Life on Mars (7 page)

He was right. Otherwise known as the Great Deep End Freakout. We really hadn't been to the rocket ship in ages.

The rocket ship was an ancient play structure on our elementary school playground. It was made out of recycled tractor tires and was so old, Dad once told me that Grandpa Muliphein helped build it when my dad was in elementary school back in the 1980s. Over the years, the school had built a real playground around it, with fancy monkey bars and tunnel systems and, of course, the aforementioned infamous tornado slide. But even though we had all the fancy stuff, the school never got rid of the tire rocket ship, and every spring Dad would go out there with little cans of paint and repaint it, white and gray and blue, with windows that reflected a marbled moon.

Nobody ever played in the rocket ship.

Except Tripp, Priya, and me. We spent more hours than I could count inside those tires, nasally talking into our cupped hands: “
Crrr
, Houston, we have Mars in sight, I repeat, we have Mars in sight, over,
Crrr. Crrr
, ten-four, Bald Eagle, you may land whenever you feel like it, over,
Crrr. Crrr
, that would be now, Houston, I've been in this rocket for six months and I really have to pee, over,
Crrr
.”

And then we'd giggle until we really did have to pee. And once Tripp giggled until he actually peed, and he had to go to the nurse's office and wear the nurse's donated office pants, and we just told everyone that he sat on a juice box, because that's what friends do when a giggle-pee happens. You never know when a giggle-pee could happen to you.

But somewhere around fourth grade, the rocket ship
started to get uncool. And also a little small. And a group of kindergartners kept hanging around pretending to be hostile aliens, and we could never land, not even to pee.

But my dad's news the night before was rocket ship–worthy. I'd called Priya before I'd walked to Tripp's house. I'd even talked into my cupped hand over the phone for authenticity. She didn't giggle, so I felt stupid.

“What's going on?” Tripp asked, pulling a bacon-flavored toothpick out of his pants pocket, blowing a ball of lint off it, and stuffing it into his mouth. “Want one? I'm pretty sure I've got another one in here somewhere.”

I shook my head. The thought of what he might have to blow off a toothpick found “in there somewhere” made my stomach squish. “I'll tell you when we get there. And I thought your mom banned toothpicks from your house after Dodge sat on one and had to have it taken out in the emergency room with a pair of tweezers.”

“She did. I found some loose ones under my dresser this morning. Sure you don't want one? They still have a little flavor left in 'em.”

I made a face. “No thanks.”

We walked to our old school, just like we'd done a million times, both of us talking about good old elementary school memories, and I wished more than anything that we could go back to that. Back to before middle school, when suddenly everybody was so worried about looking cool and playing sports and back when my dad had his job at the university observatory and it looked like things would stay that way
forever. Back to a time when leaving my best friends would have been the last thing on my mind.

Priya was waiting for us when we got there. “Perchlorate,” she said.

“Huh?” Tripp asked.

“Perchlorate. It's in the soil on Mars. My dad saw an article about it on the Internet. You know what that means.”

We both looked at her, totally blank.

“Life. It means there could have been life there. Which can only mean …” She got a very serious look on her face and we leaned forward. “Mars probably has face-eating zombies, too.” She threw her head back and laughed. “Boo!” she said, making her hands into claws and lunging toward Tripp.

“Har har har, you're so funny,” Tripp said, but he'd jumped just a little. I'd felt it.

“I'm just teasing you, Tripp,” she said, bumping his shoulder with hers. “So, why the rocket ship meeting? More about the monster next door?”

“Yeah, what's up with the undead behind Widow Feldman's curtains?” Tripp asked.

“I'm not here to talk about that,” I said. “Come on.” I knelt down in front of the opening of the rocket ship. It had gotten even smaller since the last time I saw it.

“We have to go in that thing?” Priya asked, scowling. “There are bugs in there.”

Tripp and I froze. “Since when do you care about bugs?” Tripp asked. “You used to eat them.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I ate one grasshopper one time, to prove to you that they weren't poisonous.”

I leaned into Tripp, grinning. “Oh, that was so gross. Its leg got stuck in the corner of her mouth and it kept wiggling every time she talked and it was all hairy and you puked, remember, Tripp?”

Tripp nodded, then gagged, his face turning red. “See?” he choked out. “You weren't scared of bugs then. You were one of the guys.”

“Yeah, you were more of a guy than Tripp,” I said, and Tripp slugged my shoulder.

“Fine,” Priya said. “Let's just go in.”

We ducked into the tires, bent low, picking our way through the slimy puddles that collected in there, year-round. Finally we got to the end, and Priya folded herself up against a tire. I took my position in the oxidizer, and then Tripp came in last, smacking his head on the bottom of the upper tire. He sat, rubbing his forehead the same way he'd been rubbing his rump earlier.

“So? What's the deal?” Priya asked. “Why are we here?”

I looked at my best friends, ready to fly the pretend ship wherever I wanted it to go, and I was suddenly hit with such sadness at leaving them behind, breaking up the trio, I did the only thing I could think to do.

I cupped my hand over my mouth.

“
Crrr
, Houston, we have a problem. I'm moving.”

Over.

Crrr
.

“Arty, you need to get up,” Mom said, waking me from a deep sleep.

“Huh?” I said, lifting my head from beneath the pillow. I think for as long as I live, I will never figure out how my head goes to sleep on top of a pillow every night and wakes up under it every single morning.

“Rise and shine!” Mom whipped open the window blinds in one loud ripping sound. Sunlight streamed in, and I shrank back and growled like a vampire.

Speaking of vampires … (Or zombies.)

Ever since I found out we were moving, I was doing as much neighbor watching as I was Mars watching. I almost even considered adding it as official CICM business. Clandestine Interplanetary Communication Mission and Terrifying Zombie Neighbor Observatory. CICMTZNO. At least I finally got another vowel in there.

Every night, Mr. Death would leave his house, always carrying a trash bag in one hand and a box in the other. Always wearing a black hoodie. And always disappearing into the trees. He never came back, no matter how long I waited. I stared into the woods until my eyes were droopy and CICM's batteries were dead from all the flashing and my feet were numb from keeping my legs crossed for so long.

And every night I waited while Comet went out for his nightly ritual, which consisted of first tugging on Cassi's old swing as if he were trying to kill it (because Comet was always trying to kill things that weren't actually alive—like socks and pieces of rope), and then giving up and just peeing on it instead. He'd been peeing on that swing for years. I'd seen him do it probably a thousand times. And I would have told Cassi, but then the Brielle Brigade would come over and call me “Supernerd” or “Spacedork” and I would just—oops!—forget to mention that their sequined, shiny white outfits were sitting on Comet's favorite toilet. Sometimes I would even find Comet and high-five his paw.

Anyway, every night I waited until Comet got his nightly ritual over with and the house shut down and Mom came in and told me good night, and then I would get really scared because all of a sudden it was entirely too quiet for anything good to be going on.

And still Mr. Death would never come back from the woods.

I was beginning to think maybe Tripp had a valid theory
(eleven words I never thought I'd hear myself say). Maybe Mr. Death wasn't coming back because he had reburied himself for the night.

Sometimes Priya's mom and mine would get caught up talking Mom Stuff, and it would get late, and Priya would join me. When that happened, we would call Tripp over, though a few times he wasn't home, which we both found curious. Tripp was always home. And if he wasn't, at least one of us knew where he was. Once, we stayed up at CICM so long, we saw Tripp's dad's car pull into his driveway, and we saw Tripp's silhouette spill out of the car, a duffel slung over one shoulder. Even though we called his name about a hundred times, he scurried in through his garage, like he never heard us at all.

“Did that seem weird to you?” Priya asked.

I shrugged. “What do you expect? Tripp's weird,” I said, even though, yeah, I totally thought it was weird. But Priya simply nodded and we went back to our lookout.

“Hey, Priya.”

“Huh?”

“What do you think Mr. Death does out there?”

“I don't know. Maybe he meditates or prays or something. Or hunts.”

“Hunts people?”

“No, silly. Animals. Maybe he traps rabbits. My cousin knows how to make rabbit traps.” But I could see it in the way she bit her lip as she held the Mickey binoculars to her face—even Priya was a little bit frightened.

That was why I growled, vampire-style, when Mom pulled open my blinds. I had been up way too late the night before, wondering exactly what Mr. Death was hunting out there, and if he knew how to make seventh-grade-boy traps, too.

“Come on, you've got to get up,” Mom repeated. “Ugh.” She made a face as she picked up a used pair of underwear that had been draped over the back of my desk chair and dropped them into my clothes hamper. “You've got to get yourself presentable before she gets here.”

I pulled myself up on my elbows, still snarling.

“Before who gets here?” I asked.

Mom high stepped over a Lego representation of the physics behind centrifugal force, then stopped in the doorway. “Aunt Sarin.”

If you look east in the spring and summer night sky, you will find the “celestial strongman,” fifth-largest constellation, Hercules. Unlike Orion, Hercules wouldn't have been afraid of a puny bug, because he pretty much spanked anything that got in his way. Leo the lion, Hydra the nine-headed serpent, and even Cancer the crab.
Crack, crash, thud
. Even in his constellation form, Hercules is socking it to Draco, his left knee planted firmly on the dragon's star head.

But it's over in Hercules's right knee that you will find a white subgiant—the 198th brightest star in the sky, to be exact—called Sarin.

Being in a warrior's knee sort of fits my aunt Sarin. She is sturdy and tough, doesn't take a lot of guff from anyone, and
supports the whole family. If anyone has something they need, they go to Sarin. And she always says yes, because she's reliable like that.

“I thought she was having a baby,” I yelled, but my mom had already left the room. I'd overheard Mom talking on the phone to Aunt Sarin two nights before, and Mom had said something like, “
You're gonna have that sweet pea any minute now
.” I guess I'd thought she really meant any
minute
now and not any
day
now. Why people hardly ever said what they really meant was something I would never understand.

I got up and dressed, taking a quick peek outside to see if Mr. Death was maybe doing something normal like mowing the lawn or putting water in the scaly bird bath Widow Feldman had left in the backyard when she moved out, but no such luck. As usual, his yard was empty, his curtains shut tight, his house as buttoned up as Widow Feldman's housecoat.

I went downstairs and the first thing I noticed was the giant suitcase. And by “noticed,” I mean stubbed my toe on, because it was literally sitting right at the bottom of the staircase, with two rogue pairs of shoes and a hairbrush resting on top. Tripp would have totally wiped out if he'd been there.

I stepped around the suitcase and went into the kitchen, where Mom was filling a plastic bag with snacks.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “Why is Aunt Sarin coming? Did she have her baby? I didn't know we had Fruit Roll-Ups, can I have one? What's the suitcase doing out? Where's Dad?”

Mom held out her hand, stop sign–style. “Whoa. Too many questions. Here.” She threw a Fruit Roll-Up at me. Strawberry. My favorite. Tripp and I once brainstormed a whole list of fruit-roll flavors that would be even better—bacon, cheese dip, doughnut, buffalo wings. But eventually we decided that you couldn't call them fruit rolls unless there was some fruit in them somewhere, and who wants to eat a banana-bacon roll or a chewy sheet of pomegranate-flavored buffalo wings? We considered renaming them
Food Rolls
, but Priya said that sounded gross, and she started counting off about a billion reasons why Tripp and I could never be trusted with our great ideas, and by the time she was done, we had forgotten all about the business of rolling food into sheets. “No, Aunt Sarin didn't have her baby yet. She's coming to stay with you and your sisters for a couple days while Dad and I go house hunting in Las Vegas.”