“Arty, you need to get up,” Mom said, waking me from a deep sleep.
“Huh?” I said, lifting my head from beneath the pillow. I think for as long as I live, I will never figure out how my head goes to sleep on top of a pillow every night and wakes up under it every single morning.
“Rise and shine!” Mom whipped open the window blinds in one loud ripping sound. Sunlight streamed in, and I shrank back and growled like a vampire.
Speaking of vampires … (Or zombies.)
Ever since I found out we were moving, I was doing as much neighbor watching as I was Mars watching. I almost even considered adding it as official CICM business. Clandestine Interplanetary Communication Mission and Terrifying Zombie Neighbor Observatory. CICMTZNO. At least I finally got another vowel in there.
Every night, Mr. Death would leave his house, always carrying a trash bag in one hand and a box in the other. Always wearing a black hoodie. And always disappearing into the trees. He never came back, no matter how long I waited. I stared into the woods until my eyes were droopy and CICM’s batteries were dead from all the flashing and my feet were numb from keeping my legs crossed for so long.
And every night I waited while Comet went out for his nightly ritual, which consisted of first tugging on Cassi’s old swing as if he were trying to kill it (because Comet was always trying to kill things that weren’t actually alive—like socks and pieces of rope), and then giving up and just peeing on it instead. He’d been peeing on that swing for years. I’d seen him do it probably a thousand times. And I would have told Cassi, but then the Brielle Brigade would come over and call me “Supernerd” or “Spacedork” and I would just—oops!—forget to mention that their sequined, shiny white outfits were sitting on Comet’s favorite toilet. Sometimes I would even find Comet and high-five his paw.
Anyway, every night I waited until Comet got his nightly ritual over with and the house shut down and Mom came in and told me good night, and then I would get really scared because all of a sudden it was entirely too quiet for anything good to be going on.
And still Mr. Death would never come back from the woods.
I was beginning to think maybe Tripp had a valid theory (eleven words I never thought I’d hear myself say). Maybe Mr. Death wasn’t coming back because he had reburied himself for the night.
Sometimes Priya’s mom and mine would get caught up talking Mom Stuff, and it would get late, and Priya would join me. When that happened, we would call Tripp over, though a few times he wasn’t home, which we both found curious. Tripp was always home. And if he wasn’t, at least one of us knew where he was. Once, we stayed up at CICM so long, we saw Tripp’s dad’s car pull into his driveway, and we saw Tripp’s silhouette spill out of the car, a duffel slung over one shoulder. Even though we called his name about a hundred times, he scurried in through his garage, like he never heard us at all.
“Did that seem weird to you?” Priya asked.
I shrugged. “What do you expect? Tripp’s weird,” I said, even though, yeah, I totally thought it was weird. But Priya simply nodded and we went back to our lookout.
“Hey, Priya.”
“Huh?”
“What do you think Mr. Death does out there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he meditates or prays or something. Or hunts.”
“Hunts people?”
“No, silly. Animals. Maybe he traps rabbits. My cousin knows how to make rabbit traps.” But I could see it in the way she bit her lip as she held the Mickey binoculars to her face—even Priya was a little bit frightened.
That was why I growled, vampire-style, when Mom pulled open my blinds. I had been up way too late the night before, wondering exactly what Mr. Death was hunting out there, and if he knew how to make seventh-grade-boy traps, too.
“Come on, you’ve got to get up,” Mom repeated. “Ugh.” She made a face as she picked up a used pair of underwear that had been draped over the back of my desk chair and dropped them into my clothes hamper. “You’ve got to get yourself presentable before she gets here.”
I pulled myself up on my elbows, still snarling.
“Before who gets here?” I asked.
Mom high stepped over a Lego representation of the physics behind centrifugal force, then stopped in the doorway. “Aunt Sarin.”
If you look east in the spring and summer night sky, you will find the “celestial strongman,” fifth-largest constellation, Hercules. Unlike Orion, Hercules wouldn’t have been afraid of a puny bug, because he pretty much spanked anything that got in his way. Leo the lion, Hydra the nine-headed serpent, and even Cancer the crab. Crack, crash, thud. Even in his constellation form, Hercules is socking it to Draco, his left knee planted firmly on the dragon’s star head.
But it’s over in Hercules’s right knee that you will find a white subgiant—the 198th brightest star in the sky, to be exact—called Sarin.
Being in a warrior’s knee sort of fits my aunt Sarin. She is sturdy and tough, doesn’t take a lot of guff from anyone, and supports the whole family. If anyone has something they need, they go to Sarin. And she always says yes, because she’s reliable like that.
“I thought she was having a baby,” I yelled, but my mom had already left the room. I’d overheard Mom talking on the phone to Aunt Sarin two nights before, and Mom had said something like, “You’re gonna have that sweet pea any minute now.” I guess I’d thought she really meant any minute now and not any day now. Why people hardly ever said what they really meant was something I would never understand.
I got up and dressed, taking a quick peek outside to see if Mr. Death was maybe doing something normal like mowing the lawn or putting water in the scaly bird bath Widow Feldman had left in the backyard when she moved out, but no such luck. As usual, his yard was empty, his curtains shut tight, his house as buttoned up as Widow Feldman’s housecoat.
I went downstairs and the first thing I noticed was the giant suitcase. And by “noticed,” I mean stubbed my toe on, because it was literally sitting right at the bottom of the staircase, with two rogue pairs of shoes and a hairbrush resting on top. Tripp would have totally wiped out if he’d been there.
I stepped around the suitcase and went into the kitchen, where Mom was filling a plastic bag with snacks.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “Why is Aunt Sarin coming? Did she have her baby? I didn’t know we had Fruit Roll-Ups, can I have one? What’s the suitcase doing out? Where’s Dad?”
Mom held out her hand, stop sign–style. “Whoa. Too many questions. Here.” She threw a Fruit Roll-Up at me. Strawberry. My favorite. Tripp and I once brainstormed a whole list of fruit-roll flavors that would be even better—bacon, cheese dip, doughnut, buffalo wings. But eventually we decided that you couldn’t call them fruit rolls unless there was some fruit in them somewhere, and who wants to eat a banana-bacon roll or a chewy sheet of pomegranate-flavored buffalo wings? We considered renaming them Food Rolls, but Priya said that sounded gross, and she started counting off about a billion reasons why Tripp and I could never be trusted with our great ideas, and by the time she was done, we had forgotten all about the business of rolling food into sheets. “No, Aunt Sarin didn’t have her baby yet. She’s coming to stay with you and your sisters for a couple days while Dad and I go house hunting in Las Vegas.”
I grimaced, trying to swallow, but the food got stuck in my throat halfway down. They were house hunting. In Vegas. For some reason, this made our impending move all the more real. “Oh,” I squeaked.
Mom shut the cabinet and zipped the bag closed, stuffing it into her purse on the counter and looking at her watch. “Now, you’ll be fine while we’re gone. Aunt Sarin will play games with you like she always does. This may be your last chance to spend some time alone with her before the baby comes.”
Even better, Aunt Sarin would come up to CICM-HQ with me. She’d flash the lights toward Mars and look through Chase’s Mickey Mouse binoculars and would swear she saw movement—a boat on a Martian ocean, maybe?—and wouldn’t call me weird or make fun of me. She might even help me rename it so we could make shirts.
Finding Arty’s Real Terrestrials. FART.
Ugh.
“But don’t you think Dad should make sure he’s tried all the other jobs here first? Maybe he missed one.”
Mom sighed and leaned against the cabinet. “Arty, we’ve talked about this …”
But she couldn’t finish her sentence, because just then the front door burst open, and a wailing rainbow rushed into the kitchen at us.
“Oh, Ayyymeee,” the rainbow cried. “I can’t gooo without saying good-byeee!” The rainbow engulfed Mom under seven thousand layers of fabric.
“Hey,” I heard behind me, just before someone bumped my shoulder. Priya stood behind me, her bracelets clanking.
“Hey,” I said. “I thought you were at engineering camp.”
“I’m on my way there now,” she said. “But my mom was convinced that when we came back in four days, you would already be gone forever. She’s freaking out about you guys moving.”
I am, too, I wanted to tell her, but I clenched my teeth so no words would slip out. I didn’t want to look like … like Orion. Weak, sappy, afraid of a wimpy little move.
“Devani,” my mom said, pulling herself out of the folds of Priya’s mom’s sari, which she wore over a pair of fancy-looking jeans and high-heeled sandals, just like always. “We’re just house hunting. We’ll still be here when you get back from Lawrence.”
Priya’s mom stepped back and wiped the corners of her eyes. “I just didn’t want to take any chances. I can’t believe my best friend in the world is moving … away.” With the word “away,” she burst into tears, and my mom was eaten by a rainbow again.
My mom and Priya’s mom had been best friends since we were born. They washed their cars together and they took us to movies together and they sat in lawn chairs and watched us play together for our whole lives. It was going to be weird to look out the front window of our Vegas house and find someone else sitting in the front yard with Mom. Someone not wearing a brightly colored sari and high-heeled sandals.
“I wished dry rot on you,” Mrs. Roy said, stepping back and wiping at her eyes again, this time with a paper towel Mom had given her.
“Devani!” Mom chastised.
Mrs. Roy’s eyes got big. “I couldn’t help it. I don’t want you to go. I wished dry rot and roof leaks and crumbling foundations on you so you’ll have to stay.”
I was bummed that I’d never thought of that idea. Suddenly I was wishing those things on them, too. Whatever those things were.
“Looks like they’re going to be at this a while,” Priya said. “Want to go upstairs?”
We went up to my bedroom. I flopped onto the floor and fiddled with a few Legos, while Priya walked over to the window, grabbing a space shuttle model along the way.
“Should we get Tripp?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I tried. He’s not home.”
“Again?”
“I know. I thought Chase started to say something about practice, but Heave threw a huge water balloon at him and I didn’t stick around to get caught in the crossfire.”
I pressed two Legos together. “Practice? What kind of practice would Tripp be in?”
“Got me. Whatever it is, he’s not saying.”
Briefly, I thought about the types of things Tripp could be practicing. Sports? No way. Tripp was more likely to be used as the ball than to successfully catch, hit, or run with one. Maybe he was playing an instrument. The flute, or something else lightweight that he couldn’t hurt himself with. But why would he keep that a secret?
Then again, maybe Chase was crazy. Tripp wouldn’t be keeping secrets from us.
Suddenly Priya leaned forward. “Arty! Look!” She pointed out the window.
I got up and joined her. Mr. Death was outside. Wearing his hoodie. Carrying his bag and box. Coming out of the woods. He rubbed his eyes impatiently as he walked.
“Holy cow! He was out all night,” Priya said.
“Just like Tripp’s theory,” I added, and this time she had no argument.
We watched him cross the lawn, pressing our foreheads against the glass as he moved out of our line of vision. When he’d gone, we were silent, unless you counted the beat of my heart, which was practically thumping across the floor with adrenaline. No wonder I’d never seen him come out of the woods—I’d never been looking for him in the morning.
“That’s so weird,” Priya whispered. “What could he be doing out there?”
Oh, I don’t know. Murder, mayhem, torture … “Probably … barbecuing.” I’m not good with spontaneity.
“Barbecuing?” Priya looked skeptical. “I think Tripp is rubbing off on you.”
“Well, barbecuing is better than …” Murder, mayhem, torture …
My watch beeped on the hour, and Priya and I both jumped. “We should probably go back downstairs,” she said.
I nodded and followed, hoping my heart would hop back in my chest on the way down.
When we got downstairs, Mom was once again wrapped in Mrs. Roy’s sari. Or maybe she’d never gotten out of it.
“We have to go,” Mom said. “Corvus needs a job and there just aren’t many opportunities out there. We have to take what we can get.”
“But can’t you get something closer?” Mrs. Roy whined. Her gaze landed in my direction. “Look at them,” she said, gesturing toward Priya and me with her balled-up, snotty paper towel. “How will they ever get married if you’re so far away?”
Priya and I groaned in unison. Our moms had been doing this since we were in preschool and I announced that Priya was “my wife.” The moms had thought it was so cute, they made a pact to get us married for real someday. “Aren’t they adorable together?” they would croon, watching us play tag or look through Priya’s telescope or chase lightning bugs. “Like a little husband and wife. Oh, and won’t we mothers-in-law have such a good time together?” they would say. “Won’t holidays be so much fun!”
“We’ll visit,” Mom said. She squeezed Priya’s mom’s shoulder. “We will. And you can come see us. When we have a house. Won’t that be fun, Arty? To see Priya in Vegas?”
“Oh! A Vegas wedding!” Mrs. Roy gushed.
“That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, Arty?” Mom asked.
I opened my mouth, feeling heat surge in my face so hard it might have killed me if we hadn’t been interrupted by the squeak of our front door opening. I let out a sigh of relief. Saved by the door.
“Don’t worry, the cavalry is here!” a voice cried from the entryway.
“Aunt Sarin!” I heard, followed by the sound of Cassi’s footsteps running down the stairs.
Dad came into the kitchen and dropped a suitcase by my feet. “Our flight leaves in three hours,” he said to Mom.
“We need to go,” Mom said apologetically, and Mrs. Roy burst into fresh tears and threw her arms around Mom again. Mom waved her arms through the fabric, trying to find a way out. She looked like someone who was swimming and got a cramp.
“Oh, man,” Priya whispered next to me. “This is going to be one long drive to camp.”
Aunt Sarin, belly as big as Pluto, lumbered in, both hands pressing into her lower back.
“There’s my little butt-picker,” she said, and ruffled my hair as she walked by. I heard a snort of laughter come from Priya. I sort of hoped an asteroid would smash through the roof and kill me at that moment. “Go, Corvus. You don’t want to be late. We’ll be just fine here. Now, go, go, go.”
Mom somehow freed herself from Mrs. Roy’s grip and grabbed her purse. “We’ll be back in a couple of days,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “If you have any problems, feel free to go to the man next door. I talked to him briefly this morning and he’s agreed to be a backup if needed. Not that it’ll be needed, of course. Everything will be fine. We’ll call when we get there. Cassi has cheerleading at six thirty, and Vega is not allowed to have her boyfriend in her room. Oh, and don’t let Arty skip his baths.” C’mon, asteroid, where are you?
“The flight, Amy,” Dad reminded. He’d carried the suitcase to the front door and was waiting there. The two pairs of shoes and the hairbrush had been dumped onto the stairs, forgotten. “Sarin has it under control. She can bathe Arty just fine.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Sarin said. “I’ve given Arty lots of baths in his lifetime. Right, butt-picker?”
“I can take my own baths,” I said, then cleared my throat and said it again in a deeper, manlier voice. “I take my own baths. I mean showers. I take showers now.”
What do I need to do, asteroid? Paint a target on my head?
“We should go, too,” Priya’s mom said in a watery voice. “Come on, Priya.”
“Have fun at camp,” I said.
Priya made a face. “Oh, boy, I get to build bridges out of dried spaghetti and sit next to Britt the Smelly.”
“Maybe he’s not smelly this summer.”
“He’s smelly every summer.”
“And remember to tell Vega’s boyfriend to leave by ten o’clock,” Mom called. Dad was dragging her down the front walk, griping about parking being a long way from the terminal.
Mom broke free from Dad and rushed back up the sidewalk toward me. She kissed me loudly on the cheek and hugged me. “Oh, my baby boy,” she said. “You be good for Aunt Sarin. I love you!”
“I love you, too, Mom,” I mumbled.
Dad slammed the Saturn’s trunk. “Late! Late!” and Mom threw herself into the passenger seat of the car. She rolled down the window and immediately began waving through it. “And don’t let Cassi sass you!” she called. “Don’t worry, Devani! We’ll visit! We will!” she yelled. “Sarin, you call if you need anything!” she hollered.
And then, just as Dad pulled out of the driveway, she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “And Arty, make sure you change your underwear every day!” And they were gone.
Priya burst out laughing.
Dear asteroid. Now. Now is the time to kill me.