by Cat Jordan
“Looks like I might be getting a job at the observatory here in Philly,” my dad says as he pulls away from the curb.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
That’s one of my dad’s favorite Carl Sagan quotes.
DAY EIGHT
9:43 A.M.
So I didn’t take the bus home. Turns out Dad had the entire original series on DVD so we had to binge. Plus there was the pizza.
He pulls the truck up to the curb outside the hospital and slides it into park. We both get out of the car and I feel tension string between us like a live wire.
Before he can say thank you or whatever, I blurt out, “I don’t hate you.”
My dad’s face opens in surprise. “Okay. Good.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t like you right now. I don’t like how you did what you did, but I . . .” The words don’t sound right. They don’t come smoothly or easily. “I miss you. I miss hanging out with you.”
I shove my hands into my pockets. I can feel my face grow warm—from the sun, definitely the sun—and I have to look away. “I miss how things were when I was a kid and we did stuff together.”
I didn’t realize just how much I’d missed him—us—until Priya stepped into my life.
“Yeah, me too. But it happens. You have school and friends. And I probably embarrassed the heck out of you.” He half laughs; we both know the truth of that statement.
“Well, I guess . . .” I didn’t understand. I didn’t know.
Think like a cat. I didn’t think like DJ Jones at all. I only thought like me.
I feel a hitch in my throat. “I don’t like people leaving. Priya, Em . . . you.”
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t contradict me. He’s not coming back. Em’s going away. So is Priya.
I’m right. For once, I’m not a step behind everyone else. And it sucks.
I feel my chest sink, my heart drop into my stomach. I lean on the truck, rest my head on my arms; the roof of the pickup, warmed by the sun, sears my skin.
I feel my dad’s hand on my back and his breath in my ear. “From the moment we’re born, we’re dying, Matty. We’re just like the stars. We burst into life and then slowly burn out. It’s up to you to make the light shine brightest and longest.”
I turn my head to look at him.
“That’s what your granddad told me on the night I was born.”
“You can’t possibly remember that.”
“It’s the only thing I do remember him saying.”
I can’t help but laugh through my tears. “You’re special, all right.”
We stand together, looking up at the hospital. I try to imagine Priya and her parents having coffee together. I make a mental note to grab some doughnuts from the cafeteria before I go up.
“You gonna be okay by yourself?” Dad asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He taps the phone that’s in his back pocket and says, “You know how to reach me.”
We don’t hug. We’re not huggers in the Jones family.
Just before he walks away, my dad grabs me in an awkward embrace.
Okay. I guess we’re huggers now.
Inside the hospital, sunbeams scatter my path as I walk across the linoleum. The whole place feels brighter, more welcoming than the day before.
I get in line for my visitor’s pass with a smile.
“I’m here to see Priya Shah,” I say cheerfully. Her name sounds so delicate and pretty. How could you not smile when you say it?
The receptionist behind the desk pauses with her fingers held above her keyboard. Her gaze meets mine briefly and then flickers away.
“I’m sorry, but . . .”
5:36 P.M.
I imagine her alive, tilting her head to one side, not understanding my fear because of course she has to go, of course she can’t be here anymore. Her job is done. She has collected all the data she needs. Her visit is over and she’s being called back home.
I want to tell her, Don’t leave me.
I want to tell her, My life won’t be the same without you.
I want to tell her . . .
I love you, for what you’ve brought me.
I love you, for what you’ve brought back to me.
But she’s gone.
“Safe travels,” I whisper.
9:59 P.M.
Out in the field, the telescope is in the same spot where I left it and so is the tent. I should probably bring both of them inside in case it rains. But I can’t.
I keep thinking she’s going to come back. She’s going to traipse up the hill with her black bag and her white wig. Ginger will bark until I let her out, and she’ll dash under the willows and across the creek to bury her fat head under Priya’s hand.
So I have to leave it there, trained on the night sky, deep into the constellation Libra where a small planet near Gliese 581c orbits its sun twenty light-years from Earth.
I close my eyes and put myself back in Priya’s room, locking eyes with her and listening to her mom talk to Emily.
Astrocytoma. Dr. Shah said she’d had the tumors since she was a girl. Surgery. Radiation. Hard to remove.
Back at Dad’s apartment, while he dozed after pizza and Star Trek, I opened his tablet and threw some words into a search engine. Astrocytoma means brain tumor. Called “astro” because they’re shaped like stars.
I scanned the page for signs and symptoms and found:
Poor hand-eye coordination.
I recalled how she cried when she accidentally grabbed Ginger’s tail instead of petting her.
Difficulty standing or walking.
“I am not used to your gravity,” Priya had said when her knees collapsed under her.
Memory lapses.
Her notebook. Red means stop, my name is Priya, and on and on in her “data collection” book. She’d forgotten how to swim. She didn’t know what a dog was. She sometimes didn’t recognize me. She forgot her own parents.
I’d assumed the struggles she had to find words were due to a language barrier, but that was just one more symptom of her deteriorating condition.
Another medical website told me that tumors often press on different parts of the brain, causing reactions that no one can predict. Not everything is mapped out.
Does reading another person’s mind count as an unpredictable reaction? We were connected, Priya and me. She knew what I was thinking, what I wanted, what I was feeling.
She got me.
But the field . . .
I feel a sudden anger burning inside me, claiming space in my chest, sucking all the air out of my lungs. “Why be an alien? Why not just be a girl who likes space?”
But that’s not what it was about.
Like my dad, Priya found something to believe in in the field. She found solace in the knowledge that we are not alone in the Universe.
Astrocytoma. I roll the word around in my head. For a girl who loves space, who loves science, it was fate perhaps that she had an entire constellation in her body and soul.
A girl who doesn’t want to die . . . maybe she finds a way to not be a girl.
Ginger, patient at my heels, whines as if she knows Priya’s really gone. I reach a hand down to pet her and she responds with a nuzzle for more.
With my eye to the telescope, I search the skies. Is that a shooting star? The tail of a comet? Or the flare from the back of a rocket? I imagine Priya on her ship back to her home planet, whooshing through the wormhole that somehow reminds her of eating a pizza.
A grin spreads across my face.
Stars scatter the sky like jewels and for a moment, I think I really can see Priya’s home planet. It’s the one that shines the brightest, glows the longest.
I’m not ready to go back to the house, to my normal life. Not yet. I want to feel the Universe around me, surround me, blanket me.
I tap the screen on my phone to get the flashlight app, but in the low light I can’t see what I’m touching and manage to open th
e camera roll instead.
There’s a video on it that I didn’t take.
The hair on the back of my neck is electrified and my heart beats faster. Just like the night I met Priya in this very field. The night leaves swirled around her and her laugh teased the air. She was the one who made this field magical.
It’s Priya on my phone.
“Hello, Matthew,” she says to the camera. “Thank you for the use of your phone.”
She took my cell that night, swiped it from my kitchen while I slept.
“I have no need to call anyone, of course. They are on their way very soon. As I speak these words, they are on their way to me. They want me back and I want to be back.”
I touch the screen, pausing it for a moment so I can study her face. Did I miss something in the words she said, the way she said them?
I press play.
“Please take care of your dog. I sense that she needs much more affection than you give her.”
I glance over at Ginger. That’s not hard to figure out.
“Thank you for taking care of this field, Matthew. I sense that you will miss me when I’m gone but you should not. I have collected all the data that I need.” Her gaze flits away from the camera and I hear her sigh before she looks back at the camera—at me—again. “I have enjoyed my time on Earth.”
The video ends abruptly. Just fifteen seconds long. I play it again and again and again. It doesn’t get any longer. It doesn’t say anything more than that.
I feel a fresh wave of tears wash over me. I thought I was done at the hospital. Or on the bus ride home from Philly. Or in my mom’s arms earlier tonight.
My time on Earth. Our brief blip of time. A sliver of incandescence in the vast, dark field of space.
When my dad and Carol left, I flippantly told my mom that the ones left behind need to get on with their lives. How can we? How can I?
I don’t know what the future holds. For me. For my mom. For my dad. Priya taught me in just a few days that even if you can’t see something, you can believe in it. Whether that’s life on another planet, faith in a god we can’t see, or simply love, it doesn’t need to be proved to exist in order for your heart to know that it does.
We are part of this Universe; we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us.
—Neil deGrasse Tyson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is very close to my heart, and so are the people who have supported and encouraged me along the way.
To my editor, Kristen Pettit: thank you for always pushing me to take my characters deeper and expose them to the world, for showing me nuance and shading, and for plucking things from my brain I didn’t know were there.
To my agent, Adam Peck: thank you for your enthusiasm, your detailed critiques, and your ongoing mentorship. I am happiest when I know you love something.
To Jen Klonsky and Elizabeth Lynch at HarperTeen: thank you for your continued support of me and my work, both virtually and in the real world. And to the marketing and publicity teams at HarperCollins: thank you for helping my book reach readers around the world.
To my beta readers, Omaira Galarza, Corey McCullough, and Gwen Owens: thank you for cheering me on from the book’s earliest drafts.
To astronomer April P. Senjo: thank you for vetting the science in my fiction and for helping me align the stars.
To copy editor Brenna Franzitta and production editor Renée Cafiero: thank you both for your razor-sharp attention to detail and insistence on clarity.
To Sarah Kaufman, the book’s cover designer: thank you for making my jaw drop. Your beautiful art stuns me.
To my mom and dad: thank you for reading and loving this book. It was written for you, for us, for where we came from. It was written with love.
To my husband: thank you for always saying, “You did a great job,” when you know I need to hear that.
And finally, to you, my readers: thank you for taking the time to read this book, for inviting Matty and Priya into your lives for a little while.
We are all stars. We are all the stuff of the Universe.
#ibelieve
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Europe and raised in America, CAT JORDAN has spent her life in the visual and performing arts as a dancer, painter, and filmmaker. A nomad by nature, she’s found inspiration for her stories and choreography around the world—from Venice, California, to Venice, Italy. You can visit her online at www.catjordanbooks.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
BOOKS BY CAT JORDAN
The Leaving Season
Eight Days on Planet Earth
CREDITS
Cover art
Night sky by Mario Ramadan | EyeEm | Getty Images;
Couple by Mustakim Al | EyeEm | Getty Images
Cover design and hand lettering
Erin Schell
COPYRIGHT
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
EIGHT DAYS ON PLANET EARTH. Copyright © 2017 by Cat Jordan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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ISBN 978-0-06-257173-1
EPub Edition © October 2017 ISBN 9780062571755
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FIRST EDITION
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