Jacob pulled the postcard out of his trash can and looked it over for the thousandth time. It was a painting of a cactus with snow-capped mountains in the background with the caption “Howdy y’all people, from Dakota, Arizona!” There was something off about the picture, and when Jacob had searched the Internet for “Dakota, Arizona,” he couldn’t find anything that matched. There was no such thing as a town called Dakota in Arizona.

He turned over the postcard and looked again at the inscription.

Dear Jacob,

Will pick you up for lunch at High Noon on April 23. Important things to discuss. I’m very proud of you. I love you.

Dad

The stamp was for seven dollars, which Jacob would have thought was mysterious except that one of his memories of his dad was that he never seemed to know what anything cost.

He walked over to the shelf above his bed where he kept his grandfather’s pipe, the one he had found in a junk shop on Planet Paisley. It was proof that his dad might be in outer space, that perhaps he was traveling around the universe losing heirlooms on strange planets. He set the postcard carefully alongside the pipe.

Jacob jumped when his cell phone beeped. He had a text from Sarah: Outside, want 2 talk.

He put on his shoes, yelled to his mom that he was going outside for a minute, and found Sarah sitting on the curb in front of his house. He sat down beside her, and they stared at the forest down the street, where they both knew Lucy would arrive at any moment. The sun had set and the color was slowly draining from the sky. Jacob’s breath caught when he thought of going back to space and seeing the impossible number of stars outside the window of a spaceship rocketing through the galaxy.

“What if you win?” Sarah asked quietly.

“Huh?”

Sarah turned and looked him in the eye. She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “What if you win, Jake? What then?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t really thought through my whole campaign platform yet, but I had this great idea yesterday. Shouldn’t it be a law that every restaurant should have either French fries or pizza on the menu? Or should it be both? I was thinking…”

Sarah put her hand on his arm and he stopped talking. “President of the universe. Think about how big that job is.”

He jerked his arm back. “You don’t think I can do it?”

She gently grabbed his arm again. “That’s not what I’m saying. How are you going to do that job and still be a kid on Earth? You’re going to have to be flying all over the place, solving problems and being responsible. What about our families? What about you and me? Dexter too,” she added quickly. “I’ll come with you for the election, but I can’t just disappear into space forever, Jake. I can’t do it.”

Jacob nodded and was quiet for a moment. The idea of flying around space and never going to school didn’t scare him at all, and he knew Miss Banks and the king were depending on him. He hoped there would be a way to convince Sarah and Dexter to stay with him in space instead of coming back and going to school every day and living their boring lives on Earth. If he had a choice between running around the universe or sitting through pre-algebra every day, he knew exactly which life he would choose.

He saw Dexter approaching, teetering with an overstuffed backpack that looked like it would tip him over at any moment. Suddenly the street lit up and there was a flash in the forest. A green laser shot up into the sky and then disappeared. A second later there was a faint whirring noise and a hiss. It was Lucy. Dexter gave Jacob and Sarah a hesitant thumbs-up.

Jacob thought about the postcard on his shelf, and the power he would have as president of the universe. He would be able to find anyone.

He turned to Sarah. “This is something I have to do.”