Free 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad Page B

spewing unnecessary advice and warnings.
    How long did it take to fly to New York anyway?
    Eight hours?
    Nine?
    Longer?
    She was going to have to find some way to get through this.
    Twenty minutes passed without any sign of her father. Midori’s mother started talking in falsetto, fretting about what might
     have happened to him.
    “I’m sure he’s probably just talking to someone or waiting in a line or something.”
    “Don’t you CARE that your father is missing?” Midori’s mother practically yelled.
    Midori immediately looked down, her face red. “Chill out, Mom. We’ve got plenty of time.”
    “But something’s WRONG, don’t you think?” Her mother was on the verge of hysteria.
    Seriously?
Midori thought.
How melodramatic is this going to get?
“Mom, he’s not
missing
. He just went to ask for directions. What’s wrong is all this yelling. Can’t you see that people are staring at us like we’re
     insane? Listen, he’ll be back in ten minutes. I guarantee it. And if he’s not, fine, we’ll have them page him over the PA
     system. Okay?”
    Her mother nodded weakly and pretended to calm down a little.
    “I’m going to go to the bathroom now, is that okay? It’s right over there,” Midori said, pointing to a sign at the other end
     of the hall. “Just wait here. I’ll be back in three minutes.”
    “Do you really have to go right now, Midori? Shouldn’t we wait here until your father comes back?”
    Midori stared at her blankly. “I have to go
now
. Not in ten minutes. In ten minutes I won’t have to go to the bathroom anymore. Do you get what I’m saying?”
    Without waiting for her mother’s response, Midori started walking toward the restrooms.
    * * *
    It didn’t look as though anyone had been in there for a while. No drops of water in the sink from people who’d recently washed
     their hands. No little bits of paper towel that had landed outside the trash. Only the door of the fourth stall was closed.
     Midori picked the second one and went in. She listened to the murmur of the air conditioner, which got her thinking about
     the sounds on the moon. There weren’t any, as far as she knew. No air for sound to travel through. It was impossible to imagine.
     For her entire life she’d been surrounded by sounds. People talking, traffic noise, the wind … Would the total absence of
     sound feel claustrophobic?
    For some reason, that made her think about the other occupied stall at the end. She hadn’t heard a thing from there since
     she came in. Not so much as a shuffle of feet or a throat clearing. As she went to the sink to wash her hands, she instinctively
     leaned down to check if there was someone in the stall. At first glance it appeared to be empty. But when she leaned over
     a little farther, she saw two shoes. Feet.
    There is someone in there
.
    There were hundreds of reasons someone might sit in the bathroom for a long time at an airport. If you were afraid of flying,
     for example. Or just needed a little time to yourself.
But … no one, absolutely no one, sits there so perfectly quietly for so long
.
    Without really thinking about it, Midori suddenly knocked softly on the stall door. “Hello?”
    No one answered.
    She knocked again, just as softly this time.
    “Excuse me, is anyone in here? Is everything all right?”
    But there was no response.
    Midori knocked a third time, a little harder now.
    “Hello? Miss?”
    Suddenly it struck her: What if the person was dead and there was a corpse sitting in there behind the door? Horrible images
     flickered over her retinas: a dead woman, her mouth open, her face white, with blood running out of the corner of one eye,
     staring at her. A millipede crawling out of her nose and making its way down into her blouse, where it disappeared into a
     brownish black gaping hole in her chest.
    But the person wasn’t dead. There was someone in there who now took a long, slow breath.
    Right then Midori remembered something unsettling. Way