by Karen Rivers
I roll my eyes. “Mom, don’t,” I say. “It won’t happen for a long time. Ten years! By then you’ll be glad to be rid of me! I’ll be older than Iris is now!”
“But she’s in New York, not outer space! Going to Mars is different. Even just the trip would destroy your brain,” she says. “Your beautiful brain. I clicked a link on Facebook and I read that apparently they figure that everyone who goes will get dementia. By the time you landed—if you didn’t crash—you’d all be too confused to remember why you were there. You’d probably beat each other to death with your Mars tools and things. That is, if your muscles weren’t wasted away by the lack of gravity. But instead, you’ll just sit there, all slumped over because your bodies won’t work, wondering how you got there and how you’ll get home.”
Mom works in an old-folks’ place called Country Acres. It’s right between the regular mall and the outlet mall. It’s truly awful. It’s the ugliest building known to man. I’ll bet the people who live there think they’ve died and gone straight to Hell. Old people should get to live in beautiful places! There should be some kind of prize for just living that long! Of course, when I’m old, I won’t be here. I’ll be in an old-folks’ biome on Mars, probably shouting advice at the young people about oxygen levels and things. The biggest problem with living in biomes is the oxygen level. If it goes out of kilter, even the tiniest bit, you start to go nuts. But you don’t know you’re going nuts, you just really believe that suddenly everyone on your team is trying to kill you or whatnot. Then when someone tells you it’s because the oxygen levels are wonky, you don’t believe them, because you know for sure that they whisper about you behind your back.
The oxygen levels are perfectly fine on Earth (as far as I can tell), but I still know that people are whispering about me. It’s hard not to be whispered about when you have red hair and freckles and your best friend is a boy and you want to move to Mars. It’s just my lot in life. I get it. I’m fine with it. Especially now that I’m a new, more Iris-like Ish, without a boy best friend, or even a best friend at all.
“Mom,” I say. “It won’t be like that. That’s to do with pressure and oxygen and not moving around enough. They understand it, so they’ll fix it before we leave. They aren’t going to say, ‘Well, we know this trip will make you mad, but off you go, good luck!’ It’s NASA, not . . . I don’t know what. But Mom, NASA. Or even Mars Now. No one is going to do that. It would wreck their reality show, for one thing.”
“Hmm,” she says.
Mom is able to say more with a single “Hmm” than anyone else I know. This “Hmm” said, “Well, Ish, I think you are living in a fantasy that one day will come crashing down and break your heart.”
“I don’t have a heart to break,” I tell her.
“What?” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “It’s a poem.”
“Really?” she says. She gets all excited about poetry. “Did you write it?”
“Mom,” I say, forgetting to be Iris. “No. I don’t write poetry.”
“How does the rest of it go?”
“I forget,” I say. “Um, how was work?”
She sighs. “Pretty rough,” she says.
Mom deals with bent-over, befuddled people all day long who mostly think they are just there waiting for a cab or a friend or a doctor. “Excuse me,” they say. “Will my ride be here soon? I’m sure I left the oven on. I have to get home!” Then they get for-real worried about their imaginary oven in a house they haven’t owned for twenty years, a house a whole different family has moved into and grown up in and moved on from. It’s the saddest thing.
When I visit her at work, I can hardly stand it: Those old people’s rheumy eyes, dribbling tears down their craggy cheeks. “Are you my granddaughter?” they ask me, holding on to my arm just a bit too tight. “Why is your hair so red? Must have come from the other side of the family!” Sometimes I say yes and I let them hug me and pet my hair and I eat their dusty pocket mints and tell them that I love school, yes, and my favorite subject is science, and yes and yes and yes and I love you, too. Sometimes a whole paragraph of lies is way nicer than the one terrible truth that exists inside the word no.
“At least no one hit you,” I say, brightly. That’s the kind of positive response Iris would have.
Mom half laughs. “Well, that’s true,” she says.
One day, a sweet old man with twinkly eyes named Mr. Brighton hit Mom so hard with his cane that he broke her arm. She said that she’d just told him that Bob Barker didn’t work at The Price Is Right anymore, that Drew Carey has been hosting it for years. He couldn’t believe her. “You’re a liar!” he shouted. Then he came at her. Mom had a bright pink cast on for a month.
She rubs that arm now, like just thinking about her hard day makes it ache again.
Dad interrupts by stomping into the room to get a glass of water. “Stomping” makes him sound mad or something, but he isn’t, it’s just how he walks. He’s a heavy walker, which is surprising because he’s super fit and thin. He is also crazy about hydration. And I mean crazy. I think he may have a problem. He may be single-handedly to blame for the water shortage. Well, him and the ruined climate, obviously.
“Timing is everything,” he says, for no reason, the water from his special reverse-osmosis-filtering water jug glug-glugging into his ice-filled glass. I’m not sure what he is talking about, really.
“Okaaaaaay, Dad,” I say. “Way to pay attention.”
“What?” he says. “What?” He has this way of scratching his head and looking perplexed that makes me laugh.
“Never mind,” I say, giggling.
Anyway, he’s rightish about timing. But he’s wrong, too. Timing is not everything. Nothing is everything. Only everything is everything! I open my mouth to say that, but he interrupts: “Anyone want some water?”
“No,” say Mom and I at the same time.
“Overhydration is a thing, you know,” Mom says. “People die.”
“Pffft,” he says. “We’re made of water.”
“Well, you are,” Mom says, rolling her eyes at me.
I laugh again. I bet if you popped Dad with a knitting needle, he’d spray water out like a sprinkler. I’m surprised he doesn’t slosh when he walks.
“You should have some water, Ish,” says Dad. “No water on Mars, you know. You’ll miss having water. Especially drinkable water.”
“There totally is water on Mars,” I tell him. “Don’t you watch the news? But I hate drinking water,” I say, which is the truth. “Plus, it will be contaminated there with perchlorate. Anyway, I won’t miss it at all. Did you know that you can stay hydrated without ever having water? It’s true. Besides, we’ll have equipment to extract water from—”
“Red,” says Elliott, who has just appeared out of nowhere. “No one is going to choose a twelve-year-old girl to go to Mars.” She swings open the fridge door and shoves her head inside, emerging with a hunk of cheese sticking out of her mouth. She leaves the fridge door open and leans on the center island, chewing wetly. “You’re such an idiot,” she says, almost as an afterthought.
“Shut up, jerk,” I say. “Settlement missions won’t be going for at least—”
“You’re embarrassing. No wonder you don’t have any friends. This Mars thing is a joke. It’s never going to happen. And even if it does, there is zero chance,” she says, tilting her head closer to me, “zero chance that you will be on board. Which is too bad for us. Because we’re stuck with you.” When she speaks, her mouth opens so wide that I can see the cheese disintegrating inside and glomming itself onto every bump and space in her teeth. It’s so terrible that I can’t even answer her. I have to close my eyes.
“Ell,” says Dad. “Please don’t talk and eat at the same time. And don’t bully your sister. It’s good to have a goal. You could stand to have a few goals yourself.”
Elliott says, “Oh, have another glass of water, Dad.” Then she laughs. When she laughs, it’
s like the whole room sighs with relief. Even the walls relax a bit.
Elliott and I found out two years ago that we were adopted. She is actually the only person I know who is my blood relative. I feel a bit bad, but my first thought was, “Why couldn’t it have been Iris?” Elliott’s first thoughts were mostly anger based. I can sort of understand why she was mad about it. Who waits until their kids are ten and twelve before dropping that bombshell on them during a spring break vacation in Disneyland? In the photos that were taken at the top of the rides (the Tower of Terror, Splash Mountain, the Matterhorn) both Elliott and I look completely blank. Not scared, not laughing, not screaming with our arms in the air like everyone else, just expressionless, like we’re in shock, which I guess we were.
But I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as Elliott does. At least, not anymore. I feel like if I sliced my feelings about it up into a pizza, it would be equal sizes of surprised, sad, mad, and A-OK. Elliott’s would be a whole anger pie. She’s freshly furious about it every day. It’s kind of impressive, actually. I can’t stay mad about anything for that long. At least, I don’t think I can. I might be mad at Tig forever, though, so maybe that’s another thing we have in common. We’ll see.
“Tuna salad for dinner,” Mom says in her chirpy trying-to-keep-the-peace voice. “It will be ready soon.”
“Well, shoot,” Elliott says, all slow and loud, “I’m gonna go to Pedro’s to swim. Maybe his mom is cooking something real. His real Mom. Real cooking. Get it?”
“Really, Elliott?” Mom says. “That’s enough. Nothing has changed. You’re still my daughter. You’re just my chosen daughter. And I love you.” She blinks: tick, tick, tick. I can hear it from here.
Elliott has issues, in case this hasn’t been clear up until this point. But she is my blood relative, so I feel like I should probably defend her. “You did say it was OK if we made playdates without asking now that we’re older,” I remind Mom.
“That’s right, Mom,” says Elliott. “I’m going to have a playdate with Pedro.” She snort laughs. “Playdates!” she repeats, gleefully.
What would Iris do? She wouldn’t cry, that’s for sure, so I blink back my tears and try to go to my happy place. That is a place without Elliott. My happy place is Mars. I close my eyes and imagine my body, encased in its orange (white? green? yellow?) EVA suit, the attached boots stirring up the Mars dust. I think about how the Earth would shine in the sky like a distant star. I would watch Phobos, Mars’s bigger moon, tracing its quick orbit across the sky. The thing about Phobos is that it is doomed. It’s too close to the surface of Mars and it’s already covered with long cracks because of the pull of the tides. One day, it’s going to shatter. Then Mars is going to get a ring, like Saturn. A ring of Phobos.
“I’m going to change,” Elliott announces as the she leaves the room, ignoring the tension that shimmers like pavement on a hot day.
“Jay,” Mom says. “We need to do something. We need to fix this.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” says Dad. “We messed up, we did it wrong, but are we going to be punished for that forever? We shouldn’t have told them at all!”
“But we had to tell them. They had to know,” Mom says. “Elliott’s just . . . Well, I don’t know what, really.”
“Mad,” I say, helpfully.
“Mad,” agrees Mom. “But not always. Maybe it’s getting a bit less? She has a right to be upset, if you think about it.”
“She’s been mad for two years,” I say. “It’s a long time.” Then I shut my mouth. Iris wouldn’t have said that. “I’m sure she doesn’t mean it,” I add, lamely. “No one is perfect. It’s fine. She’ll be fine. She’ll come to terms with it, like I did! I’m glad you adopted me. I like you. I love you, actually. I’m happy. Well, happyish. I am happy enough.”
“Thanks, Ish,” Mom says. “We love you, too.”
“Me, too,” says Dad. “I’m going to work out.”
“It’s dinner time,” says Mom.
“Fine,” he says. “Then I’m going to wash my hands.”
Hand washing is Dad’s other major interest. When he washes his hands, his phone plays a certain song for the exact length of time that he lathers, then a different song for the rinse. It’s quite a procedure. If this screenwriting thing doesn’t work out for him, he could be a surgeon. He’s the cleanest man alive.
“I’m sorry,” Mom says to me.
“Mom,” I say. “Forget it. Let’s talk about something else. Anything else. Or, like, not talk.”
“Fair enough,” she says, scooping the tuna onto the bread.
She looks so sad. I hate when she looks so sad. Why can’t we just live in the moment? Right now, in this very second? I don’t want to think about the past. I just want to imagine the future. I want to think about my future. The past is too painful. People should be built with erasable memories, that’s a fact. We’d all be a lot happier for it.
I open the document on my laptop where I keep notes that I’ve written for my book. I flip through what I have so far: I’ve made a terrific title page, with “Mission: Mars” superimposed over my favorite photo taken on Mars’s surface by the last NASA rover, with my name—Mischa Love—at the bottom in squared-off caps. It looks very serious and important and real in spite of the fact that it’s hard to take someone whose last name is “Love” very seriously, even if that person is not prone to dotting her i’s with hearts or whatever.
I try not to make eye contact with Elliott, who is now wearing a swimsuit under a sundress, as she passes through the kitchen on her way out through the patio doors.
“Bye!” Elliott says, like nothing has happened.
She’s always like that: super mad, upsetting everyone, and then completely oblivious to the havoc she has wreaked.
“Hello?” Elliott says. “Can no one hear me? I said BYE!”
“Bye,” I mumble. I type a string of random letters and then delete them so that I look busy and important and not bothered by what she’s done.
Mom takes a big breath, “Have fun, sweetheart.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Buzz Aldrin says.
“Oh, shut up yourself,” says Mom. “That old bird.”
“Eleanor,” says Buzz Aldrin. “Pretty pretty pretty.”
Elliott’s real name is Eleanor, but if you dare to call her Eleanor, she will stuff you in the downstairs closet and lock the door and not let you out until your mom calls the police because you’ve been missing for an entire day. (This happened in May. I didn’t mind, though. I like the closet. Small spaces make me feel safe.)
But still, I will not miss Eleanor when I go to Mars, same gene pool or not.
I have applied to be part of the Mars Now private settler program forty-seven times so far. I have forty-six emails thanking me for my interest and explaining that only a few will be chosen and I am not one of them. The emails link to a site where I can buy Mars Now merchandise. I already have pretty much one of everything. I don’t wear any of the clothes. I just fold them up and store them in my dresser. It seems dumb to wear them here on Earth, but by the time I get to Mars, they won’t fit. I can’t explain why I want them anyway; I just do. They mean something. They mean everything.
I send in one more application, just for fun, even though the most recent rejection has yet to arrive. I like filling them in. I know all the answers by heart now. There are only a few questions. Not one of them is hard.
One of these times, I’ll get a yes.
Maybe this time, fingers crossed.
Or maybe, eventually, I’ll just be old enough to count for something, to finally be someone who matters.
Chapter 6
I sleep in the hammock on the last night of school vacation. The hammock is ropy and will leave a pattern of diamond dents on my skin, but I don’t care. It’s technically not very comfortable but I love sleeping outside where the breeze can swing me a little bit and the night can be above me and below me, cooling my skin on all my
diamond shapes. And besides, I can’t be a person who cares too much about comfort. Mars is going to be uncomfortable. That’s just a fact.
The night is hot and dry, which is no big surprise, because it’s always hot and dry now, even when it seems like it should be cool. But it always feels like a surprise. Like, it’s nighttime! Why isn’t it cool yet? It feels like the coolness is being held back somehow, like all the air is yearning to let go of the heat it’s holding but it can’t unclench itself enough to do it. (That made sense in my head, but now I’m not so sure.)
All night long, I swing and wake up and dream more and swing more and sweat a lot. It’s like sleep is right there but I can’t quite get all the way into it. But I’m tired! I want to be asleep! I’m lying down with my eyes closed! The hammock moves when I shift my weight and it makes me feel strange and loose, like I could fall, like I’m already falling. But when I open my eyes, I find out that I’m not. I’m just lying here, safe as anything.
There are a million billion stars shining through the blackness and it’s totally worth it to be out here even though I can’t sleep. The constellations slide by above me so slowly I can barely see it happening unless I close my eyes for a bit and then open them again. I see three falling stars (which are really just meteors, but it’s prettier to think of them as stars). Tonight, the moon is a crescent and if you follow the end of the crescent, you can see Mars. It’s blurry and so so so so so small. I can’t believe I’ll go there one day. I mean, I know I will, it’s just hard to really imagine being that far away, being in a hammock on Mars (in a biome, of course), looking at a blurry Earth.
I get out of the hammock and walk around a bit. I go down to the lakeshore and stick my feet in the water. In the dark, the water is black. At least it is cool. I swish my feet around for a few minutes and then I see some bubbles rising a few feet away. Leeches scare me, even though I’ve never even seen one, so I jump up and get my feet on dry land. My wet feet are shiny in the moonlight. They look metallic. I look alien. This is what Martians would look like, I think. Not cute little purple guys. Just shiny, metallic people who are immune to heat or prickly grass. Or leeches, for that matter. They’d be more like machines than us.