Reyes, an astronaut, was spending six months on a space station far above the Earth. The work was important, but it was also repetitive, and as the weeks went by she began to feel more and more alone.
One Friday night her radio picked up a faint signal on an amateur frequency. At first she thought she was imagining it, but then she heard a child's voice reading a picture book aloud, slowly and carefully. The girl's name was Lila. She was nine years old, and she belonged to the radio club at her school in a small town on Earth.
After that, they talked every Friday. Lila wanted to know what space smelled like, and Reyes told her that it smelled of hot metal. Lila asked whether the stars were loud, and Reyes explained that space is completely silent, although the stars look as if they should be shouting. On her last Friday in orbit, Reyes read Lila the ending of the book. When she finally landed, the first place she visited, before she even went home, was the radio club at Lila's school.