Eight Days on Planet Earth

by Cat Jordan

  DEDICATION

  For my dad, John,

  who will always be a star

  EPIGRAPH

  Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

  —Stephen Hawking

  The Universe makes sense.

  We’re just too small to understand.

  —DJ Jones

  I want to believe.

  —Fox Mulder

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Day One 6:02 A.M.

  12:04 P.M.

  9:28 P.M.

  2:11 A.M.

  Day Two 9:09 A.M.

  11:13 A.M.

  2:45 P.M.

  8:56 P.M.

  2:27 A.M.

  Day Three 8:32 A.M.

  2:14 P.M.

  6:10 P.M.

  6:45 P.M.

  2:47 A.M.

  Day Four 10:01 A.M.

  3:52 P.M.

  4:47 P.M.

  8:39 P.M.

  Day Five 10:28 A.M.

  2:02 P.M.

  3:34 P.M.

  5:59 P.M.

  7:35 P.M.

  3:06 A.M.

  Day Six 7:23 A.M.

  12:07 P.M.

  4:17 P.M.

  4:30 P.M.

  7:31 P.M.

  Day Seven 7:01 A.M.

  7:45 A.M.

  10:41 A.M.

  12:27 P.M.

  4:01 P.M.

  5:14 P.M.

  6:02 P.M.

  Day Eight 9:43 A.M.

  5:36 P.M.

  9:59 P.M.

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Cat Jordan

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  DAY ONE

  6:02 A.M.

  I kick off the covers way too early, still on school time since the year ended just a few days ago. Stumble down the back staircase to the kitchen to make coffee and walk Ginger, our runty white Lab.

  The stone floor is cool under my bare feet, and the whole house feels eerily silent. Something’s off, or maybe it’s just me. Coffee will help.

  Our kitchen used to be an attached shed that my granddad renovated in the seventies. It was pretty modern back then, but nothing’s been updated since he died. We’ve got one of the first microwaves ever created and a Mr. Coffee drip pot from the late twentieth century.

  I’m probably the only guy I know who can make coffee in his sleep: water, filter, a hundred scoops of Maxwell House (because it’s good to the last drop). Press the button and we’re good to go. That’s when I take Ginger out for a walk. By the time we’re back, the coffee’s done and I feed Ginger and . . .

  Ginger isn’t there.

  Her doghouse, which I painted red like Snoopy’s when I was eight, is empty.

  “Ginger! Ginger! Here, girl!” I whistle for her and clap my hands and probably wake up the entire street, but she doesn’t come to me.

  “Ginger! Ginger!” I hold my breath and listen for her paws rustling in the bushes or her panting as she clambers up the short hill from the woods. All is quiet. Ginger has run away before, but she always returns, usually right around mealtime.

  I clap my hands a few more times and whistle as I walk around the outside of the house. Maybe she’s stuck somewhere, trying to crawl after a ball or a bird? The bushes and trees are still, and the driveway where my granddad built a basketball hoop is empty.

  The open garage door catches my eye. It should be closed. I should be looking at a sign that says Jones Family Farm in fat orange letters painted across the faded wood.

  I take a few steps closer and find Ginger lying on the concrete floor of the garage in the spot where my dad’s pickup is usually parked. Her front paws are crossed with her head resting on top of them.

  “Hey, girl,” I croon. “Whatcha doin’?”

  Her brown eyes are wide as she seems to shake her head. Darned if I know.

  The pickup. Where’s Dad’s pickup truck? Mom’s Honda is in its place, but there’s only a sad-looking Labrador retriever with a streak of gold down her back sprawled on the oil-stained concrete.

  My heart sinks to my stomach. It feels wrong, this empty garage. Ginger knows it too.

  Mom . . .

  By the time I get inside, my mother is sitting at the round wooden table in the breakfast nook, drinking some of the coffee I made. She has a smile on her face, which tells me she doesn’t know yet about the empty garage.

  “Good coffee.” She lifts her mug—an oversize ceramic thing that holds twice the usual amount of liquid—and nods. She drinks at least three of these every morning before work.

  “Thanks.”

  She isn’t dressed in her normal work scrubs. She’s wearing the pink shorts and tank top she likes to sleep in, along with a thin cotton robe and flip-flops. Her hair isn’t ready for work either; her brown pixie cut sticks up all over her head, like she’s gotten an electric shock.

  She waves a hand at the coffeepot. “Grab some more of that for me, would you?”

  I pour myself a cup and then refill hers. Black. No sugar. Two sugars for me.

  “Sit, Matty, sit,” she urges. There’s an edge in her voice, a tone warning me something is coming. My mother’s hand slides into the front pocket of her robe, and I hear the scritch-scritch sound of her nails on paper.

  “What’s that?” I aim my gaze at her pocket.

  Mom’s eyes flicker from me to her lap and back again. She takes out a crumpled envelope and lets it sit on her thigh for a very long moment. Her fingers tremble and her foot bounces nervously, the plastic sandal making a snapping sound against her bare skin. “Your dad . . .”

  “He’s gone,” I say, but it sounds like a question. “Is that . . . is that what you want to tell me?”

  There’s a hitch in her breath when she sighs. “I don’t think . . . well, I don’t know for sure, but—no, no, I do know. He’s—yes, he’s gone.”

  The scritch-scritch again draws my gaze. “And that’s . . . a note from him? Did he leave us—you, I mean, did he leave you a note?”

  “Matty—”

  I grab it from my mom’s hand. “‘Dear Lorna . . .’” That’s my mom. “‘I’m sorry, but Carol and I . . .’” And that’s all I see before Mom snatches it back. Not that I need to see any more. I know who Carol is: the wife of my uncle Jack, my dad’s brother. Like my mother, Jack is ten years younger than my dad, and Carol is ten years younger than Jack, which makes Dad running off with Carol . . . really pathetic.

  “Well, that’s that.” I hear a quaver in my voice and swallow to clear it.

  “We don’t know that.” My mom looks both too young and too old. Cheeks sprinkled with freckles and gray hairs at her temples. “We don’t know what will happen.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “He could . . .” Her words hang in the humid air. She takes a long gulp of coffee as her eyes dart around the kitchen. Does she really want him back? Seriously? A guy with no steady job who’d rather tweet and write blog posts all day? A guy who let his own family business wither and die because he couldn’t be bothered to care?

  I stand abruptly and the table shifts. “I gotta eat.” At the sound of “eat,” Ginger whines. “Oh crap, I forgot.” I bend down and rub the dog’s neck. “Sorry, girl. I got your breakfast. Hang on.”

  Mom waves her mug. “You got that, yeah?”

  “Yeah, no worries.”

  “And your breakfast too?”

  “What am I, ten? I can make breakfast for myself.”

  She cocks an eyebrow. “You sure?”

  “Uh, w
hich one of these things is the toaster again?” I walk up to the refrigerator. “This one? Is this it?” I tap the microwave. “Oh no, it’s this one, right?”

  My mom smiles for a split second and then presses her lips together. “I gotta get ready for work. I leave Ginger and Mr. Coffee in your capable hands.” She finishes her mug silently, not looking at me. A minute later, I feel her hand rest on my shoulder as I’m pulling down a bag of kibble. She’s about a foot shorter than me, petite framed, and tough. She doesn’t look it but my mom is one kick-ass mother. “Have a good day. It’ll be okay.”

  I shrug off the implication that my dad leaving would in any way impact my day, week, and/or life. “Well, duh, it’s summer. It’ll be great.”

  She holds my gaze for a long moment, and in that time, I try to read what she’s thinking. Are we on the same wavelength about Dad? This isn’t a big deal, right? We’re not devastated, are we? Our eyes meet and she suddenly glances away as if she’s said too much, projected too many feelings. “Yes, then, good.”

  She looks like she might need a hug, but we’re not real touchy-feely in the Jones family. It would be weird for me to offer her one. Instead I salute her as she walks out the door.

  I scoop out some kibble for Ginger, wondering about the letter in my mom’s pocket. What else did my dad write? Is there anything in there about me? Not that I care. He’s always had his own shit going on that had nothing to do with us. Maybe now he’ll finally be happy.

  I hear my mom upstairs in her room above the kitchen, padding lightly from dresser to closet to bed. It hasn’t been easy being David James Jones’s wife; she’s had to hold the family together for a while now. Maybe she’ll finally be happy too.

  12:04 P.M.

  I wait until noon to text Brian. He and Emily are late risers. In fact, the entire Aoki family is on a different schedule from us. Late to bed, late to rise. Maybe because we used to be farmers, we’re always up with the sun.

  Yo, meet me? I text him.

  Yo, yep is the reply. We don’t really need more than that.

  We meet where we usually do, at the back of the old drive-in behind the huge plaster screen. On weekends the place is used for a swap meet, but during the week it’s empty. Brian and I have been hanging out there since we were kids. We rode regular banana seat bikes and BMXes until we turned fourteen and got cheap scramblers. For the past three years, we’ve been tearing up the dirt like pros.

  Ha. No.

  One time, we set up a ramp using some raw lumber and concrete blocks we found on the side of the road and dragged to the drive-in. Without any training or practice whatsoever, Brian attempted to jump off the ramp. I never saw so much blood pour out of one nose. His face connected with the concrete like it was a cream-filled doughnut. Splat.

  The Aokis moved into the stone house at the very end of our rural road when Brian was a baby and his sister, Emily, was barely a toddler. As the only boys on the entire street, we became fast friends as soon as we could talk. Em hung out with us too, but she was kind of an honorary guy, plus she could drive before us so that gave her bonus points.

  “Yo,” Brian calls to me when he rides up to the movie screen. He’s wearing cutoff cargo pants and a black T-shirt that billows out over his stomach. Brian has always been conscious of his weight. His dad got diabetes when he was forty and he’s been hammering at Brian ever since to lose weight and eat right.

  Please. Those cargo pants are stuffed with Almond Joys, not grapefruit.

  Well, Almond Joys and weed. He takes a couple of quick puffs off a joint and offers it to me. I shake my head and he shrugs, taking another toke. “Your loss.”

  “Did you ride with that thing lit?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  I laugh. “Dude.”

  “I’m super skilled.”

  “Sure. It’s how you got a D in every class—”

  He punctuates the air with the joint. “Not true. I got a C in history.”

  History at our high school is a joke. No one has ever failed. Even the worst student—and arguably that was Brian—never got anything less than a C-minus. We’re entering our senior year with dueling crappy averages, me because I’m bored out of my mind and Brian because, well, he’s not dumb but he’d rather smoke dope than study.

  “What are we doing today?” he asks, shading his eyes with his hand as his gaze roams the empty drive-in. The place is filled with leftovers from a bygone era: metal rods planted in the dry earth, bent and crushed by wind and rain and probably me and Brian when we were younger; dead speakers, the type that clipped to car windows, used to hang by their wires but disappeared a few years ago. The snack bar is the last original structure still intact, and that’s only because the swap meet organizers need a designated smoking area.

  “I dunno. What do you wanna do?”

  “Lake?”

  “What, to swim?” At best, my pudgy stoner friend might float, but there’s no way he’s going to exercise on his own.

  “Swim? Dude, please.” He sucks in another drag from the joint and holds it in his lungs. “Just hang,” he ekes out before exhaling the smoke. The sweet smell of it immediately evaporates into the dusty air.

  “Hang?” I know what he wants to do at the lake: stare at the girl lifeguard he has a crush on. “Like, get a tan? Is that what you wanna do? Or maybe rent a boat? No!” I snap my fingers. “Paddleboard.” I mime rowing with an invisible oar, wiping my brow of imagined sweat.

  “Fuck you, Jones.”

  “Go on, say it.”

  “What.”

  “Say her name. Go on.” I poke his chest with two fingers. “Mir. An. Da.” I poke him again, and his butt slips off the seat of the dirt bike. I lean in and whisper in his ear, “You know you want her.”

  His cheeks purple with embarrassment. “You’re a douche.” He holds up the joint, pinches off the end between his fingernails, and tucks it into the front pocket of his cargo shorts. “Don’t ask. You’re not getting any.”

  I shrug. “Don’t care.” Jeez, so he likes a girl.

  And I guess because of their shared DNA or whatever, I’m suddenly thinking of Emily.

  Brian’s sister has their mom’s heart-shaped face with cheeks that dimple when she smiles; auburn hair she keeps in a ponytail most of the time; curves hidden under Levis and an Eagles sweatshirt. A few of us guys know she’s got a killer bod, but she’s constantly in motion. Field hockey in the fall, dive team in the winter, softball in spring. Em’s a team player, even when the team is just me and Brian.

  Me and Em have fooled around a little bit. But that’s over now.

  Miranda, now, she’s something else. She’s so far out of Brian’s league, she might as well be on another planet. I mean, she’s a lifeguard! Totally in shape, one of the most popular girls in school since kindergarten, stellar grades. Her shiny black hair—let’s call it sleek—and high cheekbones make her more like a model and less like a real person.

  Any normal guy—like me—would know his place with a girl like Miranda. But Brian . . . I love the guy, but he’s not normal. He actually believes he might get a chance to hook up.

  Not helping to dispel this illusion? Emily was on the dive team with her. So she knows Brian’s name is actually not Toad, which is what most girls call him.

  “Anyway, gotta go. Things to do,” I say, and sling my leg over my bike.

  Brian rolls his eyes at me. “Things to do? What, you got a job now?”

  We both know the “job” I had last year is gone. The farm barely had a summer stand then, eking out a few bucks selling fresh eggs and sweet corn to the neighbors. But the chickens were eaten last fall (sorry, chickens) and the corn is dead.

  I stare at the patch of earth under my bike’s front tire. Hard. Dry. Empty. Three long months stretch out before me. Jesus, what do I have to look forward to this summer? Smoking weed and riding dirt bikes with Brian? Watching him make a fool out of himself as he lusts after Miranda? Sounds like a path to loserdom. Like father, lik
e son.

  “I could get you a job,” Brian says. “Making deliveries,” he adds, lowering his voice and glancing furtively around the drive-in.

  I know that look. “Dude, I’m not gonna be a weed guy.”

  “I said you’d make deliveries. Who said anything about dope?”

  I sit back on my bike and cross my arms over my chest. Am I that desperate for cash? We’ve been living on Mom’s income for a long time, but how much longer I don’t know. Granddad’s farm and house are paid off, thank god, but I’m savvy enough about finances to know there are taxes and other crap that have to be paid each month. I often heard Mom and Dad arguing late at night, about how Dad needed to contribute more and take responsibility and face facts. That’s one of Mom’s favorite phrases, as in “Face facts, DJ, this farm can’t run itself.” Or, “Face facts, Matty, you’ll crack your head open if you don’t wear a helmet.”

  I wonder if she’s telling herself, Face facts, Lorna, that jerk is gone and he’s not coming back.

  But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?

  I hear the flick of a lighter and look up to see Brian with a brand-new joint, a little on the skinny side but it’ll do. He doesn’t light it himself but hands both the Bic and the joint to me.

  “You kinda look like you need it,” he says.

  I don’t hesitate. I fire it up, take two quick tokes, and hold the smoke in my lungs for as long as I can. Finally I give it back and exhale.

  “So . . . the lake?” I ask Brian.

  My friend shakes his head. “Nah, this is good.”

  I tilt my face up to the sky and feel the sun warm my cheeks. Yeah, this is good.

  It doesn’t take long for every muscle in my body to turn to jelly and for my head to feel like it’s filled with helium, expanding farther and farther out into the Universe. Fleeting bits of memories, of Dad and me, of other summers, pop into my brain.