1
I was born the day Challenger fell out of the sky, and I was born blue. At least, that is what I was told.
My mother went into the maternity ward around the time the crew made its way to the shuttle—a giant, blood- orange tank from which hung the orbiter and the rocket boosters. If you watch videos from that day, you can see the crew as they leave their base, wide smiles and eighties hair, their sky-blue NASA uniforms visible from afar. It was an unusually chilly morning in Florida, but even so hundreds of people came to Cape Canaveral to send them off. They had caps and T-shirts and cheering banners, cameras and binoculars at the ready.
Space launches did not usually attract so much attention, but Challenger was no ordinary launch. It held a teacher on board, Christa McAuliffe, who would be the first civilian in space. Right before entering the shuttle, a ground team member gifts her an apple, bright red. As she says her thanks, cheerful, she turns the fruit over in her hands, admiring it closely, as though it were a planet itself, as though it held a whole world she had yet to explore.
Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, a heavy cloud of smoke and flames engulfed Challenger. It began breaking apart, its wreckage tumbling into the Atlantic Ocean. The crowd watched the fragments plummet, the billowing fumes they left in their wake, as confusion gave way to realization and dread. There were no survivors on board. Later that day, President Reagan addressed his nation, quoting the poet John Gillespie Magee Jr.: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth [to] touch the face of God.’”
* * *
Later on, the investigation revealed that the failure at launch had been due to the temperature, much lower than expected. The small rubber O-rings, which were supposed to seal the joints of the rocket’s segments, were stiffened by the cold and rendered brittle, causing fatal gas leaks. NASA had been advised by their own engineers to postpone the launch, but too much was riding on it. Television crews and students watching from all over the country, all holding their breaths, their childhood dreams, all holding some intangible hope on to this launch. NASA decided to go ahead.
* * *
The names of the seven astronauts were: Christa McAuliffe, Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, and Gregory B. Jarvis. If you watch videos from that day, you’ll see them smiling as they leave their base, yes, and you’ll see McAuliffe being handed the apple. And before that you’ll see them having breakfast together, white frosted cake emblazoned with the mission’s logo. They’re chatting and posing for the cameras, not a worry in sight—like they’re going on a trip to the shop down the road, nothing extraordinary, nothing surreal, nothing that would take them out of this world and into the pitch-black skies.
* * *
It was around liftoff, across the Atlantic Ocean in a hospital near the village I would grow up in, that my mother gave a final push. I was quiet when the doctor first held me, and underneath the blood and slime my skin had a pale, ice-blue hue. My father assumed the worst. Not one to parade his emotions, he left the room dazed and numb, crouched in the corridor, and held his head in his hands. But as he was about to cry for the loss of his son, he heard tiny wails coming from the ward. He got up and ran back in, where he saw a nurse gently place me in my mother’s arms, the blue already fading from my face. My cries grew louder as my breathing deepened and then, like the rarest of miracles and the most common of occurrences, there was life.
* * *
It’s funny. In my head, these events are perfectly clear—their hidden corners, their pervading emotions, heightened and tangible. But when I try to recall my actual memories, I see they’re much more slippery.
Lately, I’ve been thinking of the summer of ’95. The simmering heat, my feet cool against the kitchen tiles, the hovering flies, and the sound of the milk as I poured it into my glass in the morning. But when I try to picture these moments, I can only do so for an instant. I see them as flashing images, as if looking through a View-Master at glimpses of my childhood. And all I’m left with are its lingering qualities, like an aftertaste that is bitter and sweet. Sometimes, I wonder if childhood is best described as a feeling, rather than a period of one’s life. But what I do remember vividly, from that summer in the village when I was nine, is meeting Philly.
I’d just finished helping my father in the garage. He liked renovating old cars and then selling them on, and that summer, it was a sixties Mini. “Ollie,” Mum said, as I entered our house. She’d been in the garden and her cheeks were flushed. She removed a strand of blond hair that had stuck to her forehead, her movements sluggish in the heat. “Do you mind dropping off some of our plums to Mrs. Tan?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Thank you, darling. Make sure you’re back before sunset, okay? You know how your father gets if you’re late.”
I nodded, took the plums and my bike, and I was off.
* * *
Mrs. Tan lived on the other side of the village, past the old church and the Shield and Joe Harding’s field, which stank of manure most of the year. The smell would invade Mrs. Tan’s house, and to cover it she sprayed perfume on her velvet cushions. I never asked her what perfume it was, but sometimes a whiff of it will hit me as I’m walking down the street, or when I’m at a party, or in a lift—a light, woody, citrus smell—and I’m brought back to Mrs. Tan’s house.
But that day, instead of Mrs. Tan, a girl about my age opened the door. She wore a pale yellow dress that was smudged with grass, and her knees were covered with dirt. Her hair was tied into a disheveled braid that came down to her waist, and her eyes were a color I’d never seen before—a mix of brown and green and gold. She was pretty, I thought.
“Is Mrs. Tan here?” I asked.
“Auntie Mel?” she said. “She’s gone to play cards at her friend’s house. Why do you want to see her?”
I showed her my basket of plums. “From our garden. My mum wanted me to bring them to her.”
She grabbed one and, before I had time to protest, took a bite out of it. Juice splashed on her chin and dribbled onto her dress.
“You’re lucky,” she said, her mouth half full. “Auntie Mel doesn’t have fruit trees. I’m Philly, by the way.” She reached out her sticky hand for me to shake. I had oil stains on mine, which I hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“I’m Oliver. But you can call me Ollie.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Philly’s a nickname, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She paused for a moment. “But I won’t tell you my full name, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t like it.”
“But I’ve told you mine,” I said. “Is it Phyllis? Philippa?”
She shook her head, and I stood there, basket in hand, uncomfortable.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked.
“It’s not that, really. I just think it’s fair, that we know each other’s names.”
She considered this. “I’ll tell you what. If you help me in the garden, I’ll tell you.”
“Help you with what?”
“Come,” she said. “You’ll see.” She went past me and out of the house, rushing to the gate at the side. I followed suit in a stiff, slow run, not wanting the plums to spill everywhere.
* * *
When I think of the garden now, I picture freshly cut grass and roses everywhere, flawless and fragrant and towering over us. I see it as endlessly vast, but in truth, it couldn’t have been much larger than a tennis court. It was on a slope and gave way to the river, which divided the village in two. “This way!” Philly said. She hurried down to the bottom of the garden, her braid bouncing on her back as she ran.
By the time I’d caught up to her she was crouched under the old sycamore. She held a magnifying glass in her hand, its wooden handle scratched and faded. I observed her as she went from one patch of grass to the next, peering at it with great focus. The tree shaded us from the sun, and a warm breeze brushed against the lawn and Philly’s dress. I crouched down next to her. “What are we looking for?” I asked.
“Shhh,” She put her index finger on my mouth. I felt my whole face blushing. “Can you hear it?”
I listened closely. I could hear the wind cradling the sycamore, the river’s flow and bees circling the roses. I could hear cars and Joe’s tractor in the distance, but whatever Philly was referring to was lost on me.
“Hear what?”
“That very high-pitched buzz. Listen.”
We fell quiet again, and I pricked up my ears. And then, underneath the wind and the river, the bees and the cars and Joe’s tractor, I heard a hum, barely discernible, but undoubtedly there. I nodded, and Philly smiled.
“Cicadetta montana,” she said. “New Forest cicada.” In response to my confused face she added, as if it was the most obvious of things, “The insect!”
Copyright © 2026 by Cecile Pin
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