Life on Mars

by Jennifer Brown

  Huey was our dream, kid, and even after I die, I want you to keep trying, keep dreaming, keep looking to the sky. Kid, you keep dreaming, and I’ll promise you one thing. If there is life out there somewhere, I will send you a sign.

  Never give up. Especially on space, but never give up on anything. Especially never give up on yourself, like I did.

  Notice I said “when you discover life on other planets,” not “if you discover life on other planets,” because all that bunk I told you about it not being out there was just that–bunk. Hooey. A load of space garbage. A floating flock of Herbert’s snotballs. It’s not all dead rocks out there. I know that to my core.

  I’m going to miss you, kid. I really am. You gave me something I’d never thought I’d be able to have. You gave me something Herbert Snotsflicker (you’re right–that is kinda fun!) could never take away from me.

  Arcturus, the red giant, the third brightest star in the sky, is 110 times brighter than the sun.

  And that’s what you gave to me.

  I am thankful.

  Yours in space,

  Cash Maddux

  P.S. I think you’ll like the change I had Sarah make to the suit.

  P.S.S. You still ask too many questions, though.

  I read the letter twice, my hands making the paper shake. The fountain had sprouted to life again, only this time it raged too hard against the insides of my eyelids to keep it in. Tears rolled off my chin and plopped onto the helmet. But they were good tears. I was going to miss Cash. But at least I knew he was going to miss me, too.

  After the second time I read the letter, I refolded it and placed it on the floor beside me. Then I reached into the bag and pulled out Cash’s flight suit, which had been folded into the bottom of the bag. I held it up by the shoulders. Sarah had stitched letters across the front of it:

  HUEY

  And underneath, in tidy cursive:

  Hillside Undercover Exploration of Yetis

  I blinked. That was a terrible acronym. First of all, it made it sound like I was looking for your average variety Earth yeti, the kind you find in rain forests and mountain caves and stuff. Which I wasn’t. And second, I wasn’t just looking for yetis. I was looking for Martian yetis, and I’m pretty sure if I found one, doing a hula on a beach and waving a Mars is #1 foam finger at me, the fact that it was a Martian would probably far outweigh the fact that it was a yeti, and nobody would call it a yeti at all. Not to mention, being a Martian yeti would probably mean that it would be different from an Earth yeti, and maybe it wouldn’t even be called a yeti but would have a different name, like a … Vega. Plus, I could never put it on a T-shirt, because everyone who saw me walking around with the word HUEY across my chest would naturally assume my name was Huey. Besides, was the plural of “yeti” even “yetis,” or was it just “yeti”? Because “yetis” looked weird, and I did not want to have to get into some big grammar talk every time I wore my shirt.

  On the other hand. Cash came up with an acronym. Cash said yetis. Which meant he had been listening to me. At least at some point, he had been paying attention to my hopes and dreams. Which made the acronym kind of …

  “Perfect,” I said aloud.

  Just then, Vega and Cassi came into my room, their eyes red and swollen from tears to match mine.

  “The van just left,” Vega said softly. “It’s time to go.”

  “What’s that?” Cassi asked, and instinctively I let the flight suit drop back into the bag.

  “Nothing,” I said. I pulled off the helmet and put it next to the letter on the floor. “You’d think it’s nerdy.”

  She bent over the bag and peered inside, then pulled out the suit and dangled it in front of her. Her eyes got big. “Is this a real flight suit?”

  I nodded. “It was Cash’s.”

  Vega joined Cassi, running her fingers along the American flag patch. “So cool.”

  Cassi dropped it back into the bag. “Is it true that he’s dying?” she asked, kneeling next to me.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That’s a bummer,” Vega said, sitting on the other side of me. “I’m really sorry, Arty. I know you guys were friends.”

  Cassi sniffled. “I’m really going to miss my friends,” and when she said it, I kind of felt sorry for her, even though the Brielle Brigade were super annoying and they made Cassi hate space. It was hard to lose friends, even annoying ones.

  “I’m going to miss Mitchell,” Vega added, her voice brittle.

  We sat in silence together. Then Vega said, “But we have each other, so that’s a good thing. Can you imagine having to move away from all your friends if you didn’t have old Armpit here to torment, Cassi?”

  “Definitely not,” Cassi said, wiping her cheeks and pushing my head toward Vega. Vega pushed it back toward Cassi and we all chuckled.

  “I’m really sorry about cheerleading,” I said to Cassi. “And face sucking,” I said to Vega. “Your hand must feel really cold without the Bac … Mitchell attached to it.”

  “Thanks,” they both said, and they got up to leave.

  I walked over to my suitcase, dragging the paper sack with me. Somehow I was going to have to fit this stuff into my already-crammed suitcases.

  “Hey, Arty?” Cassi said from the doorway. I turned. “I still think space is maybe the tiniest bit cool,” she said. “But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  I grinned. “Who would I tell?”

  The hustling and rustling downstairs told me that it was almost time to go. I unfolded Cash’s letter one last time and read it over again.

  Never give up. Especially on space.

  Never give up on yourself.

  Huey was our dream.

  I pressed the suit and letter into my suitcase and hurriedly zipped it shut, then rested the helmet on top of it. Then I got to my feet and sprinted out of my room and down the stairs.

  “Hey-hey-hey,” Mom shouted. “Where are you going? It’s time to get on the road.”

  “Just one more thing!” I shouted over my shoulder, and ran out the front door.

  33

  The Gravitational Pull of the Mother, Er … Father Planet

  Dad was on the hill when I got there. He was wearing a pair of gardening gloves and was bent over beside a big moving box.

  “Dad? What are you doing here?”

  He popped up and smiled when he saw me. “Hey, Arty! I’m just doing some last-minute packing.” He placed a mostly intact mirror into the box. “Your mom send you to find me?”

  He was so casual about what he was doing, like this was something he did every day. Like this was no big deal. Like it was totally expected. Like he couldn’t imagine leaving Huey behind, either.

  I loved my dad. I mean, I loved my dad every day, but that was he’s-my-dad-so-I-love-him kind of love. Watching him bend over and sift tiny nuts and bolts out of the grass, I realized that today he deserved he’s-a-pretty-cool-person-so-I-love-him kind of love.

  I never answered his question, so he pulled off his gloves and came over to me. He put his arm around me and we both sat on the ground.

  “Guess your life’s pretty horrible right now, huh?” he said.

  I nodded. “I don’t even know what the pizza is like in Nevada.”

  “I’m sure it’s pretty similar to the pizza in Liberty. You’ll like it there, Arty. It’s not that different.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “Priya and Tripp won’t be there. And neither will Cash.”

  Dad’s arm hugged tight around me. “I know. And I’m sorry about that, pal. I really am. But I need you to roll with this. I need you to at least try to like Las Vegas. Your opinion matters to me.”

  I looked up at him. “Really?”

  “Of course it does. You’re the only one in this family who loves space as much as I do. You built this awesome machine.” He swept his arm out to indicate what was left of the pieces in the grass. “You’re a smart guy, Arty. Maybe even a genius. Moving, starting a new job, it’s scary f
or me, too. I could use a genius on my side.”

  I smiled. It never occurred to me that this move wasn’t just happening to Vega, Cassi, and me. It was happening to Mom and Dad, too. “Cash is going to die, Dad.”

  “I know. I’m really sorry, son. You two seemed close.”

  “He liked space as much as you do, too. It was kind of his whole life. That’s why I can’t leave Huey here.”

  Dad’s forehead crinkled. “Who’s Huey? Oh. The machine. Gotcha.” He stood up with a grunt. “Well, what do you say we box the rest of Huey up, then?”

  I took his hand and let him pull me up, but before we got started, he spread his arms out wide and I plunged into them for a hug. “It’s all gonna work out, Arty, you’ll see,” he said into the top of my head.

  We started back toward the box, and Dad stopped. “Oh! I almost forgot!” He fumbled in his front pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and handed it to me. “I figured you would want a way to keep up with your friends on the way out to Nevada.”

  I turned it over in my hands. “Is it new?”

  He bent, picked up a piece of Huey, and tossed it into the box. “Yep. And it’s all yours.”

  I pushed a few buttons. He had already programmed Tripp’s and Priya’s numbers into the contacts, along with his, Mom’s, and the Las Vegas Planetarium and Observatory. And … Sarah’s? I turned the phone off and just watched my dad for a moment, smiling. I’d been so mad at him about moving for so long, I forgot what a really good guy he could be.

  He stood to put a piece of Huey in the box and caught my eye. “And if Cassi gives you any trouble about that phone, you just send her to me.”

  Correction: a really great guy.

  34

  The Space Shuttle Epiphany, Ready for Liftoff!

  In case you were wondering, it is 1,365.84 miles from Liberty, Missouri, to Las Vegas, Nevada. That’s twenty hours of driving. Or, in my case, twenty hours of sitting between the two most annoying sisters on Earth and wishing a UFO tractor beam would suck me right through the roof of the car.

  When they weren’t busy whining about the radio station, they were fighting over earbuds. They complained that it was too hot, and then when Mom put on the air conditioner, they griped that they were freezing. Cassi practiced her cheers for 947 hours straight, and Vega’s phone beeped with text messages more often than I blinked. They both bellowed that my legs were touching theirs and that my breath smelled like something died in my mouth and that my atlas was getting in their way.

  Comet sat in the row of seats behind us and, every ten seconds or so, licked the back of my head. My hair was plastered to my scalp with dog drool. Which made Cassi and Vega complain even more.

  Behind Comet were our suitcases and a box filled with clanking broken pieces of Huey.

  I passed the time by memorizing the years that Halley’s Comet passed through our solar system, going all the way back to 1066, and trying to imagine what it would look like from the top of Olympus Mons, the sixteen-mile-high volcano on Mars.

  I also passed time by flipping the pages of the atlas Priya gave me, keeping track of the towns we passed.

  That was what I’d been doing when I saw it.

  After an eternity, we’d finally crossed over into Nevada and I was able to flip to the final page of our journey. The brush and dirt, and even the hazy mountains off in the distance, had gotten boring, so I followed I-15 with my finger, tracing how far we had left to go. We were just outside of Moapa; not far now. My eyes wandered past Vegas and up the page a bit, and my finger stopped.

  “Lovell Canyon,” I whispered. Excitement jolted through me. “Lovell Canyon! Lovely cannons!” I shouted, and Cassi, who’d been dozing, jerked awake.

  “Ready! Okay! We’ve got spirit yes we d …,” she muttered before falling back to sleep.

  I ignored her. “That’s it! That’s what Cash meant!”

  Mom twisted around in her seat to see what was going on. “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  I pointed to the atlas, turning it so Mom could see it. “Not lovely cannons! Lovell Canyon! It’s a place outside of Las Vegas.”

  Mom squinted at the map. “What about it?”

  “Don’t you see? He wasn’t talking about some sort of war. I knew it!”

  “Who?” Mom asked, looking thoroughly confused at this point.

  “Cash! He was telling me where to take Huey!”

  35

  3-2-1 Contact!

  Mars was in opposition in April the next year. Which gave me eight months to prepare. I spent most of those months saving up my money to buy new parts to replace the unfixable ones on Huey. But I also spent lots of time sprucing up the broken parts, including painting him navy blue, with stars and planets, really making him look the part. After all, if Huey and I were going to discover life on another planet someday, we had to be camera ready for when the press came after us.

  I also painted across one side:

  In Memory of CASH: Contacting Aliens in the Solar System through Huey

  Technically, that would be CASSH. Or CAITSSTH.

  … Yeah, I was never going to get any good at acronyms.

  It turned out my house in Las Vegas was kind of cool. It had a red tile roof and a stone wall around the yard. It was way bigger than our old house and had a pool right down the street. But mostly it just seemed like a house in a neighborhood, just like in Liberty. It made me feel like I hadn’t really moved all that far away and that people were basically the same no matter where you went.

  And the best part? Right outside my bedroom window was a little slope of roof, one just the perfect size for stargazing. Or for changing the course of human history through scientific discovery. However you want to look at it.

  I liked my new school and right away made two new friends. Their names were Toby and Tan, and they both lived right down the street from me. We met on the first day of school, on the bus, and it turned out we all had PE and lunch together. Toby was into video games and Tan constantly had his nose smudged up against the pages of a book. Neither of them was interested at all in space, and neither of them fell a lot or wore clanky bracelets, but that didn’t really matter. I liked them anyway.

  Dad, however, did get interested in space again. Turned out that working for the new company meant he spent a lot less nighttime hours at work. Instead, he came home and we’d climb out onto the red tiles together, sitting side by side, sharing popcorn or chips or sometimes pastrami sandwiches in Cash’s honor. Dad bought two pairs of binoculars—one for each of us. They weren’t quite as cool as Cash’s but somehow that seemed right. And I would tell him about the things I learned from Cash.

  “Hey, Dad, have you ever heard of Gliese five eighty-one?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s a star, and it’s got this huge exoplanet, and there was a radio signal and this professor says …”

  Mom and Priya’s mom video called each other on the computer every day. And Mom stopped baking raisiny things.

  Vega found a new boyfriend right away. His name was Vincent, and he was skinny and wore really tight black jeans with big, clomping boots. His favorite word was “yo” and he liked to use it in pretty much every sentence, like, “What’s up, Arty, yo? School was a beast today, yo. Tomorrow’s the weekend, yo.” Vega was head over heels in love with the guy (yo), but I liked to think of him as the Virus (yo), and secretly he made me miss Mitchell a little bit.

  Cassi found a new cheer squad, and it seemed like every girl on it was named Adrian. But Cassi’s best friend Adrian thought I was cute and giggled a lot when I was around, and said it was “neato” how “like, smart and stuff” I was about “you know, those, like, space thingamabobby things.” She drove me crazy when she was around, but at least Cassi started to hate space a little less, and sometimes she would even join Dad and me out on the rooftop, smacking her cinnamon gum and claiming every five seconds she saw a UFO.

  “Did you guys see that?”

  “It was an airplane.�
��

  “But it had lights and they were flashing!”

  “Because it was an airplane.”

  “And it was moving across this way. Actually moving!”

  “Because that’s how airplanes get to the airport. Which is, by the way, the same direction the plane was moving.”

  “I’m telling you, it was a UFO.”

  “Next thing you know, Cassi, you’ll be claiming zombies are real.”

  Aunt Sarin visited once, and brought baby Castor with her. He was googly-eyed and drooly, and he grabbed my finger and squeezed it just like Cassi used to do when she was a baby. Once, when Mom and Aunt Sarin were gabbing in the kitchen, I tiptoed into the living room with a gift for Castor.

  “Hey, little star,” I said, crouching so I was eye level with him in his baby swing. He smiled and cooed. “I have something for you.” I held up Chase’s old Mickey Mouse binoculars. Castor reached out with clumsy hands and grabbed at them. Once he got hold of them, he immediately stuck them in his mouth. “These binoculars are all yours. But they aren’t just any binoculars. They’re part of a very intricate piece of space-communication machinery. I expect you to take good care of them, okay? And when you’re old enough, I’ll show you an even better telescope.” He gurgled and laughed. Chase’s binoculars would be in good hands with Castor. Cash probably would have liked to see baby Castor gumming up those awful binoculars.

  Speaking of Cash.

  Sarah called a few days after we arrived in Vegas to tell me he had died.

  “Don’t you worry, I was right there with him all the way up until the end,” she said.

  I’d never had to talk about someone dying before and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. I tried to think of what Dad would say. “Did he, um, suffer?”

  “No, he went very peacefully.”

  “Good, good,” I said in my Dad-impersonation voice.

  “The funeral was very nice, Arty. You should have seen it. Beautiful flowers, beautiful music. Your little friends both came. I can’t remember their names. Red-haired boy, and a girl wearing lots of bracelets.”