Life on Mars (20 page)

There was a strange white car with Kansas license plates in Cash's driveway the next day.

I sat on the porch steps and stared at it, willing it to go away.

“Looks like your pal has company,” Dad said. He was up on the ladder again, this time cleaning out the gutters.

“He didn't say anything about having company,” I said, frowning.

“Maybe it's surprise company,” Dad said. “You should probably stay away until his guest is gone.”

My frown deepened. “But we were supposed to get Huey out tonight.” I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and unfolded it. “I translated the ‘Star-Spangled Banner' into Morse code. Took me forever.”

I heard a sigh and the clap of the screen door closing behind me. Cassi, in her cheer clothes, had stepped out onto
the porch. “Ick, make him stop talking like that, Daddy. Brielle is coming and if she hears him, she might die from his nerdiness.”

“What was that?” I said loudly, my voice echoing down the street. “I couldn't hear you over the clinking of the medals you earned in space camp. Mom must be packing them. I hope she remembers to keep them with your space rover obstacle course completion certificate.”

She glared at me, her fists planted on her hips in perfect cheerleader formation. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said. “You're the space nerd, not me.”

“Are you sure?” I yelled. Brielle's mom's car turned the corner and crept toward us, the sun glinting off the windshield. “Because I definitely have a sister, named CASS-EE-OH-PEE-AH, who knows exactly who Phobos and Deimos are.”

“Okay, shh, Arty … Daddy …”

“And that sister of mine, the one named CASSIOPEIA, looks a lot like you. Who are Phobos and Deimos again? I've forgotten. Huh. If only Cassiopeia were here to remind me …”

“Shut up, Armpit! Dad, make him stop.”

“Oh! I know who Phobos and Deimos are! Pick me!” Dad said, raising his hand like we were in a classroom.

Brielle's car thumped into our driveway, and now we could make out Brielle's upturned I-just-smelled-the-inside-of-Tripp's-gym-shoe face. “If she'd remind me, I could stop talking about it. Phobos and Deimos, Phobos and Deimos … I wonder if Brielle might know.” I snapped my fingers and
made like I was going to follow Cassi off the porch and to the car.

Cassi turned abruptly and through a barely open mouth she hissed, “Fine. Mars's moons. Happy now?”

I grinned. “Yes! Thank you, Cassiiiiii.” She started down the driveway. “But I'd be so much happier if I knew what Phobos and Deimos meant in Greek.”

She shot a half-scared, half-furious look at me and loped down the driveway. Just as she opened the car door, I snapped my fingers and
shouted, “Oh, yeah! Phobos and Deimos! Fear and Panic!”

She slammed the car door shut and they backed out of the driveway, and I would have felt really proud of myself for having given her such a hard time if my eyes had not immediately gone right back to the strange car in Cash's driveway.

“You think they'll leave soon?” I asked.

“Who?” Dad asked, then followed my gaze. “If you had plans, I'm sure his guest will be gone in time.”

But they weren't. The sun began to set, and Tripp and I played catch in the front yard. The car was still there. The sun moved lower in the sky, and Mom made raisin spice cupcakes. Tripp and Priya and I ate them on the porch. The car remained. The sun lowered and Priya had to go practice her cello, and Tripp went home to babysit his baby brother Guts. The car was still there. I ducked inside to eat dinner. I thumbed through a
Discovery
magazine. I watched half an episode of a cartoon. I packed a snack and made a thermos of Kool-Aid
and rolled up a blanket and stuffed everything into a backpack. I loitered around the kitchen. I watched Mom pack the last of the knickknacks in our living room. And the car was still there.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. Just as I saw the first firefly blink, I went to Cash's door, hoping Dad wouldn't catch me and yell at me for not giving Cash and his company some privacy.

A woman opened the door. She had short gray hair and a smooth, friendly face and was holding a dish towel in one hand. There was a lamp on behind her in Cash's living room.

Wait. That should go in all caps.

THERE WAS A LAMP ON BEHIND HER IN CASH'S LIVING ROOM!

For a second, I feared I might have actually dreamed the whole thing and Cash Maddux didn't really live here. Which would have been both the best and worst dream ever.

“Hi,” I said. “Is Cash home? Er … Mr. Maddux? Is he … here?”

She smiled down at me, one of those smiles my mom sometimes gives before she says something like,
Well, aren't you precious
, or
Bless your heart
. She shook her head. “I'm sorry. He's not.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said. “Can you tell him Arty came by?”

“Oh. You're Arty? The boy he's been stargazing with? He told me all about you.” I nodded, and a little jolt of happy wound its way through me at the thought of Cash telling someone
about me. But also a little jolt of disappointment at the word “stargazing.” We weren't “stargazing,” we were changing the course of humanity through scientific discovery!

“Please, come in.” She stepped aside and let me through the door. Once I was inside, she shut the door, then sat on the edge of the couch and resumed her saintly smile. “I'm Cash's sister,” she said. “You can call me Sarah.”

“Okay,” I said, still standing awkwardly in the doorway, afraid to sit on anything now that I'd seen it in full light. Cash's house was … ugly.

“Honey, I'm afraid Cash is in the hospital.”

“What? Why?”

She looked at me sympathetically. “He isn't doing very well.”

I felt myself go numb from the chin down. “How not very well is he doing?” I asked.

She shook her head sadly, tilted to the side. You know the news is never going to be very good when it's coming to you from a sideways head. “Did Cash ever tell you about his cancer?” she asked in a small voice.

And then I did sit down, but not by choice. My legs and butt pretty much made the decision for me, plopping me right down onto Cash's recliner. “He has cancer?” I asked.

“Lung cancer. He's had it for some time,” she said. “And I'm afraid it's finally caught up with him.”

I said nothing. What did that mean,
finally caught up with him
? She'd made it sound like a monster, rushing through the
woods after him, leaping forward and snagging him by the ankles, making him fall into the leaves.

Immediately I thought about our last few walks back from Huey, how Cash had coughed and gasped and how he'd had to stop and put his hands on his knees a few times.

Maybe my vision of the cancer monster wasn't too far off.

“When will he get out?” I asked.

She did that sad head shake thing again, and I almost told her not to answer me at all, if her answer was going to begin with that shake or come out sideways. “I'm—I'm not sure …”

Suddenly it didn't matter that we were moving to Vegas. It didn't matter that the Bacteria ate all our food and talked only in single syllables. It didn't matter that the Brielle Brigade couldn't spell the word “science” or that I'd never climb into the tire rocket ship anymore or that I was walking around in a shoe that had once lived in Comet's stomach for a whole day.

All that mattered was that my friend was dying.

“Can I go see him?” I asked.

Sarah gazed at me for a long moment, squeezing the towel in her fist.
Open, close, open, close
. She stood and placed the towel on the couch where she'd just been sitting.

“Let's go ask your parents, and I'll get my car keys,” she said.

The hospital was white. White, white, white, everywhere I looked. White like the moon. White like the tail of a comet, the white of a meteor exploding under atmospheric pressure. Blindingly white.

Cash must have hated it there.

A nurse was standing by his bed, tapping something into a little electronic device that she slipped into her pocket when we came in. She squished an IV bag around and adjusted a blanket under his chin, smiling at us the whole time.

“He's been resting comfortably,” she whispered to Sarah on her way out, and Sarah nodded gratefully.

I stood in the doorway, trying to take it all in. The beeping machines and the hiss of something squeezing and releasing. The tubes and the wires.

And the tiny, white-haired old man resting in the bed, his head smashed flat against the pillow, his eyes closed, his lips
pale. One socked foot poked out from under the blanket, but otherwise, he was covered from chin to toe, like a mummy. Like somebody who was already dead.

He didn't even look like Cash. His skin was too thin, almost see-through, his breathing too labored and false, as if he were a machine man rather than a real human. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the breathing sound to be inside the helmet in his space room instead.

The force is strong with this one (one-one)
.

I waited for my brain to take over, to hear mission control telling Cash and me it was time to take off, to hear us checking and ticking off the systems and buttons in our space shuttle one by one. I tried to imagine us floating around in the space station. Anything.

But nothing would come. All I could see was the whiteness of his skin. The brightness of that dying star of a hospital room.

“It's too bright in here,” I said, and was surprised to hear my own voice sounding gruff, like Cash's. I walked over to the one window and yanked the curtains shut. Immediately the room dimmed. Better.

Cash's eyes opened at the
scrrr
sound of the curtains closing.

“Kid,” he said. Groggy. Breathless.

I froze. “Hi,” I said. I even gave a halfhearted wave, and then felt like a big dork about it.

“He came by. He wanted to see you,” Sarah offered. She
took a few tentative steps toward her brother's bed but seemed half-afraid. “How are you feeling?”

He turned his head to look at her. A scowl creased his face. “How do you think I feel? Like running a marathon? I feel like I'm dying.”

She took a step back and turned her face to the floor. I thought I saw a tear gather on the tip of her nose, but she kept her hands clasped together in the folds of her skirt.

Slowly, Cash snaked a hand out from under his blanket. He motioned for me to come closer. I did.

“Listen, kid,” he started, but then for a long time he didn't say anything else and it felt really awkward, so I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the paper with the Morse code songs on it.

“I've got a new message to send,” I said hopefully. “When you get out, we can send it up. I think we're getting close.”

He shook his head impatiently. “Not gonna happen,” he said.

“Sure it is,” I said. “We've worked so hard, and I think Huey is really good—the best I've ever had, actually—and …”

He swiped at the paper in my hand. It tore on one edge and floated down to my feet. “I said it's not gonna happen,” he said, his voice guttural and raspy, and began a coughing fit like none I'd ever heard out of him before. Now that I had a name for that coughing—
cancer
—it frightened me. “We're not gonna make contact with Mars,” he finally said once he'd caught his breath again.

“I'll wait until you're better,” I said weakly, and it wasn't
until a tear gathered on the tip of my own nose that I realized I had been crying. “We'll do it together.”

“Kid, listen to me,” he said. “I've devoted my whole life to the sky. My whole life. It cost me marriage, kids, pets, everything. I had nothing but what was up there.” He jabbed a weak finger toward the ceiling. “I spent every waking second studying what's up there. I used up everything I've got on what's up there. And you know what's up there?”

I shook my head, sniffed, did the hiccup-cry thing that babies and annoying little kids do.

“NOTHING!” he boomed, so loud both Sarah and I jumped and a nurse poked her head through the door curiously. He coughed for a moment, the end sounding weedy and agonizing, like words spilling out of his mouth rather than just air. “Nothing,” he repeated more softly once he'd caught his breath and swallowed a few times. “There is nothing up there but rocks, and I wish more than anything that I'd given up on it when I still had time. I wish I'd paid more attention to life on Earth.”

He turned his head so his watery eyes were gazing right into my watery eyes, and for a second I thought maybe I saw something in them that I recognized. Something I'd seen in Mom's eyes when she yelled at me to look both ways, or in Dad's eyes when he'd told us about Las Vegas. It was like a mixture of fear and protection. And maybe … worry?