The Year We Fell From Space Read online

  It’s the answer to the wish I made on the star even though I didn’t ask specifically for any of this. Wishing on stars isn’t like making a birthday list. Even if you’re specific, the sky can send whatever it wants to help you because the sky is kinda mystical and old. It has different ideas about what we need.

  After lunch Mom says she’s going to the grocery store and she asks Jilly to come with her but Jilly won’t budge from the couch where she’s reading a book and hugging the tiger. This means I have to stay here and babysit.

  “Can I use the computer? I have to look some stuff up,” I say.

  “No computer while I’m out,” Mom says.

  “It’s just star stuff,” I say. “Research.”

  “No games, okay?” she says, then walks out the door.

  I type I think I found a meteorite into the search engine and click the magnifying glass icon. There are 8,919,000 results.

  The first thing I find is a list of meteorite facts. Meteorites attract magnets and are: very heavy, not radioactive, and sometimes have metallic flakes on their surface. The pictures make me think that wow—I had no idea meteorites could be so different from each other. There are ones that look like blobs of metal and ones that look like weird rocks. They’re all different colors, not like rainbow colors or anything, but rock colors. Red, black, brown, gray—and some are shiny and some are dull.

  I go back and click on the next page result and find a page filled with capital letters. It starts with: YOU HAVE PROBABLY NOT FOUND A METEORITE.

  I stare at that sentence and I’m scared to read more. But I stay on the page because this guy—a professor—seems to know what he’s talking about.

  NOT EVERY ROCK THAT FALLS TO EARTH IS A METEORITE.

  JUST BECAUSE A ROCK WASN’T THERE YESTERDAY DOESN’T MEAN IT’S A METEORITE.

  PLEASE DON’T CONTACT ME ABOUT YOUR SO-CALLED METEORITE.

  Crabby guy, this professor. He has a list that’s eighty-four sections long about “WHY YOUR DUMB ROCK ISN’T A METEORITE.” The more I read, the more my rock fits the description of a meteorite.

  I go back to my search results. I find a place that sells meteorites. I click on that. Who knew that there were meteorite necklaces for sale? And who knew that people sell meteorites for $20,000 or more?

  I think about how I could buy a telescope with that money. A really good telescope, too—maybe one that can see Saturn’s rings and the Orion Nebula. I think about how I could help Mom out with the bills or something more responsible. Like saving for college.

  I think about writing Dad an email to tell him about it. He’d be so excited. But I don’t.

  “Wanna play a game?” Jilly asks.

  “I’m researching.”

  “You’re staring into space.”

  “That’s part of research,” I say. “I’m thinking.”

  “After you research, then?”

  “Maybe. It’s nice out today. Want to go swing?”

  “No.”

  “Think about it. I have to go do something.”

  I grab a magnet off the fridge before I head out the door to the rock.

  The magnet sticks. There’s rust-colored metallic markings all over the surface. And when I try to pick it up, I can’t. It’s that heavy. Heavy as two Jillys. Heavier than me, and it’s only the size of my head.

  I’m no professor, but this is a meteorite.

  I don’t know why I doubted myself because I saw it fall from the sky. But I’m twelve. I’m an amateur creative astronomer. And I doubt myself all the time. If I didn’t doubt myself, then I’d end up cocky like the Nolan brothers. Anything I could do to not be like them, I’d do it.

  I walk back to the house and put the magnet in my pocket and it sticks to the tiny rock that hit me last night. Another meteorite.

  I close my eyes and see my imaginary response to the crabby professor.

  THE THING THAT FELL IN MY WOODS IS TOTALLY A METEORITE.

  Once Mom comes home from the grocery store, our weekend is a blur of games and a movie and charades. Charades aren’t as fun indoors as they are around a campfire, but it’s cold out there. After Jilly goes to bed on Sunday, Mom helps me study for a math test. Fractions. Again. As if I can’t remember what a common denominator is from the last three years of learning fractions. I get a few problems wrong because I’m distracted by the meteorite.

  It’s outside. I’m inside. But I can hear it calling to me.

  Don’t worry.

  I’m fine.

  I just like science, is all.

  On Monday morning, Patrick Nolan is whispering at the bus stop. He’s saying things about lightning hitting our house on Friday night because we deserved it. Jilly grips her tiger more tightly and I give Patrick a look like he should shut up or else I’ll rearrange his freckles.

  This happens every other day when Patrick’s mother can’t drive him to school. But only since Dad moved out. Before then, Patrick was asking Jilly to marry him, or playing fun games with her in the woods, or sitting in our kitchen drinking hot chocolate after we all went sledding. Dad moving out changed everything with the Nolans.

  Finally after another minute of Patrick whispering, Jilly starts to cry. Her eyes just leak water. And Patrick can see it so he starts whispering louder. He hisses, “Everyone knows a family needs a man.”

  I wish I hadn’t heard that.

  If I hadn’t heard that, I wouldn’t have to grab Patrick by the shoulders and say, “Shut up, you little jerk!”

  And if I hadn’t said that, Finn wouldn’t have to pull me off him and say, “Keep your hands off my brother, you feminist.”

  I’m not even in school yet and I already hate today.

  We’ve been stuck with the Nolan brothers for as long as I can remember because we’re the only kids who live this far out in the woods. Finn and I used to be friends, I guess, but the older he got, the more weird he got. It was normal boys-and-girls stuff starting around fifth grade. He didn’t talk to me much anymore, and if he did, he kept things short and pretended like I didn’t much matter to him anymore. And then since Dad moved out, he got kinda mean. Cold, really. I don’t know. Finn’s whole family was different. I never liked sitting in their kitchen when it was their turn to make post-sledding hot chocolate, never liked playing in their pool, and never liked being around when Mr. and Mrs. Nolan were there because it was too stressful. We had enough stress of our own at home.

  I used to worry about Finn. He had bad days when we were younger, and he got in trouble a lot in school. I used to sit with him on the bus those days and he’d be so scared to go home. One time I made him come home with me because he couldn’t stop shaking. That was third grade. Dad drove him home before dinner and when Dad came back, he looked so sad, it made me cry.

  It’s no secret that Mr. Nolan is not a nice man. I figure Patrick is only saying this stuff to Jilly because he heard it from his dad first. Patrick is worse even though he’s the little brother. But now it’s rubbing off on Finn. A few weeks ago, Finn told me that Mom should have let Dad do whatever he wanted because men are in charge and that’s the way things are supposed to be.

  At least Mom was dealing with it. She wasn’t getting yelled at all the time and then curling her brain into a hedgehog ball like Mrs. Nolan would when Mr. Nolan was a jerk to her. I never felt safe in that house and Patrick and Finn are turning out just like their father. I already pity whoever they take to the prom.

  As for Finn calling me a feminist, I don’t think he knows what that word means. How could he know what it means growing up in a house like that?

  By the time the bus drops us off at home, I didn’t draw anything on the walls, didn’t get called to the principal’s office, didn’t talk to anyone in my class, and I didn’t have to see Finn Nolan on the bus because their mom always picks them up from school. Probably with warm homemade cookies and individual cartons of milk because Mr. Nolan says so.

  It’s drizzling and Jilly and I share her umbrella because I always
forget mine at school. Jilly keeps talking about Patrick Nolan and how mean he is. I nod and listen, but really I’m thinking about the meteorite and how I have to get it out of the woods and into my room.

  Mom’s on the phone again when Jilly and I walk in. She holds up her finger to her lips for us to be quiet and she smiles and waves.

  I put on my raincoat and go out to the woods. Jilly tries to chase after me, but she stops on the deck. Can’t go any farther. She calls my name over and over again and I pretend not to hear her.

  I start up the hill and I worry about Jilly because she’s standing in the pouring rain but I don’t ask her to come with me because I know it would be an hour-long conversation about how she can’t go outside. I just want to see the meteorite. I’m allowed to have a life.

  The rock is still here. It’s still heavy. I try to pick it up but it’s slippery in the rain and it thumps down into the mud again. I think. I think. I think.

  I walk back down the hill and find Jilly three steps into the lawn, still holding her now-very-wet tiger and making a low sound in her throat. Like she’s growling and crying at the same time.

  Because Mom has asked us not to use the word crazy I can’t tell her she looks crazy, but she does. “You’re acting irrational,” I say. But she can’t hear me because she’s babbling and crying. There’s snot coming out of her nose and it forms a bubble and I feel bad.

  “What are you two doing?” Mom says. She’s in the doorway and looks a mix of confused and concerned.

  “Just checking out something in the woods,” I say.

  “It’s raining,” Mom says.

  Jilly answers, still growling, “YES, WE KNOW IT’S RAINING.”

  Silence.

  This is when Mom and I both realize that this is the first time Jilly has been outside willingly in sixty-six days.

  Mom says, “I’ll make hot chocolate,” and goes back inside.

  Jilly says, “Why won’t you play with me?”

  “It’s raining.”

  “What are you doing up there in the rain?”

  “It’s a long story. It’s stupid,” I say. “Come on. Let’s go drink hot chocolate.”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “It’s raining and cold! Come on. Hot chocolate.”

  “I’M STAYING HERE!” she yells. She throws her tiger in the mud and crosses her arms.

  I try not to judge Jilly. She’s going through something the way we’re all going through something. And now the tiger is on the ground, Jilly is out of the house, and even though she’s crying and acting irrational, this is progress.

  “Do you want me to take tiger inside to dry off?”

  She nods.

  I have no idea how to explain this to Mom.

  “What were you two doing out there?” she asks.

  “I was checking on—um—the hill. I left my favorite pencil up there on Friday night.”

  “What’s your sister doing?” she asks.

  I look out the window. Jilly is on the swing set, swinging. In the rain. I point.

  “Did you find it?” she asks.

  I look confused because A. I forgot that I just lied about my pencil and B. Why isn’t Mom worried about Jilly swinging in the rain? “Nah. I think it’s probably with my star map,” I say.

  She looks at me and smiles.

  I show her the soaking-wet tiger. “Can I put this in the dryer?”

  “That thing needs to get washed. She hasn’t let go of it since … in a long time.”

  “Since Dad moved out,” I say. “You can say that.”

  She looks at the tiger, and then the floor. “Since Dad moved out.”

  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Dad moving out. Today, I mean. He doesn’t call us, he hasn’t had us to his house yet, and he seems to have zero interest in coming back or being part of the family. Or part of anything. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.

  He’s arranged three weekend visits so far and canceled every one of them at the last minute. Mom has to deal with him on the phone. She tries her best to stay friendly because it’s what she reads about couples with kids going through divorce. Keep things civil. Stay as friendly as you can. Don’t talk badly about each other in front of the children.

  Dad doesn’t make it easy. When she talks about it, she says it’s not entirely his fault. He’s not well, she says. He’s not well. By which she means Dad has to go to talk to psychiatrists and stuff.

  I used to think people who saw psychiatrists were irrational, like in the old cartoons we have on DVD. But it turns out that a lot of people have to see psychiatrists. It’s just because they need help with things.

  Mom talks to a therapist named Rosemary every week on Wednesdays so she can get help with her new life without Dad. Jilly needs help with Dad leaving, so she talks to a child psychologist named Jan every week since he left. Mom’s asked if I want to see Jan too and I’ve told her no. I’m fine.

  When she gets back upstairs from putting the tiger in the wash, Mom asks me to sit and hands me a mug of hot chocolate.

  “How was today?” Mom asks.

  “It was all right.”

  “How are you feeling about Dad?” she asks. “Us, his depression, anything?”

  This is complicated. Because it’s not like they ever talked to us about what was really going on. It’s always in some sort of code. He’s not well. He’s having a bad day.

  Thing is, I still can’t figure out why it was a good idea for Dad to move out. Like, when he got sick in the brain, he moved away from the only people who really cared for him. Sure, maybe there was something more that I was too young to understand, but the whole thing didn’t make Mom look very nice.

  “I do have a question,” I say.

  She sits.

  “So Dad’s family has it too, right?”

  She nods. “It can run in families sometimes.”

  She tells me some vague stories about Dad’s family. Nothing remarkable. I already knew all those stories already. While she talks, I wonder if maybe we should have gone with Dad and not stayed with Mom. Because if something happens to my brain, I don’t want her to kick me out too.

  When Jilly comes inside, it’s as if she was never the other Jilly. Not the Jilly who yelled at Mom and me, and not the Jilly who was standing in the pouring rain by herself, with snot running down her chin. She looks like she’d meant to go swinging in the rain.

  She’s also freezing and Mom insists that she take a hot shower before dinner and follows her to her room to collect her wet clothes. I grab my toughest backpack—an Outdoor World Day Pack—and go to the hill.

  For some weird reason when I get to the rock, I say, “Hello, rock.”

  I probably need more friends.

  I move it from where it’s stuck into the mud—about three inches deep—and open the backpack and roll it in. Once I zip the backpack, I squat and put the straps on my shoulders and then stand slowly. It’s not as heavy on my back as it was in my arms, but I have to bend over to stay balanced.

  Mom and Jilly are in the kitchen by the time I come in and even though Jilly is the nosiest sister ever, she’s too preoccupied by helping Mom make her magic meatloaf to notice that I have mud on my clothes and that I need the railing to pull myself and the rock up the stairs.

  By the time I get up two flights to my bed in the attic room, my back hurts.

  I sit for a minute and look around. I can’t figure out where to put it.

  “On the floor.”

  I don’t know who said that, but I think I’m talking out loud to myself. Of course it should go on the floor. It weighs more than I do.

  Next to my bed I have a bunch of old stuffed animals. I move them out of the way so they don’t get any mud on them and I squat down so the backpack eases itself onto the floor. I unzip it and roll the rock out.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I stand it up the way it landed and I wipe off the mud with a wad of tis
sues.

  I arrange the animals around it so it has friends.

  I change my clothes so I’m not covered in mud.

  I hide the Outdoor World Day Pack under my bed until laundry day.

  “Nice room,” the rock says.

  “Thanks,” I answer.

  At dinner, Mom asks us about school. Jilly has stories about the kids in her class and a game they played in gym. I don’t really remember what we did in school. In school I’m either thinking about the stars or divorce or the meteorite. Even before the meteorite or the divorce, my brain was always in space.

  Dad always told me school isn’t for everyone and that I have bigger things to think about. And it’s not like I have close friends or any social life or anything. Some kids join band or play sports.

  I just think about stars. Usually by myself.

  I’m probably from another planet.

  The school year had already been weird before Mom and Dad sat us down that day in January.

  Everyone in sixth grade was trying to be boyfriends and girlfriends. It seemed so silly. It made school harder—all the breakups and people taking sides and passing notes. Leah Jones told me when we got back from winter break that I had to stop talking to John, a kid I’ve known since second grade, because he broke some girl’s heart. “If you talk to him, you’re a traitor to womankind,” she’d said. Leah Jones used to be my friend. I went to her birthday sleepovers every year for four years and we had a recess rock band in third grade. Sixth grade changed her and I still don’t know why.

  Anyway, I knew the breakup wasn’t John’s fault. His ex-girlfriend had dumped him for a kid from band who she liked more. I couldn’t see how talking to John now made me a traitor to womankind, so I kept talking to him.

  The womankind of sixth grade recess shunned me once they found out. And then they sent David. David kept asking me to be his girlfriend all through January until finally, on the Tuesday of the week we fell from space, I’d had enough.

  “Look—you’re a nice kid and everything—but I’m too young to have a boyfriend and I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t even want you to want me to be your girlfriend. It makes me feel weird.”