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Prologue: Mei
"Mei?” Miss Carrie said “Please put your painting work away now Your mother is here”
It took her a few seconds to understand what the teacher was saying, not because Mei didn’t know the words—she was four now, and not a toddler anymore—but because they didn’t fit with the world as she knew it Her one to live on Ceres Station, because, as her daddy put it, she needed so to race, Mei thought, She came back
“Mommy?”
From where Mei sat at her scaled-down easel, Miss Carrie’s knee blocked her view of the coatrooer paints, red and blue and green swirling on her pal as much to move it as to help her stand up
“Mei!” Miss Carrie shouted
Mei looked at the ser on the woman’s broad, dark face
“I’m sorry, Miss Carrie”
“It’s okay,” the teacher said in a tight voice thatto be punished “Please go wash your hands and then coet this down and you can give it to your ie?”
“It’s a space monster”
“It’s a very nice space o wash your hands, please, sweetheart”
Mei nodded, turned, and ran for the bathrooht in an air duct
“And don’t touch the wall!”
“I’m sorry, Miss Carrie”
“It’s okay Just clean it off after you’ve washed your hands”
She turned the water on full blast, the colors and swirls rushing off her skin She went through thewhether she was dripping water or not It felt like gravity had shifted, pulling her toward the doorway and the anterooround The other children watched, excited because she was excited, as Mei scrubbed the finger marks mostly off the wall and slammed the paint pots back into their box and the box onto its shelf She pulled the smock up over her head rather than wait for Miss Carrie to help her, and stuffed it into the recycling bin
In the anteroorown-ups, neither of them Mo held gently in her hand and a polite smile on her face The other was Doctor Strickland
“No, she’s been very good about getting to the toilet,” Miss Carrie was saying “There are accidents now and then, of course”
“Of course,” the woman said
“Mei!” Doctor Strickland said, bending down so that he was hardly taller than she was “How is irl?”
“Where’s—” she began, but before she could say Momger than Daddy, and he s her sides, and she laughed hard enough that she couldn’t talk anymore