My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie Rick's devotion to Pluto staying a planet was both oddly admirable and terrifying at the same time. 2006 had been a difficult year for him, and nearly eleven years later, he still had not let up in his unrelenting zeal. He had posters of Pluto in his office; his son had built him a model of the solar system, with Pluto's small girth plainly seen in the spinning  papier-mâché; he drank his coffee out of a mug with Pluto's beaming, cartoonish rocky face on it. It was a crusade he was unwilling to surrender: He wanted the little dwarf planet that could to be promoted back to a very non-dwarf planet. The debate had started again in the lunch room, after a lengthy conversation about the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets around a smaller star, one that thankfully had not been diverted despite its length and detail. I was sitting with Annabel, one of our senior research associates, who was sipping from a thermos and discussing the latest laboratory resul

I thought we had something, in the end. I thought we shared a bond. I thought the words meant something - the gestures meant something - the smiles meant something. I thought that the way you held me in your arms as I cried over my broken heart meant more than just a favor or a kind act. I thought we had connected. I thought we were strong. But here we are, with an angry email and a screaming phone call - whatever friendship I thought we had? It's gone.