“Night night, sweetie.” Mom beamed her usual big smile at me, which made me feel a lot better, because she was still my always Mom.
Grandma yawned and rubbed her eyes behind her reading glasses. “By the way, be careful when you go into the upstairs bathroom.”
Aside from a bit of mold over the winter, our bathroom had never been dangerous before. “Why?”
“A softball shattered the window earlier, and a squirrel has moved in.”
There weren’t any kids in our neighborhood who played softball or any adults who were lively enough. Nickel told me windows never broke at his house, but it sure happened to us a lot. Mom and Grandma even had an account with the glass-repair place. I guessed that was what happened when your roof attracted foreign objects.
Sure enough, when I opened the bathroom door and switched on the light, a pair of beady eyes peered back at me from the top of the shower curtain rod.
Animal, toy, or satellite: sooner or later everything hit our house.
I couldn’t use the bathroom with a bushy-tailed rodent staring at me, so I hurried back downstairs to use the party toilet. Mom and Grandma were talking in quiet voices in the kitchen when I passed. I stopped outside the doorway to listen.
“Bah. Don’t worry so much. It might never happen,” Grandma said.
Mom sighed. “It’s going to happen—they’re pretty clear about that. The question is where. What if Robyn’s right to be scared? Things do seem to end up on our roof. It’s not impossible.”
The possibility of being right had never felt so wrong.
It was quiet for a minute, and I stretched out my earlobes to let more sound in.
Grandma sighed. “No way to tell, far as I can see, till it happens. So we hunker down, keep an eye on the news, and don’t scare Robyn in the meantime.”
Too late—I was already scared. Plus, they’d called me Robyn. No nicknames. That meant things were serious. I needed the bathroom more than ever now.
* * *
• • •
At lunch the next day, Nickel quit poking at his food and stared at me. He wore the most confused look I’d ever seen on anyone, including little kids with too much food coloring in their systems. “You want me to do what?”
“Apply for Space Camp, duh. Is it that hard to understand?” I asked.
Honestly, it was like he didn’t even try to use his imagination sometimes.
“Yeah, it kind of is.” He rubbed his eyes like he had just woken up, and blinked at me. “I hate space. It’s all…spacey, and there’s possible UFOs and black holes and other horrible stuff. There’s absolutely nothing between us and getting sucked into a space vacuum.”
“Except the atmosphere!”
He shook his head. “No way am I going to Space Camp. I’m happy on this planet, thank you very much.”
“It’s on Earth, silly. They don’t have UFOs on Earth, most of the time. And you couldn’t fit a black hole in NASA, I’m pretty sure.” Sometimes I had to explain everything for him. It had something to do with boy hormones; they made him a bit dense sometimes.
“But I don’t want to. And I mean I really do not want to.” He said it like it would make any difference.
“Not even for me?”
He shook his head. “Not even for you.”
“But, Nickel, if you go to Space Camp, you can tell NASA how their satellite is going to land on my house and make them put up some sort of satellite-repelling force field. Something like that. They’re NASA; they’ll know what to do.” When I said those words, it made my tummy get all tied into the sort of knots that never came undone. Trying not to sound too desperate, I added, “Please.”
Groaning, he leaned forward until his forehead rested on the lunch table between his droopy salad and his most-likely-meat-loaf. I reached past his cup of soda and patted his head. His hair was all rough, like the hair on his terrier, Whiskits. Nickel had wanted to call him Whiskers, and his little sister, Penny, had wanted to call him Biscuit—so it ended up as Whiskits.
“It’s life or death, and there is no other possible way for us to make NASA understand. None. I have thought of everything,” I said.
Nickel looked up at me. “I could email them.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Or that.”
Nickel emailed NASA to explain my problems, and that night, he sent me a copy. He could write like Shakespeare, but in regular English. Maybe he’d write movies or presidential speeches one day. I bet he could if he wanted to.
Dear NASA,
As you are aware, your satellite called XR-26 is planning to come down soon and crash either into the ocean or on land. My friend, named Robyn after a famous fairy, says it’s going to land on her house, which she doesn’t like the idea of. We know this is true because everything lands on Robyn’s house.
Can you please tell Robyn how to protect her house the best way? Or come and fix it yourself. It’s kind of your job because it’s your satellite and you shouldn’t have it landing on people’s houses. It’s pretty irresponsible.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. N. Bugden
I held my hands to my chest and sighed.
Good old Nickel. I especially liked the bit about how it was their job to fix things. After all, they wouldn’t want to be sued. Although it is a bit hard to sue after you’ve been squashed by a satellite that plummeted to Earth and exploded into a fireball, taking you and your whole house with it.
“Bedtime, Bob!” Mom called from the kitchen. I closed down my email and slumped upstairs.
Unlike most people in Calliope, Mom and I never went to church. Mostly, I didn’t mind. But it seemed to me that with a satellite heading for my house and a recently discovered potential dad, it couldn’t hurt to get a bit of religion into my life.
I put on my pajamas and knelt on the floor beside my bed with my hands in the prayer position.
“Dear God.” I squeezed my palms and fingers together as tight as I could so God would see I meant business. “Please don’t let the satellite land on my house, or anyone else’s. Try the ocean, but don’t hit any whales, because they’re endangered and have enough problems.” I thought hard for a second to make sure I wouldn’t forget anything. “Please help me find my dad and make him happy to see me. And maybe make my mom happy to see him too. Amen.”
I figured I’d better stop there. It was best not to give God too much to do all at once. There were probably a few other kids with requests.
Later, when my stars ran out of glow and the dark crept into all the corners of my room, I caught a glimpse of the real stars through my window. They didn’t seem so beautiful anymore. For all I knew, most of them were satellites hovering around, waiting for their chance to squish me.
* * *
• • •
Nickel checked his email every morning before school and at least twice after, but we hadn’t heard anything by the weekend. We would have to go ahead with our plan during the play.
The school bus had no air-conditioning. Half the windows were jammed shut, and everyone was cranky. I felt like a sardine squashed into a giant yellow tin can. Worst of all, we were trapped inside a moving vehicle with Dameon Swenson. At least we were headed to Densdale. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d probably have faked car sickness.
“Aw, look at little Mr. and Mrs. Pink all snuggled up together,” Swenson said, sniggering from the seat behind us.
I opened my mouth to say something in return, but Nickel elbowed me. “If you kiss me right now, I’ll have to transfer to a school in Densdale, because it won’t just be Swenson torturing me.”
“I wasn’t going to kiss you. Sheesh. I have better things to do with my lips.”
I didn’t really, but my lips still had some pride. I folded my arms tight against my chest and thought the most furious thoughts I could come up
with. I very nearly, but not quite, wished XR-26 would land on Swenson’s house. But wishing a satellite would land on someone else was the surest way to have it land on you. Karma did things like that to keep you honest.
Mrs. Gilbert stood in the middle of the bus and conducted while we sang a countdown from ninety-nine bottles. Everybody joined in. Swenson opened his mouth to make another sarcastic comment, but no one could hear it. Frowning, he gave up and moved his lips along with the words.
Nickel whispered right into my ear. “What’s our plan?”
I tried to answer, but if I talked loud enough for him to hear, everyone else would hear as well. Planning would have to wait until we were inside.
We still had thirty-four bottles left on the wall when the bus pulled up outside the Centurion Theater. My smile stuck to my face like I had used superglue on it. This was it. Today was the day I would find my other family. I took a deep breath and looked around.
Before we left our seats, Mrs. Gilbert stood up at the front of the bus. “Now listen very carefully. I expect you all to be good ambassadors today, for our school and for Calliope. This is Densdale, so I need you to stick together, and no one is to wander off alone. Do I make myself clear?”
Technically, when Nickel and I wandered off, it would be together and not alone. So I chanted along with everyone else, “Yes, Mrs. Gilbert.”
The street didn’t have many cars on it. I needed the place to be busy enough that no one would notice two kids on their own. Lucky for me, cars had arrived by the time we all lined up, ready to file past the box office.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Nickel whispered to me as we waited in line. “And how exactly are we going to get to Market Street?”
I lifted my finger to my lips to hush him. “I’ll tell you when the time comes. Relax.”
He would be so impressed when he heard the whole plan, because it was epic and guaranteed to succeed. It included such highlights as excusing ourselves to use the bathroom, sneaking outside, and doing a Focus Pocus ninja roll right past the box office. After that, all we had to do was find a bus stop, which had to be easy in a big city like Densdale, and ask the driver to take us to Market Street. Foolproof.
Mrs. Gilbert hurried us all inside and to our seats. Our group got the whole balcony to itself, which gave us a great view of the stage. Nickel and I were put right at the front, which would make it much harder to sneak out. He leaned over the barrier to check out the filled seats below.
He waved at me to join him. “Come look at this. You can see all the way down.”
“No, you come here,” I growled. We had plans to discuss.
“Just for once, could you listen to me?” he asked.
“Eventually, maybe.”
By the time he gave up glaring at me and sat beside me, there were candy wrappers and spitballs and who knew what else being fired from the back rows. I could feel something stuck to my ponytail but didn’t dare feel to see what it was. Gross.
Mrs. Gilbert stood up in the middle of the rows.
“That is enough! We are representatives of our school, and you are all making a dreadful impression. Sit down right now!” Her voice got all high and squeaky, the way it did when detentions were about to be dished out willy-nilly.
She stalked up and down the rows, taking away food and paper-related missiles. Finally, she moved Swenson and his friends to the front row. No one had the nerve to fire things at them, which stopped the missiles, but the move put them close enough to harass Nickel and me.
We wriggled ourselves as far down in our seats as we could.
Now that it was quieter upstairs, the noise from downstairs filled every corner. A group of kids in the seats below was making so much noise that we sounded like well-behaved sweetie pies by comparison. That was quite an achievement, considering we had Swenson in our class.
The lights in the theater lowered, and the ones on the stage got brighter as the curtain went up. The kids downstairs didn’t get quieter when the play started, even with their mothers hissing and snarling at them. Onstage someone had built a fairy wonderland, which reminded me of ours but was not quite as well done. A little bubble of pride in Mom’s talent burst in my chest.
When the professional-type actors recited Shakespeare, a strange thing happened. Maybe it was seeing the action along with the words, but it almost made sense. It was funny too, especially Puck. If only he hadn’t been a fairy, my name might not have been so bad after all.
Halfway through the first scene, Nickel and I bent over and tiptoed out of our seats to find Mrs. Gilbert.
“We’re both desperate for the bathroom,” Nickel whispered to her.
She gave us her “well, isn’t that a coincidence?” face but let us go. Because what teacher wants a pair of kids to wet their pants in the middle of a public theater?
We crept down the balcony stairs, which were wide, carpeted in musty red, and lit only by rows of lights near the floor. Nickel’s face looked pretty spooky with lights shining on it from that angle.
“You look like Frankenstein,” I said.
He lifted his hands and made a strangled roaring sound at me. It would have worked better if he hadn’t needed to whisper.
Downstairs, our plan came to a grinding halt. Some guy in a fancy-looking uniform with a tall hat stood, arms folded, in front of the door. One look at him and my nerve sank to the toes of my shoes. There had to be a law against that sort of thing—holding an entire theater full of kids hostage.
“Bathroom is that way,” he said, pointing to a set of doors at the side of the lobby.
My stomach gurgled at the cranky way he peered down his long nose at us. Now I needed the bathroom for real. We trudged through the doors and down a long, shadowy hallway.
“Maybe there’s an open window in one of them,” Nickel whispered.
The light blinded me when I walked into the ladies’ room. Because the guy guarding the front door was all dressed up, I expected the bathrooms to be grand too, but no such luck. If anyone had cleaned them recently, they had forgotten about adding more toilet paper to the stalls and soap to the dispensers.
I checked every stall and every wall, but there weren’t any windows, much less any open ones. Hopefully, Nickel’s luck had been better.
When I got back into the hallway, it was empty. Nickel still had not appeared two minutes later. I slid down the wall to sit on the floor, trying very hard to be patient.
I counted the seconds until they added up to another two entire minutes. Maybe Nickel had decided to go back to our seats without me. Or perhaps he had found an open window and forgotten to wait for me before climbing outside, and he couldn’t get back in through the locked and guarded doors.
After another three minutes and fifty-five seconds, I got back to my feet. Clearly my future husband had escaped or deserted me, or was suffering from the worst case of the runs known to man. Or…
Nickel had told me Swenson had threatened to flush his head right down the toilet one day. Maybe Swenson had chosen that moment to strike. Maybe right then, poor Nickel was up to his eyeballs in truly heinous toilet water, with Swenson cackling like a hyena.
No Focus Pocus master could allow a comrade to go in such a humiliating and gross way. I had to take action.
Mustering all the nerve I could find, I put my hand on the door of the boys’ bathroom. Going inside would feel all wrong, like accidentally-on-purpose walking into the teachers’ staff room, or meeting Dr. Marston in the supermarket without his stethoscope and lab coat.
At first I couldn’t see a thing. The boys’ bathroom was even brighter than the girls’ one. Blinking and squinting, I waited for my eyes to adjust.
When they did, I could not believe what I saw.
Nickel. Standing at the sinks with a boy. A boy with very white, extremely curly hair.
T
he boy with white hair ignored me and squinted at his phone, like it was no big deal to have a girl in the boys’ bathroom, and kept talking.
Nickel threw his hands up in the air. “What the heck, Robyn? You can’t come in here.”
“I sat out there in the hallway forever, so I can come in. It’s like…a rule. If you have to wait more than five minutes, all bets are off.” I turned in circles, checking out the bathroom. I might never get another chance.
Not only was it clean, but it had extra toilets mounted on the wall for boys to pee standing up. They even had little round cakes of soap in the bottom for the boys to use as targets—which made sense. Anyone who saw our downstairs bathroom after a party with boy guests knew males were not born with natural aim.
Like in the girls’ bathroom, there wasn’t a single window anywhere.
“You made that rule up,” the white-haired boy said. He looked a little older than us. Thirteen, maybe. Fourteen at most.
“She always does. You get used to it,” Nickel said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out except a huff of air.
“It was supposed to be a surprise.” Nickel did one of his big floppy sighs.
“Surprise me, then.” I started to cover my face with my hands before I remembered all the bacteria on them. This bathroom had plenty of paper towels, and the dispensers were full of soap. They probably never got used up because boys didn’t wash their hands without someone nagging them to do it.
With an impatient look on his face, Nickel waited for me to finish washing my hands. Once I’d dried them, he said, “This is Michael. He is—”
“An O’Malley?” I asked. The hair and the pale skin and eyes, plus me not being a complete nincompoop, made it easy to figure out.
Michael tilted his head to the side and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “You do look like you’re part of the family.”
Family. I liked that word. It made my insides ache in a good way. Not that Mom and Grandma and me weren’t a family, but we were a pretty small one. I felt taller after he said that, bigger, like instead of being a little pinhole on the map of humanity, I was a whole pushpin.
What Goes Up Page 5