See You in the Cosmos

by Jack Cheng

  RONNIE: The next day I kept waiting for Mom to say something, but she never did. She never once brought up that the ashes were missing. I never asked her why . . .

  RONNIE: Look, I know his death was an accident. I know that. But it was like he did it on purpose, you know? Like he left us on purpose. He made us depend on him, he made Mom depend on him, and then he just left.

  ALEX: But you left too, Ronnie. You went to California.

  RONNIE: I . . .

  ALEX: And Benji’s dad left him and his mom and sister. And I left Carl Sagan even though I didn’t mean to, and now we’re leaving Mom in the behavioral health hospital.

  RONNIE: We’re not—that’s different. That’s temporary.

  RONNIE: Maybe . . . Maybe Benji’s dad left because he knew that if he stayed, he’d end up hurting Benji and his mom again. Maybe that’s why. Maybe he couldn’t trust himself.

  ALEX: He had to make a sacrifice?

  RONNIE: That’s right. He had to do what was best for his family, even if that meant that he wouldn’t get to see them. Even if it hurt him that he wouldn’t get to be with them. He had to take responsibility—real responsibility—for his actions. That’s what it means to be an adult.

  ALEX: So then, when we really love someone, we have to sacrifice getting to be with them?

  RONNIE: No, not always. Not usually. But sometimes . . . sometimes it’s the only way. Sometimes when we really love someone we have to leave them, because it’s better for them than if we stayed.

  ALEX: It’s like how we have to go to Mars.

  RONNIE: What?

  ALEX: So the earth is dying because of things that we did, right? Things that humans did. And we KEEP hurting it, and the forests are disappearing and the oceans are rising and animals are going extinct, so maybe that’s why we have to colonize Mars. We have to leave Earth so Earth can get better again.

  RONNIE: That’s . . .

  RONNIE: Bud, listen. I’m sorry I left. It wasn’t because I don’t love you and Mom—I absolutely do. It was just the only way for us to . . . I mean, I couldn’t stay here. In Rockview. I couldn’t let it beat me, do you understand? I had to live my own life, and I—I know I haven’t been the best about visiting, and I wasn’t here when you needed me. I know that now. I haven’t been the best role model for you but I’m—I’m just trying to be a good person. I’m just trying to do the right—

  RONNIE: Are you crying again?

  RONNIE: What are you crying for?

  ALEX: Because you’re crying.

  RONNIE: —

  ALEX: Ronnie?

  RONNIE: What is it?

  ALEX: I’ve never seen you cry before.

  RONNIE: —

  RONNIE: Alex . . . Listen, bud, Terra and I have been trying to shield you from this . . . but I want you to know what’s happening. That call I took earlier—that wasn’t for work. That was someone from DHS—Department of Human Services. They’ve been investigating our family, and that’s why I’ve been telling you to stay inside, I’ve been trying to protect—

  ALEX: I know.

  RONNIE: You know?

  ALEX: I listened to Terra’s recordings.

  RONNIE: Why didn’t you say anything?

  ALEX: Because I was waiting for YOU to tell me. I’m NOT a little kid anymore, Ronnie. I’m not in elementary school anymore and it’s not like when we still slept in the same room, and I know that the truth is uncomfortable but if I’m only happy all the time then it’s not bravery!

  RONNIE: —

  ALEX: Um . . . why are you looking at me like that?

  RONNIE: Because I haven’t seen you in a long time.

  ALEX: —

  RONNIE: I know how much you want to know the truth about everything, Alex. I really do, bud. It’s just you have to understand that sometimes it’s hard for people—it’s hard for ME—because you’re still my little bro. You’re still Alex. It’s my job to make sure you don’t get hurt, and I haven’t been doing my job lately.

  ALEX: But Ronnie, I can handle it. I can take care of myself.

  RONNIE: I see that now. You’re a tough kid. I just need you to try and be a little more patient with me, and I’ll try not to hold stuff back. Deal?

  ALEX: Deal.

  RONNIE: Good man.

  ALEX: So what do we do now? Are you going to move back home?

  RONNIE: We can talk about that, but first we gotta deal with this DHS situation. That’s more immediate.

  [car starting]

  ALEX: But what about—

  RONNIE: Let’s discuss it back at the house. I want Terra and the guys to be there too.

  ALEX: Will we really talk about it this time?

  RONNIE: Yes.

  ALEX: Everything?

  RONNIE: Yes.

  [tires on gravel]

  [engine accelerating]

  NEW RECORDING 47

  4M 32S

  Guys I have big big big news news news! CivSpaceScott donated fifty dollars to help pay for my hospital bill and so did CivSpaceElisa, and they showed the forum thread to the people at their work and they donated a bunch also and Lander Civet sent me a message! THE Lander Civet!

  His message said that Dr. Carl Sagan is one of his all-time heroes too, and when he was a kid he got to meet him and shake his hand. Lander said he has an exact replica of the Voyager Golden Record in his office and he read about my Golden iPod in the forum post and listened to some of my recordings, and he would be honored if me and my family would join him as his special guests to watch the Mars satellite launch at Cape Canaveral, do I want to come?

  I messaged Lander back right away and I told him, Are you kidding me! Of course we want to come to the launch, DUH! And Lander said that’s great, he can’t wait to meet me, and his assistant is going to help us book our tickets for Florida and everything.

  I wanted us all to go to Johnny Rockets to celebrate because Dr. Clemens said I can eat solid food now that I’ve had my first bowel movement. And Ronnie said we’ll go celebrate soon but not today, not right now, right now we need to talk about DHS and his plan for our family. He said one of their social workers is coming over to our house the day after tomorrow, and I said, What’s a social worker, is it someone whose job it is to go on Twitter? And Ronnie said it’s not, it’s just a person that works for the state, and Zed said it’s also someone who tries to help people in need. I said, Oh, in that case I’m a social worker too, and Ronnie said, Let’s focus.

  He said that the only real solution he sees is for me to go live with him in California for now and he’ll start looking for a bigger apartment, and then when our mom gets better enough to come out of the hospital we’ll move her out there too and we’ll sell our house in Rockview. I said, But what about your condo? and Ronnie said it’s not his, he can’t afford a condo on a junior agent’s salary so he’s just renting it, and it’s only a single room in the back of someone else’s property and it doesn’t even have its own kitchen. Then I said, But what about my school and Benji and my job for Mr. Bashir, and who’s going to be president of the Rockview Planetary Society and why can’t YOU just move back from LA and live at home? And then I started crying a little again.

  Terra held my hand and she said she knows it’s going to be hard, but Ronnie’s job is in LA and he’s already making a lot of sacrifices, and now it’s up to me to make some sacrifices too. She said I can always chat with Benji online and maybe he can take over as president of the Rockview Planetary Society, and there are gas stations in California too. Ronnie said he already talked to the guys about it and they’ve agreed to watch me if he has to travel for work, and I looked at the guys and Steve nodded, and Zed said it’s true. Ronnie said also Terra’s only going to be a few hours away in Las Vegas, and I asked him, Do you have an air mattress? and he said he doesn’t, and I said, Can you get one because if you have an
air mattress then Terra can come live with us too and sleep on the air mattress. And Ronnie and Terra looked at each other and then Ronnie said let’s talk more about that later, for now let’s just get through the next couple of days.

  I asked Ronnie what does all this have to do with the social worker and he said that it’s going to raise some red flags if we just leave the state suddenly, and we don’t want them to think that I need to be in a foster home. I asked him, So how do we raise some green flags? and he said that’s exactly why this meeting is so important, because if we show them I have a safe environment right now, then they’ll leave us alone and we can do what we want. Ronnie said that’s why before the social worker comes over we have to get everything with the house in good order. I said, What do you mean, I keep the house in pretty good order already, and Ronnie said yeah but what about the unmowed lawn and the old coupon flyers in our mom’s room, and the dust and wet dog smell, and the stains on the living room carpet from before I found out about Carl Sagan’s digestive problems, and I said touché. Ronnie said we’ll have to take care of all that stuff anyway if we’re going to sell the house, so we might as well do it now. He said let’s just have a quiet dinner at home and clean up what we can tonight, and then we’ll get started on everything else first thing in the morning. So that’s what we’re doing.

  I have to get back to cleaning now, guys. I’ll record more for you soon.

  NEW RECORDING 48

  5M 37S

  I. Am. So. Exhausted.

  But it’s a different kind of exhausted than I was right after my accident. Then my whole body was sore and all I wanted to do was sleep. Now my body’s tired but so is my brain, it’s almost like I’ve been running a mile and trying to solve a really hard riddle at the same time.

  Everyone else is really exhausted too, but they’re all still cleaning. The guys came over this morning and Ronnie went to Justin Mendoza’s house to borrow his lawnmower because ours doesn’t work anymore, and he came back and filled it with gas and he pulled the cord and it went blub blub blub bvvvuuuuuuu and Carl Sagan started crying because he was scared of the noise. But then he got used to it.

  Ronnie pushed the lawnmower for a while and then he let me try, but it was SO heavy. So Ronnie pushed it again and the bag would get full really quickly, and every time it got full I helped him dump the cut grass from the lawnmower bag into big paper bags. Carl Sagan was running around in the parts we already cut and lying on his back and rubbing his back in the grass, and I told him, If you keep doing that you’re going to turn green, you don’t want to take another bath, do you? And then he started crying again because he recognized the word bath.

  After I helped Ronnie for a while I went inside, and Terra was done vacuuming the living room and she was trying to get out the poop stains from the carpet. I helped her spray the cleaning spray on the stains and Terra scrubbed them with a scrubber but it didn’t do much, you could still see the stains there, or even when it did get out the stain it made that part of the carpet look lighter than the carpet around it. Terra said maybe we should have used a carpet cleaner instead of the one we used and I said, But it says multi-purpose, is cleaning carpets not one of the multiple purposes? And then I looked on the label and it wasn’t.

  Steve said maybe we can just cover the stains with rugs, and Terra said that’s a great idea, so the guys went to Goodwill to find some rugs that weren’t too old and dirty. Meanwhile me and Terra went into my mom’s room with garbage bags and we wore gloves that we found in the garage, and it was like we were exploring an alien planet except we didn’t have entire space suits, just the gloves. We put all my mom’s old coupon flyers in the bags along with some other trash from her closet like shopping bags and empty boxes and crumpled Kleenexes, there were SO many crumpled Kleenexes. When we finished we had fifteen garbage bags full, and I said, Aye yai yai, how can one person make so much garbage!

  We took the bags outside and Ronnie was almost done with the lawn by then. He looked kind of funny too, because he took off his T-shirt earlier and now it was sticking out of the back of his shorts like a ponytail. Ronnie saw us with the garbage bags and he said don’t leave those on the driveway, put them in the garage for now and we’ll take them to the dumpsters later. And then Ronnie used his shirt to wipe off the sweat from his face and I asked him does he want a LOX? and he said sure, so I gave him one of the ones that Steve put in our refrigerator. I told him, Remind me to tell you later about how you can get a free BMW.

  The guys got back from Goodwill with some rugs and they got Febreeze also for the wet dog smell, and some potted plants that were Zed’s idea. We unrolled the rugs and Terra vacuumed them, and they covered all the poop stains except a couple in the corner of the living room. So Zed just put a plant there. And then we sprayed Febreeze all over, we used SO much Febreeze, and it was supposed to get rid of the smell and it did mostly, but then everything just smelled like Febreeze.

  Ronnie came inside and he said, Great job, and I said I’m sure that the social worker is going to be really impressed at how clean and Febreeze-smelling the house is now. He said don’t tell her that we cleaned up, just pretend it’s like this all the time, and I said I wish I didn’t have to pretend. I said, I wish we did this every weekend, because the grass is going to get longer and the house is going to get dirty and smelly and filled with garbage, and we’ll have to clean it up all over again. And then Ronnie went back outside because he had more work to do.

  After lunch Terra told me to rest for a while, I shouldn’t strain myself too much because I’m still recovering from my accident. So I rested with Carl Sagan on the sofa and everyone else got back to work getting the house in order. The guys scrubbed the tub and tiles in the bathroom and Terra swept and mopped the floor of the kitchen so it’s not all sticky, and I watched them and I watched Ronnie outside, and I thought maybe if my dad was still alive I’d be watching HIM mow the lawn and clean out the leaves from the gutters, and maybe if my mom wasn’t in the behavioral health hospital I’d be watching HER sweep the spiderwebs from the ceilings with a broom.

  And then I started wondering, What the heck is a dad anyway? I mean, if you’re talking about a biological dad I had one, but what about a non-biological dad? If it’s someone to protect you from bad stuff that happens and someone you can help mow the lawn and clean the house, then I have Ronnie and Terra, and if it’s someone you can look up to and follow in their footsteps, then I have my hero Dr. Sagan, and if it’s someone who you can laugh and drive places with, then the guys did that too, so what’s the difference? And why is it that the more I think about that word—dad—the less I know what it means? It’s the same with words like love and truth and bravery too, the more I think about them and say them over, the less sense they make. Love. Truth. Bravery. Bravery. Truth. Love. It’s like, I know those things are out there, I know they exist, but the more I think about them the more it feels like they’re all talking about a lot of different things put together, or they’re talking about the same thing, but . . . what?

  Do you know?

  Do you guys have a word for it?

  NEW RECORDING 49

  15M 9S

  The social worker from DHS just left. But so much other stuff happened too, I think my head’s going to explode. Except it’s not really going to explode, it’s just a metaphor. It means I’m overwhelmed. And I want to tell you guys what happened but I don’t want to leave anything out, so I’ll start from the beginning.

  Ronnie said yesterday that it’s better if the guys aren’t here this morning, that way when the social worker gets here it won’t look like there are strange men hanging around the house. I said even if they’re a little strange they’re still my friends, and Zed laughed and said he agrees with Ronnie. I told Zed if he needs to write down more of his thoughts, then him and Steve can go to the public library, they have computers there too. He said it was a great idea.

  So this morning it w
as just me and Ronnie and Terra getting ready for the social worker. We got a big pitcher from the cupboard and washed it and filled it with ice water, and we put the pitcher and some glasses on the coffee table. Ronnie said that when the social worker gets here we’ll have her sit in the Lay-Z-Boy, and the three of us are going to sit on the sofa because that’ll show solidarity. I said that’s a great idea because then the social worker will feel comfortable too. Ronnie told me just try to sit still, he’s going to do most of the talking, and if the social worker asks me any questions don’t answer them unless he gives me the signal.

  Ronnie started practicing with us everything he’s going to say to the social worker, but then our house phone rang and Ronnie answered it. He said, Hello? and then he said, How did you get this number? and then he said, We’re not doing any interviews, and he hung up. I asked Ronnie, Who was that? and he said it was a reporter and then he went to get his laptop, and Terra asked him what did they want? and Ronnie said Lander Civet mentioned me and my Golden iPod in an interview. Ronnie found the interview and showed it to us, and then I logged into my e-mail and I had a ton of new messages and some of them were from reporters who want to interview me!

  I said, This is SO cool, I’m famous! and Ronnie said it’s pretty cool, yeah, but we can’t talk to any reporters right now, not under current circumstances. I asked him why not, isn’t that what he helps his clients do, so what’s the difference? And he said the difference is that I’m his brother. The phone started ringing again and Ronnie unplugged the line and then there was a knock at the door and Ronnie said, That must be the social worker. But it wasn’t the social worker—it was a reporter from Channel 5 Action News!

  The news reporter asked Ronnie, Does Alex Petroski live here? and he told her we’re not doing any interviews, and she said she just wants a few words with me and then she saw me over Ronnie’s shoulder and I waved to her and Ronnie shut the door. She knocked again but Ronnie didn’t open it, and I looked through the window and I saw the Channel 5 Mobile Action News Team van parked across the street! It had a tall satellite tower with a curly red cable that curled all the way down to the van, and some joggers ran by and they stopped to look at the van and so did a mom pushing a stroller, and then Ronnie told me to come away from the window. He said, I can’t believe this, and there was a knock at the door again and Ronnie went to tell the reporter to go away again, except this time it was the social worker!