When I rang Tripp’s doorbell, I heard a tumbling sound from inside the house, and then the door was pulled open to reveal Tripp rubbing his backside with both hands.
“I fell down the stairs,” he said, although I noticed him cast an accusing glance over his shoulder toward his older brother, Heave, who stood at the top of the stairs with a wicked grin on his face. Heave shrugged, which is usually the job of Tripp’s oldest brother, Shrugg, but at the moment Shrugg was racing through the living room after Chase, wearing only a pair of tightie whities and screaming something about paybacks. Tripp edged through the door and closed the chaos in behind him. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Rocket ship,” I replied.
Tripp’s eyebrows went up. “We haven’t been there since Priya’s mom made her take swimming lessons in fourth grade,” he whispered.
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.