Excerpt from Alone Out Here by Riley Redgate, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Hey! Hey." I touch the girl's back, and she twists toward me. She looks maybe thirteen. Her dark eyes are enormous, and she's breathing so hard that her lips are fluttering like paper.

"It's okay," I say, hoping she knows some English. "We're nearly aboard. We just have to follow the launch process."

I expect the girl to snap at me, or maybe to burst into tears, but she hesitates instead, searching my face. I glance at my reflection in the elevator door and see what she sees. I'm as straight-backed and composed as my mother delivering a speech. My fear is invisible.

"What process?" the girl says, still shaky. Some of the other kids are watching, too—the ones who toured the Launch Control Center yesterday instead of the Lazarus. Their group must not have gone over the procedure.

I raise my voice. "Passengers go up to the cabins and follow the instruction cards in the bedside tables. Just stay calm. The crew will be here soon."

The words have hardly left my lips when the elevator door cranks open. We clatter out through the access arm, and at the end of the passageway, we have a stroke of luck. The hull door is already open. After crowding into the airlock, we find the secondary bay doors open, too.

We step into the Lazarus. The ship is another universe, quiet, still, and dim. We've emerged in the atrium: the intersection of the four wings, the center of the ship's X. Overhead, walkways curve like ribs through ten stories of space, joining one wing to another, limned with traces of light. I wonder about the lights, why those recessed spots are already glowing like eyes in the jungle.

"Syuda, syuda," Sergei calls, waving everyone toward a ramp that spirals up the wall, leading to the ship's interior elevator bay. I'm about to follow when my gaze snags on a Korean boy's profile. In the half-light, shaggy black hair disheveled and glasses askew, he looks like Marcus.

Right now, is the Cho family driving to the nearest bunker site, Marcus's sister watching the eruptions on her phone while the fiery pictures flicker across Marcus's enhancement lenses? Is Lilly flying around her bedroom, snatching up mementos while Mrs. Dionizio yells for her to hurry?

If my mother were here, she would take one look at me and say, Leigh, are you with us? It's a phrase she says brusquely, like a teacher checking on a distracted student during class, but to me it's always been reassuring. I notice you're gone, she's saying. What can I do to bring you back?

The thought of her wipes out every other thought, the way a dead bulb in a string of lights makes the rest go dark. My parents are in Geneva for a summit of the Global Fleet Planning Commission, and there's nothing like a launch site anywhere in Europe. Besides the Lazarus, our prototype, every ship in the fleet is still a half-finished husk. The other kids and I traveled out to California to learn how our ships would operate next year, like a field trip. We were supposed to be tourists here, not permanent residents.

I shove my hand into my backpack, groping around for my watch and earpiece. I have to call my parents. Lilly and Marcus, too, before they're underground and out of range. I rip at zippers, stretch elastic, but halfway through searching the front pocket, I lose my momentum, because suddenly I remember the watch's milky solar strip glinting, half-covered by the pillow where I stashed it last night for safekeeping.

A high-pitched noise builds in my throat. Safekeeping. I want to fling my bag across the atrium, but I can't move.

Even if I were back there, if I could call and they could answer, we'd say—what? What could we fit into this last shred of time? What could I possibly say that would be enough?

"Leigh!"

I startle back into myself. Sergei is at the top of the ramp, Caro at his side. He makes a frantic motion toward the elevators.

Excerpted from Alone Out Here by Riley Redgate. Copyright © 2022 by Riley Redgate. Excerpted by permission of Disney-Hyperion. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.