Life as We Knew It (2 page)

Mom came into my room about an hour later and we both apologized. Mom said she'd think about the skating lessons. She said she thought volleyball would be better on my college applications since I could join a college squad if I was good enough.

She didn't say I'd never be good enough at swimming for a college squad, which was actually kind of nice of her. I'm never going to be good enough for anything the way things are going.

And I don't much like either of my two best friends these days.

All that and a math test tomorrow I can't even pretend I studied enough for.

I wish I was in college already. I don't see how I can make it through the next two weeks, let alone two more years of high school.

May 13

Friday the 13th. Well, things weren't that bad.

The math test wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Mom said if I wanted, I could take skating lessons in July. August I'll be spending with Dad, anyway. Then if I want to continue, we'll talk about it again.

Megan had lunch with her church friends (I don't like any of them) and Sammi had lunch with this week's boyfriend, so I ended up eating with some of the swim team, which was a lot more fun than listening to Megan and Sammi yell about God. Dan, who'll be captain next year, told me I had a really good crawl stroke and that if I worked at it, he could see me anchoring relays as soon as next season.

And I like Peter (he told Jonny and me to call him that; said Dr. Elliott was his name at the office). Some of the guys Mom's dated have tried too hard with us, but Peter seemed pretty casual. Not with Mom, though.

He actually stammered when he was talking with her and he stumbled and nearly fell. But he laughed at himself and said he wasn't nearly that careless when he was operating on someone.

He asked if any of us had heard about the asteroid and the moon. Mom remembered something about it, because it was big news when the astronomers first announced it was going to happen. Some asteroid is going to hit the moon, and Peter heard on the radio driving over that it's going to be visible in the night sky next week. I asked Mom if we could dig out Matt's telescope and she said we should ask him, but she was sure it'd be okay.

Jonny and I didn't even argue over the computer after Mom left. There was something I wanted to watch on TV from 8 to 9 and there was something he wanted to watch from 9 to 10, so that worked out really well.

The fan board is still fighting over whether Brandon'll need two quads to win the Olympics or whether he could win with just one.

It would be so amazing if Brandon won a gold. I bet we'd have a parade and everything.

It's 11 already and Mom still isn't home. I guess she and Peter are out admiring the moon.

May 15

Spent the weekend working on my English paper.

Dad called this morning.

Matt says we can use the telescope. He'll be home in a couple of weeks. He swears he'll teach me how to drive.

Jonny was named middle school player of the week.

May 16

All of a sudden this moon thing is the biggest thing ever. Either that or my teachers are as bored with schoolwork as we are.

I could understand it if I were taking astronomy. But French? Madame O'Brien made us talk about "la lune"

the entire class. She's making us write a composition about it due Friday, because Wednesday night we're all going to be outside watching the asteroid hit the moon.

Sammi says every time they make a big fuss like that, for an eclipse or a meteor shower, it rains.

It isn't just Madame O'Brien who's hot for this asteroid. In English today we talked about the origin of the word lunar. Eddie made a joke about mooning, and Mr. Clifford was so excited about word origins, he didn't even get mad. He talked about slang instead and metaphors that have to do with astronomy and he gave us a new assignment, too. We can write on any topic that has to do with the moon. Due Friday, of course.

I guess Ms. Hammish thinks this moon thing is historical, because in history that's what we talked about.

How people throughout history have looked at the moon and comets and eclipses. Actually, that was kind of interesting. I never really

thought about how when I look at the moon it's the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. Not to mention all those zillions of people I've never heard of.

All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.

Of course Ms. Hammish wasn't satisfied with inspiring us like that. She gave us an assignment, too. We can write either an essay about astronomy in the past and how it affected someone in history (like if they saw a comet and it scared them or prophesied something) or an article about what's going to happen Wednesday night.

Either way it's due on Friday.

I don't understand teachers. You'd think they'd talk to each other and at least one of them would realize how unfair it is to give us all assignments due on Friday. I wouldn't mind if I could figure out how to double up on them, write my history essay and translate it into French (which I could maybe do if my French was good enough, which it isn't). But I don't see how to do two for the price of one, so I think I'll have to write three separate papers (and one in French) and hand them all in on Friday.

I'll really be sick of the moon by then.

This moon thing is supposed to happen around 9:30 Wednesday night, and Mom was interested enough that we watched the news tonight. They said asteroids hit the moon pretty often, which is how the moon gets its craters, but this one is going to be the biggest asteroid ever to hit it and on a clear night you should be able to see the impact when it happens, maybe even with the naked eye but certainly with binoculars.

They made it sound pretty dramatic, but I still don't think it's worth three homework assignments.

Mom watched the local news, too, which she almost never does because she says it's too depressing, and they're predicting a really nice night. Clear skies and temperatures in the low 60s. They said in New York people are organizing parties for Central Park and on apartment rooftops. I asked Mom if we could have a party, and she said no, but people on our road will probably be out watching and it'll be like having a block party.

I don't know how interesting it's really going to be, but compared to everything else in my life, at least it's something different.

May 17

I got an 82 on my math test. There were at least four questions I should have gotten right but made careless mistakes on.

I know for a fact that Sammi's mother hasn't looked at a test result of hers in years, and Megan's mom has always worried about who Megan hangs out with, but I don't think she cares all that much about her grades.

I had to get stuck with the mother who works at home and has plenty of time to check things out and hover and demand to see tests.

We didn't have a big fight over it (I did pass, after all), but Mom gave me one of her famous You Shouldn't Be So Careless lectures, which I get at least once a week and sometimes more than that if the mood strikes her.

Mom said since I'm prone to carelessness, etc., it might be a good idea if I got a head start on all my moon papers, especially since they didn't have to be about whatever is going to happen tomorrow.

She suggested writing about the 1969 moon landing, so I Googled it, and I found out lots of people didn't really care that there were men walking on the moon. They all watched Star Trek (the original, old lousy-special-effects Beam Me Up Scotty Star Trek) and they were used to seeing Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock hopping around the universe so real people walking on the real moon wasn't as exciting.

I think that's funny. Men were walking on the moon for the very first time in history and people preferred watching Dr. McCoy say, "He's dead, Jim," for the thousandth time.

I wasn't exactly sure how to turn that into a paper, so Mom and I talked about it, about how fiction can have more power than reality and how in 1969 there was a lot of cynicism because of Vietnam and the sixties and all that and there were people who didn't think men were really on the moon and thought it was a hoax.

I think I'll do my French paper on what happens tomorrow night, because my French isn't good enough for stuff like hoaxes and cynicism. For English I'm focusing on how fiction can be more exciting than reality and for history I'll focus on how people in the '60s were cynical about what the government told them.

I told Mom that Sammi said it was sure to rain tomorrow night because it always rains when something important is supposed to happen in the sky and she laughed and said she had never known a more pessimistic 15-year-old.

I'll be at Dad's when Sammi turns 16. I have a feeling if she has a party, it'll be all boys, so it probably won't matter.

Around 10, something kind of odd happened. I was working on my paper and Mom was arguing with Jonny about going to bed, when the phone rang. We never get calls that late, so we all jumped. I got to the phone first and it was Matt.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. Matt never calls that late and he pretty much never calls on a weekday night.

"I'm fine," he said. "I just wanted to hear your voices."

I told Mom it was Matt. Jonny took the kitchen phone and she used the one in her bedroom. We told him what was going on (I complained about my three moon papers), and he told us about what he has left to do at school. Then he and Mom talked about the arrangements for him to get home.

This was all perfectly normal stuff, but it didn't feel right. Jonny hung up first and then Mom, and I managed to get Matt to stay on a minute longer.

"Are you sure everything's okay?" I asked him.

He paused for a moment. "I have a funny feeling," he said. "I guess it's this moon business."

Matt's always been the one to explain things to me. Mom had her writing and Jonny, and Dad was at work (for as long as he was here), so Matt was the one I turned to. I don't think he's psychic and maybe it's just because he's three years older than me, but whenever I've had a question he's seemed to know the answer.

"You don't think anything is going to go wrong?" I asked him. "It's not like the meteor is going to hit us. It's just the moon."

"I know," he said. "But things might get a little crazy tomorrow night. Phone lines might get tied up, people calling each other. Sometimes people panic even if there's no reason."

"You really think people are going to panic?" I asked. "Around here, it just seems like an excuse for teachers to give us even more work."

Matt laughed. "Teachers never need an excuse for that," he said. "Anyway, I figured I'd find you all home tonight and it'd be a good chance for me to say hello."

"I miss you," I said. "I'm glad you're coming home."

"Me too," he said. He paused for a moment. "Are you still keeping that journal of yours?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Good," he said. "Be sure to write about tomorrow. You'll probably enjoy reading all the details twenty years from now."

"You just want me to keep a record of all your clever sayings," I replied. "For your many biographers."

"Well, that, too," he said. "See you in a few days."

When we hung up, I couldn't figure out if I felt better because he'd called or worse. If Matt's worried, then I'm worried.

But maybe all Matt is worried about is getting through his papers and exams.

Chapter Two

May 18

Sometimes when Mom is getting ready to write a book she says she doesn't know where to start, that the ending is so clear to her that the beginning doesn't seem important anymore. I feel that way now only I don't know what the ending is, not even what the ending is tonight. We've been trying to get Dad on his land line and cell phone for hours and all we get are the kind of rapid-paced busy signals that mean the circuits are tied up. I don't know how much longer Mom'll keep trying or whether we'll talk to him before I fall asleep. If I fall asleep.

This morning seems like a million years ago. I remember seeing the moon in the sunrise sky. It was a half moon, but it was clearly visible and I looked at it and thought about how tonight the meteor was going to hit it and how exciting that would be.

But it wasn't like we talked about it on the bus going to school. Sammi was complaining about the dress code for the prom, nothing strapless, nothing too short, and how she wanted a dress she could wear when she went clubbing.

Megan got on the bus with some of her church friends and they sat together. Maybe they talked about the meteor, but I think they just prayed. They do that on the bus sometimes or read Bible verses.

The whole school day was just normal.

I remember being bored in French class.

I stayed for swim practice after school, and then Mom picked me up. She said she'd invited Mrs. Nesbitt to watch the meteor along with us but Mrs. Nesbitt had said she'd be more comfortable watching at home. So it was just going to be Jonny and Mom and me for the big event. That's what she called it: the big event.

She also told me to finish my homework early so we could make a party of it after supper. So that's what I did. I finished two of my moon assignments and did my math homework and then we ate supper and watched CNN until around 8:30.

All CNN talked about was the moon. They had a bunch of astronomers on and you could see how excited they were.

"Maybe after I'm through playing second for the Yankees, I'll be an astronomer," Jonny said.

I'd been thinking the exact same thing (well, not about playing second for the Yankees). The astronomers looked like they loved what they were doing. You could see how excited they were that this asteroid was going to make a direct hit on the moon. They had charts and computer projections and graphics, but basically they looked like big kids at Christmas.

Mom had gotten out Matt's telescope and she'd found the really good pair of binoculars that had somehow hidden themselves last summer. She'd even baked chocolate chip cookies for the event, so we carried a plate out and napkins. We decided to watch from the road, since we figured we'd have a better view from up front. Mom and I brought out lawn chairs, but Jonny decided to use the telescope. We didn't know exactly how long the hit was going to take or if there'd be something exciting to see afterward.