Before she returned to the office, Alma shoved the quintescope under the backseat of her parents’ car. She hadn’t told them about the flyer, and she didn’t want to tell them about the quintescope either. It would be too easy, she knew, for the flyer and the quintescope to become part of another strategy to help her acclimate.
She still wanted these things to be hers for now. Hers and hers alone.
But that night at dinner, Alma’s father said, “Alma, we want to talk to you about something.”
No, Alma didn’t want to tell her parents about the flyer and the quintescope. But she also very much did not want to have the Discussion again.
“I have an announcement,” she said before her father could continue. “I’m going to be joining a club. Like you said I had to. Astronomy.”
Her father’s eyes blinked wide open with surprise. Her mother clapped her hands together.
“Alma Llama, that’s fantastic news!” she said.
“It certainly is,” her father said. “Although no one ever said you had to do anything, just that it would help.”
“That’s what I meant,” Alma said. They were only suggestions, of course, even if they didn’t always seem that way. “To help me acclimate.”
“You’ve always liked astrology, am I right?” her mother said.
“Astronomy,” Alma corrected her. “Astrology is horoscopes and things like that.”
“Oh that’s right,” her mother said with a laugh. “Leo, Aquarius, moons in the second house. That could be fun, of course. But astronomy—stargazing and supernovas and galaxies—well, you’ve always loved nature and exploring. It’s perfect for you.”
“I think it really is,” her father said. “And that’s exactly what you’ve been needing. Something for you. Just for you.”
Alma smiled. “That’s what I was thinking too,” she said.
Her father smiled back at her, and it was the proudest look Alma had gotten from him in a long, long time.
She had done something right at last. There would be no Discussion tonight.
“They even gave me a telescope to use,” she said, feeling guilty about the lie but wanting now to show them. “Well, it’s a special kind, actually, called a quintescope. And it’s really old and really dirty, but it works.”
After dinner, Alma cleaned the quintescope. Her parents helped, her father bringing orange oil to polish the wood of the case and the cones, her mother contributing a salt-and-lemon-juice mixture and a bristly sponge to scrub the green patina from the copper clasp and from the quintescope’s casing.
When she climbed into bed that night, Alma put the case next to her pillow. Just a flyer and a quintescope had made her Alma-ness so much bigger, so much brighter.
She felt more like herself than she had in a long time.