Clues to the Universe

“I’d always dreamed of building rockets someday, but it had never occurred to me that I could launch Dad’s things into outer space.”

When Ro gets the idea to create a time capsule of her father’s belongings and send it into space, she discovers that Finding Meaning in the Face of Loss can come about through the simplest and sometimes most unexpected means. The project gives Ro focus and purpose and provides an opportunity for bonding with her new friend, Benji.

“Seriously, what on Earth was she up to?”

In this clever play on words, Benji wonders what Ro is doing buying all sorts of supplies from the general store. His curiosity gets the best of him, and when he asks Ro about it, it’s the beginning of what becomes a strong and purposeful friendship.

“The marble clattered perfectly down each of the steps, and then through the tunnel that I’d built, and then down the chute I put to replace Ro’s tunnel. It dropped into the bucket. The level launched it through to another tunnel, where it clattered through to the final chute. It hit the bell and dinged.”

Like the Rube Goldberg machine that Ro and Benji create together, sometimes things just fall into place, particularly when calculated correctly. Ro has the faulty expectation that all things should be this way, and when something doesn’t go as she planned, she wrestles with disappointment and feelings of inadequacy. When Benji describes the movements of the marble through the machine, it is really a metaphor for this desire for perfection.

“I knew what all the details were, but this time the details weren’t enough for me. It didn’t explain why an average person lived to be sixty-seven years old and Dad didn’t get twenty-two of them. The police never told me how to finish sixth grade or spend a summer with a black hole growing in my chest.”

Ro thinks that everything in life should make sense and that anything that is planned thoroughly and correctly should turn out as expected. All of these expectations are thrown to the wind when her father dies suddenly and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. Despite going back over his death numerous times, trying to figure out why it happened, she eventually realizes that she just has to accept it. Ro also draws on another space metaphor to describe how her grief feels and affects her, comparing it to a black hole.

“There was enough Red Vines packets stashed to last a nuclear winter.”

Ro hyperbolizes the amount of Red Vines that Benji keeps in his room, characterizing Benji as someone who knows what he likes and adding some humor to a story filled with difficult subject matter. The Red Vines are Benji’s way of asserting himself, as he eats them despite his mother always telling him not to.

“Some people would always be made of bright reds and blues and flashes and those BANG and KAPOW symbols and all that fun stuff. And I would be that sweet sidekick in the background. Or something. With my Red Vines. Barely sketched out and barely shaded in.”

Benji sees life through the lens of his comic books and often makes metaphorical comparisons between life and art. Before becoming Ro’s best friend and solving questions together, Benji feels that he is simply a background character who doesn’t deserve the spotlight or any extra attention. This all begins to change when he sees what he is capable of accomplishing.

“Dad always used to have a Plan for everything.”

Ro capitalizes the word “plan” because the idea of having things planned out and being prepared is one of Ro’s primary aims in life. She has a scientific mind and looks at things through as much of a logical lens as she can, which sometimes leads to her not being able to understand the more elusive and unpredictable aspects of life, like death.

“Even when her spaceship was shot down, she still made her way to the cavern where her father was held.”

Benji is determined to find his father, even though it seems like an impossible feat. He thinks of the comic book hero Gemma Harris, who traversed the universe and overcame great obstacles to find her father, and he wants to embody those same values of persistence and strength.

“Sometimes I wondered if people were meant to walk around with craters in their hearts for the rest of their lives.”

Ro compares the painful experiences of a person’s life to craters on the moon. These experiences leave a permanent mark on the person, and each painful experience leads to a necessary period of adjustment. Ro looks ahead to the rest of her life and anticipates that she will never stop grieving her father. Instead, Finding Meaning in the Face of Loss becomes her way of accepting and healing from it.

“If I could sketch this moment, I’d mix dark against light blues.”

Ro and Benji go outside to look at the stars during the Chinese New Year party. Benji isn’t usually the observant type and doesn’t take the time to look up at the sky very often, but being around Ro inspires his curious side. Benji once again compares life to a comic book, already envisioning how the moment would make a great illustration. This demonstrates how Ro and Benji have unique, defined personalities, as they see something different even when looking at the same sky, and their differences complement each other.

“For every unknown there was supposed to be a perfect explanation. For every problem to be solved, there was supposed to be an exact solution, if only you did the steps right.”

When the rocket doesn’t fly as high as Ro hoped, she wonders what she could have done wrong and feels like a failure. Some part of her also feels like she is failing her father, who always believed in the power of a great plan. Like her grief, there seems to be no perfect or easy solution to this project.

“Against all odds, in this world of millions and billions of people, we’d finally found him.”

When Ro shows Benji the ad for the Spacebound premiere, Benji can hardly believe it. He comes to see Ro as someone who aims for and achieves the impossible, never letting the odds or the difficulty of a task get in her way of solving it. Ro helps Benji see that the impossible can be made possible, demonstrating Friendship and Its Power to Inspire.

“I opened my mouth to say anything better, to take back my words, but the damage was done.”

Benji and Ro get into a fight when their emotions are running high amid major life changes. Drew openly bullied Ro, and Benji did nothing to stop it. Benji accuses Ro of taking over his search for his father and implies that she used him to help her finish the rocket. He doesn’t mean what he says but speaks out of anger and frustration. This fight allows each character to confront their weaknesses and, eventually, realize how to better approach their situations.

“Impossible things, Captain Gemma Harris, are often dares in disguise.”

Benji remembers a favorite quote from the Spacebound comics, which speaks to the comic book’s themes of persistence and achieving the impossible. Gemma Harris serves as inspiration for Benji, who struggles to act and speak up for himself until he finds the courage to go and meet his father. Ro similarly accomplishing “impossible” things and pushing Benji out of his comfort zone is what makes her reminiscent of Gemma, in Benji’s eyes.

“Relief slammed into me—and then turned to dread.”

The intensity of the moment in which Ro realizes that Benji left for LA on his own speaks to how much she has grown to care about him and how she feels responsible for pushing him to do something so drastic. Ro carries this guilt with her even after she and Benji resolve it because she knows that he was not entirely wrong in accusing her of wanting to find his father to satisfy her own feelings of loss.

“Each minute dripped by slower than the last.”

The tension is palpable as Ro sits in the car on the long drive to LA, wondering if she will be able to find Benji and feeling like it is her fault he left. There is a strong tone of anticipation and suspense during the story’s climax, with the characters venturing into a large, unfamiliar place to face the unknown and find a loved one. This mirrors Gemma Harris’s own adventures in the Spacebound comics, demonstrating the relationship between life and the art form that Benji loves.

“He knew that a tiny part of me, buried deep down, had yearned for Benji to find his dad because I wanted mine back. It was this part that wished, in an aching way, that getting my dad back was as easy—as possible—as putting a star over a city on a map and chasing it down winding roads until I finally saw him and everything was whole again.”

Ro is referring here to Mr. Voltz, who is an intuitive person. Because he has experienced loss, he recognizes the same behaviors and motivations in Ro. Ro is 12 years old and still developing self-awareness, but through the experience of worrying about Benji, she realizes that her motivation for finding his father is more complicated than just wanting to solve a mystery.

“Maybe he had never been waiting for me to find him. Maybe when he walked out of our lives, he never wanted to come back.”

After seeing his father react to him with shock and confusion rather than the relief and joy that Benji imagined, his entire worldview is shaken. He must come to the realization that his father may not be the hero he always expected him to be. Still, Benji is not entirely correct in his observation because his father does make an effort to redeem himself. Nonetheless, Benji is confronted here with his own immaturity, as he innocently believed his dad was waiting to be found by him.

“I thought about Dad telling me about each of the space launches he’d seen as a kid, the ones that started with just sending a steel box into space and then got more and more elaborate until he finally saw Neil Armstrong step on the moon.”

Ro is learning that any project or investigation worthwhile—including everyday relationships—will take multiple attempts, will be fraught with obstacles, and will challenge a person in unexpected ways. Space exploration began modestly but became a major scientific endeavor that achieved amazing feats. Ro’s rocket did not work perfectly, but it taught her a great deal about rockets, herself, and The Science of Living.

“Scientists are detectives. They go into deep oceans and to the ends of thick jungles to find clues to the universe. They stare at things under a microscope and crane their necks at the stars, always hoping to find something new.”

Ro is inspired by science because of her curious mind, her father, and her desire to find answers to life’s biggest questions. As she starts to grow up, Ro’s discoveries about The Science of Living teach her how to be a better friend, to heal from loss, and to never give up. Instead of being weighed down by her grief, she allows herself to be inspired by the memory of her father and the things that remind her of him, like space.

“Why had I ever thought my dad would be the superhero? Mom had been standing in front of me all along, holding our world up on her shoulders.”

Benji comes to see his mother in a new light after meeting his father and facing the reality that his father was just a person, not a hero or someone who was waiting to be saved. Benji often complained about his mother’s stress and her constant worrying, but he now sees that she has always worked hard to raise and love her two sons.

“What if it would never get easier?”

When Benji talks to his dad on the phone, it is awkward and tense, and Benji starts to clam up again like he always used to. He worries that his relationship with his father will never improve, but he reminds himself of the lessons he learned in building the rocket. He realizes that it will take time, patience, and effort.

“The truth was, a place like this couldn’t always contain her big grin and her crazy smart ideas and her wild experiments. And I knew that wherever she ended up in the future—in San Francisco, or in a spaceship that traveled to the edges of the universe—she would be just fine.”

Benji comes to deeply admire Ro for her drive, intelligence, and vibrantly unique personality. When she tells him that she’s moving away, Benji is sad but not surprised because he always knew she was meant for great things. He sees her as a hero traveling the universe in search of adventure and answers. He likens her to his favorite comic book heroine, Gemma Harris, who motivated him to search for his own dad. The similarities show the importance of Friendship and Its Power to Inspire.