Life on Mars (9 page)

I shrugged. “That's okay.” I put the contraption down and peered toward Mars through Mickey's ears.

“Having any luck?”

“Not really. Doesn't matter anyway,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because we're moving.”

She shifted so her arms were folded over the windowsill and she was resting her chin on them. “Arty, it's the same sky over Las Vegas, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “I mean, there will be some changes in latitude and longitude, so it's not technically the exact same sky.…”

“Okay, okay, point taken, Astronarty,” she said, using her old nickname for me, a much preferable one to butt-picker, I might add. “You'll still be able to see Mars.”

“No, I won't,” I said. “Did you know you can see Las Vegas from space?”

“You can see lots of things from space,” she said. “Can I try?” She gestured toward the flashlight, and I handed it to her. She began flashing toward the mirrors, aiming the beam at the sky, her brow furrowed in concentration. “You can see the Great Lakes, the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Wall of China.…”

“That's false,” I said. “You can't really see the Great Wall of China from space.”

She lowered the flashlight. “Really?”

I nodded. “Well, I mean, with a satellite or something you probably could.”

“Huh. Still, the point is, you can see stuff from space. So what?”

“Yeah, but do you know
why
you can see Vegas from space?
Because of the lights. And you know what you can't see when there's a ton of lights?”

She locked eyes with me. “Stars,” she said. And she didn't try to tell me I was crazy or wrong, and that was what I loved most about Aunt Sarin. She could spot a bad deal when she saw one, and she didn't try to make it into something good. Mom would have told me we'd see plenty of sky and then asked me if I wanted some raisins.

“What are you going to name your baby?” I asked, too depressed to talk about space anymore.

“I don't know. I was sort of thinking about Castor.”

Castor, as in Castor and Pollux, the two stars that make up the constellation Gemini. Although the Gemini stars are technically supposed to be twins, Castor must be the pushy twin because he's the first to appear over the horizon at night.

“Castor's good,” I said. “I like it.”

“I thought you might,” she said. “Did you know that a
Castor canadensis
is actually a North American beaver? Isn't that funny? Name him after a star and he'll get a little bucktoothed rodent for a side name.”

“Yeah, that's funny.” (Translation: Not to a guy named after an armpit.)

“Speaking of names, what are you calling your Mars operation these days?”

I hesitated. “CICM-HQ,” I said. “But I wish I had something that spelled an actual word so I could put it on a T-shirt.”

Aunt Sarin thought for a few moments.

“How about COMET?” she said. “Calling Out Martian Extra Terrestrials?”

“Aren't Martian and extraterrestrials the same thing?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said.

“And, besides, ‘extraterrestrials' is one word.”

“It is?”

“And, traditionally, comets were seen as bad omens. Like, if you were a Chinese emperor and you saw a comet, which they called ‘broom stars' in case you were wondering …”

“I really wasn't.”

“Well, seeing a broom star meant you were pretty much going to be out of a job soon.”

“That's not good.”

“Or possibly die.”

“Oh.”

“Plus, Comet is my dog. And he peed on my magnifying glass, so I kind of don't want to name anything after him right now.”

“Okay, okay, understood,” she said. “Not Comet. Tough crowd.” She thought some more. “How about SPACE?”

“What does that stand for?”

She scrunched up her brow, stopped pressing the flashlight switch. “Sending … People … Around … Celestial … Enterprises?” She looked pleased with herself.

I gave her a look. “That makes no sense. I'm not sending people anywhere. If anyone is going to be sent, it will be me,
and then it would be Sending Myself Around Celestial Enterprises. Which spells SMACE.”

She grunted. “Okay. MOON. Manned Observation OperatioN.”

“You can't use the last letter of the last word to finish your acronym. That's cheating.”

“Says who?” she asked.

“Says everybody in the history of naming stuff,” I shot back. I put the binoculars back up to my eyes and squinted, hoping to find the red planet.

She was silent again for a moment, and then she sucked in a great gasping breath. “BABY!” she shouted.

I didn't even bother to put down the binoculars. “Oh, what's that supposed to stand for? Boy Alien Binocular Yielder? That's terrible. It makes me sound like I'm the alien. Besides, I don't want the word BABY written across my chest.”

“No,” Aunt Sarin said, her voice all breathless and ragged. I turned and peered at her. She was wide-eyed and pointing at her stomach. “Baby! Castor is coming!”

The next twenty minutes were pretty much a blur of chaos. Vega and the Bacteria heard Aunt Sarin's yelp and came running up the stairs, the Bacteria's ice cream spoon still hanging out of his mouth.

“What's wrong?” Vega said. “What did you do, Arty?”

I tumbled in through my window. My shoelace hung up on the corner of a shingle, which pulled my shoe right off. The shoe thumped down into the yard, where Comet immediately snatched it up and took off across the yard with it.

“No! Comet!” I yelled, scrambling to get up. “I didn't do anything,” I said to Vega, then turned back to the window. “Comet! Do not eat my shoe!”

The Bacteria stood on his tiptoes to look out the window, then chuckled in slow, one-syllable laughs around the dangling spoon. “Heh. Heh. Heh.”

“Get me a phone. Call Uncle Manny,” Aunt Sarin commanded.

Vega aimed her steely eyes at me. “Don't act like you wouldn't do something, Armpit. You do stupid stuff all the time.”

“Heh. Dog. Heh,” the Bacteria continued.

“I haven't done anything stupid in a long time, Vega. Comet! Drop it!”

“Hello? A phone? You guys? Someone needs to call Uncle Manny.” Aunt Sarin grabbed her stomach.

My sister planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Using my eyeliner to draw a pirate mustache and eye patch on the dog?”

“That was Tripp!” I yelled. “And it was a superhero mask. There was no mustache. I told you that a thousand times.”

“There was so a mustache! I saw it myself!”

“Kids, I don't want to interrupt, but I'd really like to use the phone now,” Aunt Sarin said.

“No,” I countered, putting my hands on my hips to match hers. “That mustache is Comet's natural facial hair.”

Vega made an I'm-not-stupid face. “Dogs don't have natural mustaches, genius.”

“Heh,” the Bacteria laughed. “Dog 'stache. Heh.”

“It's not an actual mustache, it's just his fur!” I yelled back. “Look at him!”

Together, Vega, the Bacteria, and I all turned to the window and leaned forward, craning our necks.

Just in time to see Comet gobble my shoe. My whole shoe. Laces and all, in one swallow. Gulp. Like a cartoon dog. It was unnatural and unsettling. And my only pair of shoes!

“No! Comet! Aw, come on! Couldn't you have just peed on
it?” Then, as if in answer to my question, Comet got up, walked over to Cassi's swing, and lifted his leg. Well, at least I had that little consolation.

“Huh,” Vega said. “What do you know? His fur does look like a mustache.”

“Would somebody pick up the phone and call Uncle Manny, please? I'm having a baby over here!”
Aunt Sarin screeched, and we all turned, sort of surprised to remember that she was still in the room with us.

Vega went into panicky overdrive. “You're having the baby? She's having the baby? Why didn't you tell me she was having the baby? Oh no, oh no, I don't know what to do. What do I do? Where's the phone? What's Uncle Manny's number? How far apart are the contractions? What happens if the baby is born here? How will we get to the hospital? Should Mitchell drive you to the hospital? Should I call an ambulance? Baby? A baby? Right now, a baby?”

The Bacteria's mouth dropped open, and the spoon plunked on my carpet. He ran out of the room, down the stairs, and straight out the front door, shutting it behind him with a house-rattling slam.

Vega and I looked at each other for a beat, and then we both raced to the phone in the hallway. She got there first, and Aunt Sarin recited Uncle Manny's phone number for her. Vega started yelling into the phone, something about babies and ambulances and some other stuff that made me feel like I was going to throw up. If Aunt Sarin started doing half the things my sister was talking about, I might have nightmares forever.
I paced in circles, one shoe on, one shoe off, trying to remember aloud the stars in order of brightness.

“Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Vega, Rigel. Wait. No, Capella is brighter than Rigel. Or is it Procyon that's brighter than Capella? Or is it Riccola? Wait. What am I saying? Riccola is a cough drop. It's Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Vega, Capella, Rigel, Procyon, uh … uh …”

“Armpit!”

I snapped my fingers, stuck my finger in the air. “Right! Betelgeuse! How could I forget that?”

“Armpit! Stop talking about stars for one second,” Vega said. “Get your things together. Uncle Manny is on the way.”

“Oh,” Aunt Sarin moaned as Vega helped her out of the chair. “Oh, kids, I'm so sorry. You should call your mother. Tell her what's happening, see what she wants to do. Go to the guy next door. Your mom said he'd help in an emergency.”

Vega helped Aunt Sarin downstairs, and in minutes Uncle Manny's car screeched into the driveway. He ran into the house and collected Aunt Sarin, his hands shaking as he grabbed her elbows.

“Easy, easy …,” he said. He helped Aunt Sarin into the car and then glanced back at Vega. “You guys okay?”

Vega nodded, and Aunt Sarin let out a howl from within the car. Uncle Manny looked panicked. “We'll be fine,” Vega said. “We'll call Mom. Everything will be fine. Go!”

But it turned out Mom didn't think everything was fine at all. I could hear her screeching into the phone from all the way across the kitchen table. Vega held the phone away from her
ear,
okay
ing and
uh-huh
ing and
yeah-I-get-it-Mom-sheesh
ing, and then she hung up and set the phone on the table and looked at me.

“So basically Mom wants us to leave.”

“Leave? Where are we supposed to go? To Las Vegas?”

There was a knock, and the front door opened, the Bacteria stepping inside. “Aunt? Kid?” he grunted.

Vega shook her head. “No baby here. They went to the hospital.” She looked back at me, but she was kind of talking to both of us. “Mom and Dad are coming home as soon as they can get here. But in the meantime, we're supposed to find someplace else to go. Mom said she'll call Brielle's mom and Cassi can just stay there for a couple of nights. I'll go to my friend Anastasia's house. And you'll have to go to Tripp's.”

“Tripp isn't home.”

Even Vega looked surprised. “What do you mean, Tripp isn't home?”

“I've been calling all day.”

“Are you sure? Tripp's always home. If he's not here, where else could he be?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. It's a mystery. He's been missing a lot lately.”

Vega pressed her lips together. “What about Priya? I know she's a girl, but she hangs out with you and Tripp all the time, so she's kind of a boy.”

“Engineering camp. She won't be back until the day after tomorrow.”

Vega stood up and huffed. “Well, do you have any other friends who are home?”

I hated that we all already knew the answer to that question. And that we also all knew that my standing around puffing my lips out, looking up, and tapping my chin thoughtfully, like I was going through my long list of social prospects, was a lie. But that was exactly what I did. “Nope,” I finally said.

“You're kidding,” Vega said, swooshing her hair over one shoulder dramatically and stomping out of the kitchen. “Seriously, you can't even have one friend, Armpit?”

I followed behind her. “I have two friends. They're gone. It's summer, Vega. People go places.”

She went into her room and began cramming things into a backpack, leaving the Bacteria to shuffle over to the pantry and scrounge for something to snack on while he waited. I stood in her doorway.

“So, what am I supposed to do?” she asked. “I am not taking you to Anastasia's. There's a limit to what a sister should have to do, and hanging out with her armpit of a brother at her friend's house is definitely past that limit.”