The Year We Fell From Space Read online

“Hi?” I manage.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No idea,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  “I had a pass when I was late to Spanish today,” I say.

  “Where were you during lunch?”

  “Eating lunch. I sit with some kids I don’t really know yet,” I say.

  “Did you take a trip to the ladies’ room?”

  “Yeah. When I finished lunch,” I say.

  He looks at me in a way that Ms. S. used to look at me. I think school principals and vice principals must read a lot of detective books. “And then what?”

  “Then I washed my hands and went back to the cafeteria,” I say.

  “Did you see anyone on the way?”

  “Not anyone I knew,” I say, thinking of who I saw in the halls on the way to and from the bathroom. But then of course I realize he’s talking about Leah. “Oh. Leah Jones was in the bathroom the whole time I was there. She was putting makeup on.”

  When bald people raise their eyebrows, they kind of look like puppets.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I know you’ve had a habit of drawing on school walls before now, so I’m wondering if you drew on any today.”

  “All I have is pencils and this one pen,” I say.

  More puppet faces, then he says, “Let’s take a walk.”

  We walk to the guidance office first where I stand staring at the anti-bullying box they told us about in homeroom the first day. Then Mr. Scott introduces me to a woman—a guidance counselor. He tells me her name and I forget it the minute he says it. We get to the ladies’ room outside the cafeteria and she and I walk in together and she shows me the inside of the stall where I’d peed at lunch.

  A bunch of dots. A bunch of dots connected in crude Sharpie marker, pretending to be a star map.

  “Ugh!” I say. “Whoever drew that has never even looked up!”

  The woman looks surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just dots, you know?”

  She crosses her arms and nods as if she knows what I’m talking about, but I can tell from her face she has no idea.

  “What’s it even supposed to be?” I say. “Looks like a scarecrow with boobs.”

  Mr. Scott believes me—probably because I can’t stop talking about how star maps are supposed to be based on accurate star placement. You can’t just put some dots on paper and connect them. That’s what I tell him.

  “You have a real interest in this stuff,” he says. We say goodbye to the lady with no name at the guidance office and walk back to his office and close the door.

  “I’ve been drawing stars since I was little,” I say.

  He hands me a piece of paper and a pen. “Draw some for me.”

  I start with Polaris. “North Star,” I say. I ink the rest of the stars in Ursa Minor and then move down to Ursa Major because once people see the Big Dipper, they usually show some sort of interest.

  “Hey! That’s the Big Dipper!” he says. Right on time.

  “Do you want me to draw in Boötes? Or can we stop now?”

  His puppet features look amused. I like him.

  “I used to teach science,” he says. “Mostly chemistry. But back in college I was part of the astronomy club.”

  “Sounds cool.”

  He points to the paper. “That’s a pretty hard thing to do.”

  “I have hundreds of them.” I pause. I’m about to tell Mr. Scott about my dream—to change the way people look at the stars—but then I remember I gave up on that. “Can I go back to class now?”

  He nods, and when I get up and turn to go he says, “You know, our science wing walls could use something interesting. The art wing has all the fun.”

  I just walk out because I don’t know what to say and because the thought of drawing star maps on the science wing makes me think of how much I miss elementary school. And Dad.

  Middle school handles people like Leah Jones different from Ms. S. over at West El. No more apologies or meetings where two kids have to talk things out. When I’m in line for the bus, I hear Leah got detention.

  On the bus, Finn Nolan still looks like a different Finn Nolan. His hair hasn’t been cut since summer and his bangs hang in his eyes. It’s like he’s trying to hide.

  When I get home, I’m tired again. Like I just hiked the Appalachian Trail. Mom tells me to take another nap. She says, “Don’t look so worried. It’s just a new schedule. Your body will get used to it.”

  When I close my eyes the only stars I see are Leah Jones’s random dots—like the scarecrow with boobs is going to haunt me forever. I barter with the stars inside my eyelids. I tell them that I’ll have the ring back by the end of the week.

  I’m so used to middle school already that it’s weird. Classes aren’t hard and the people are pretty nice. I like the new kids from the other elementary schools. At lunch, I miss Malik and I hope people are being nice to him back at West El, and I sit with a girl named Maya who’s from North El. She lives on a farm. We have a lot in common. Mostly, we don’t talk about boys, clothes, or makeup.

  Mom and I pick Jilly up together on the fifth day of school.

  Jilly gets off the bus crying.

  “It was red. All red!” she says.

  Mom and I look confused and she explains. “The tests. On the computer. Math. I got all red.”

  I’ve been here. Last year I had a lot of red in my reading section because even though I read a lot, I didn’t answer the questions the way they wanted me to. “They give you hard questions so you get red,” I say. “It’s not you, it’s the questions.”

  Mom looks angry. “They give you guys a standardized test during the first week of school?”

  “I’m dumb!” Jilly says.

  “You’re not even close to dumb,” Mom says. “I have two smart, imaginative kids and all the school wants to do is make them like everybody else. I will never understand what the hell is going on with education.”

  Mom knows she just said the H-word. She doesn’t care. The H gives me and Jilly a home. Like warm, cozy bunk beds, H. I get the top bunk. Jilly gets the bottom bunk, and Mom is the H, made of some kind of strong wood that even she can’t split with a hatchet.

  Three more days until we have our next Dad weekend. Jilly thinks he’s going to let us meet his new girlfriend. Every time she says new in front of girlfriend I want to tell her the truth but she’s ten and I’m not and she’s already sad because of her test results. She says the meteorite makes her feel better, so we’re in my room.

  “I wonder if she’s going to be one of those stepmoms who buys us cool stuff.”

  “Why do you want a stepmom anyway?” I ask.

  “I don’t,” Jilly says. “I don’t even want a stepmom. I just—I’m trying to—I don’t know. Think positive or something?”

  “That’s probably good,” I say.

  Jilly looks at me like she knows. I try to look other places.

  “You know something I don’t know,” she says.

  “What? No,” I say, staring at a sock on the floor.

  “You said it this summer. When we were there. You knew then, didn’t you?”

  “Not really. I just suspected.”

  I don’t tell her how the sky told me. I don’t tell her about the wineglass. Plus, by next week, we’ll have Dad back if I keep up my side of the deal.

  “How’s the library back at West El?” I ask.

  “That’s a weird question,” Jilly says.

  “I miss Mrs. Hanson. We don’t have special classes anymore. The library is there, but some people never go to it.”

  Jilly screws up her face and says, “So?”

  “So, what day is your library day?”

  “I think we go on Monday.” She looks around my room and I don’t say anything because I’m formulating the next step of my plan. “Why are you so interested in the library?”

  “Just tell me before your next class there, okay?”

  I feel b
ad. But it’s for the best.

  Dad picks us up right on time on Friday. Mom gives us a hug and kiss in the kitchen and sends us to the driveway where he’s waiting.

  “We have reservations for six!” he says.

  “Reservations for what?” Jilly asks.

  “A special treat.”

  “Roller-skating?” she says.

  “You don’t need reservations for roller-skating,” I say.

  “I’m taking you out to eat,” he says. “We’re meeting a—a friend there.”

  “You don’t have to call her a friend,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Jilly says. “You can just say we’re meeting your girlfriend.”

  When we get to the restaurant parking lot, Dad takes our hands as if we’re in a parade. A Proud Dad parade. I want to ask him who he is.

  Not to say Dad was never proud of us. I’m sure he was and he still is. But the parade of Proud Dad makes me feel like the meteorite. I don’t belong here. I’m not from here. These are not my natural surroundings. Also: Dad should be with Mom.

  His girlfriend is already here. Already sitting. Already sipping a glass of wine. She stands when we get near the table and smiles nervous like we might be wild animals. Or maybe that’s me. Smiling nervous or wild animal, you choose.

  “It’s so nice to meet you both,” she says. “I’m Tiffany.”

  Tiffany. Not a camping name.

  Jilly waves and sits down. I don’t know what I do because I’m so busy trying to feel like I’m from the same planet as Tiffany.

  Dad sits next to her and puts his hand on her shoulder. They kiss—just a peck—and I want to throw up. Inside my meteorite brain, I say, “Why did you do that? Don’t be kissing some stranger in front of us!” Inside my meteorite brain I compare that kiss with the kisses he used to give Mom. Mom’s were better.

  “You okay, Liberty?” Dad asks.

  “Yeah. Just tired.”

  “Your dad tells me you just started middle school,” Tiffany-alien-smelly-not-my-stepmom says.

  “It’s the natural progress of things,” I say. Even Jilly looks at me like I’m weird. “I couldn’t stay at West El forever, I guess.”

  “True,” Tiffany says.

  Dad says, “Are the classes okay? A lot of homework or what?”

  “It’s all fine,” I say, and look down at my menu.

  “Fifth grade is awesome!” Jilly says. “We had to take those stupid tests all week but now we’re actually learning stuff. Like, did you know that you can’t really grow an apple tree from the seeds in apples?”

  Tiffany says, “I didn’t know that.”

  “And I knew all my states. Forgot some of the capitals, but no one else knew all their states. I even remembered the difference between Colorado and Wyoming. And I could name all seven continents.”

  Dad is looking at me and not listening to Jilly, who’s now talking about math and how fractions still confuse her. She’s making up for me. I don’t feel bad about it because I spent a lot of this year making up for her.

  Jilly is a giant broom and I am a giant pile of broken glass.

  The menu is expensive. The food is pretty fancy. There are no grilled cheese sandwiches. I find the cheapest hamburger and close my menu and look around.

  Dad and Tiffany sip wine and make eyes at each other. If I was to guess, they’re in love.

  “Is the burger good?” Tiffany asks me while my mouth is full.

  I finish chewing and say, “It’s okay. I like them better when they’re cooked on a fire. My mom makes the best ones.”

  Jilly wrestles with a chicken tender. Dad cringes when Jilly starts to talk with her mouth full. She says, cheek full of chicken, “Do you go camping, Tiffany?”

  “Kind of. I used to, I guess. I’m not really the outdoorsy type now that I got older.”

  “How old are you?” Jilly asks.

  Dad says, “You don’t ask ladies their age.”

  I say, “Are you from the old days or something?” I say it for real. Not in my space-rock brain. He laughs like this is a joke, so I say, “Geez, Dad. You always told us that girls shouldn’t be taught all that crap. Who cares how old Tiffany is? Jilly was just trying to make conversation.”

  Jilly is eating the last of her chicken tender. She says, “Yeah.”

  “I’m thirty-one,” Tiffany says. “And they’re right, Jack. Nothing wrong with women getting older.”

  Dad looks mad now. Tiffany notices and puts her hand on his hand and pats it.

  “Dad! She’s thirteen years younger than you!” Jilly says.

  Tiffany laughs. Dad looks uncomfortable. Jilly keeps doing math.

  “That’s like if I had a boyfriend who was twenty-three!”

  I think this is probably the most fun Jilly’s had doing math in years.

  I leave half of my burger on my plate and pick at the sweet potato fries. Tiffany asks if she can try one and I push the plate toward her a little. “Ooo! They’re good!”

  I want to tell her that girls in our family don’t make small talk over sweet potato fries, but I just breathe. I think about the stars. I wonder if I’m thinking about stars because I’m with Dad. I want to stop thinking about stars. Tiffany would probably think I’m weird, anyway, for seeing things in the stars. She probably only wants to see what everybody taught her to see.

  When we leave, Dad, Jilly, and I get into Dad’s car and say goodbye to Tiffany, who drives some kind of Jeep. When we get back to Dad’s house, things look really different. There are pictures on the walls and a tablecloth on the kitchen table. New appliances. A new sofa. When I go to Jilly’s and my room and turn on the light, I’m surprised to see a bunch of my star maps on the walls, framed like they’re art.

  Dad’s behind me at the doorway. I didn’t even hear him come up the steps.

  “Tiffany framed them for you. She thinks you’re a genius.”

  “Huh,” is all I can say.

  Dad gave me stars. Dad took away my stars. Now here I am looking at them framed like they’re modern art.

  “Did Tiffany move in here or something? Everything is different,” Jilly says from downstairs.

  Dad looks at me. He doesn’t answer Jilly.

  But then Tiffany walks in the front door and answers the question for all of us.

  Tiffany listens to the radio while she makes French toast for breakfast—like she lives here. I have so many angry thoughts I don’t think I’ll last until lunch.

  The French toast is good and Dad says, “We’re going to Hawk Mountain today for a hike. Then maybe a movie tonight. Sound good?”

  Jilly nods and gives a thumbs-up. I shrug.

  “Looks like your sister has a dose of the tweens,” Dad says to Jilly.

  “She hates that word, Dad.”

  It’s such a stupid word. “So was it a dose of the tweens that made you leave us? Or how about all those weekends you didn’t pick us up? Tweens, right?”

  “You can’t talk to me that way,” he says.

  “You can’t talk to me that way,” I say.

  “I was just being funny.”

  “No. You were making fun of me because I’m a twelve-year-old girl and you think I’m too emotional or something. Get over it. Of anyone in our family, we all know that I’m not the one with the emotional problems, okay?”

  Dad takes a breath like he’s about to say something but then he just exhales and doesn’t say anything.

  By the time we’re about to leave for Hawk Mountain and I’m watching Tiffany slowly lace up a brand-new pair of Outdoor World hiking shoes so she doesn’t chip her manicured fingernails, I know I’m not going to make it through the day. I need to call Mom and ask her to pick me up.

  I go into the kitchen, where Dad is packing snacks and lunch into his old blue backpack. I stop for a minute and think of how many times I’ve opened the clips on that backpack to get something he asked me to get. His knife, a flashlight, a Band-Aid, a towel to wipe his sweat while he chopped wood on camp in mid-August�
��all things that don’t seem to fit with his new tablecloth or new cologne.

  “Sorry about what I said at breakfast,” he says. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  I keep staring at the blue backpack.

  “I know I shouldn’t try to be funny about stuff like that,” he adds.

  “Stuff like what?” I say.

  “You’re growing up. You’re in middle school. I feel like we used to be best friends and now I don’t even know you.” He stops what he’s doing and if I was to guess, he’s about to cry. “I miss you. I’m trying to get on with my life and be happy but when I see you growing up, I feel like I really screwed up. Screwed up everything,” he says.

  I want to give him a hug but I don’t. The hug is a tablecloth. It’s hiding the scratched, messy tabletop.

  “You did screw up everything,” I say. “You really did.”

  He starts to cry. I still don’t hug him.

  “Can I call Mom?”

  He hands me his phone and I go out the back-patio door so I can talk to her without anyone hearing.

  The phone rings. And rings. And then it goes to voicemail and at the sound of the beep I can’t leave a message because I don’t want her to worry.

  We go to Hawk Mountain.

  Tiffany has never been to Hawk Mountain before. I tell her that we’ll probably see bald eagles and she doesn’t believe me.

  “She’s serious, Tiff. You’re gonna see a bald eagle today,” Dad says.

  “And a merlin or kestrel if you’re lucky,” Jilly says. “Bald eagles are overrated. Everybody wants to see one. But a kestrel. Now that’s something.”

  “What about hawks?” Tiffany asks.

  “You’ll see a lot of those,” I say. “But Jilly and I go for the weird birds. Probably because we’re weird birds.”

  Jilly says, “Caawcaaw!”

  I say, “Eeeeeeeeee!”

  After all this, I’m pretty sure Tiffany still thinks we’re lying about the bald eagles. Lucky for her, one of them greets us as we drive up the mountain to the parking lot.

  Dad points out the windshield toward the top of the electrical pole. “Look! There’s one!”