Astronauts under the Sea Dance

Benjamin King
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The Challenger Space Shuttle exploded in 1986, just 73 seconds after blast off. Christa McAuliffe, the first member of the Teacher in Space Project, and six good American astronauts survived the initial breakup, but with the main cabin hurtling downward at 333 kilometers per hour, the ocean surface might just as well have been a solid sheet of concrete. All seven crew members perished.

Out of respect for the fallen astronauts, at the very last minute, my high school changed its winter formal theme from Enchantment under the Sea to Astronauts under the Sea. They replaced painted cardboard mermaids with mannequins in flight suits; papier-mâché octopuses with half-broken rockets, and nobody thought it was morbid or weird or tacky in the least.

Kids, my classmates, showed up dressed as O-rings and fireballs. One wore a shark head with a bloody leg dangling from its mouth.

Then at the end of the dance, my biology teacher, Mrs. Walker, I suppose in an attempt to capture the spirit of Christa McAuliffe, donned a curly shoulder length wig, took charge of the microphone, and belted out “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” the Simple Minds song from the Breakfast Club movie. Everyone cried.

Benjamin King is an okay writer and a pretty good dad. His fiction has appeared in NANO Fiction, Safety Pin Review, New Wave Vomit, Up, For Every Year, Metazen, and some other really cool spots. He likes robots, space music, the future, and pictures of celebrities pumping gas.