“Hey, Arty, where you going?” my dad asked as I walked past him. He was perched on a stepladder, painting the last few inches of the ceiling over our front porch. He’d been out there since right after dinner, trying to finish it before the sun went down. “So many things to fix on this old place before we move,” he’d said, and I’d immediately lost my appetite. I hated thinking about the move.
“Over to Cash’s house,” I said. “We’re going to …” I paused, unsure how to finish the sentence, because I really didn’t know what we were going to do. I finally decided on ending it with, “You know. Space stuff.”
The bald dome of my dad’s head was covered with big baby blue paint droplets, making his head look like an Easter egg. He frowned at me. “Your mother says he’s not a very nice guy.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t the nicest. Nobody could argue that. Cash was one angry astronaut. And most of the time I wasn’t sure if he liked me or wished I would go away. But I didn’t care. “He’s okay,” I said. As far as I was concerned, the “astronaut” part of “angry astronaut” canceled out the “angry” part. “He can be nice. Sometimes.”
Dad’s eyebrows raised. “That so?”
I nodded. “And we have a lot in common. He loves space like you and me, Dad.”
“Huh,” Dad said.
I watched him slide the last brush stroke of paint onto the ceiling. As if to celebrate being done, a fat paint blot fell and dripped down right between his eyebrows. “Dad?”
“Yeah, buddy?” he asked, distractedly scraping the brush against the edge of the paint can to squeeze off the leftovers.
“Is your observatory in Las Vegas going to be as good as the one here?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he came down the ladder and set the paint can on the top step, covered it with its metal lid, and rested the paintbrush across the top. When I started to think maybe he wouldn’t answer my question at all, he sighed and leaned against the ladder. “I won’t be working in an observatory, Arty,” he said. “I’m working in an IT department. You know … computers,” he said. He tried to make the last word sound exciting, like any old technology was just as good as space technology.
But it didn’t work. My heart startled, limped, and fell into my stomach. “No observatory?” I croaked. “We’re moving all the way to Las Vegas to work on computers? They have computers right here in Liberty!”
“But no jobs,” he said. “Not for me, anyway. This job pays more, Arty. And we’ll find an observatory in Vegas once we get settled in. We’ll visit that one every now and then.” He reached for me, but I ducked away from his hand.
“Find an observatory once we get settled in? Every now and then? But what about Mars?”
“Arty, you’ll have plenty of chances to see Mars next year.”
“But it’s only in opposition one day!” This was true. Mars was visible in the night sky much of the year, if you had the right equipment to find it. But it would be most visible when it was in opposition, meaning Earth was between Mars and the sun, so the red planet was both the closest and also stayed in the sky the longest on that day. That day would be my best hope in communicating with the life there. No big deal. Only an entire three years of grueling work, gone. No problem.
“And we’ll do our best to get to an observatory that day, Arty. You know, this isn’t the end of the world.”
But to me it seemed pretty close to the end of the world. The end of my world, anyway. The end of the world that I had spent my whole life dreaming about. How could Dad do this to me? He was the one who made me love space. How could he rip it away from me like this? Without even asking me! Without even caring!
“What happened to you?” I asked, my lower lip beginning to tremble, which was embarrassing because it meant I was about to cry. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure nobody I knew was around to witness me losing it. “You used to love space.”
Dad sighed again and closed his eyes. “I do love space, Arcturus,” he said. “But I love my family more. And this is what I have to do for my family.” I thought maybe I saw his lower lip tremble a little, too, and I felt a little better about mine. If I was going to lose it and be a big bawling baby, at least I wasn’t going to be alone about it.
Finally, Dad picked up the can by its metal handle. “Don’t stay out too long,” he said, all business again. “It’ll be getting dark pretty soon.”
I could barely make myself talk. “Actually, I was kind of wondering if I could stay out a while,” I said. “I think we might look at some stars.” At least I hoped that was what we were going to do.
Dad looked up and nodded. “It’s a clear night for it,” he said. “Okay. But you promise me you’ll come home if you have any problems with him?”
“I promise,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
Dad nodded again. “Say hi to the Martians for me.”
What would be the point of that? I thought.
Cash was sitting in his recliner again, just like he had been earlier in the day, only now he wore his standard nighttime uniform: black hoodie and jeans and a pair of boots. Next to his chair was a black plastic trash bag and a box. All of a sudden I was scared again. I knew that we were going out back tonight, and I still didn’t know what to expect there. It was both terrifying and thrilling and, just in case, I tried to tell myself that a future lifetime zombie diet of faces could be quite tasty.
“About time,” Cash growled. “I thought you weren’t gonna show up.”
“I had to get permission,” I said, sinking into his couch.
“Something wrong?” he asked. He coughed, held up his cigar as if to smoke it, then changed his mind and stubbed it out angrily.
“Did you know we’re moving?” I asked.
“I figured when your parents were house hunting in Vegas.”
“Right. In Vegas. Away from my friends and from space.”
“How do you get away from space? It’s over your head all the time.”
“But … the light pollution,” I said meekly. “Never mind. I’m sure Mars will be in opposition lots of times in my life.”
“Every couple of years,” he agreed.
“Cash?”
Grunt.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Can I stop you?”
“How come you stay outside all night and don’t come home until morning? I saw you once. So did Priya.”
Cash ignored my question and swiped at the curtains to peer outside. The sky was bathed in evening indigo. A lightning bug flashed. Night would be fast upon us. He pulled himself up out of his chair with a groan, then grabbed the bag and the box. “You ready?”
I jumped up, eager to go.
It didn’t feel real, walking behind Cash through the dewy backyard. My teeth chattered nervously, and I glanced up at CICM-HQ to make sure I didn’t see myself sitting up there, asleep, dreaming that I was walking with Cash through the backyards.
Of course, I wasn’t there, but Comet was, and he followed us, jumping at the fence, his head popping up, tongue flapping, every few feet. When we’d passed the fence line, he danced around in the corner, barking and bellowing, as if to warn me that I was with a bad guy.
“I’ll be back, Comet,” I called, only half reassuring him and mostly reassuring myself, as the woods got nearer and my palms started to sweat. “Is there any poison ivy in there?” I asked, but Cash didn’t answer. “Are there snakes?” Nothing. “Ticks?” Not a word. I gulped. “Open graves?”
Cash acted like he didn’t hear what I was saying and plowed on into the trees, where a path led into the blanket of woods. I followed him, not sure if I was doing the smartest thing in the world, but I had gone too far to go back now. As the woods closed in around our path, I felt comforted having the moon as my companion on this walk. The moon and I had been buddies since pretty much the day I was born.
Even though it was a warm summer, the nightfall had turned everything cooler and the sweat on my skin picked up breezes that coaxed goose bumps onto my arms and legs. I listened for animals, but the only sounds I could hear were the echoes of Comet’s barks in the distance.
I began to think that we might be walking forever. I started to feel far away from home. A nervous squickiness started to rise in my stomach.
“Hey,” I asked. “How much farther?”
But just then I saw what looked like illumination between some of the branches up ahead. Not man-made illumination, but more like the blue light of a clear summer night sky.
“Is that where we’re going? What’s up ahead?”
“You ask a lot of questions, kid,” Cash grumbled over his shoulder, but he tromped on.
Finally, he stopped, and I eased next to him. “Whoa,” I breathed. “I didn’t know this was back here.”