Two nights after Mom and Dad left, they called to say they’d found a “cute little crackerbox house” on Celeste Street that they thought was meant for our family.
“Celeste, like celestial. Get it? Can you think of a more perfectly named street for your father, Arty?” Mom gushed on the other end of the phone.
Yes. Traitor Street. Giving Up Avenue. Will Never See the Sky Again Through All Those Lights Boulevard? All of those would be more perfectly named for my father.
“No,” I said. “It must be a sign.”
“It has a big backyard,” she said. “Lots of room to play in.”
“Comet bombs make it hard to play in the backyard,” I said. “And he pees on everything that doesn’t move.” Once, Tripp and I tried to play hide-and-seek in our backyard, but Tripp was so still behind the shed that Comet sauntered back there, sniffed him twice, and hiked his leg.
That was actually pretty funny.
Which only bummed me out even more.
I would never get to see Tripp get peed on again.
So Mom and Dad went on about staying in Vegas for a couple of days to get an inspector to look at the house and see if their offer went through and blah blah blah. I honestly stopped listening. I was too upset to care.
I gave the phone to Aunt Sarin and picked through my dinner, pushing most of the food around my plate aimlessly.
The sun went down, and Cassi took off for cheerleading. Vega and the Bacteria hunkered over a tub of ice cream with two spoons in front of the TV, which left just me and Aunt Sarin. I went up to CICM-HQ and got out the contraption, climbed onto the eaves outside my bedroom window, and started flashing lights.
“Knock-knock,” I heard behind me. I turned to see Aunt Sarin standing in my doorway.
“Hey,” I said.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” I scooted over to make room on the eaves next to me, but Aunt Sarin pulled my desk chair over by the window and plunked down on it instead. “You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m not in top roof-climbing shape these days,” she said, and gestured to her stomach.
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!”