A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) Read Online Free PDF

think to get myself shipped off to prison years ago?”
    Alan tosses each of us a silvery-gray jumpsuit. There’s even a bitty silvery papoose for Olivia.
    “What are these for?” I ask. “Are we going to need to free-float to the station? ’Cause I’ve had some experience in zero-grav.”
    “The thermals are for when we arrive in Antarctica,” he replies. “It’s cold there.” From anyone else, that would have sounded snarky, sarcastic, or just an attempt at deadpan humor. But God love ’im, Alan is one-hundred-percent not kidding.
    “We’re almost ready to transfer,” he goes on. “You have five minutes.” And with that, he leaves.
    “Better get a move on!” Dad says, more overcome with excitement than I’ve seen him since the New England Crossword Puzzle Championships (where, he’d have you know, he placed thirty-seventh). He hands Olivia back to me so he canput on his thermal suit, but of course, the instant he does so, she wakes up and begins wailing again.
    “It’s so nice to be loved,” I mutter, bouncing the baby in my arms in my best imitation of my Super Dad. But Olivia’s having none of it. “I love you,” I squeak out, “a bushel and a peck . . .” I am growing more and more frantic with each second of Olivia’s piercing distress signal. And it’s not helping things any that Ducky’s sitting on the other side of the train car with his fingers jammed in his ears, the pain written clearly across his face. “Is it my singing or Olivia’s screaming?” I ask him.
    He pulls a finger from his ear just long enough to answer. “Can’t it be both?”
    My father, of course, already has his arms and legs jammed into his thermal suit. “Don’t worry, Dearheart,” he tells me. “You’ll get it. Being a parent takes practice.” And with a quick peck to my forehead, he races down the hall as he zips his suit up down the middle. “Hurry up, now!” he calls back to us. I swear I can hear him tittering with glee.
    I glance down at the screaming infant wedged between my left arm and my boob, and then at the two thermal suits in my lap. Across from me sits Ducky. He doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush either. I take advantage of a moment when Olivia’s gulping for air, and there’s an actual second of silence between us in the train car.
    “Ducky?” I say softly.
    He looks up.
    “I’m really sorry,” I tell him. “About . . . everything.” How I managed to drag the best friend in the universe into this whole mess is beyond me, but here he sits. Dragged.
    Ducky shakes his head. “Not your fault,” he replies simply. And somehow the fact that he seems to really mean it makes me feel even worse. But before I can kick up my apology another notch, he reaches across and plucks the baby thermal suit from my knees. “Here, let me help,” he says. “You look like you could use it.” Ducky’s face, I should mention, is still green as a jar of Manzanilla olives.
    “You think she’s always going to cry this much?” I ask Ducky as we stuff the screeching baby’s chubby legs into the infant thermal pouch. Ducky’s not a baby expert or anything, but he seems to know more than I do. Maybe because while I spent the past nine months actively avoiding any useful baby knowledge, Ducky actually read, like, half a baby book.
    “She’s hungry,” Ducky tells me. “She probably hasn’t eaten all day.”
    “Oh God,” I say. And my eyes go huge. Because, duh, Ducky’s right—babies need to eat. Like, almost always. But it has suddenly occurred to me what she needs to eat. I may have been avoiding baby knowledge, but even I’m not such a chromer that I’m unaware of an infant’s natural food preference. “You think that’s why she’s been so squirmy?” Ducky shrugs. “Shit.” I’m really beginning to wish I took On Your Own class first semester, before, you know, our school exploded. But . . . well, how hard can it be? I look down at Olivia, still wiggling and