The Last Notebook of Leonardo by B.B. Wurge Page A

We were too busy looking out the window at the stars.
    We had left at midnight, past my usual bedtime, and I fell asleep about an hour later. When I woke up we were still driving. The moon looked bigger. Dad said I had slept for about five hours and it was morning now. We ate breakfast, and then Noma took out a mystery novel, settled in one corner of the seat with her feet up on the ice chest, and read by the light of the moon. I wished I had thought to
bring a book. I had nothing to do but look out the window, and although a spread of stars is an amazing thing, it was pretty much all the same. A long trip does get dull.
    â€œAre we there yet, Dad?” I said.
    â€œOh stop it,” he said. “Not for a while.”
    â€œWhat’s the moon like? Is it hot? Should I have brought my shorts?”
    â€œI suppose it’s hot in the sun and cold in the shade. But it’s nothing like you ever learned about in school. I can tell you that.”
    â€œI never learned anything about it in school,” I said.
    â€œThat’s not a surprise,” he said. “I don’t know what they teach you there. How to stick your brain in a blender. If it was up to me. . . .”
    I sensed another lecture on imagination coming at me, and I tried to head it off. “Tell me about the moon, Dad.”
    â€œ The moon?” he said. “There’s things the government doesn’t want anyone to know. I saw some of the moon files when I was working for Spork. About forty years ago, when NASA was trying to land people on the moon, the first thing they did was to send an unmanned lander. Not too many people know about that lander. It came down picture perfect, and sat on its eight feet, and started filming. But it didn’t
last more than two minutes. A tentacle whipped out from behind a rock, smacked into the camera lens, and Bam! Crack! Static. Nothing more. That was it. They never got any more photos from that lander. They never found it again.”
    â€œCome on, Dad,” I said. “There wasn’t any tentacle on the moon.”
    â€œHow do you know?” he said. “You never believe me, and then I turn out to be right. I’m telling you Jem, it was a tentacle.”
    â€œ What color was it?”
    â€œYou’re testing me,” Dad said. “The photos were black and white, so I don’t know what color it was. But we’d better be careful up there. We’d better be ready to take off quick, if we see anything we don’t understand. And we better not get too near any big rocks if we don’t know what’s hiding behind them.”
    â€œDad,” I said, “every animal I know of that has a tentacle lives in the ocean. So how many oceans are on the moon?”
    â€œClever,” Dad said. “But data trumps cleverness. I saw the film, and I saw the tentacle. I hope we don’t get smacked by that thing, but if we do, you’ll see it for yourself.”
    After lunch, Noma and I played hangman and tictac-toe on the back of the moon map. She beat me almost every time. She wanted to draw out a chessboard
and use little scraps of paper for the pieces, but I got the idea that she would beat me at that too, so I said I was tired, and took a nap. When I woke up, it was time for dinner and we handed out the cold chicken and raw potatoes.
    After dinner, Dad tied down the controls, which he said was Leonardo’s version of cruise control, and stretched out on the reclining chair. “Everybody get a good sleep,” he said. “ We should get there tomorrow morning.”
    When I opened my eyes, I panicked. We must have slept a long time without any regular daylight to wake us. Nobody had thought to set an alarm clock, and now the moon was gigantic, looming in front of us. “Dad!” I shouted. “Wake up! We’re gonna crash!”
    â€œHuh?” he said, sitting up suddenly. “I won’t! You can’t make me, Spork! I