Acknowledgments

I wrote my first book when I was in fifth grade. It was a novelization of the Super Nintendo game The Death and Return of Superman. It was handwritten on wide-ruled, loose-leaf paper. And it was EVERYTHING to me. Until I mustered up the courage to share it with one of the bigger kids on the school bus, who made me painfully aware that The Death and Return of Superman was already a book of sorts and that the SNES game had been based on an acclaimed comic book series (which itself had already spawned a novelization). Having legitimately thought that I’d penned The Definitive Retelling of My Second-Favorite Video Game (I wasn’t worthy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past), I regrettably chucked my version in the trash.

Since then, I’ve mostly kept wanting to write fiction to myself. All this is a self-indulgent windup to deeply thanking the small handful of friends who did know and who have encouraged me all this while. Thank you. I’m throwing out a trite “you know who you are”—because you do. And because if you didn’t know this was something I’ve been chasing, it’s not you, it’s me. I promise to shout more from rooftops (or flight decks) from now on.

To my will-not-be-deterred agent, Elana Roth Parker, thank you so very much for seeing something in this book and sticking with it, even though it took more than a few light-years.

Thank you to Lerner/Carolrhoda, especially my editor, Amy Fitzgerald. Thank you for taking a chance on the PSS 118, and for helping me polish the hull until it shined. (Well, okay, not shined. It is the PSS 118, after all.)

Serena. This is as good a place as any to thank you for being kind and curious in your unique and extraordinary way. I love you to the moon (to the very last moon).

And Tali. No one’s read this thing more than you have. No one’s encouraged me more than you have. No one has as seriously, as confidently, and as unsarcastically known all along that I’d eventually be able to thank you in these pages one day. You’re always eyeing some star beyond your reach and I hope Serena learns a thing or two from you about the power of well-placed wanderlust. I know I have.