard, when they got in trouble. But dad wasn’t the type. He was always tired. He worked as a painter during the day, a janitor at night, and then sometimes on the weekends he went down to Frenchtown to help the fishermen.

He was too tired, he told me once, to raise a hand.

He looked far, far more tired than I’d ever seen him.

“How you could do this?” he asked. “You know who that boy is? Do you know what his father can do to us?”

“I just…” I started to say.

“I always telling you the boy don’t think things through, you know,” Auntie Lynn interrupted, putting a hand on my dad’s shoulder as she came to the door. “Always rushing.”

I didn’t get in a word edgewise. Not as my cousins wandered in from wherever they’d been hanging out, as word spread even further by text, whispers, and gossip. As everyone in my family and extended family arrived to tell me what I’d done was stupid.

We all lived in Auntie Lynn’s house, packed in tight and battling our family feuds in the courtyard of a building that my great-grandparents had built themselves. Block by concrete block, or so Auntie Lynn said.

Most tourists, they come to St. Thomas and they go to a nice hotel and visit a nice beach. They take a boat trip to St. John. Usually they wander around downtown Charlotte Amalie and shop the jewelry stores.

But get a few blocks back from the waterfront, past the shops and restaurants, and you got into the crooks of the hills where we lived. Back where the yards had chicken coops and tough dogs, small gardens or brush, and we all crammed in as best we could.

Because it’s harder and harder to buy land on a small island. Harder still to afford it when everything is shipped in.

Harder still when jobs where in short supply, and tourism was faltering because there were few tourists.

We all jumped when my mom screamed. A burning book arced over our walls and landed in the concrete yard. Charred pages burst free when it hit. They scattered and swirled about in the air.

“My father on his way back,” Just Rahim shouted in an unsteady voice from the other side. “You go be dead, Kadie Stephens. Deader than dead.”

The flaming book sputtered out, a black lump of burnt out debris.

“We have to get you out of here,” Auntie Lynn said. They didn’t call her Auntie Fixit for nothing. She looked at my mom and dad. “All three of you have to leave right now. You don’t know what Rahim is capable of.”

I had ten minutes to pack a few clothes and books into a suitcase, and then one of Auntie Lynn’s friends came by in a beat up taxi to pick us up.

We fled the neighborhood. Auntie Lynn worked at a hotel on the Northside, and another friend of hers who owed her a big favor snuck the three of us into an unoccupied room.

That night I lay in a strangely luxurious bed with fluffy pillows and a soft top you half sank into. There was a sea breeze coming in through the patio windows, and the sound of happy people chatting away in a fancy restaurant down in the hotel’s courtyard.

“Why you don’t think?” my mom had asked at some point.

Laying down in bed, I remember replaying it all over in my head. I had been thinking. I knew that it was a lost fight. That Just Rahim probably was going to win, and take the bat from me. Or that I wouldn’t be able to pull it from him.

But I thought, at some point, someone, somewhere, had to pick that first stand. If they hadn’t, there wouldn’t be countries, or revolutions, or freedoms, right?

I’d been tired of the running. I just wanted, for once, for someone like Just Rahim to have to fight for what he was going to steal.

Because then maybe the next time he’d hesitate just a moment.

As my parents started to snore, I smiled a little. I couldn’t help it.

Just a little.