CZM Book Club: Moonkids, by Abbey Mei Otis, Part 2

0:01 Cool Zone Media.

0:06 Book Club book Club book Club book Club. Hello and welcome to the Cool Zone Media book Club. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and today we are finishing up the story moon Kids by Abby may Otis. If you didn't listen to the first part, well that's strange. That is a strange decision to have made. You should listen to part one.

0:30 I guess I'm not actually in charge of you. Where we last left off, we were following a clique of moon kids, young adults who grew up in the science utopia on the Moon but failed their aptitude tests and were sent back to Earth. But because of the gravity shift, their whole bodies have been compressed down about six inches and they're you know, kind kind of funny looking by Earth standards. And so far in the story, just to bring you up to speed, you have I met the following characters. You've met Colleen, who has her shit together and his mom to all the newly arrived moonkids, who's probably our protagonist. And there's Tesla, manager of the crabby Abby's crab Shack where her crew all works, but she's

1:14 not adjusting well to Earth life. And there's trespass Tesla's punk ass younger brother as a big mouth. And there's Abitha, who has newly arrived as the hot shit baddie who has big ambitions and is slowly getting plastic surgeries to become desirable. Abitha has just riled up all the boys on the beach, talking a big game about how hot she's going to be one day, only to be interrupted by Tesla, who has returned in tears. Trespass has stayed on the beach to fight some rude boys, but not rude boys like not people into ska, but instead boys who are rude, and the girls head back to Colleen's place for the second parts of Moon Kids by Abby may otis and just as a note if you're like but how did their voices change between parts of one

2:00 and two? Is it part of the narrative or is it the showbiz of the fact that I'm recording this a week later and I only recently decided to do voices at all, and so I'm not going to do it perfectly. It could be either one of those things. Moon Kids by Abby may otis Part two out of two. You must be disgusted with me. Tesla flops her head into Colleen's lap. Girls are on the futon couch and Colleen's apartment just one room on the first floor with an afterthought of a bathroom and a kitchen stowed away in one corner. But her front door slides open to a sandy street, and across the street is a sandy sidewalk, and past that is the roaring, suckling, spitting old man's sea.

2:49 Colleen pet's Tesla's hair. I'm not disgusted with you, then you're a saint. I'd be disgusted with me. The room smells like lemons and salt stiff clothes. This afternoon Tesla spent locked in the old time Quick Mart bathroom. Some brash mouth earth lady tried to pick her up in the oral hygiene aisle, and fragile girl freaked. She called me loomy nus bean. Tesla rolls the word on the front of her tongue for disgusted emphasis. She said something about devotion. She probably wanted me to go recharge her goddamn crystals. Colleen does a belly laugh that makes Tesla's head shake up and down. You should have you should have done her star charts blown her fritzy mind. Tesla groans and reaches out to play with the rocks on

3:38 the side table. Colleen likes rock smooth, symmetrical, ovoid. She brings them home and finds that anyone who comes through the apartment likes to cradle them big as a finger, big as a fist, earth bones in every color. Tesla lays a green pebble in each palm and rubs them with the hands of her thumbs, holds them up to her ears like secret listening, brings them to her lips like a kiss. Colleen's distracted by a phantom pressure on her upper arms. She worries at the memory until she can place it. Abitha's hands at the party, shaking her shoulders, pulling her close. She twists her head and presses her mouth to her arm flesh. Why then, no seeking a taste like how the ocean's touch leaves behind fingerprints of salt.

4:28 Suso has a bunch of people over at his piece together house. Abitha shows up with legs like strange long twigs, balks still on her belly and ass, but her hips all carved away. She walks like a newborn fawn, cackles like a raven told you. I told you I'd do it. Ugly mugs thought I was full of shit, But I told you doctor had a big laser. He was over in ten minutes. They ask how she paid for it.

4:56 She says, fill out the right forms, smile at the right place. People. It was state of the fucking art. I'll tell you that I'm doing this shit right. She flings her arms out, shakes her hips. Next stop torso, next stop shoulders, next stop face. Colleen stays out of the fray, though all night she can feel Abitha raking her with her eyes. Finally, Colleen slips out the sliding door and stands on the sidewalk, leaning against the vinyl siding of the apartment building. Tesla's funk is making her anxious.

5:30 She thinks about how it's like some people have a broken vase inside them, the pieces never quite fit back together. She turns and finds Abitha right up in her face. Holy shit, sorry, Abitha looks the opposite of sorry. She nudges Colleen. Hey, uh, I wanted to ask you a question. I heard a thing about you. Oh yeah. At some point or another, everyone hears a thing about Colleen She tries to look like she doesn't know what Abetha means and doesn't want to like that'll make the girl go away.

6:06 What I heard, Beetha grinds the gristle of her question is that you didn't take the exams. Yep, that's what they hear. Colleen stands perfectly still and stares out across the parking lot. Then really slow, she brings her head up and down. It's the first time she's seen Abetha struck. Silent girl doesn't ask why not, but it's in the cant of her head and the tap of her fingers.

6:31 So finally Colleen answers, I didn't want to do research, didn't want to be a scientist, had some dumb ass idea about art. She laughs at herself, bitter seal bark. Yeah, Colleen, you thought you were pretty fricking cool, didn't you, sitting in the exam room with your hundred classmates, typing dirty limericks into the answer screens, hitting the submit button and sending in fifty six pages of blank, blank blank. You were going to stick it to the man. You are going to shuck off your parents and your friends and your whole little, sanitized, climate controlled life, all in the name of that snarky pagan god called art you lovely fucking revolutionary. But there were those first months when she arrived on Earth and found it so full of artists

7:17 its eyes were turning tiedie, when she tried to enroll in a narrative school and got laughed out of the admissions room. Because the truth is, Colleen, in this post consumer, post information fever dream of a world, creativity is a vital fluid. The inhabitants of these cities swim in virtual galaxies.

7:36 They sculpt their bodies into fairy tale shapes. They lick the lines between reality and fantasy, body and mind until everything melts together like ice cream, all because of Luna, gleaming white, sacrificial lamb. It took three years for Colleen to get this research happens on Luna, so pleasure can happen on Earth. The beautiful Earth people. They don't have time to concern themselves with the twitching, blinking nerd men from the Moon. They for sure don't have time for some flabby beech bum kids who wobble when they walk.

8:10 So Colleen falls back on what she knows. She soothes Tesla, and she rolls her eyes at trespass. She's good at giving people a place to crash. She's good at serving fried food. When she dreams of the moon, her visions are colored amethyst and silver, and midnight, the desolate, gaping planes of home wake her up with tears streaming down her cheeks. She'd like to dig her nails into random people on the street. Moonkids no pain, she'd shriek to them.

8:37 Moonkids could make beauty. But she doesn't. Oh, Colleen, no one wants to hear about that. But dear listener, do you know what else? No one wants to hear about the products and services that support this show? And we are back. Abetha grabs her wrist. I knew there was something something. You don't go around moping like everyone else.

9:16 Her fingers palpitate up Colleen's forearm. You're so tense, Colleen tries to pull away. She wants to say Tesla doesn't mope, But that's such a lie. And it's true about the rest of them too, How they shiver, how they cling. Sometimes it builds like sludge on her brain until she wants to fling them all into the ocean. I told myself I'd be different. Abetha scrutinizes Colleen's wrist. I knew i'd fail. I was never any good at that shit.

9:48 I figured might as well embrace it. She doesn't say anything else because Colleen leans in and kisses her. Somehow. They are down the street and then Colleen's apartarment and on the futon. Abetha's hands are up her shirt, tracing orbits around her breasts. The moon is hidden behind clouds tonight, a milky haze that leeches through the window. Colleen reaches for Abetha's hips and peels her shorts down. The scarf from her bone shave runs down the outside of her leg from hip to knee. The skin is sunken in gray.

10:23 A line of pale puffs oozes between the stitches and catches the moonlight. It doesn't hurt Abeitha puts a hand on Colleen's cheek and forces her eyes away from the wound. Leave it. Her words rasp in a language Colleen doesn't understand. Her long hair hangs in her face, brushes over her stomach. She must have been growing it for years. On Luna, Colleen realizes she must have planned to let it down.

10:51 The clouds shift and for a moment. The moon gets an eye full of them, then is obscured. Colleen clamps one of Abetha's legs between in her own knees, shoves her other thigh up with her hand, leans down, breathing hard, sticks her tongue into the dark. New Girl tastes like clam juice, which is to say, salt water and body.

11:13 Abetha makes a noise like a gull. Something shakes in her thigh. Then she sits up and pushes Colleen back. Her eyes are dark and liquid, and Colleen thinks she sees something broken open. Abetha licks her lips. You, She says, you could be lunarian. Her voice is thick with longing. Colleen has thought about this every day for three years.

11:37 She imagines filling in the exam blanks with serious answers. She imagines filling them in with her whole brain and whole heart. She can picture the congratulations, the celebrations, the cool, close embrace of her family, and the tunnels of Luna. She shrugs at Abeitha, No, I couldn't. I've been here long enough to figure that out. Abetha shakes her head stubbornly.

12:01 But you don't know for sure. Suddenly the three years that separate them feel like ages, three years of earth pole, of fighting, of just barely making it. They stretch miles wider than Colleen's whole childhood on Luna. If I had passed, there are other things I would never have known. I made a choice. I'm not really any different, and you aren't either. She thinks, I didn't see that at first.

12:26 She reaches out to pet Abetha's shoulder. The other girl's questions drive sadness into her like a wedge. Her mouth is dry. Abeitha pulls away. You are different, she insists. The door that had cracked open in her eyes now so fast, clang shut, weird. Different. There it is back in her eyes, the tinge of distaste that makes her look more like an Earth girl than any body mod ever will. She is retreating and retreating, like the tide.

12:55 They sit in silence for a moment. Then Abetha stirs, I think I should go inhaling as the fabric skates over her scars. Colleen doesn't turn and watch her go out the door. So Sandpoint, crappy, little gum wrapper town, undeserving of so many stories, so much love, But this not quite ground and not quite water. They own it, this sliver of country, with its ever changing dunes in sinuous shoreline. It's theirs. Knowing is a kind of possession, and they know where the tide pools form, where the weed is sold, which beachfront property owners don't mind if you cut through their yards in constant of course. But remember their moon kids. They're used to not owning things for real. They were raised in home pods doled out

13:48 by the government. The moon knows sleeping space and study space. The moon knows regulated recreation zones and one vacation day per month. The moon knows you are part of the Mashie, and it presses that knowledge in on you. It gives you disposable clothes and flavorless food, and raises you with the knowledge that you, too, are only worth the research you produce. Sweet little cogs of mine, funny then sick and sad. How souls find something to latch onto even in the bleakest environs. How hungry bodies are to belong little lunarian kids. Their brains know nothing is guaranteed, but their hearts cling like hermit crabs on driftwood. As the tide comes in December, after they turn sixteen, the exams come.

14:36 The wind whips up the water January, the scores get mailed out, crash, big waves, slam down, froth and churn, and when the water recedes again, some of those crabs, those cogs, those bright eyed girls and boys, are swept clean away. In the night, Colleen flees down to the beach, kneels by the water, sand collapsing all swirly around her legs.

15:02 She puts her mouth into the sea and hails, and the salt water barrels down her throat like a bullet train, burns tracks into her tongue. Girl falls backwards, coughing. Her hair goes smack in the wet sand. Turn her head. One way down the beach. There is an old petrol car parked on the sand, people dancing like paper cutouts in the headlight glow. They kick up shells and gallop down to the water edge to scream and spit. Turn her head the other way up the beach is a dark, slick shape of something big, jelly or rotten tire or sulky skin, salt and body. The ocean is nothing but salt and body. Coliene drinks sea water till her eyes ache, thinking with each suck, go ahead, put the flame to us, just see if we melt and flow away, gulps until

15:54 her stomach revolts, and then she pukes it up and walks a long way into town. By the time she reaches her apartment, the sand has dried on her. She brushes it off like dust and climbs into bed, sweet and clean. And do you know what else in time will brush off like dried sand. Not these products and services that support this show. They are eternal, like the moon itself. That's how good of deals they are. And we are back on the phone with her mother in the pink hour between lunch and dinner rushes. Colleen leans against the sliding glass door and jams the mini disc to her ear. The connection is finicky. It bulks and shuffles its hoofs. Do you Her mother's voice flickers in and out a job. Her concerns keeps down the phone line.

17:01 No other question a moon mom could ask, really, no other way to tell are you okay? Are you functioning? Lucky? Colleen lives in a pleasure park town where things like jobs still exist, or else? How would she explain to the Mama, jobs mean goose egg. Here, we've moved on. I'm a waitress, mom, like I tell you every time I bring people food. That faint noise might be her mother ohing, or might be the sound of two hundred thousand miles. Colleen waits for more news without expecting any.

17:35 Machines don't rearrange their parts often, Oh, her mother's thin exclamation. The Sakaros mister and missus Sicaro live in the neighboring pod. They're having a baby. Sharp pain is big chunks of Colleen's chest A rode into her stomach until she takes a quick, tight breath. Why does this news smart so bad?

17:57 Why does she wrench open the door and fling them mini disk into the flower bed. Later, she'll apologize to the moon mom, explain how the connection fritz out, And she'll think of how lunarians see her today. Wonder if she saw mom Pa again, would things be different? Probably? No, course not, how could you? But maybe maybe there'd be a little hitch pause between the moment of recognition and the moment of hugging. Maybe that hitch would grow wider.

18:26 It would be easy to call the dark, breathless void between them space, but Collein knows its way older than that, and still no one's built a rocket that can cross it. One evening, Colleen runs into a Betha on the boardwalk, not like she's been avoiding her or anything, not exactly. When she thinks of Abitha, there's an odd sensation in her stomach. Not embarrassment that she's sure of, more like disappointment, a little like grief. You talked so, big, new girl, she wants to say, I thought you had answers. I thought you could fix us like that hack doctor straightened your legs. They stare at each other. Abetha licks her lips.

19:07 Colleen makes a motion with one hand and then stops. Not sure where she's going, she shifts her eyes to the people passing them, oggling them in the near dark. Then she hears her name being called, Colleen Trespass, white faced under his white paint, hurling up the beach like a cannonball. Colleen, it's big sister, get her, gotta help me, get her. The two of them rush across the beach, now not two of them, three, Abetha runs two. Colleine can feel her joints grind her muscles fray times like this.

19:43 She hates her body the most, this earth pull, this aching flesh. How light we were on the moon, how we could have bounded over miles. Tesla is walking into the ocean. The water is up to her neck. Waves rear up and come down over her head, and she doesn't flinch, doesn't duck, just keeps heading out. It's almost too dark to see her. Moon girl come back. They scream through the sea breeze, hurl themselves into the ocean.

20:12 At first the water is something to fight, but then it gets deep enough that they can give themselves over to it. They paddle to Tesla, surround her, tug on her arms, and kiss her cheeks. Big sister, best friend? Why would you leave us? The fuck you thinking that first moment when they catch her, Tesla's eyes are dead, but she sparks under their touch, and her mouth makes a smile. I'm okay. Her lips shape the words, but her voice is barely a sound. I'm I'm okay. Her eyes snag on something beyond all of them, Colleen and trespass Nabitha. They turn and follow her gaze. A full moon is rising. He catches them off guard in the ocean.

20:57 They fall silent still. Look at them now, only their heads bobbing above the water, four dark bumps breaking up the white shine of the moon reflection, cradled by the warm ocean. They don't have to be moon kids. They could be round and embracing as Luna herself. They could be slender as the breeze that licks the sea surface.

21:20 They could be regular Earth boys and girls loving the feel of water on skin. They could be sea nymphs. They could be four seals. Aabetha's face is hard and set. She stares at the moon like a challenge, trespasses quiet, his arms winging back and forth just under the surface. Paint runs down his face and makes a pool of smoke around his throat. Tesla lets out one gasping sob and chokes on sea water. Colleen reaches through the black water and finds her hand. They clutch each other in the darkness. Colleen leans her head back so water creeps cool on her scalp around her and beneath her, the ocean pushes with hands like continents, push drag. With her head tilted, her vision is filled up with moon, white

22:11 and brilliant and huge, as the sound of blood in her brain huge as the pull of home. Can she see the cities on the surface, the pale tunnels that hash through the face of Luna. Can she see her parents sitting down to dinner, bloodshot, sun starved, their fingers still tapping out equations. Could she notice the extra place setting at the table, but when they look at but never touch. Oh, come on, now, girl doesn't see any of that, doesn't even imagine it. This time of night, with water lapping at her cranium, the moon is no longer a place. The moon just is bigger than everything, her light flowing out and lifting them up until they are no longer even floating. Their bodies have vanished. They are nothing but light. If we cried out loud, Colleen thinks,

23:01 maybe the moon would turn her eyes back down to us. If we beat ourselves against the earth, if we let our bones break and our flesh split, maybe that would jar her memory, her exiled children. Maybe she would fall in love with us again. It is not enough, this warm, dry dust, these rocking waters. We will not last very long. Luna.

23:24 Please hold us, let us go, Let the squalls in our minds grow quiet, Let our bodies gentle, Let all the knots suntie Dun dun dun. That's the end of the story. Thank you for listening along to Moonkids by Abby Meotis And oh what did I think about this time when I was reading it. I'm interested in the seal thing, the symbolism of the seal. I didn't get it on the first read, but like, basically they're constantly being compared to seals, and there's like a thing about a selkie skin, and so it's got this like selky vibe about like people pulled out of the ocean and living on the land in order to be part of society, and it's got all this stuff about well, I don't know.

24:11 You just listened to it and you've got ideas too. Hazel, who helps me with the scripts, has this to say about it. Less on the emotion side, big languishing, so so juicy, and more on the craft side. I love, love, love Abby's prose. It is so stylized and fragmented in a really evocative way. Abby will use a verb but not conjugated or with a pronoun attached, and it feels both poetic and exacting, efficient and scientific, like lunar society.

24:42 She uses a lot of sentence fragments that feel like parts of a life pieced back together like a cozy quilt. It's hard to convey this over audio, but a lot of what characters say moves in and out of quotation marks. It gives this effect where only some of what's discussed happens out loud, or like a lot of the die dialogue is imagined, or a character's inner monologue. It makes a really interesting read. I would absolutely recommend checking out the full text sometime if you're excited about that kind of experimentation. And then, as for what Abby herself says about this story when we asked her quote, I tend to collect threads of thought until I have enough to twist together into a story. The threads for this piece

25:24 included reading John Kessel's stories for men and thinking about the effect of gravity differentials and bodies. Working in a middle school and navigating the harms inflicted by standardized testing systems, conversations with my friends from other countries, thinking about what it means when your home is a place for which other people have their own, deeply ingrained cultural associations, fascination with beach towns and tourist economies in the off season.

25:51 This is what emerged from those threads. But who is Abby Meotis? You might be asking, because you forgot the bio that we read at the end of the last episode. Well, I'll remind you. Abby may Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller, and a fire starter. Raised in the woods of North Carolina, she loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster from Small Beer Press was named one of the best science fiction books of the Year by The Washington Post and was a finalist for the twenty eighteen Philip K.

26:25 Dick Award. She studied creative writing at the Missionar Center for Writers, Oberlin College and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Currently, she is making a living as an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in West Philly, where her favorite days are spent walking her dogs in the woods, overstaining her welcome in coffee shops, chipping away at a novel, and dismantling the state. We did ask her how our audience can stay up to date on her releases, and she said, quote, I don't have any social media. Please don't follow me anywhere, which is wise, brave, and iconic and I'm officially jealous. That's it for this week.

27:05 We will see you next week for more short fiction. My name is Margaret Kiljoy. I have a substack Margaret Kiljoy dot substack dot com. You can find my thoughts pretty much every week, and well take care of each other. Fuck Ice Free, Palestine, Up theepunks, Up the moon kids. See y'all next week.

27:27 It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.