The Year We Fell From Space Read online

  “The dots are there,” I say. “But I can’t connect them.”

  He blinks a few times and looks at me, concerned. He takes the map to the kitchen table and opens it. Tiffany goes to look as if he’s just opened a treasure map. The two of them stare at it and Dad asks, “When’s this from?”

  “The week of January eighteenth to the twenty-fifth,” I say.

  “How do you even remember that?” Tiffany asks.

  Dad says, “It’s the week I moved out.”

  “The week we fell from space,” I say.

  Dear Liberty,

  You’re right about how I lied to you. You’re right about how I hurt our family. You’re right about how I hurt Mom. Most of all, you’re right about how I’m not happy. Not even now.

  You girls were so kind to Tiffany when you met her. You’re probably kinder to her than I’ve been to her. Sometimes I can’t keep up with myself. I’m so sorry for how I treated you after I moved out. I wasn’t okay enough to be a father. I’m not sure I’ve ever been okay enough to be a father. But I’m ready to try now.

  You’re so smart and talented. I remember when you set out to change the world. Do you remember the night you told us about your new constellations? Mom says you aren’t drawing maps anymore and I know that’s my fault.

  I want to find a way to help you get back to where you were. Liberty, I love you. I just want to help you get through this time so you can do everything you want to do.

  Love,

  Dad

  I read it twice, once I get to bed. I try not to be angry, but I’m still angry. I think about the night I first told Mom and Dad about the new constellations and I feel stupid.

  I think back to the silent walks Dad and I used to take. Sometimes we’d walk only half a mile in three hours. Not a word between us. It was special.

  I’m mad that he can’t remember how special that was. I’m sad that he thinks he wasn’t ever a good dad. He was a great dad. That’s what I fall asleep thinking about. How he was a great dad.

  When I go downstairs for breakfast, the three of them, Jilly, Dad, and Tiffany, are sitting around the kitchen table—tablecloth off, pencils in hand, still in their pajamas— looking at the two star maps I gave to them. Dad is brewing coffee and Jilly has cream cheese on her chin so I know she just ate a bagel.

  “Is there a sesame bagel left for me?” I ask.

  “Already sliced and waiting,” Dad says, not taking his eyes off the map.

  My favorite bagel, ready in the toaster. I push the lever down and wait.

  Jilly is in deep concentration over her map. Her eyebrows are bent down into the space above her nose.

  Tiffany is looking at her phone. She says, “I can’t understand how you draw all these in the right places.” She shows me the phone. It’s a picture of the night sky.

  I shrug. The toaster shrugs—and my bagel arrives, toasted.

  There’s no room on the kitchen table for me or my bagel so I fix it and eat it at the counter. None of them are talking to me. They’re all squinting at the dots. Same as I did for months until I ripped them down.

  I finish my bagel and sit on the couch.

  “I think this looks like a sled,” Tiffany says.

  “I think it looks like a horse,” Jilly says. “Lying down.”

  I want to tell them that they’re doing it wrong, but I don’t.

  The rock is still propped up by pillows. It doesn’t say anything. Not even when I stare at it.

  “Liberty, this is a horse, right?” Jilly says.

  I stay quiet. I hope Dad will tell her that she has to figure it out herself.

  He doesn’t.

  She says, “Right?”

  “I can’t tell you what you see. Only you can see what you see,” I say.

  “But it’s your map!” Jilly says.

  “I gave them to you guys. They’re yours now.”

  Tiffany says, “You’re not going to stop making them, are you?”

  Jilly says, “She already did.”

  Dad deflates a little. Maybe he’s finally seeing outside of his own head.

  It’s Sunday afternoon. The star maps are still out on the kitchen table. Jilly and Tiffany have gone to the store for dinner ingredients. Dad is still staring at the dots on his map. He stands on the kitchen chair and looks down at the map and smiles.

  “Got it!” he says.

  He sits down and draws a bunch of lines. I can’t see what he’s drawing from where I’m sitting on the couch, so I get up.

  He holds his hand up for me to stop. “Let me draw it first.”

  He draws. It feels like an hour but it’s probably three minutes. He draws the lines in lightly at first, then makes them heavier once he’s confident. He keeps saying, “Wow.”

  When he finally calls me over to see it, I try to smile but I can’t make my mouth smile because my lip is quivering too much.

  It’s a drawing of a buck. Our buck. Just his face and antlers huge in the sky. Dad didn’t even have to make up any fake stars. They connected this way naturally.

  He stands there wanting some sort of reaction and all I feel is sad.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I want to tell him how I’m feeling, but all I’m feeling is mixed up. I shake my head.

  “Lib, what’s wrong?”

  “I think I could have what you have,” I say. I’m crying.

  “You mean depression?” Dad asks.

  I nod and cry.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “I don’t want Mom to know,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want her to have to live with me like this after having to live with you like this,” I say.

  “Your mom is the strongest woman I know,” he says.

  “She’s going through a divorce! And her husband is living with his girlfriend!”

  “True,” he says. “But I know your mother. She’d want to know if you’re feeling these things.”

  “I threw a toaster through the window,” I say. “It was a while ago, but I think she knows I’m feeling like this, I guess. But not this bad.”

  Dad doesn’t know what to say to this. He puts down the pencil and leaves the buck in the night sky in January and sits on the couch and makes me sit next to him. The whole time, the meteorite is there, making me tell the truth.

  “Can you explain the feeling?” he asks.

  “I’m just … not happy.”

  “Like, sad all the time or just not happy? Do you think about—um—do you think about bad things?”

  I think about this question. Yes, I think about bad things because I live in a bad thing. Divorce is a bad thing. How do I answer a question like this? “How do you feel about being in the middle of a divorce?” I ask.

  “It’s horrible,” he says.

  “Exactly.”

  “So that’s the bad thing you think about?”

  I nod.

  “I wish I could go back in time, Lib,” he says.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yes and no. It’s a lot of stuff you wouldn’t understand yet. Like—maybe I married your mom because she was so strong. Maybe I wanted her to save me from all this stuff.”

  “And then you left,” I say.

  He’s quiet for a few seconds. “I want to talk about you. I want to know why you’re not happy. If you can see a reason, if it’s situational, you know? And not something more lasting,” he says.

  I don’t know if there was a question in there anywhere.

  I also don’t know why I’m not happy. But nobody ever asks me that.

  “I do,” the rock says from behind me. “I ask you all the time.”

  I try to figure out what to say. I can’t figure it out. First I want to tell him my hands are brooms, but that makes no sense. Then I want to tell him about Leah’s mom’s ring. Even though the whole thing is over. I don’t understand why it’s bugging me so much because I never even felt that bad about i
t. Then I think about how dumb I was to think Mom and Dad could get back together. I say, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  Dad shrinks.

  “Tell him about me,” the rock says.

  “I’m sure you saw that,” I say, pointing to the meteorite.

  “Big rock,” he says.

  Dad isn’t paying full attention. He looks panicked. “I want to talk about you and how we can help.”

  “It’s a meteorite,” I say.

  “We’ll see the doctor as soon as we can and Mom says that you like that therapist you’ve been talking to.”

  “It’s a meteorite,” I say again.

  He stops and looks at the rock. Looks back at me.

  “I’m serious. I watched it fall,” I say.

  Dad tries to pick up the meteorite like it’s some regular rock. It’s funny to watch because he puts his hands on either side and tries to lift it and his arms seem like they’re stretching. “It’s so heavy!”

  “Meteorite,” I say.

  He turns on the lamp next to the couch. “Metal deposits. Iron, probably.”

  “Yep.”

  He goes to lift it again, but then gives up. “This is amazing!”

  “Yep,” I say.

  I can see him doing all kinds of math in his head. I don’t know what he’s trying to figure. The weight? The value? The size of it before it hit the atmosphere? I hope we have a conversation about science and space. I hope for something that feels normal before the end of this crappy weekend.

  “Is this why you said the week I left was the week we fell from space?” he asks.

  I say, “The week you left we all fell from space. Now we co-own a divorce. Split four ways. You can’t just pretend Jilly and I aren’t in here with you. We all own it. It’s ours.”

  “That’s hard for me to agree to,” he says. “You girls have nothing to do with the divorce.”

  “Um. We’re living through it, remember?”

  “True.”

  “And you didn’t tell us about Tiffany and you never tell us how you are,” I say.

  “True.”

  “So we fell from space in January. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my quarter of a divorce. I owned it but I didn’t know what to do, you know? And I asked the sky what to do and the sky sent this. Like it was something we forgot. Like we fell in January, but this was our luggage. It got lost and it came in March.”

  Mom, Dad, Jilly, and I sit in the living room of Mom’s house. This has been pre-arranged. Dad called Mom. Mom said yes. Here we are.

  Jilly is feisty. She says she’s fine and I think she really is. Her hamster is running around in its ball. She named it Judy.

  My little meteorite is still in my pocket. I haven’t named it anything.

  Jilly’s finished star map from January is taped to the kitchen chalkboard. She found: herself. The drawing even has pigtails like she’s been wearing since summer when her hair grew out enough to make them. Mom’s star map is still rolled up on the kitchen table. I guess she had a busy day.

  Mom and Dad tell us about what’s happening with the divorce because maybe they understand now that Jilly and I own part of it.

  They tell us the paperwork should be done before the end of the year. They tell us that Dad is going to keep the every-other-weekend arrangement because it sounds like what we want. Dad says he’s sorry about not telling any of us about Tiffany moving in.

  Eventually, Jilly goes for her Sunday-night bath and it’s just me, Mom, and Dad. They ask stuff. I try to answer.

  “I’m just angry all the time,” I say.

  “It’s okay,” Dad says. “It could be a bunch of things. You’ve had a really hard year.”

  “I don’t want to have to take medicine every day,” I say.

  “You may not have to. We have to see what the doctor says. And Jan. You’ll be talking to her a lot more,” Mom says.

  Ugh. I feel like the world’s biggest problem now.

  “By the time you’re in high school, you’ll have a lot of coping skills. More than anyone around you. Trust me,” Dad says. “Figuring this out early is so much better than figuring it out late.”

  “But we have to ask you a few questions just to make sure you’re okay,” Mom says.

  I nod.

  They ask me if I ever think about hurting myself. I say no. They ask me if I’m bored in school. I say no more than usual. They ask me how middle school is really going. I tell them that the vice principal said I might get to paint the science wing hallway.

  “Paint it? What color?” Dad says.

  I say, “Star maps, Dad. This thing happened the first week of school. I nearly got in big trouble. Long story. He likes my constellations. He was part of his astronomy club in college or something.”

  “That’s exciting!” Mom says.

  I shrug.

  “You don’t feel excited?” Dad asks.

  I say, “There’s no point in trying to get anyone to see something new in the sky. No one cares anyway.”

  Mom says, “What big trouble happened in school the first week? I don’t remember that.”

  “Some girl drew a fake star map on the bathroom wall and they thought it was me.” I think about how it was probably fine that she did that, considering what I did with her ring.

  “You got in trouble for something you didn’t do?” Dad says.

  “The vice principal knew I didn’t do it. The stars were all wrong.”

  “Can you tell me about stuff like that when it happens from now on?” Mom asks. “That way, I can help you.”

  We all sit there for a minute. They’re looking at me and I’m looking at the rug. “Remember what you said yesterday about secrets?” I ask Mom.

  She nods.

  I say, “I have a secret.”

  Mom and Dad freeze. I can hear Jilly singing in her bath. I can hear the frogs croaking from the stream. I can hear the screech owl screeching.

  “Lib?” I don’t even know who says that. Mom or Dad. Maybe both of them.

  “So this girl, Leah, bullied me since January. Maybe before that. But in January—when you left,” I point to Dad, “she really started saying bad stuff.”

  “She’s the girl you called the B-word, right?” Mom says.

  “Right.” Dad’s eyebrows go up. I guess Mom doesn’t tell him everything after all. “She got everyone in sixth grade to stop talking to me.” The two of them start to say things, but I ignore them. “And I really don’t want to get into details but she had a diamond ring in school—it was her mom’s—and I found it on the floor and I picked it up.”

  They look relieved already, but also concerned.

  I continue. “So I couldn’t give it back to her because I was scared she’d say I stole it. So I put it somewhere for safekeeping.”

  “Where is it now?” Mom asks.

  “I gave it back to her last week.”

  “So you apologized?” Dad asks.

  “Not quite.”

  They look at me. I don’t know what to say.

  “I got the ring back to her but she doesn’t know it was me and even though she has it back, I still feel awful for not feeling guilty about it.” I cry.

  I know why I feel guilty. It’s not for the ring. It’s not even for making Jilly go get it. It’s for thinking I could magically get my parents back together when really, they don’t want to be together.

  I can see the scene from space. I look depressed. I don’t know if I really am depressed, but I know I look it.

  “I can take care of the bullying thing at school. No problem,” Mom says.

  “I’m gonna have to tell her I had the ring,” I say. “I don’t want to do that right now.”

  “I’ll be there with you. Don’t worry. We’ll work it out no problem,” Mom says. “And next week is fine. No rush.”

  “What else can we do to help?” Dad asks. “We’d do anything.”

  I think about this.

  There’s nothing they can do
.

  They can’t move time backward.

  They can’t be a happy family again.

  They can’t whisk me and Jilly off to a camping trip and pretend everything is fine.

  “I have no idea,” I say.

  We say a few more things to each other and they hug me and tell me that they love me. This is the closest I will ever get to having what I used to have. When I think this thought, I cry so hard I can’t breathe.

  I feel like someone just died.

  There is nothing nice about the feeling. Nothing nice about the hugs. Nothing nice about “getting my feelings out,” which is what Dad whispered a second ago.

  I finally figure out what to say. “Nothing will ever be good again.”

  They don’t say anything to that. I keep crying. Dad is petting my head. Mom is rocking a little, back and forth. I keep trying to breathe and I feel like I’m not getting enough oxygen.

  Eventually, I find myself in bed. The meteorite is back in place in the corner of fluffy toys, and the house is quiet.

  I whisper, “Good night, rock.”

  The rock doesn’t answer.

  A sliver of the moon is visible from my attic window.

  It feels like the last time I will ever see the moon.

  That’s what everything feels like anymore.

  Everything is something I will never see again.

  I’m not surprised that Mom is in the guidance office on Monday morning waiting for me. A lot happened between me leaving the house this morning and third period, which is when I was called down.

  1.   I tripped and fell down at the bus stop.

  2.   My wrist hurt so bad I had to go to the nurse.

  3.   I didn’t want Finn Nolan to have to go through getting in trouble because he’s so sad all the time, so I lied and said I tripped.

  4.   I don’t understand #3 because he did push me and I did fall down and that’s probably not a reason why I should stick up for him.

  5.   I have no idea why Finn pushed me. But I think I’m his toaster.

  I’m lucky Mom is here because she tells the guidance counselor that Finn and Patrick have a habit of being mean to Jilly and me.

  “Did Finn say anything this morning?” Mom asks.