Love, Ish

by Karen Rivers

  One of the most incredible things about settling Mars is that eventually the people who go there will evolve to the conditions. Isn’t that crazy to think about? They’ll become different from Earth people! Better. Tougher. We’ll create actual Martians in our own image, like God. If you believe that kind of thing, which I don’t. I don’t think. Really, it will be more like we’re the cavemen and the real Martians will be our babies’ babies’ babies’ babies. Me—Ish Love of Lake Ochoa, California—I will be the matriarch of Martians! Not that I want to have babies or things like that. I’ll be pretty busy doing science experiments and making it possible for humans to stay alive.

  But maybe. Who knows?

  I walk along the shoreline a short distance. I’m not scared. I like being outside at night when no one else is around. I like how the air moves and I can hear the water lapping at the shore and the sound of me, breathing, my footsteps crunching a bit on the beach and the trees rustling. I throw a rock into the water and it makes a really satisfying bloooop sound, so I throw another and another until my arm starts to ache.

  Then I go back home and try to get comfortable in the hammock. I make myself close my eyes and I count slowly to ten and then back from ten and then up to ten again and then back. That was Tig’s trick. He said it got distracting when you went above ten, and he’s right. I can’t get much further than fifteen without my mind wandering, but maybe a wandering mind is the point.

  When I finally properly dream, I’m on Mars and have stepped out of the airlock without my protective suit. The perchlorate! I’m inhaling it! The air is just like real air, but I know it isn’t. I know—in my dream—that I’m doomed and I start to cry, but not sobbing-­crying, just tears leaking down my cheeks. “But I’m not finished!” I keep saying. Then I get really dizzy. My eyes keep shutting. It’s too bright, somehow, and I can’t see properly. I keep trying to look at things, but they stay out of focus. Even though I blink hard, the dusty ground and the orange sky just get blurrier and blurrier and grayer and lighter and I’m fading and I’m fading and I’m fading and I can’t even scream. I feel so sad. I’m not done! I’m dying, but I’m not ready! But I know there’s no one who can help me. I can’t see anyone. No one is out here but me. I’m alone. In the dream, everything fades and fades until it’s all the palest pinkish white and my chest hurts from trying to breathe in the fog and then I die. I think I actually die. You aren’t supposed to die in dreams, but I do. I did.

  I wake up sad and shivering hard, even though it isn’t even a bit cold. A moth lands on my arm. I feel each foot like a tiny little eyelash, resting on my bare skin. Usually I have my notebook with me to sketch things like this, so I can remember them, but I must have left it on my desk. When I’m on Mars, noticing things and sketching them will be super important for cataloguing. Cameras might not work. It’s not like you can go down to Best Buy and get a new one if yours breaks. It’s going to be old-­fashioned: drawing, cataloging. I mean, obviously we’ll have cameras, too, but I’ve been practicing my sketching just in case. Plus, I like doing it.

  Anyway, there won’t be any moths.

  I blink hard to clear my eyes, which are still sleep-­blurry. Sometimes it takes me a long time in the morning to get them to focus properly. When the moth takes off, I can see that the undersides of his wings are really bright blue. It’s so cool. “Come back!” I tell him, but he ignores me. Typical. Insects never listen.

  The sun is coming up over the hills in the distance, hot and angry-­looking, the orange and pink spreading low and thin into the smoggy air. The sunrise leaks into the haze and pinks it up. On Mars, the sky is pinkish all the time, as far as we know. No one knows how accurate the color portrayal is on the footage the missions have brought back. I don’t mind. I like pink. I mean, not on me, but it’s a fine color for a sky.

  The air smells different already somehow, like all the antiseptic cleaner and floor wax they use in the school has permeated everything, even the smog, and traveled all the way here. Gross. (TIWNM: the smell of the inside of the school; school, in general; being nervous about school; doing and saying all the wrong things.)

  I breathe through my mouth and try not to think about today. If I were on Mars, what would I be doing? Getting up to tend crops, I’ll bet. Basically, the first settlers will be glorified (but very brave!) farmers. In the corner of the yard here, I have a greenhouse that I got for my last birthday. I’ve covered the ground with dirt, like the guy does in my favorite Mars book, and planted it all with tomatoes (gross) and potatoes (even grosser) and other vegetables like kohlrabi (ugh) and Brussels sprouts (worse). I’m not actually a fan of vegetables, as it turns out. I make myself eat them, for practice for the future, when I’ll have to eat to survive for real.

  I want to lie here all day and watch the fierce sun travel across the whole smoky blue bowl of the sky, and maybe water my plants and see if any are ready to harvest. But I can’t. Not today.

  “Save meeeeeee,” I say to the sun, which doesn’t answer.

  One day, the sun will implode. It’s just a star, one of a billion stars. One day, our sun will turn into elements. Of course, by then, we’d better have figured out a way to get to a different galaxy, because when the sun goes out, it’s lights out—permanently—for all of us. (I don’t mean to be such a downer, but it’s true.)

  “Sorry,” I say out loud to the sun. “Keep burning, OK?”

  Iris would never be so pessimistic. But maybe I can’t be Iris. Someone has to be me! It might as well be me. I sigh. It’s hard to figure all this stuff out: who to be, how to be, what to be. It was easier when Tig was here. When Tig was here, I wasn’t just me. I was us. It’s easier to be an us than a me.

  Iris has always had a million friends. Iris never had this problem.

  If I stay outside for much longer, I’ll broil like a slice of bacon on the fryer. “Get up, Love,” I tell myself, sternly.

  In books and movies about Mars settlements, everyone uses their last names. I don’t know why. Maybe first names are an Earth thing, better left behind, with all your old memories and photos and books. I don’t know if I really want to be called Love, but I guess there are worse things. (Like Red, for example. You wouldn’t call someone with regular brown hair “Regular Brown,” would you? I think not.)

  I try to roll over so I can stand up, and somehow instead of letting me go, the hammock hangs on, wobbling, then tips. For a second, I’m tumbling. Then I land hard on the dry, dead grass, the air whoomping out of me.

  I try not to throw up. I lie back and watch the bright white stars drift around in my field of vision. Those are inner stars, not real ones. I wait for them to twinkle out and then I inhale, slow and deep. It takes a second to get my air back in properly, my lungs filling up like pink balloons, the sky tilting strangely above me.

  “I’m a machine,” I tell the tilted sky.

  The sky hangs there, ignoring me.

  My stomach makes that low, curdling sound it makes when it’s empty. I make myself get up. I’m wobbly but OK. I go to the front door and push it, but it’s locked, which is terrible news because I have to pee. I can always climb the tree and go in my window, but I can’t climb properly if I have to clamp my legs together to stop myself from wetting my pants. I have to go so bad, my feet itch. Astronauts wear diapers. True story. What did you think? That there were bathrooms in space? There’s nothing like that on Mars, either. Besides, pee needs to be recycled so you can drink it. Think about it.

  The houses across the road are still. Probably everyone is asleep and not looking out their front windows to see what I’m up to over here. I whip my pj pants down and pee in the shrubs, careful not to get any on my feet. The plants need the water and I’m not squeamish about bodily functions, at least I’m trying not to be. To be honest, the idea of drinking my own recycled sweat and/or pee (or someone else’s) is pretty unappealing. Actually, it makes me puke a bit into my own mouth. But I will be able to do it when I have to! I hope. There are probably a l
ot of gross things that you have to get used to pretty quickly when you’re living on a whole new planet. I’m sure drinking pee won’t even be the worst of it.

  I walk away from the puddle and climb the tree, which has big broad leaves that are turning brown around the edges. It’s dying, much like everything else. The day is already hot! I’m already sweating! Poor tree. It can’t go inside where there is air-­conditioning to escape all this. I pull myself up from branch to branch. The tree is pretty easy to climb, with its thick, wide boughs. The bark feels cool under my hands even though the air is stupidly hot. I love this tree. I will for sure miss this tree. But come on. I mean, I won’t still be climbing it when I’m twenty-­two! (At this rate, it will be dead long before I go, anyway.)

  “It will probably rain soon,” I tell the tree. I pat it reassuringly.

  The sky is cloudless. What if it never rains again? Even the tree knows I’m lying.

  Iris never lies.

  “That was a lie,” I say to the tree. “I’m sorry, you’re going to die.” That doesn’t feel any better, frankly. It might have been kinder to lie. But doesn’t the tree have a right to know?

  The window to my bedroom is luckily pretty easy to open. I don’t look down as I push myself up onto the sill and tumble over, onto my carpeted floor. It’s not even seven in the morning and already my head hurts more than it should. What Mom doesn’t know is that my head almost always aches, it’s just a matter of more or less. I can’t tell her. I just can’t.

  If I tell her, it will make it real. It will become a capital-­T Thing. “Ish’s headaches” will be a problem that everyone is trying to solve. Elliott’s job in this family is to be the problem-­to-­solve! My job is to be the smart one. Iris’s job is to be perfect. I feel like we’ve got that all figured out and adding a problem to the mix would wreck the balance. Besides, I have enough problems right now (see: school); adding to that is out of the question.

  There was a time when I didn’t have headaches and there will be a time when I don’t have them again, this is the in-­between part when I do. I feel like we just need rain. Real rain. Hard rain. Pouring, soaking, splattering rain. And even though it doesn’t make any sense, I know my head will stop hurting if it rains. Everything will be fixed if it rains.

  If.

  I lie on the carpet for a few extra seconds. It smells like nylon and rubber. My bedroom is clean and perfect and totally organized. I don’t have anything that I don’t absolutely need, except for the pictures. Everything lines up in straight lines. The bed is made so tight, you could bounce a coin on it. All my clothes are put away. I don’t keep anything for sentimental reasons. There’s no room for sentimental stuff on a spaceship. I’ve figured out how to keep what matters inside my head. That way, I don’t need anything. Or anyone.

  The only thing that makes my room different from any other astronaut’s quarters is that I made frames that look like window frames and put big photos of Mars’s surface inside them and white curtains around them. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were looking out windows at the real thing. I’m not dumb, I know that on Mars there won’t be curtains, but they make the windows look more like windows. Things like fabric will be a luxury for at least a generation. I wonder if we’ll grow cotton. I wonder if someone will weave it or spin it or whatever. Or if we’ll actually just keep waiting for shipments from the Earth, bringing more and more of what we wanted to leave behind from Amazon.com. Maybe Amazon will get Mars drones so it can bring us new socks and the latest season of whatever dumb show is popular and cinnamon gummy bears. It probably won’t be any different from Earth, eventually. Humans are like that. We can’t stop accumulating stuff. That’s why we’ve basically wrecked the whole planet. It’s why we need a new one in the first place.

  I get up and start opening drawers to find what I need, then I pull on my clothes (white T-­shirt/short-sleeved, new jeans that go in at the bottom with little zippers, white socks, black Converse high-­tops). I go into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. That’s when I notice it. DOOM. I almost scream out loud, but I stop myself just in time.

  All in a row on my left cheek, three mosquito bites. They are huge and red and look like boils. “Seriously,” I say to my cheek. “Today of all days.” I lean my forehead against the mirror and close my eyes and pretend I look like someone else, like Bea or Zoe, with their streaky blonde hair, or even Ana Sofia with her curly black hair that looks as soft as feathers. Then I remember it doesn’t matter. Who cares? I’d rather be smart than pretty! I’m not the pretty one, so I don’t have to worry about being pretty. That’s the truth. Besides, I’m going to Mars! Pretty only lasts for so long. Next thing you know, you’re an old person.

  Life is short, that’s all I mean.

  I glare at my cheek. I put “mosquitoes” into my brain-­room of TIWNM. Let them buzz around in there with Elliott for a while. (And wasps. And fast food. And shopping malls. And plastic water bottles. And school.) If only I could put the entire school away in that room, lock the door, and throw away the key. If only I had that kind of magic.

  “I’d do anything to not have to go to school. Anything,” I say out loud. I don’t know who I’m talking to. I don’t know anyone who has the power to make that kind of deal.

  The room stays silent. Of course. I wasn’t even expecting anyone to answer. Not really. Not this time.

  I was just hoping. Sometimes hope is all you’ve got to hang on to, like the one thing that’s tethering you to the ship while all of the Universe threatens to pull you away from the tin can spaceship that’s keeping you safe and alive.

  Chapter 7

  I’m halfway down the stairs when Elliott’s door flings open and she comes tearing out. Something you might not guess about Elliott is that she loves school. (I know, I don’t get it either.) Elliott is really really really good at sports. School is her thing because there are sports there. Her main sport is wrestling. Don’t ask.

  “Gooooooood morning, little red freakazoid!” she shouts, shoving me down the last five steps.

  I land hard on my feet in a way that I can feel all the way up the back of my legs. My head jangles inside like a bell with a broken clapper, a muted hammering, echoing afterward with a kind of buzz.

  “Jerk,” I mumble.

  She ignores me and pours herself a bowl of cereal and empties all the milk into it, slopping rice puffs onto the counter in little krispie-­mounds. I pour my own bowlful and start eating it, but it is so dry that I choke. I bite into an apple instead. Mealy. I sigh dramatically.

  Elliott grins. “Cheer up,” she says. “Maybe there will be some new weirdo kid for you to befriend.”

  I glare at her. “You should talk,” I say, which doesn’t make sense because Elliott has plenty of friends. Wrestling friends and basketball friends and volleyball friends and track friends. The thing with sports is that they come with a built-­in support system. Not so with science. Not in Lake Ochoa, anyway. Maybe there is somewhere in America where science is the cool thing and there are clubs and parties and whatnot, but that place is not here.

  “Shut up,” squawks Buzz Aldrin.

  “You shut up,” I tell him.

  I pour a glass of water and make myself drink it. Yuck. I have no idea why Dad loves it so much. It tastes slightly like chemicals (perchlorate?) and sweat.

  “You can do this. You have to do this. It will be fine. You’re invisible. You’re a machine. You’re OK,” I murmur to myself. I will be my own inner-­Iris! “You’ve got this!” I experimentally bite into an apple from the other side of the bowl. It’s OK. It’s better than the first one. I hope we can grow apples on Mars. Even when they are mealy, they still leave a good taste behind.

  “I’m invisible,” mimics Elliott. “You wish. Hey, what would you do if you were invisible? I’d just go around and take photos of everyone picking their noses. Everyone does it, but they all pretend it’s gross. Then I’d glue them up in the hall at school so that they couldn’t
be ripped down.”

  “Huh,” I say. I snicker. She’s probably right.

  “You’d probably do something boring though, right? Like . . . go spy on Tig?”

  I flinch. I mean, yes, I probably would. “No,” I go. “He’s dead to me.” I spit the last bite of apple into the trash. For some reason, I suddenly can’t swallow it.

  “Don’t freak out,” she says, which is pretty much as kind as Elliott gets. “Just hope you don’t get Wall. He’ll totally pick on you. He doesn’t like smart kids. He likes sports.”

  “I like sports,” I lie. “I like running.”

  “True,” Elliott says. She smiles at me. When she smiles, she’s so pretty, it’s ridiculous. Sometimes I forget that she’s pretty, because she’s so mean. “You’ve got mosquito bites on your face,” she observes.

  “I know,” I snap. “Leave me alone, OK?”

  She raises her hands in mock fear. “OK! Sorrrrrry.” She puts her cereal bowl in the sink. “DAD!” she shouts. “WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE!”

  Elliott and I used to be sort-­of-­friends. It’s like when Dad told us about the adoption, she just got so mad at me that she forgot that part. We used to play games together all the time. Old-­timey board games, like Monopoly and Life. When we went camping, we’d always share a tent and we’d take a whole pile of those dumb games and play for hours, the sunlight coming through the nylon walls tinting everything blue. It was the greatest. Then, one time when I won, she got really mad and stuffed my game piece up my nose. (I was the car. My nose was never quite the same after that. I swear my right nostril is still bigger than my left.) She’s always been super competitive. After that, Mom and Dad let us each have our own tent and that big old blue tent got thrown away. We never slept in the same one again. At first, because it was fun, but then because she couldn’t stand me. I think that’s when I started to like being by myself best of all, those camping trips where I could just crawl into my tent and get away from everyone.