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The nine Tom Corbett books appeared from 1952 to 1956. Like the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, they were written under a pen name by a variety of authors. For an adult reader, the plots are clunky and uneven, the prose is forgettable, and the characters are stereotypes. The Tom Corbett books never measured up to their much stronger progenitor, Robert Heinlein’s Space Cadet, but a ten-year-old doesn’t read like an adult. The young readers who discovered science fiction through Tom Corbett and grew to love it probably still wish they could join the Space Academy and become members of the Solar Guard.

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET

TOM’S NAME WAS HER CURSE. She started with Tomiko, but by the time she was four, everyone in her family called her Tom, and once that stuck, her grandfather made a joke: “Tom Corbett, eh? How’s the Space Academy? Are you going to be in the Solar Guard this year?” Or “Have they let you drive Polaris yet? How’s your buddies, Astro and Roger Manning doing?” He was relentless.

It was irritating until she turned ten, found out who this “Tom Corbett” person was, and then took her birthday money to the used bookstore where she found copies of Stand by for Mars and Treachery in Outer Space. From there, she discovered Tom Corbett videos on the Internet, Tom Corbett comics, and Tom Corbett View-Master discs, which meant that she had to buy a View-Master in the toy store. For the sixth grade Halloween party, she made her own Solar Guard uniform and wore it every day until Christmas.

Of course, the other kids started calling her “Space Cadet,” which they didn’t mean in a good way at all.

By the time she was a freshman in high school last year, “Space Cadet” was a label. She put the Tom Corbett books away. She took the “Space Academy” badge off her shirts, but it didn’t matter. The nickname stuck. Some of the kids called her SC, which rhymed with “Jesse” without the “J.” Some of the teachers too, who didn’t even know where the name came from, called her that, even though she carefully printed her full name, Tomiko Corbett, on every piece of homework. For most people, she was Tom, Tom Corbett: space cadet.

She had taken the Solar Guard medallions off her shirts, but she couldn’t take them out of her heart. Tom sat at her desk that faced her bedroom window. Her house topped a hill with open country on all sides. Her parents bought here when they thought a subdivision was going to spring up around them, but so far they were the only house. Outside, in the dark, with no trees or obstructing buildings, she had an unencumbered night view, straight east. Leo Minor nearly touched the horizon. The bright light by its mouth was Jupiter. She knew star names: Regulus, Algieba, Procyon, Pollux, and Alhena. She wondered what it would be like to be an astrogator, or to sit in the pilot’s seat on the control deck. She’d toggle the intercom. “All stations report,” she’d say. “All clear on the radar deck,” a voice would answer, and then another, “All clear on the power deck.”

She’d be in command, the control panels displayed in front of her, the power to take off to the stars underneath her hands. Tom looked at her own hands, resting on the keyboard at her desk. If only she could press the right buttons. Her bedroom window could be the control deck view panel. The stars would rush toward her. She would look up slightly, chin thrust forward, a picture of confidence and adventure for all who could see.

Tomika got up from her desk, cracked the bedroom door open. The hallway and living room were dark. Her parents had gone to bed. Good. Their room was on the other end of the house. They slept with their door shut and a fan going. When they were asleep, she could be as loud as she wanted. She shut the door, snapped off her lights, turned up the sound on the computer’s speakers, and then clicked the icon on the screen. The rumble started in the background very low, almost subliminal. Tom leaned back in her chair, looking out the window, trying not to see the drapes hanging on each side. She just wanted stars as the rumble sound grew and grew. It was rocket engine noise, building, and there were electronic sounds in the background. Doors irising open or closed maybe? Blasters? Emergency klaxons? And then the engines cut out, and were replaced by footsteps on metal decks. Distant orders being shouted out. The ping from ranging equipment.

Tom strained to hear, but the voices were always indistinct. Occasionally, she’d make out a word, “Asteroid,” “Orbit,” “Translunar,” but never an entire sentence. She’d set the sound clip to replay. The entire audio was almost ninety-minutes long. Most nights, she’d fall asleep with it playing before the engine noise started again, but tonight, it replayed five times. The sun rose directly in her window as she watched.

She turned the sound off. The rising sun filled the room with warmth. She thought, if I close my eyes now, I can get a half hour of sleep before Mom tells me to get ready for school.

At breakfast, Mom, a slight, slender woman with long black hair, and Dad, whose hair was brown and curly, talked about real-estate values. They’d been looking at houses on the north side of town that they could buy, refurbish cheaply, and then sell for a huge profit. Dad thumbed through the obituaries in the newspaper.

“Here’s one,” he said. “The guy was ninety-four. It says his family lives in Chicago.”

Mom nodded, a coffee cup in one hand and her tablet in the other. She swiped at her screen methodically. Tom wasn’t sure what Mom was looking at. She said, “We could give ’em a lowball offer. Out-of-towners won’t know the market, and they’d probably be glad to unload the house. I’ll drive by this morning and put a flyer in their mailbox.”

While Tom finished her cereal, her parents talked about discount carpets and how a cheap, new carpet in an old home could return the purchase price by one hundred and fifty percent. “Fresh paint and new carpet covers a multitude of sins,” said Dad.

They left together for work before Tom had to start her walk to the bus stop. She realized as she headed out the door that neither one had spoken a single word to her, but that was pretty normal.

At every stop, more elementary and junior high kids crowded onto the bus. Most high schoolers drove themselves or went with their friends. In high school, only losers took the bus, but Tom didn’t mind. She gave up her seat to two fourth-grade girls who liked to sit together, and then walked down the aisle looking for an empty place. The only spot was next to Jacob Rose, another sophomore, who everyone called “Jacob the Hut,” because he was huge, the biggest kid Tom had ever seen. If it weren’t for Jacob, Tom would be the best mathematician in the tenth grade, but it didn’t earn Jacob any friends. Jacob covered much of the seat. He scrunched next to the window to give Tom more room.

“Sorry,” said Jacob in his deep voice. He held a book on his stomach, his finger marking a spot.

“What ‘cha reading?”

“You’ll think it’s boring.”

Tom settled into the seat. She braced her knees on the chair in front of her. “Try me.”

Jacob shrugged. “Ok. It’s Atoms to Andromeda : Selected Lectures on Theoretical Physics, High-Energy Nuclear and Cosmic Ray Research, Plasma and Thermonuclear Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics and Electronic Computing.’”

When Jacob opened the book to continue reading, Tom could see pages filled with tiny print and math formulas. “Is there a graphic novel version?” she said.

Jacob glanced up, surprised, as if he’d already forgot she was there. The bus lurched into motion. Kids yelled back and forth. A ball of paper flew past them. It was a typical day. “Do you play Destination Ceres?” he asked.

Tom knew the game, a third-person PC shooter set on fantastical versions of Mars, Venus and Ceres. The science in it was terrible.

“Do you?” she said.

“No, not really. But I like to wander around in the game. The worlds are beautiful.” He looked at the kids on the bus. “I don’t think I belong here.”

Tom nodded. “I know just what you mean.”

When they got to the school, Tom watched Jacob walking deliberately down the middle of the sidewalk. Kids ran around him as if he were a moving island.

She thought he had a kind of dignity in his steady pace.

Tom dreaded English. Last year, in the junior high, she’d turned in a book report on Stand by for Mars, the first book in the Space Cadet series. The assignment had been, “Choose an influential book that you read in elementary school, and explain its impact on you.” Tom wrote how the book made her check out astronomy texts and encouraged her interest in rockets. Ms. Schneider, a second-year teacher, scheduled a private meeting with Tom after she turned it in.

“I’m concerned about your choice of reading. I don’t think a young, twenty-first century woman should be interested in this sort of book,” said Schneider to open their conversation. “It’s terribly sexist. You could select much more appropriate literature.”

Tom didn’t have a chance to reply.

“Look at this quote,” said Schneider. She had a faded copy marked with several sticky notes between the pages. “Here, Corbett and his friends, Astro and Roger Manning have gone to Crystal City. They are trying to book a room at the hotel, and Manning treats the clerk, who is a woman, of course, like a prize. He even says, ‘What’s the matter with beautiful girls? They’re official equipment, like a radar scanner. You can’t get along without them!’ What sort of universe is this? Women are always ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’ or they get whistled at. Where are the women who are cadets or commanders?”

Schneider snorted derisively. “Terrible. Here, I think you should read this.” She handed Tom a copy of Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists. “I think this has much better role models for you.”

Tom took the book. “Does it have rocket ships?”

“Phallic tripe,” muttered Schneider.

Tom was pretty sure that the comment wasn’t directed at her, but if Ms. Schneider didn’t think that Tom knew what “phallic” meant, then she was underestimating her.

Tom read the book. It wasn’t terrible, but the next book she read was The Rocket Robot, which was the third time for that title. She paid closer attention to Tom Corbett’s world. Schneider was right about the story being all about the men, but that wasn’t how Tom read it. In her mind, the characters weren’t about being boys or girls. They were about having adventures, and anyone could have those. She wanted to read about going to space, and if she had to do it with male pronouns, so be it. When she read, she boarded the ship. She gave the commands. She looked out the port to see the curve of a new planet.

Today Ms. Schneider gave the class a fill-in-the-blank quiz. The first sentence was, “If a doctor gives you advice, you should listen to what _____ says.” The second question was “If a kindergarten teacher is speaking, the class should pay attention to _____.”

Most of the class filled in the first blank with “he” and the second blank with “her,” which Schneider used to springboard into the unconscious sexist assumptions in the society. Tom’s answers were “the professional” and “the alien in the corner.” She didn’t share that with Schneider.

After school, Tom didn’t ride the bus. The land behind the school was undeveloped. It rose to a treeless, flat-topped hill, littered with nearly-white limestone on dark soil. Almost no vegetation. For the last month, Tom had been climbing the hill to work on her project. She dropped her backpack, picked up a pair of melon-sized stones, and then added them to the thirty-foot tall letters she had been forming. The perspective was wrong for her to get a proper look at what she was writing, but if her plans were right, from directly above, the message read “TAKE ME WITH YOU.”

Mom and Dad were at the kitchen table arguing about landscaping when Tom walked in the front door. Open Chinese takeout boxes surrounded their briefcases. Dad said, “Fewer plants and newer plants show better from the street. I say we rip out the hedges, lay down a nice, colored gravel, and plant a couple of roses. It cleans up the look, and the buyers will see possibilities.”

Mom shook her head. “Too expensive and too much work. We get a gardening service to tidy up the bushes, and the house says ‘I’m already beautiful’ to buyers. No one gets into a house so they can spend their weekends putting in plants. Not in that neighborhood.”

Tom put her backpack on the counter behind them, poured a glass of milk and grabbed a handful of cookies. “I’m home,” she said.

Dad said, “A little extra investment at the beginning pays off big later. Curb appeal is everything.”

“Lookiloos don’t sign contracts. They don’t even go inside the home. Mature landscaping is the right answer for this house.”

“I’m thinking of starting a terrorist cell,” said Tom. “We’ll call ourselves The High School Freedom Front. I might get a tattoo.”

Dad glanced her direction, nodded curtly, then turned to Mom. “Newness generates interest. Old bushes say worn out property. We’ve had this discussion before.”

“Yes, we have. When you come to your senses, I’ll be in the office faxing today’s documents to the bank.” Mom snapped her briefcase closed and stomped out of the kitchen.

Dad said, “Have you been home long?”

“Hours.”

“There’s some Moo Goo Gai Pan and rice in the fridge if you’d like some.”

She held up the cookies. “I’m good,” but he’d already turned away to study a thick sheaf of papers.

Back in her room, Tom opened her notebook that she’d titled “Ways to Get Off the Planet.” She’d labeled sections: Rocket Engines, Ramjets, Ground-based Laser/Microwave, Space Elevator, Project Orion (nuclear bombs), Alcubierre Drive (warp drive), Piggyback Jets, Rocket Sled Launch, High Altitude Blimp Launch, Verne Gun, Launch Loop, and Cavorite.

She’d also designed capsules using empty gas station storage tanks, train tanker cars, heavy culverts with end caps welded on, and a host of others. Based on her figuring, there was no practical way she could make a capsule capable of maintaining an atmosphere when there was a vacuum on the outside from wood, ceramic, plastic or concrete. Lately, she’d been collecting articles on 3D printers. If she had a large enough printer, she should be able to make a spaceship!

And, of course, nothing she’d put into her notebook could be built in the back yard.

She added the title of Jacob’s book to her “To be Read” list. It was too long to remember, but she found it online from just the first three words: Atoms to Andromeda.

Tom opened her webpage that she’d been building for the last year. It was basic HTML (she did the coding herself in a plain text program). The page’s title was SOLAR GUARD APPLICATION. Under that, she’d created what looked like a job application form. She modeled it on the college application forms they kept in the counselors’ office. In it, she’d entered all her grades since 3^rd grade (straight A), and included descriptions of what she’d learned in math and science. She had a section with the books she’d read, and her thoughts on them, several personal essays about what service in the Solar Guard would mean to her and why she should be chosen.

At the bottom, was an e-mail address that she’d set up just for the website. Although she’d never linked to the site anywhere, she received occasional e-mails. Some were fun, like “Is this for real? Can I join?” Some were mean. “Get a life,” or “This is stupid.” And some were creepy, like “Are you really a girl? Show me your boobies.”

But how else was she going to contact the Solar Guard? She’d sent Morse code messages out her window with a huge flashlight, and tried the same trick with a home-built laser. She’d taken apart an old DVD burner for the laser diode and followed instructions from the Internet. The beam was surprisingly powerful. It could burn a hole in dark paper. The most expensive part of the project were the safety goggles. She’d also sent signals through a walkie-talkie she’d found in the garage, which only managed to piss off a nearby construction crew who were using the same wave length, and then she’d built her own radio transmitter and receiver. She picked up static, distant stations in foreign languages, police and fire calls, and at certain wavelengths, the beeps, pings and pulses from satellites. She liked those best.

She scrolled to her web page e-mail. Three new messages. One read, “I thought this site was about solar panels. LOL.” The second one said, “I’d rather be an officer on the Enterprise in the United Federation of Planets.” And the third said, “We are looking for a recruit. Watch the skies.”

If only, she thought. But she stayed up until the horizon lightened in the east, watching the skies.

At breakfast, Mom said, “Your dad and I will be attending a week-long realtors convention in Atlanta, starting this afternoon. I’ve left $40 on the mantle, when you need to buy anything, and you can call us if there’s a problem. If we don’t answer, it’s because we’re listening to one of the presentations, so leave a message.”

Dad was coming down the stairs with two huge suitcases when Tom left through the front door.

She rode the bus with her eyes closed, next to a third grader with a SpongeBob Square Pants lunch box. Kids shouting blended into a white noise background. The swaying and bumps lulled her into near sleep. She wasn’t dreaming, but her imagination ran free. She stood before an entrance committee for the Solar Patrol, four officers with serious expressions. They argued among themselves.The one on the far left said, “Why take an Earthling, especially an American one? They’ve abandoned their manned space program. A few robot probes don’t show a national commitment. We should be looking at Chinese recruits.”

“Just because the country doesn’t seem space-bound doesn’t mean that we can’t find a qualified candidate among them. Look at what this one has accomplished.”

The first officer to speak said, “That’s true. She has shown both aptitude and desire.”

“We should test her further,” said the officer on the other end.

“Yes, let’s.”

Something in the tenor of the background noise changed, and Tom realized she was still riding to school. Reluctantly, she watched the admissions committee fade away, and she was back in the bus, surrounded by noise.

She opened her eyes. A dozen kids sitting in front of her were looking over the backs of their seats. Tom thought at first they were looking at her, but a deep voice shouting incoherently behind her made her look back too.

Four boys were out of their seats, two in the aisle, two kneeling on a seat so they faced the bench behind them. Their open hands rose and fell, and the boys were laughing. Jacob cringed under their blows, his arms up, covering his face.

“Take it!” yelled one of the boys as his hand came down on the top of Jacob’s unprotected head.

Smack. Smack. Smack. It was the laughing that infuriated Tom most. They weren’t just hurting Jacob, they were mocking him. Some kids in the back of the bus chanted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” but no one tried to stop the beating.

Tom looked to her right. The third grade girl was watching like everyone else. Tom grabbed her metal SpongeBob Square Pants lunchbox. It had a nice heft to it. Probably a thermos of milk inside beside a sandwich.

She slung it overhand at the nearest boy.

It was a lucky shot, but the results were spectacular. The box whacked solidly into the back of the head of one of the kneeling boys, popping open in an explosion of potato chips. At the same time, the bus suddenly slowed, throwing everyone forward.

“Hey!” yelled the bus driver, “what is going on back there? You kids get into your seats.”

Three of the boys, still laughing, sat in nearby benches. One said, “That was a real bitch slapping. Did you video it?”

“No, doofus. How am I going to shoot it if I’m bitch slapping too?”

“Did you call me a doofus? A doofus? How old are you?” and they both laughed even louder.

The boy Tom had hit wasn’t laughing. He had laced his fingers together over the back of his head, while eyeing the front of the bus balefully. Tom made sure not to catch his gaze. She was sure if he saw her grinning, he’d know that she’d thrown it.

Jacob sat with his head down. He rubbed a coat sleeve under his eyes. Tom picked up her books and sat next to him.

“Go away,” he said.

Tom didn’t move. “Are you all right?”

“Go away.”

“No.”

The bus made the turn toward the school after picking up the last kids. They were a mile from the building.

“They’re just stupid bastards, you know,” said Tom.

The boy sitting in front of them who’d been hit with the lunchbox, said to no one in particular, “I think I have a concussion or an infarction.”

Someone nearby said, “Infarction isn’t even a word. You’re brain scrambled.”

Jacob looked up, his cheeks bright red. At least a couple of the slaps had got through his arms. “We’re surrounded by idiots.”

“I’ll grant you that,” said Tom.

“And what kind of idiot lets idiots beat him up?” Jacob said bitterly.

“The kind of idiot who understands abstract algebra and differential equations in the 10^th grade. You’ll be buying and selling the likes of them before you’re twenty-five. They’re going to be sweeping the hallway outside your office so they can earn enough money to buy the inventions you’re going to come up with.”

Tom looked at him, his eyes bloodshot, his cheeks wet. “If I live that long. This is a bad place. I don’t belong.” He turned to the window and didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. Tom wanted to do something, but even putting her hand on his shoulder felt patronizing. He was right. What kind of world did she live in where people could be so . . . horrible? If she could get away, she would, to a place where nobility was recognized, where the brave succeeded, and medals were earned. She needed to be in the Space Academy. She thought for a moment that she didn’t have to go to school. Her parents were gone. She could walk home. For the rest of the day, she could reread the Tom Corbett books, do research on space flight, think about Mars and Venus and the places in deep space that had yet to be discovered. She could stay home all week if she wanted. The temptation was intense.

But when they got to the school, Tom shuffled down the aisle with the handful of high schoolers. She was taller than most.

As Tom stepped through the door, the third grader she’d been sitting beside exclaimed, “Someone stole my lunch!”

That night, Tom opened her bedroom window, turned her rocket noise clip as loud as the speakers could go without distortion. The night was particularly warm and clear, so clouds didn’t reflect city lights. Every star shone like a diamond point. She pushed the desk out of the way so she could sit right at the window and see the most sky. But Tom hadn’t slept much the last two nights, so she put her head back against her chair, closed her eyes, and let the ship sounds sweep over her. A subsonic rumble filled the background. She imagined the mighty engines throwing them forward, ever faster through space.

A life on a ship is one filled with purpose. Everyone has a job, and the destination is clear. Not like her life where she didn’t know where she was going, where she didn’t know her job. On a ship in the Solar Patrol, everyone belonged to the team. Each had a responsibility and purpose. She longed for clarity, for a mission.

Footsteps went by her on a metal corridor floor. A conversation rose and fell. Metal locks clinked open. Pneumatic pistons released pressure. Pumps engaged. She loved being on the ship. Gradually, she slipped into a dreamlike state. The Solar Guard committee sat before her again. “Tomika,” said the first officer, “after much discussion, we have approved your application for admission into Space Academy. We can only take one from your planet, and you have been chosen.”

Tom tried to contain her joy, but a smile spread through her anyway. “I’ll do my best,” she said.

The second officer said, “We know that. Your passion, your strength in math and science, and your drive to succeed won us over. We don’t think you belong here. There’s a place for you, if you earn it, among the stars.”

She nearly leapt from her seat—she pictured herself throwing a handful of clothes in a bag, writing her parents a quick note, and then leaving, really leaving—but a thought stopped her. “You can only take one?”

“We don’t have to take even that,” said the first officer. “Sadly there are many years when we don’t find a suitable candidate at all.”

Tom swallowed hard. “I . . . shouldn’t be the one, then. I know a better person. He’s way stronger in math. A genius I think. His name is Jacob Rose. You should take him.”

The first officer frowned, turned to the second one. The other two leaned in to the discussion. They murmured for several minutes.

The second officer addressed her. “We have Jacob Rose on our short list. His qualifications are known to us. You would give up your place and have him attend the academy instead? We won’t offer this opportunity again.”

She could see the stars glittering like a million promises behind them. What would it be like to be in the academy, studying with purpose, a future filled with service and adventure in front of her? What would it be like to climb the stairs to her own starship for the first time? “Up ship,” she’d bark into the intercom. Deep in the ship’s bowels, her power deck officer would reply, “Aye, aye,” and the metal around her would come alive, quivering with the power that would send them out and out.

Tom felt the control buttons beneath her fingers. She smelled ship air. Everything, all of it, so real and only a breath away.

“Yes, you should take Jacob. He is better qualified.”

The first officer shrugged with resignation. “We will consider your suggestion.”

The committee faded, and when Tom opened her eyes, the rising sun sat on the horizon through her open window. She shivered in the morning breeze, and she realized her cheeks were wet.

She moved through her Tuesday listlessly. It was only a dream, she thought, but loss still weighed on her, like a real opportunity had passed. On Wednesday, a note from administration called her from her first hour class. She sat outside the vice principal’s office with three other students. One by one they were called in. Tom went last. A stranger in a business suit and tie sat next to the vice principal. “This is Detective Tasker. He has some questions for you . . .” he glanced at a list on his desk, “Tomika.”

The detective, a young man with a skinny, black moustache, asked her about Jacob. When did she see him last? Did he seem depressed? Had he said anything odd to her lately?

She told him about the slapping incident on the bus Monday. She didn’t tell him about the lunchbox. The detective frowned as he wrote the information down. “This doesn’t sound good,” he said.

The vice principal looked concerned. “You should have reported this to us immediately, young lady. You know we have zero tolerance for bullying. We have other students to interview, but I will talk to you about your responsibility when the current situation blows over.”

“What’s the current situation?” asked Tom.

“Oh . . . I thought you knew. Jacob Rose is missing. He’s been gone since sometime Monday night.”

The detective gave her a card. “Call me if he contacts you, or you think of anything that might help us find him.”

Some kids talked about Jacob during the day, but his absence didn’t seem to affect anyone else. Tom, though, felt lighter. The dullness from yesterday faded some. She put her hand up in class more often. She chatted with the kids around her. Where was Jacob? The vice-principal seemed to think that he had run away, or maybe hurt himself, but Tom dared to hope differently. Jacob had said, “I don’t think I belong here.”

She imagined Jacob waking in the middle of the night. “We have an opportunity for you,” the first officer might say. And Jacob, as smart as he was, would go with them. They would take him into space because he was the best candidate.

The thought made her happy. If it was true, that is, if Jacob was gone and safe.

That night, she sat at her window again, her room silent. The stars flickered just as bright, but they seemed impossibly remote now. She thought about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, the fantasies of her childhood, and she knew that Tom Corbett and the Space Cadets would fade into her past too. For now, the thought that Jacob had joined the impossible Solar Guard buoyed her, but what if it was true? She’d never know. If it was true, she’d given away her one chance.

Maybe she would sell real-estate, like her parents. She flinched just thinking about it.

Still, for the moment, the stars were beautiful. The impossibly remote night sky spread out like myths made real, a visible reminder of possibility. No world could remain mundane when every night the universe could unfold like this before her.

And high in the sky above the Pleiades, a star unhooked itself from the background. She thought at first that it might be a satellite, but it grew brighter and brighter, until it was no longer a star. It was a flame descending, and then she could hear it like a hum at first, but soon a roaring that shook the house and vibrated in her chest.

The ship landed, a needle balanced on end. A door opened in its side. A ramp extended from it to the ground. A tall figure emerged. Illuminated from the light within the ship, Tom recognized the first officer’s uniform, and soon the officer stood outside her window. “Are you coming?” the officer asked.

“You said you could only take one. Didn’t Jacob go with you?”

Standing on the lawn, only a few feet from her, the officer nodded. “The committee talked about you, Tomika. We decided that a candidate who would sacrifice her dream to save someone else is exactly the kind of person the Solar Guard should recruit.”

“Yes, of course.” Tomika could hardly breathe.

A meteor streaked across the blackness. Tomika saw it as she ran toward the ship. The light left a trail that glowed like a sign, an arrow, like a long invitation. She dashed up the ramp, glad beyond hope, her heart throbbing like a rocket engine’s pulse.

Inspiration comes from so many sources. A bit of overheard dialogue in a cafe, a poorly recalled memory of an old movie, or the fading images of a dream. Inspiration comes from anywhere. Of all the sources of inspiration, though, the easiest to access is autobiography. Some people call autobiography the low-hanging fruit of inspiration. That doesn’t make it easy to write from, though. Unless the writer is writing autobiography directly, the source material will be transformed and repurposed. Somehow it has to take on its own sense beyond simple reminiscence. A story might start with the writer fondly thinking about a series of books he read as a child, but by the end a very different child climbs aboard a spaceship, her hopes come true.

Google “ceramic lawn fairies.” Are you back? Isn’t that a strange and wonderful world for people who want their gardens to be more whimsical than prosaic? One of humanity’s great joys is that people can pursue their obsessions. One or our greatest challenges is when our obsessions conflict with someone else’s.

THE LAWN FAIRY WAR

GRACE LILY WHITE PARTED THE CURTAIN to peer through her kitchen window into Ashley Tombley’s yard. She squinted. Are those gargoyles? Yes, they are! It was bad enough that Ashley moved in, pulled up the grass, replaced it with black and gray gravel, and then tore down the nice, white picket fence so that she could erect a black, cast iron one, but now, gargoyles?

When Ashley repainted the house, Grace said nothing, although the house didn’t need new paint. The Dearborns had freshened the property when they decided to sell. It had been a beautiful robin-egg blue with slightly darker trim, but Ashley painted it a stark, yellowed white with black trim. It looked like a daguerreotype of the house that used to stand there. Cast-iron furniture appeared on the porch. Two cast-iron benches faced each other in the black-graveled back yard. Cast iron meant a lot to Ashley, Grace decided.

No plants in Ashley’s yard, just gravel, boulders and twisted hunks of driftwood. It looked like a nuclear wasteland as far as Grace was concerned.

Grace loved, collected, and displayed lawn fairies. She also sought ceramic gnomes, leprechauns, elves, fairy bridges, fairy doors, and the occasional mobile if fairies dangled from it. Starting in February, when the snow cleared, she bundled out to her yard, digging, scraping, and rearranging the landscaping. By early spring, she planted seeds and bulbs, spread the new groundcover, and waited for when it was warm enough to relax in a lawn chair with a book, surrounded by her collection.

Grace opened a lawn ornament catalog on her kitchen table. She’d dog-eared the pages with new figurines, but she couldn’t stop herself from returning her attention to Ashley’s yard. It was lurid, desolate and terrible.

During the winter, she longed for summer smells, a good book’s heft in her hand, the sun’s caress on her shoulders, and the company of her lawn friends, peeking from under the lilacs, hidden among the daffodils, and frolicking in the periwinkle. Even now, she saw the fairy jamboree she’d arranged near the fence. Fairies danced through the Snow-in-Summer. A tiny tea party convened around a table in the purple Sedum.

For years, she added to the collection, never minding that the neighbors thought her a little batty. Once she overheard Beatrice Angelo talking to Wanda Lewis in the supermarket after Grace passed: “It could be worse; she could keep cats,” said Beatrice. Of course, Grace would never keep cats, nasty things that dug into the sandy areas in her yard, hunting the little winged creatures who came to her fairyland bird bath.

The talk didn’t bother her. What bothered her were little kids who’d sometimes steal her figurines, and the occasional hailstorm that broke them.

I’m fifty years old, Grace thought. I deserve to be happy.

She put on a shawl, went out her front door, down the rainbow-speckled steppingstones that lead to her fairy-green with yellow shooting stars mailbox, and down the sidewalk to Ashley’s front gate. She paused as she unlatched the cold metal clasp. Ashley had added a pair of stone wolves just inside the gate. They stood hip-high, made of dark granite, posed viciously with snarling expressions and shiny, black teeth.

She’d never been inside the gate since Ashley moved in. Now she saw an iron snake coiled in a waist-high rock’s shadow. Against the house leaned a very convincing tombstone. In front of it, a pewter hand, buried at the wrist, reached out as if a corpse was trying to claw from the grave. Figures hid everywhere behind the boulders, invisible from the street: scorpions, spiders, a weird half-bear half-man the size of a puppy, trolls, and by the porch, a pair of pale stone lions. Ashley had even painted the sidewalk black. Grace pulled her shawl a little tighter, mounted stairs to the door, grimaced, and then seized the skull knocker.

Ashley answered, cigarette dangling from her black lipstick painted lips. She was taller than Grace, the same age, broader in the shoulders, henna-red hair that hung to the middle of her back. Her maroon Victorian riding jacket sported dull silver buttons, but ordinary blue jeans and white sneakers spoiled the effect.

“You have gargoyles in your back yard,” said Grace, primly, realizing that she had nothing else to say beyond that.

Ashley flicked her cigarette into a bucket by the door. “Do you like them?”

Grace couldn’t tell if the woman was being sarcastic.

“They’re facing my kitchen.” She could picture their stone eyes now, contemplating her house. “They’re inappropriate for the neighborhood.”

Ashley laughed. “Your yard looks like a unicorn threw up on it. Who is inappropriate?”

Grace suddenly felt ridiculous. The conversation had turned improper and confrontational. “Could you display them so I won’t see them? I like the view out my kitchen window.”

“They’re seventeenth-century stonework. Genuine articles off Irish Catholic monasteries. They’re art. Get used to them. Have you heard of a gargoyle garden? I’m making one.”

Grace swallowed weakly. “More gargoyles?”

Ashley nodded. “It’s taken me twenty-five years to afford my own house. It’s going to look the way I like.”

*

“I’m sorry, Ms. White,” said City Planner Filcher. “The area you live in is not covered by restrictive covenants. Ms. Tombley’s obligations as a homeowner are to keep her yard clear of weeds and the house in good repair. She’s not running a business out of the home is she?”

Standing in the kitchen, Grace gripped the phone tight to her ear. Ashley, in her back yard, unpacked a set of three, dishwasher-sized boxes. Two young men helped her cut the cardboard away. Their truck sat in the alley at Ashley’s back gate. “No! I told you that she’s putting repellent statuary in her yard. Did you get that she’s using black landscaping stone? It looks like the House of Usher over there.”

“Let me see what else is a possibility.” Grace heard paper shuffling. “Is she noisy between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., or are there large groups of people coming and going from the property?”

“No.” The cardboard had come off the first box, but bubble wrap and strapping tape hid the contents. Ashley gestured to the corner next to Grace’s yard. The two men levered the wrapped mystery onto a dolly.

“Are there noxious odors, trash fires, automobiles in disrepair, abandoned appliances, piles of used tires, industrial equipment or barrels of toxic chemicals?”

“No, of course not. I told you the problem.”

“I’m just reading from the city standards for home owners, ma’am.”

“Come out here and look!” said Grace desperately. “Or I can send you pictures.”

“Wait a minute,” said the city planner. “Are you Grace Lily White?”

“Yes, why?”

Papers rustled. Faintly, a computer keyboard’s clackety clack came through. “You live in the fairy house, don’t you? I thought your address was familiar. You’re in the system. Theft and vandalism complaints. Oh, and the ‘she’s the mistress of darkness’ call from last year.”

Grace felt herself blushing. “That was a misunderstanding. Selma Wall is a religious nut. She said my yard ornaments were idolatrous and not right for a Christian community. They’re fairies, not the devil!”

“I believe the city backed you up on that issue. Am I right?”

The memory stung to think about. In Ashley’s yard the workman peeled the bubble wrap in a long strip off the delivery, revealing a black-stone winged figure crouched on a pedestal. Under Ashley’s direction, the men turned the heavy piece so that it looked right into her window.

Grace stepped back, as if it could see her. “I have another option,” she said, and ended the call.

*

Grace knew Selma Wall from grade school. They’d both lived in the neighborhood their entire lives, but never been friends. In elementary school, Selma carried a Bible everywhere she quoted from with a particularly grating precision. Then, in high school, she went through a brief slutty period, marked mostly by sleeping with each of the three boys Grace had a crush on. She returned to the Bible years later when her marriage fell apart. Grace wouldn’t have any contact with her at all except that Selma put in the complaint with the city about Grace’s yard.

They had sat on opposite sides of a conference table in the mayor’s office. The mayor, a retired telephone executive who ran for office on a can’t-we-just-get-along platform, mediated.

“Miss Wall. Could you explain your objections to Miss White’s decorating choices?”

If Grace thought that the misunderstanding could be settled amicably, Selma’s opening put that hope to rest.

Selma put a manila folder filled with papers on the table. “I’ve been investigating. Most people think of Walt Disney and Tinkerbell when they picture fairies, but it’s not well known that faeries,” (she spelled it out) “or the ‘fae’ as some practitioners refer to them, are minions of the devil. This woman’s display is an affront to our community’s Christian values.”

Two weeks later, after four more increasingly acrimonious meetings, where Selma accused Grace of witchcraft, and Grace called Selma a “sanctimonious twit,” the mayor dismissed the complaint on religious freedom principles.

Grace said to him later, “But I don’t worship fairies. This isn’t religion. They’re not real. I just like them. They’re pretty.”

The mayor said, “I know, but she can’t see it any other way. Take your victory and run.”

*

Selma lived in a tidy bungalow tucked behind a much larger house that faced the street. Grace walked up Selma’s gravel driveway, staying as far away from a huge dog that followed her on the other side of the big house’s fence. It didn’t bark, but Grace had never heard more threatening breathing in her life.

If Selma thought Grace’s yard was bad, what would she make of Ashley’s? Certainly the two of them had an angry history, but she hoped to convince Selma that the enemy of her enemy was her friend. Grace imagined Selma galvanizing her church behind her. Selma wouldn’t make the mistake of going to the city this time. She’d organize protest rallies in front of Ashley’s house, because, after all, fairies were innocent, while gargoyles were clearly demonic. She wondered what Selma would make of Ashley’s black lipstick.

Smiling, Grace knocked on Selma’s door.

A wave of incense washed over her when Selma greeted her. She wore a long, orange robe with gold tassels hanging from the hems and a loose yellow sash across her chest. Selma faced her hands palm to palm, fingers up, and bowed slightly as a welcome.

“Selma?” said Grace. The last time she’d seen her, Selma dressed like an Amish matriarch.

They shared tea. The incense burned so thickly that Grace’s eyes watered. Grace knew long before Selma announced somewhat redundantly, “I’ve become a Buddhist,” that she wasn’t going to find an ally here in her battle with Ashley.

When Grace left, Selma said, “Namaste.”

“Whatever,” said Grace.

*

Late that night, a spring wind came out of the north. The weather station predicted a freeze, so Grace covered her roses and the more delicate flowers. She apologized to the fairy figures that she covered also. “I know you like the outdoors,” she said, “but the plants need protection.”

Wind whistled through her old home’s eaves, and the oak tree in back that she’d been meaning to prune brushed the siding with creepy scratching and thumping. She pulled a quilted throw off the couch to wrap herself, sat in her favorite chair with a new book, and read by the light of her Tiffany lamp. On the table beside her sat a warmed scone under a napkin and a small glass of wine.

The book had come in the mail the day before, Reflections of the Cottingley Fairies: Frances Griffiths - in Her Own Words: With Additional Material by Her Daughter Christine. The Cottingley fairies had been a sensation around 1920. Two sisters claimed to have photographed fairies in their garden. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes books, became very interested and championed their experiences.

Grace ran her fingers over the black and white photographs of the two young girls who appeared to be within inches of the delicate creatures, but even to her uncritical eye, the pictures screamed fake. How could anyone have thought them genuine? Decades later, the girls admitted the images were false, but still maintained they’d seen fairies in their garden.

Grace sighed. She didn’t believe that fairies were real, but she liked the idea that she lived in a world where she could imagine them.

Still, she did her own fairy photography. A digital camera and digital editing created convincingly interesting pictures. She’d covered the walls in her library with them, and now, by the Tiffany lamp’s light, they looked over her benignly.

Something whapped hard against the side of the house, rattling the photographs. Grace jumped, straining her ears. The wind had picked up, but she didn’t believe it could carry anything large enough to cause what she’d heard. It was if someone had smacked her siding with a shovel.

She grabbed a flashlight and a coat, slipped the deadbolt on the back door, then cracked it open. A cold breeze pushed in. She shut the door behind her. From the back stoop, the yard became a dark symphony of movement, illuminated only by a streetlight through the wind tossed tree. Shadows danced, branches creaked, and the fairy mobiles clattered like skeleton teeth.

Her flashlight cut through the night. Torn leaves and dust dashed through the beam, peppering her face. She swept the light to her left and right, but she didn’t see anything that would account for the noise. Holding her coat tight around her neck, Grace moved to the corner next to the driveway away from Ashley’s house. She didn’t like the idea of looking at the gargoyles in the middle of the night quite yet. But nothing seemed out of place there either. Among the tossing flowers, her fairies and gnomes seemed content. The wind had pushed over one of the larger pieces. It could wait for the wind to settle down before she would put it upright.

A shape moved just beyond the light. A dog? Grace scanned her neighbor’s bushes. Other than the branches pitching left and right, nothing. Occasionally she’d seen a fox in the yards. Maybe that was the movement.

The front of the house was clear too. Her glider with canopy strained against the wind. The canvas awning snapped sharply, but she’d anchored the chair solidly against the possibility of wind (or thieves). It hadn’t made the noise either.

With dread, she turned the corner toward Ashley’s house. She directed the light at Ashley’s yard. The new gargoyle, the huge one who’d been staring at her kitchen window, was gone. Had the wind pushed it over? She couldn’t imagine the wind had been that strong, although now it plucked at her coat and blew hair across her face. A glittering in the flower bed before her caught the flashlight’s beam. She had arranged a tableau of wood nymphs beside a two-foot tall fairy castle in the center of the bed. Grace’s breath froze in her throat. A castle parapet hung loose, dangling from the ribbons that decorated the building. Below the drawbridge, fairy wing fragments and sparkling, ceramic remnants were all that remained of her display. At her feet, a delicate leg and a whole wing, like the remains of a tiny massacre, stood out in a scattering of unidentifiable ceramic shards. No wind could have done this. Grace swept the flashlight down her garden, revealing unbroken fairies, but not where she’d placed them, a busted gnome, and a fairy mobile, jangling crazily. She picked up a whole fairy, a delicate beauty in lavenders and pink, as long as her hand. It dropped into her pocket.

A torrent whirled around her filled with twigs and sand. She shielded her face against it and turned her back.

The light revealed a dent in her siding. On the ground next to the house, black marble pieces mixed among her white stones. Most were no bigger than jagged, ugly marbles, but one piece, as large as a softball stood out. With her foot, she rolled it toward her. The pointed ears and leering mouth revealed themselves. It was from the gargoyle Ashley had installed earlier in the day.

The wind wasn’t even blowing from Ashley’s direction.

A mass swept by her head, tugged at her shoulder. She jerked the flash up, but whatever it was vanished. From the bed of Virginia Bluebells, though, a faint globe of light rose, and from the geraniums, another. Dust swirled, stinging her eyes, but she could have sworn that within the light’s auras, fairy wings fluttered, steady in the wind. More appeared out of the black-eyed Susans and the golden rod until a dozen lights floated above her head, like an umbrella or shield. Were they protecting her?

In the storm’s roar, something howled. Panicked, Grace pawed through the lenten rose and coneflowers for unbroken figurines. She couldn’t leave them outside, but the howl called again, and two of the globes winked out. A shadow against the roiling clouds swept above.

Her pockets full of fairies, and others cradled in her arms, Grace closed her back door against the wind and the unnerving noise. She gasped heavily.

Carefully, she put the fairies on a shelf, only a handful of her collection, and it wasn’t until she took her coat off that she discovered a long cut in the shoulder, like a razor or a talon, and a corresponding rent in her blouse. Her skin was untouched.

*

Grace stood at the gate, waiting for the owner of Chōzō Gardens and Lawn Art to open. A tree limb had come down across the street, blocking the sidewalk. A city crew with chainsaws and a wood chipper closed a lane of traffic.

“Ah, Miss White. Glad to see you again,” said Eiji Kagome. He held a large bundle of keys in one had, and a coffee in the other. “Your regular business pays my girl’s tuition.”

“No time for chit chat,” said Grace. “I’m on a mission.” She pushed by Eiji as he opened the gate and headed for statuary at the back of the lot.

*

Ashley rested her forearms on her cast iron fence. “Quite a storm last night.”

Grace surveyed her yard. Besides the shredded flowers and several small oak limbs, the damage wasn’t terrible, as long as she ignored destroyed figurines. Dozens more had shattered. Some were ones she’d owned for years and had sentimental value. She moved with determination, picking up trash and dropping it into a heavy garbage bag.

“I see you lost a gargoyle.” Grace tried to keep calm. She had thought about going into Ashley’s yard at dawn with a hammer, smash for ten minutes, and her losses would be avenged, but she ate a breakfast of toast and oatmeal instead while waiting for Chōzō Gardens to open. Did Ashley know what happened last night? Was she responsible?

“Yeah, darnedest thing. They must have installed it poorly for wind to knock it off the pedestal.”

Grace didn’t think Ashley knew. She bent and straightened, bent and straightened. It would take the rest of the afternoon to get the yard where she wanted it.

A delivery truck parked in front of Grace’s house. She smiled, took off her work gloves, and went to meet it.

“I’d like them at the corners,” she said. The college-aged workman with a thick neck and impressive biceps, wearing a T-shirt that said, old gardners never die. they just throw in the trowel, grunted as he hefted a box onto a dolly.

“Back yard too?”

“I’ve cleared spots for them.”

A half hour later, the last box had been removed and the statues leveled. Ashley watched through the process.

“Dragons?” Ashley said. “Not really your motif.”

Grace wiped down the jade-colored beauty that faced Ashley’s yard. The wings, partially extended, reached three-feet across, and the long head tilted slightly to the side, as if studying them. Each well-muscled, powerful creature looked poised to leap or fly. Strong faces. Unflinching eyes. Razor sharp claws and teeth.

“I think of them as heavy artillery,” said Grace. The smallest dragon was half again as large as the remaining gargoyles in Ashley’s yard. Much more imposing than Ashley’s wolves. Dragons topped the mythological food chain, Grace thought. Nothing stronger. Nothing more intimidating, and nothing more territorial.

On the kitchen table, she spread her catalogs. The broken fairies could never be replaced. She mourned, but new ones could appear. Grace would grow to love them too. She imagined the tiny cottages nestled in the Marigolds, the fairy rings among the sunflowers, under the dragons’ watchful gaze.

They’d dance, the fairies would, maybe only when the wind blew hard, but now that Grace knew, she’d come out at night with her camera. Maybe if she waited all night, perfectly still, full of the purest thoughts, they would dance for her like they had at Cottingley. Last night they protected her, and now she protected them. She’d told the mayor that she didn’t believe fairies were real, just as she’d told herself that they were only pretty figurines.

What a relief to know she was wrong.

One way to look at how stories are structured is to focus on conflict. If you think of conflict in the terms your high school teacher presented it, though, you think that conflicts are identifiable into broad categories, like man vs. man, or man vs nature, etc. For writers, a better way to think of conflict is that a conflict has three parts: someone wants something, something stands in the way, and something of value is at stake. A fun way to build a story is to make what one character wants to be what stands in the way of what the other character wants. Once that structure is set up, just write and let the sparks (or fairy wings) fly.

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Framed