Life on Mars

by Jennifer Brown

  “I don’t want to have to run after you,” Mr. Death called from wherever he was. “But I will. So don’t even think about it.”

  My eyes bulged. It was as if he’d read my mind. How did he know?

  “You can put your bag in your room,” he said a few moments later.

  I took a few steps toward the hallway, still trying to avoid making any noise.

  I felt my way down the hall until I came to a door on the right. If I remembered correctly, this was the room that looked straight into my bedroom at home, the one where I’d moved the TV for Widow Feldman. The door was shut, but if I squinted real hard at the crack beneath the door, I could make out a strange dim glow on my toes. I reached for the doorknob, and gripped it.

  “That door is locked!” Mr. Death barked right in my ear. I jumped and whirled, dropping my overnight bag and pressing my back to the door, only to find myself eye-to-terrifying-zombie-yes-definitely-zombie-eye with Mr. Death. I was breathing raggedly, trying not to hack up my own lungs every time I sucked in a whiff of cigar smoke.

  “I thought … I thought … I th-thought …,” I stammered.

  “Your room is the next one down,” he said. He eyeballed me for a long time, the circles under his zombiefied eyes radiating against his white cheeks. He brought the cigar up to his mouth and took a long puff. Then, with his cigar hand he pointed to another doorway just a few feet away.

  Trembling, I reached down and picked up my bag again, then zipped away from the locked door. I practically dove into the room and slammed the door shut. After a few moments of waiting for his superhuman undead strength to punch a hole straight through the door, I pushed a small table up against it. Then I sat back down on the bed, keeping vigilant, hoping Mom and Dad would come first thing in the morning to rescue me.

  This was going to be a long night.

  12

  The Hidden Universe of Lights and Prisoners

  After a few hours, I grew bored and tired of being in the dark. I wondered what Cassi and Vega were doing right then. Probably eating snacks and watching movies and having a great time that in no way involved worrying that every moment might be their last.

  I snapped open the curtains, the ones that looked out onto our backyards, and let in a familiar stream of moonlight that made the room seem bright.

  I spent some time picking out the stars of the Big Dipper. Technically the Big Dipper isn’t a constellation but an asterism, which means it’s too small to be a constellation itself. It’s actually part of the Ursa Major constellation, but most people just like to point out that it looks like a giant pan. It’s the one thing besides the moon that Tripp can consistently pick out in the night sky, so I don’t bother to argue with him about it.

  Then I got bored with the Big Dipper, too, so I opened my window and spent some time harassing Comet through the screen.

  “Comet!” I called softly.

  He stopped sniffing and perked up, one ear lifted higher than the other as he tried to figure out where the noise had come from.

  “Hey! Comet!” A little louder.

  He hopped in a circle, still trying to find me.

  “Over here, boy!” Louder still, and I added some smoochy noises for good measure.

  He gave a confused look to the eaves, where he was accustomed to seeing me, and then spun in a circle again.

  “Keep spinning, you shoe-eating mutt,” I mumbled, and that, of all things, was what finally made him find me. It was, apparently, the worst possible dog torture to be able to see your master but not get to him. Comet ran to the fence and leaped and leaped at it, bouncing off with his front paws and spinning in circle after circle, panting and whining. He was in a real state.

  “Yeah, well, it’s what you get, eating my shoe like that,” I whispered out at him. “I hope all that spinning makes you queasy so I can have my shoe back.”

  As if he understood exactly what I was saying, he turned, bent his head, hunched his back, and barfed up what remained of my shoe. Then he looked at me and wagged his tail proudly. My shoe lay in the grass, all slimy and covered with sludgy brown dog food.

  Gross.

  “You can keep it,” I said, and shut the window.

  I was about to pull the curtains closed when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Of course! It was nighttime, the time Mr. Death usually headed out to his place of eternal unrest. I ducked below the windowsill and waited for him to pass by.

  I counted to fifty and raised my head.

  And there he was, his face right on the other side of the glass, staring in at me with his evil beady eyes.

  “Yow!” I yelled, startled, and crab-walked backward until I ran into the bed. I scrambled under the bed and let the dust ruffle block my view of the window while I tried to get the panic to subside.

  After a few seconds, I lifted the tiniest corner of the dust ruffle and peeped out. Mr. Death rubbed his jaw a few times and then turned and walked off, toward the trees, where he always disappeared. I scrambled back to the window, watching him as he plunged through the thicket, a box under one arm and a bag clutched in his other hand.

  At first I just watched the tree line where he’d been, half expecting him to pop out at me again. But when he didn’t, I used the opportunity to explore a little bit.

  The house seemed extra creaky around me, and even though I couldn’t see anything but shadows, I was too afraid to turn a light on. What if he came back? What if the darkness was cloaking something terrible, like an embalming table for a kitchen table or a coffin for a couch? What if I turned on the lights only to find something grisly?

  I moved down the hallway and toward the kitchen on my tiptoes. As I got closer, I could hear the hum of the refrigerator. Which was good because I was starving.

  The kitchen smelled like lemon cleaner, and the carpet gave way to slick linoleum. I tried to make out objects by their shapes—a toaster, a blender, a microwave.

  I gripped the handle of the refrigerator.

  What if I opened it up and there was nothing but faces lined up on the shelves in plastic containers? Did zombies save leftovers? It would seem reasonable that leftover faces would need to be refrigerated, so if Tripp was right about Mr. Death, I was about to be in for a face full of horror.

  But I was so hungry.

  And, besides, I was kind of curious what a face in a plastic container might look like. Would it look like when Tripp smushes his face against the car window?

  I took a deep breath to steady myself, paused for a brief second, then yanked open the refrigerator door with a primal scream.

  “Aiiiiieeeee!”

  I stopped short.

  Oh.

  No faces.

  Plenty of plastic containers, yes. Some bottles of soda. A cardboard box like the kind you get when you order takeout Chinese food. Ketchup, mustard, mayo. The usual. What kind of crummy zombie had such a boring refrigerator? There is nothing terrifying about pork fried rice.

  On the middle shelf sat a plate with a sandwich on it, along with some raw carrots and grapes, a little bag of chips, and a note that read:

  Just eat it, kid.

  I reached for the plate greedily, but my hand stopped midway into the refrigerator. Maybe this was a trick. Maybe he wanted me to eat it because it was poisoned. Maybe I’d eat it and morph into a zombie like him. Wait. No, that’s not how zombies are made, is it? Boy, I wish I’d watched more zombie movies with Tripp. I wish I knew where Tripp was. Of all the nights for Tripp to pull a disappearing act!

  I leaned forward.

  It was roast beef. The good kind that came freshly sliced from the deli. Thick, pink slices spilling over the sides of moist bread.

  My mouth watered.

  There are worse ways to go than poisoned roast beef, you know.

  I sat at the table and devoured every last crumb of that sandwich. And the chips. The grapes. Even the carrots. I opened the refrigerator again and, even though there wasn’t a note attached, grabbed a bottle of soda and wash
ed it all down, then belched a belch so loud and long I wished Tripp had been there to witness it. I felt so much better.

  I got up, put my empty plate in the sink, and threw away my trash, then wandered back through the house, wondering if Comet was still standing on our back porch, waiting for me to come back. Or if he’d eaten my shoe again. Comet did that pretty often, actually—ate things he’d already barfed up. And once, when Granny came to visit and brought her long-haired, smush-faced cat, Miss Penelope, he ate something she barfed up, too. The cat, not Granny. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Comet ate human barf. He ate a whole shoe, after all.

  Now that I was full, I was kind of sleepy, so I headed back toward my room.

  But I couldn’t help stopping at the door next to mine. The one I’d stopped at before. It was still closed. I put my ear against the wood and cupped my hand over my free ear.

  Nothing. Not even the scratching fingernails of hungry undead.

  I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the door. I didn’t see much, except, yes, there was definitely a strange glow in there.

  I stood up again and wiped my sweaty palms down the legs of my jeans. Earlier, Mr. Death had sure seemed like he didn’t want me to go into that room at all.

  But there was a glowy light.

  And possibly prisoners.

  Come on, lights and prisoners! I had to go in. It was against human nature not to. If I was going to just keep walking and pretend I didn’t know anything about lights and prisoners, I might as well join Comet in his doghouse tonight and fight over his bowl of breakfast kibble in the morning.

  I had to.

  Slowly I lifted my hand and reached for the doorknob.

  But before I could even make contact, there was a noise. The front door opened, letting in a stream of moonlight. Smoke roiled around a shadowy figure, which lurched into the house.

  “That door is locked!” Mr. Death’s voice cut through the night.

  I jerked my hand away from the door and dove into my bedroom. I pushed the table against the door again and sat on the edge of my bed.

  Where did he appear from?

  And, more importantly, what was in that room that he was so afraid for me to see?

  13

  The Intergalactic Association of I Heart Faces

  I awoke in the morning, slouched against the headboard of my bed, my cheek smushed on the wood, a string of drool snaking its way to the floor. The curtains were open, and in the morning sunlight, I could see the whole terrifying room much clearer.

  The bed was covered with a faded flowered quilt, the dresser held a few knickknacks, and an adjoining bathroom had a shaggy blue rug tossed on the floor.

  Which is to say, not at all terrifying.

  At first I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, changed into clean underwear, and then just stood in the middle of my room listening to my stomach growl. I wanted breakfast. I wanted to know if Aunt Sarin had her baby yet. I wanted Mom and Dad to come home. I wanted to be out of this house. I wanted to go get Tripp and tell him everything, especially how he was right, so right, Righty McRighterton.

  I sat glumly on the edge of the bed. What if I never got out of here? What if even Mom and Dad couldn’t save me? Would I just waste away and die on a flowered quilt?

  Somehow I’d always envisioned myself dying in a much grander fashion. Like an asteroid would fall on me while I was in the bathtub or I’d die of excitement over having discovered a new planet or I’d disintegrate while being the first human to cross the two and a half million light years between the Milky Way and our galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. Those would be awesome ways to go.

  Slowly turning into a skeleton on a flower quilt was not an awesome way to go at all.

  I could just see my tombstone:

  RIP

  ARCTURUS BETELGEUSE CHAMBERS

  He did not die in space

  He had only one shoe

  He was an armpit

  Shameful.

  I busied myself by trying to come up with some new names for CICM-HQ, just on the off chance I should live to see it again.

  I had:

  ALIEN: Association for Looking Into Exceptional Nartians

  Nartians? No. But I did like being an association. Associations sounded important.

  CLOUD: Contacting Life Outside USA Dimensions

  But I was afraid that would make the other countries mad.

  SKY: Stars Kinda Yellow

  What the heck did that even mean? Only one star really looked yellow to the naked eye, and that was the sun. Stars were mostly blue or red, sometimes orange, but to us they looked white.

  This clearly wasn’t working. I couldn’t sit in one spot all day. I had to do something. I had to get out of here.

  I moved the table away from the door and leaned the side of my head against it, listening for Mr. Death. I hadn’t heard any coughing or smelled any cigar smoke yet this morning. Maybe he’d gone back out to the woods. Maybe he was a late sleeper.

  Maybe he was waiting on the other side of the door with his teeth sharpened into razors, a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, wearing a bib that read I HEART FACES around his neck.

  I tried not to think about it.

  I turned the doorknob, feeling my heartbeat in my fingertips and behind my eyes, hearing it throb behind my eardrums. I opened the door a tiny crack.

  No needle-sharp teeth.

  No silverware.

  No bib.

  I opened the door a little farther. Stuck my head out into the hallway. Held my breath.

  Nothing. Phew.

  I went back into my room and picked up my bag, then went straight for the front door and my freedom.

  That is, until I noticed something different about the room next to mine. You know, the one with the lights and the prisoners?

  That door—the one that stays locked—was open. Just a crack, but open, definitely open.

  I slowed to a stop, wavering in front of the doorway, unsure what to do. It wasn’t open enough to see inside. I gripped my bag tighter. I should leave, I thought. While I have the chance, forget about the room and get out.

  But there were lights and prisoners and I might be an association now. What association can resist lights and prisoners behind an open door, I ask you?

  I reached out with my fingertips and felt the wood of the door lightly.

  What was in there that was so important to hide? What could it possibly be?

  No. I didn’t need to know. I shouldered my bag and took a few determined steps toward the front door.

  But then stopped and looked back over my shoulder.

  What if he had a kid trapped in there or something? What if he was planning to eat that kid’s face for breakfast? Wasn’t I obligated to save that poor kid? If I didn’t and I saw some poor, faceless kid wandering around the mall later, wouldn’t I feel guilty?

  I had to save that kid’s face.

  And, you know, there was the strange glow …

  I went back to the door and gently, carefully pushed it.

  It swung open with a faint groan.

  Just like in a horror movie.

  And when it did, I saw what was inside. I gasped so hard I almost fainted right there in the hallway.

  14

  The greatest (or at Least Pretty Cool) Space Discovery of all Time

  My legs didn’t even feel like mine. They were numb and weak and struggled to keep me upright. I took two steps into the forbidden room and felt along the wall for a switch, not even thinking about the light possibly attracting Mr. Death.

  I finally found the switch and flipped it, and then gasped again as the room was illuminated.

  Space was everywhere.

  Model rockets and satellites, moon rocks in glass cases illuminated by black lights, articles about manned space missions and Mars rovers and even the Iranian space monkey. There were glowing stars on the ceiling and giant blown-up photos of Merc
ury, Venus, and Saturn. There were photos of moons I’d only hoped to one day see through a telescope, and of stars and swirling nebulae and comets streaking across a crowded sky. Draped on the far wall was a huge poster of Earth as seen from space, and behind it, on a mannequin, an official NASA flight suit.

  No, that should be in all capital letters.

  AN OFFICIAL NASA FLIGHT SUIT!

  My eyes got all swimmy and I realized I hadn’t been breathing.

  I rushed over to the flight suit and let out a gust of air. The sleeve ruffled in the breeze of my breath and I got all swimmy again.

  MY BREATH TOUCHED AN OFFICIAL NASA FLIGHT SUIT!

  I reached out and stroked the sleeve with my fingertips.

  I STROKED THE SLEEVE OF AN OFFICIAL NASA FLIGHT SUIT!

  I ran my fingers over the name Maddux, which was embroidered in silver on the flight suit’s chest. I only hoped some space dust might have rubbed off on me at that very minute.

  I was so enthralled with what I was seeing, I completely forgot where I was.

  “What is going on in here?”

  I jumped, my hand falling immediately to my side, and whipped around to see Mr. Death standing in the doorway. I was trapped.

  I opened my mouth to explain myself, but my brain was still repeating, Touch it, touch the shiny flight suit and wasn’t working yet. Besides, I had no real excuse other than lights and prisoners and associations, and I doubted he would accept those as viable excuses for invading his privacy. Not to mention mucking up his flight suit with my earthy fingertips.

  He took a few steps into the room, waving his unlit cigar at me. “You just go into closed rooms in other people’s houses?” he boomed.