Life on Mars (2 page)

I was about to remind him that it was impossible for the sky to be boogers, because scientists have pretty much identified exactly what ingredients the earth's atmosphere is made of—nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide—and, as you can see, boogers is definitely not one of them, when Mom walked in.

She kissed Dad on the top of his head. “You're home early.”

“They did it, Amy,” Dad said.

“What?” I asked.

Mom's eyes went wide. “No.”

Dad nodded.

“What?” I asked again.

“They couldn't possibly …,” Mom said.

“Couldn't possibly what?” I asked.

“Could and did,” Dad answered.

“Did what?” I asked, a little louder this time. Though I had begun to suspect that they were ignoring me.

Mom clapped her hand over her mouth. Dad rubbed the top of his bald head a few times, tugged the little clownish hair
tufts over his ears till they stood straight out, then announced, “I need to lie down.”

After he left, Mom stood completely still, as if she had totally forgotten I was even in the room.

“What just happened?” I asked.

Mom jumped. Then she recovered, smiled, and bent to dig through one of the lower cabinets.

“Want some cookies?” she asked. “I'm going to make double-chocolate chip.”

“Oh, no, Mom's baking, what happened?” Vega had walked into the room, her hand permanently attached to her boyfriend, the Bacteria (real name: Mitchell). The Bacteria was kind of an idiot. I imagined the inside of his head to be filled with nothing but a bunch of one-syllable commands: Walk
House
Girl
Hand
Hold
See
Bro
Wave
Duuude.

Although I have always suspected that Vega began hating things on the day she was born, and had only begun hating things with more intensity when she turned fifteen, it wasn't until after she met the Bacteria that she really, really started hating everything in the world. Except him. Gross.

“Something happened,” I said.

“Well, of course something happened,” Vega said, rolling her eyes and sneering and doing all the things that made her charming and irresistible to someone like the Bacteria. “Mom's baking. Mom always bakes when something happens.” There was a clang as Mom sorted through the cookie sheets.

“Don't worry,” I said. “She hasn't gotten out the raisins yet. There's nothing to worry about unless she gets out the—”

Mom stood up, unloading an armful of ingredients onto the counter, blew the hair out of her eyes, and then, in slow motion, she turned, reached up, and pulled a bag out of the cabinet next to the stove.

Vega gasped so hard her hand almost parted with the Bacteria's hand. “Oh, no. Raisins,” she breathed.

That's how I found out that my dad lost his job.

And, with it, I lost my only connection to life on Mars.

It'd been three weeks since Dad lost his job and so far Mom had made double-fudge brownies, monster cookies, two pineapple upside-down cakes with extra cherries, at least a thousand chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, a bunch of pies, and a strawberry-chocolate parfait.

All of them had raisins.

Dad spent most of those three weeks wandering aimlessly through the house, munching on sweets, and pulling his hair so much it permanently stuck straight out. Every time someone mentioned anything astronomical in nature, he would get a crazy, bug-eyed look, yank a hair tuft, and disappear into his bedroom.

The result? So far I'd spent my summer waiting for the sun to go down so I could sit on the eaves outside my bedroom window to squint at Mars through the crummy cardboard Mickey Mouse binoculars that Tripp had borrowed from his little
brother Chase. And by “borrowed,” I mean Tripp sat on Chase's head and threatened to go nebula on him until he said yes.

I couldn't see Mars through those things. All I saw was a faint reddish blur with Mickey Mouse ears on top of it. A drooling twelve-hundred-pound yeti could have been doing the hula on a Martian beach and I wouldn't have been able to see it.

But CICM was too important to get picky about things like binoculars.

CICM had been my pet project since third-grade space camp, when we did a whole unit about life on other planets. CICM stood for Clandestine Interplanetary Communication Module, and the idea behind it was that if I could flash some sort of signal to Mars, and if I did it every night for long enough, eventually the hula-dancing yeti would get curious enough to flash back.

So basically, after three years of constant, committed work, CICM consisted of an intricate and complex system of … well, basically a flashlight and some mirrors. And a magnifying glass, because magnifying glasses are awesome. Especially when Tripp duct-tapes one across his forehead so that it hangs over one eye and we play mutant giant-eyed monster tag.

And after three years of dedication, still no flashing yeti.

So I mostly spent my summer nights perched on the roof, trying to see Mickey Mouse Mars, readjusting mirrors, rhythmically pushing the power button on a flashlight, and, most importantly, trying to come up with a better name than CICM—something that would look cool on a T-shirt.

So far I had:

STAR: Stellar Thinktank About Rabid martians

Except that I wasn't interested only in rabid Martians. Actually, if I had a choice, I preferred nonrabid space creatures. And I was pretty positive that the word “Martians” had to be capitalized, making it STARM, which wasn't, technically, a word at all.