“How’s the news?” Mom asks, bringing me my dinner, freshly ordered in from the coffee shop down the street.

“Not good,” I say, cracking open my meal in a box.

Mom takes the zapper and channel-surfs to E! True Hollywood Story, which doesn’t make the whole wide world look or sound any better.

I head down the hallway to my room. I’ll do my English homework first. It’s easier. I’ll attack the trig before bed, so that the answers to the problems seep into my sleep.

English homework assignment: What is your personal philosophy of life?

I take pen to paper.

They are destroying everything anyway, so what’s the point?

I try to fall asleep, but I am filled with the thought that I am powerless. I open my mouth but I have no voice. I cannot scream. The cars on the street suddenly sound like missiles falling, like in Terminal Earth.

I lie there and I listen, afraid, heart beating fast, so loud in my ears I want to yell, Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!

What if this is it? What if I have to live through the end of the world, like they do in the movies? To me, this is the end of the world. To me, this is real. I try to get out of the house, away from the bombs.

I wake up on the living-room floor.

My knee is skinned and bleeding. I start to laugh at myself for being so stupid as to believe a dream was real. Even worse, I’m still clutching my trigonometry textbook.

“What’s going on out there?” Mom asks. She’s run out of her bedroom, scared by the noise I am making. She thinks it is an earthquake.

“Nothing,” I lie. “I just fell.”

“Well, what are you doing up at this time of night?”

“I was going to make myself some Sleepytime tea.”

“Oh, no, Victoria, I don’t want the kettle screaming at this hour. I have to get some beauty sleep. I have a seven A.M. call tomorrow.”

My mom finally has a new job. She is playing Mrs. Claus in a Movie of the Week. This means freedom from her always trying to bond with me and asking questions. At least for the next little while.

“Okay,” I say. I will microwave the water. She will never know. I need to sleep tonight. Tomorrow there is another quiz in trigonometry and I have to pass. I am slipping. I feel myself slipping.

I turn the computer on and log on to the Terminal Earth site.

Geranium7: Hey Eggtoria. Are you going to the A Dream for the Moon screening at the Cinematheque? Saba Greer is going to be there. I am going to take the train up.

Eggtoria: yep.

Geranium7: We are all going to go and try to meet Saba Greer. We have decided to all wear a white rose on our cloaks, so that we’ll know each other.

Eggtoria: Got it. White rose.

Geranium7: Ok see you there. Can’t wait to finally meet you.

Mental note: Do not wear anything Egg-like at the A Dream for the Moon reception.

Anyway, there is no chance in hell that I would ever wear a flower on my cloak. I am curious, though, to see what everyone else looks like. I wonder if they’re as boy proof as I am. I worry that I am really the most awful girl ever.

Knock, knock. My instant messenger says, Do you want to accept a message from Catburglar?

Catburglar. Who is that? I don’t know that name. I am intrigued. I accept.

Catburglar: Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.

Eggtoria: What? Who is this?

Catburglar: That’s my philosophy. It’s a quote from the past. “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.” I got your info off the Lion contact sheet. I thought I was the only one who couldn’t sleep.

Max Carter.

It blinks at me. Begging for a reply.

His philosophy is so right. So multilayered. I wish that I had thought of it. It even looks good written in Latin. I would like to engage in a discourse about what exactly “earth” and “stars” mean. I want to talk about how even if there is no easy way to the stars, there still is a way. I bet he would have something clever to say about it. But I wonder if my words would look as pretty as his, written and blinking on the computer screen.

I log off. Suddenly I don’t feel like chatting.