The Year We Fell From Space

by Amy Sarig King

  He’s not there.

  Thursday night I go out to talk to the stars. The hill is muddy so I don’t even sit down. My arms are crossed. I tilt my head back and ask, “Okay, when are you gonna deliver on your promise?”

  I look for my answer.

  I see three things: a canoe, a rabbit, and an ice cream cone.

  I try to make the rabbit into Dad. I try to make the ice cream cone into Mom. I try to make them hold hands and go for a walk, or get into the canoe and enjoy a trip down the river. None of this makes sense. Rabbits and ice cream cones do not belong together—not inside or outside a canoe.

  Dad picks us up for our weekend with him and talks super fast in the car on the way to his house. He has plans. Dad always has plans now.

  “Tonight we’re going to a movie and then tomorrow it’s out to the lake to canoe and get some exercise!”

  “We exercise all the time,” I say.

  “I just meant canoeing. You love canoeing!”

  Jilly is quiet and tired. “As long as we don’t go fishing,” she says.

  Dad puts an animated frown on his face. “Aw, Jilly. Fishing is fun. Gets you out into the fresh air.”

  “Gets the fish out into the fresh air, too. And then they die,” Jilly says.

  “And then Sunday, Tiff and I have something really special planned,” he says.

  “Maybe we could just hang out at your house this weekend in our pajamas,” I say. “We could watch TV or movies and make food and just be together.”

  “Oh,” he says.

  “I’d like that,” Jilly says.

  Dad goes quiet. We park outside his town house and Dad gets both of our backpacks from the trunk of his car and I wait for him to hand me mine, but he walks inside and puts them on the couch. Jilly is dragging her feet. We get inside the door and stand there.

  “So what do you want to do now?” he asks.

  “We just got here,” I say.

  “I want to take a nap,” Jilly says.

  “Lazybones!” Dad says. He’s trying to be funny. Jilly doesn’t take it that way and storms upstairs and closes the door to our bedroom. “She okay?” he asks me.

  “She’s tired. Long week at school and she was up late the other night because of the storm.”

  “Still scared of thunder, huh?”

  “She’s ten,” I say.

  “Maybe if she gets a nap now, she’ll be more excited about the weekend’s plans,” he says.

  “We’re tired and we just want to relax,” I say.

  “Oh,” he says. “Sorry. I’m just trying to be a good dad.”

  “You are a good dad. But we can’t always be going on adventures. It’s just a weekend to us, you know? You don’t have to entertain us.”

  “Okay,” he says. He walks to the kitchen table and opens his laptop.

  Eventually, I sit down on the couch. I don’t throw myself at it the way I would at home. I don’t curl up and cuddle the nearest pillow. I just sit. Like I’m in a doctor’s office waiting room. My mind moves faster, not slower. I don’t relax. I can’t relax.

  I take a few deep breaths and they help. I pull out my sketchbook and a pencil from my backpack and I lie down and take up half the couch. I try to figure out what I want to draw or write in the book but my mind is unreasonably fast.

  I take more deep breaths and close my eyes. I can’t figure out how to relax. I think about how this could mean something is wrong with me. Like on the websites I read. Racing thoughts. Can’t stop them. Feeling bad about myself. I can’t stop my brain.

  I’m a good kid. I do good kid things.

  So why did I put Jilly in danger?

  I didn’t really put her in danger. I’m a good kid.

  If I was a good kid, Dad would be talking to me and not working on his computer.

  Dad just wants you to do what he wants to do.

  A good kid would just do it.

  Jilly was tired. I just wanted to be a good sister.

  Mom doesn’t mind when we say we want to stay in our pajamas all weekend.

  Dad thinks it means we’re lazy.

  I’m a lazy, bad kid.

  For not wanting to go out on the lake in canoes.

  He’s probably just doing a few little things. He’ll probably come and talk to you when he’s done.

  You’re a good kid, Liberty.

  “Not you, too!” Dad says this and only when he says it do I realize I wasn’t all the way awake.

  I open my eyes. He’s standing between the kitchen and the living room and he’s got his arms crossed. Nothing wrong with that except that he looks mad. Even though he’s smiling, he looks mad.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks. He sits on the edge of the couch. This shifts my balance and I have to sit up.

  “Everything is fine, Dad. It’s just Friday and I’m a little tired, I guess.”

  “What do they do to you in school that you’re so tired?”

  I shrug. I don’t like the question. They don’t do anything to us in school that isn’t what they did to him when he was in school.

  They wake us up too early.

  They give us too much homework.

  They bore us with worksheets.

  They make us sit for too long.

  I miss recess.

  I don’t say any of those things to Dad.

  “How about a cup of coffee?”

  I twist up my face like he’s weird. I think he’s joking. But he’s staring at me like he wants an answer. “I don’t drink coffee. I’m twelve.”

  “What would wake you up, then?”

  A nap would wake me up.

  Or maybe it would make me more tired.

  I don’t really care.

  Why does he keep asking so many questions?

  Why is New Dad so weird about normal kid things?

  Was Old Dad the same?

  If I’m tired outside of bedtime, does that mean I’m depressed?

  Did I get it?

  How long will I have it?

  Why do I feel wrong all the time?

  Like I should be someone else?

  I am my Liberty.

  New Liberty.

  Doesn’t draw star maps.

  Doesn’t draw on walls, either.

  Doesn’t have anyone to talk to. Except the rock.

  Exciting exceptions.

  I talk to a rock.

  The rock says I’m fine.

  “Come on. Let’s do jumping jacks,” Dad says. He starts doing jumping jacks.

  That’s when Tiffany comes home from work.

  Dad stops doing jumping jacks and arranges his hair with his hands. Greets her at the door. A kiss. A hug. She looks at him in a way like he’s a puzzle.

  She sees it, too.

  Liberty Johansen, you are not going irrational.

  Dad says, “Don’t know what happened to the girls this week in school, but they can’t seem to find their energy.”

  Tiffany smiles at me and waves. I wave back and my hand even looks tired.

  “I was telling them about our plans,” he says.

  “Your plans, Jack,” she says. “No offense to the lake, but if the girls want to chill out, I say we chill out. We can make cookies and watch TV.” She looks at me. “Sound good?”

  I nod.

  “Not you, too!” he says.

  She hugs him and they laugh together but his laugh is nervous.

  “How about pizza for dinner?” Tiffany says.

  “Jilly wants sausage,” I say.

  “What about you?” Tiffany asks.

  “I was gonna take them out to that burger place,” Dad says.

  “We can get pizza delivered. Let’s do that instead,” Tiffany says.

  Dad looks defeated. Over pizza.

  But by the time the pizza comes and we’re eating off paper plates in the living room while watching Jilly’s favorite episode of her favorite cartoon, Dad seems normal again.

  This will be the fir
st normal weekend we’ve had with him since he left.

  I’m looking forward to it.

  But deep inside I know something is wrong. With him. With me, maybe. With the feeling of relief I had when Tiffany came home and when the pizza came.

  Dad isn’t happy.

  I did something wrong.

  I always feel like I did something wrong.

  This probably has to do with the item.

  I wonder what Dad’s item is.

  And then I look at Tiffany.

  I’m irrational. I hate everyone.

  I thought I liked Tiffany when she came home but now she’s holding Dad’s hand and she keeps rubbing it with her thumb and I hate her thumb and her and her floofy flats with bows.

  Jilly is clueless. To the thumb-rubbing and to me hating everyone. She’s just so okay with all of this and I know she’s following my lead so I can’t be anything but okay with this but I’m not okay with this. I’m tired of being a broom.

  “I’m going to bed,” I say.

  Because what else is there to do when you suddenly hate everyone?

  In bed, I whisper to the tiny meteorite in my pocket and I think about how much I hate Mom.

  She could have been better at being a wife. She could have been better at being a mom. She could have been better at scooping ice cream or wearing shoes that didn’t look like she was hiking all the time. I don’t know. I don’t understand any of these thoughts. I told you—I’m irrational.

  This isn’t like when I threw the toaster through the window. This is new.

  I sleep. I don’t even hear Jilly come to bed. When I wake up, it’s light out and the house is quiet except for Jilly’s breathing.

  I look at the clock in the bathroom and see it’s six in the morning. I think about walking back to Mom’s house. The meteorite is there. I want someone to talk to.

  I go downstairs and turn on the TV. I open the book I’m supposed to be reading for English and I stare at the markings on the page. Letters that make words. Like stars that make constellations. We have so many languages, but only one set of accepted constellations. Even in other languages. Ursa Minor is Osa Menor in Spanish. La Petite Ourse in French. Orsa Minore in Italian. Ursa Mdogo in Swahili.

  It makes no sense. But it’s not my business anymore. Someone else can change the way the world sees the night sky in whatever language they want.

  Jilly comes down and plops on the couch next to me. “You’re up early,” she says.

  “I guess.”

  “Went to bed early,” she says.

  I nod. Jilly’s in a mood. This can sometimes scare me but her hair is standing out from her head perfectly horizontal. She looks like a grumpy clown.

  “Dad said we can’t just sit around all day,” she says. “We have to do something. So I told him he could go canoeing with Tiffany if he wanted and you’d babysit.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “He said it’s not him who needs to get out, it’s us,” she says.

  I wonder if Tiffany can just sit on the couch in her pajamas on weekends or if when we’re not here, he makes her climb rocks or something.

  I’m exhausted and it’s not even seven in the morning.

  “If Dad asks,” I say, “tell him I went for a walk.”

  I get up, put my shoes on, and walk out the front door.

  There’s a farmer’s market on Saturdays and I think about wandering through and cooling off. I don’t know why I’m so hot inside. It’s not like a fever. It’s not like anything else that’s hot.

  The farmer’s market doesn’t open for another hour, so I keep walking. An old man in a car waves at me as if he recognizes me. I wave back because I don’t want to make him feel bad. I walk to the main street in town and run across it after looking for cars both ways ten times. I’d rather live in the woods by myself. In one of Lou’s tree stands, maybe. I don’t need much room. No traffic. No streets to cross.

  I start walking up the hill to Mom’s house. It’s a dangerous road—more dangerous than the main street. Once I get up the hill, I avoid the twisty part where there’s nowhere to walk and I take a left on the road that overlooks three farms.

  Birds are all I hear.

  There’s a red-tailed hawk circling a field. There’s a flock of starlings chirping in a cornfield that’s been plowed. There’s a woodpecker.

  Rather than walk on the road, I cut into Lou’s woods as soon as I can.

  Only once I get close to Mom’s house do I think about Dad waking up and me being gone. I don’t know what to feel about that. I can’t hang around in my pajamas at his house. I always have to be getting out and doing something.

  Well, here I am. I got out and did something.

  It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday morning and Mom’s car isn’t here. I imagine her somewhere quiet, cooking eggs on a fire by herself, reading a book at the same time. I find the key to the back door where we always keep it, and let myself in.

  The cabin smells weird when no one is in it. Smells like a mix of hamster cage and damp. Sounds gross, but that’s what it smells like. I stop by the fridge and get myself some orange juice. When I see food, I realize I just walked three miles and I’m hungry.

  Cereal. Milk. I go upstairs to talk to the rock.

  I say, “It must be weird to fall from space only to land here.”

  Rock says, “What’s so wrong with here?”

  “I don’t even know where I’m supposed to live anymore.”

  I know I once called Leah Jones the B-word but I’m not someone who curses. I hear curses on the bus and in school and I don’t like them. But right now I want to curse out the rock.

  I say, “&*&% *%#$&%^$$%!!”

  The rock doesn’t answer.

  I say, “$#@ &%^* %#@*!”

  The rock says, “Get it all out, Liberty.”

  I deflate. I tell the rock I hate it.

  The rock tells me it loves me.

  This is all so confusing.

  I decide to take a shower. Showers always help. In the shower I think about how if I don’t know where home is, I never will because I’m really from somewhere else. But then I realize that I’m human and I’m most likely from Earth and I’m in middle school and I’m smart enough to know what’s really going on.

  I just hate everybody.

  That’s all. No big deal.

  “Lib? Is that you?”

  I say, “Random strangers take showers in your house?”

  Mom says, “Geez, kid. You scared the pants off me.”

  And then I cry because the shower is a safe place to cry because everything is wet and I have all the time in the world. Or at least until the hot water runs out.

  I think it takes about twenty minutes for the hot water to run out. I’m still crying and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel bad for leaving Jilly at Dad’s house. I forgot about that until right now. But then I think Dad and Jilly and Tiffany are probably out running a marathon or kayaking rapids or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and are having a great time without me.

  I just wanted to hang around in my pajamas.

  So I go up to my room and put on my pajamas.

  Mom calls, “Are you coming down soon?”

  I ask the rock. “Am I coming down soon?”

  The rock says, “Only if you can hang around in your pajamas.”

  Mom says, “Sounds like we need to talk.”

  I go to the closet and pull out my star maps from last winter. The ones that never connected any dots. I look at the first one and I just see dots. Same with the second and third one. Three maps with no connections. That’s how I feel.

  I’m a map for Jilly with no connections. I’m a map for Mom with no connections. I’m a map for Dad with no connections. I’m useless to all three of them.

  The rock says, “You sound depressed.”

  I yell at the rock. “@%$^*&#!”

  “Lib? Can I come up?”

  I don’t know why she asked. She’s already halfway
up the attic steps.

  I must look worse than I thought. She sighs and her shoulders slump. I try to see myself from where she is. I’m on my bed, maps out in front of me, my hair is soaking wet, and I’m wearing pajamas. Seems like a normal enough Saturday.

  “Does Dad know you’re here?” she asks.

  “Probably not,” I say.

  “Oh, kiddo. That’s not good.”

  “He’s probably off doing something fun,” I say. “Probably not worried at all.”

  “I have to call him,” she says.

  “NO!” I say this louder than I mean to.

  “Liberty. Please.”

  “If you call him, he’ll be angry,” I say.

  “If you ran away, then he’s probably worried. Not angry.”

  “I didn’t run away. I just took a walk and ended up here,” I say.

  She gets her phone and sends a short text. I don’t see what it says but it was short enough to only say Liberty is here. “Did you have a bad night? Is that why you … took a walk?”

  “I just wanted to hang out in my house in my pajamas,” I say. “Is that really so bad? To want to have a weekend off to hang around in pajamas and watch TV? Or read a book? It’s not that bad, right?”

  “What did he want to do?”

  “Everything. Raft the Amazon rapids, climb Mount Everest only using one foot.”

  “Your dad and his plans,” she says.

  “He’s irrational,” I say. “I wish I never had to see him again.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why do you always stick up for him? What did he ever do for you? Look at what he did to us!” I say. “He didn’t even see us for eighty-six days after he left. Now he wants to act like he always wanted us around so he looks good for Tiffany. That’s all. He doesn’t want us to come there and he can’t wait for us to leave.”

  “You really think that?”

  “Well why else would he always have to run a mini day camp when we come over? I just wanted to hang out and relax. We’re tired. It’s the weekend. Jilly took a nap the minute she got there. Not the best time for skiing the Alps, you know?”

  “Your sporting geography knowledge is impressive,” Mom says. She smiles.