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When I first heard about that, I thought that meant: no radio. And it does. But it also means no television, no cell phones, no microwave ovens, and no internet. When I heard that, I thought: Perfect.
The hardest thing about moving to Grin And Bear It, Nebraska, is not leaving Omaha, or giving up the internet, or even moving into a house that we frequently share with dead people. (Funeral homes in cities are businesses; funeral homes in small towns are actually homes.) The hardest thing about moving to Grin And Bear It, Nebraska, is starting a new school. In February. Ask anybody: That’s the stuff of seventh-grade nightmares.
There’s no blending into an empty field.
(My brain, if you haven’t got this yet, specializes in disaster scenarios.)
The principal’s name is Ms. Snodgrass, and she looks like she’s spent her whole life trying to overcome being called Ms. Snodgrass.
At a glance I probably look like a homeschooler. But Ms. Snodgrass takes more than a glance, and the look she gives me makes me wonder if she’s thinking: Juvie? Or maybe she thinks all seventh graders are potential criminals.
Going in is like stepping out onto a stage, I swear.
The “oh-poor-baby” expression. I hate that expression. And, oh man, here it comes. Miss Rose reaches out and draws me into the room, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. It’s sort of like a hug, except she’s also making sure I’m in exactly the right place for the spotlight to hit me. The shoulder she’s holding goes stiff. “Everyone?” she says. “Everyone? If I could have your attention?” I don’t know why she even asks. New kid in class is a big deal anywhere, and in Grin And Bear It, it’s like the circus has come to town. I stand like the acrobat on the high wire—drumroll and all—trying hard to
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The room is swept by a kind of sigh: Omaha, shining land of dreams and promises. Yeah, right. I’m resisting the urge to run out of the room.
My words are coming out like there’s pressure behind them, and I can’t seem to stop talking.
“So,” she says, starting in on the cupcake first. “Message from space aliens. What do you say?” “I think I say: Why?” She looks at me super seriously, her eyes wide and kind of sad, like she’s explaining why you should get your pets spayed or neutered. “Because the scientists have been listening for ages and they haven’t heard anything. I don’t want them to give up hope.” “I mean—why me?” It’s a question I’ve asked myself a zillion times. I’m not expecting Agate to have an answer. But she does: She answers like she’s prepped for it, like she’s reading her reasons off an index card, and pops a
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Like—anyone can do anything, but that doesn’t stop people from giving you whatever label they think you ought to have, whether you wanted it or not.
On the plus side, having a team makes you less of a target, which is a real thing in junior high. On the other hand, sometimes it’s smarter to sit with your back to the wall and your eyes on the exit. To be honest, I was ready to flip a coin when Agate turned up like a penny landing on its edge.
I can smell the gentler, more organic pace of life being spread on the surrounding fields. (It’s manure. Organic farming is truly the way of the future.)
Any homework? What are you learning? Are you making friends? How’s the new school? As a tweenager I am only legally required to say, It was fine, Dad. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s like Dad thinks that if he asks me every day, one day I will crack and tell him everything.
That would be fine, except the peacock—who has a tail the size of a golf umbrella and a brain the size of a shriveled lima bean—always thinks the sound is another male peacock. Like, every day he thinks this. And every day he comes bursting out from behind the hearse garage or down from the porch roof or up from the pits of hell to challenge that other peacock to a duel. He yodels and sticks his neck out like a goose. He snaps and spits and attempts to rake you with his spurs. He is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he does have some very sharp parts. We call him Pretty Stabby.
Then Pretty Stabby spots Agate’s color scheme and pulls up short, the single circuit firing in his lima-bean brain. The circuit is labeled girl peacock. Pretty Stabby looks at Agate, and Agate looks at Pretty Stabby. My dad waves his umbrella in a confused way. Pretty Stabby snaps open the fan of his tail. Agate tries to step around him. The bird sidesteps to stay in front of her. He gives his tail the old bump bump shaky.
Agate tries stepping in the other direction. Pretty Stabby slides to intercept her, then prances in a circle until his back is to her. He arches and shakes his fully fanned tail. Even from the doorway I can hear his stiff butt feathers rattling like maracas. Agate frowns. “I think your peacock is sexually harassing me, Mr. O’Keeffe,” she says.
My dad beams at Agate. You can totally tell that it’s been a while since I had friends over and he’s delighted. He needs to chill a little.
She talks to him like she’s memorized a phrase book on how to be polite in English. It’s a parent-pleaser for sure. To me, it kind of sounds like she doesn’t know what to do with commas.
If she was all phrase book before, it’s like laughter is her native language. She turns pink with it, and I’m smiling before I know why.
In fact, I try not to know too much about what’s happening on Mom’s side of the building, just on general principle.
Agate being cool about her brain stuff makes me feel a little safer about my brain stuff. Not safe enough to get into it or anything—but safer.
“You are super good at the disgusting things.” “Uh. Sorry.” “No, it’s good. Disgusting things are also one of my things.” “Well, good news: I have basically a bottomless supply.”
Down in the kitchen my dad is probably standing at the sink thinking: Simon is having a normal human interaction with a fellow student! Sound the trumpets! If only he knew.
He was wearing his jersey because he’s a fanatic—he’d have to be, because the red shirt with his green hair and his extreme skinniness makes him look like the Grinch Who Stole Football Tickets. I was wearing my jersey because it was clean.
I try out a little grin even though my mouth tastes like I’ve been chewing tin cans. I can feel how my smile flickers and jerks. But Kev doesn’t notice. One of the nice things about Kev is that he never thinks I might be hiding anything.
Kevin told me that his last name, Matapang, is Filipino, but his mom turns out to be the whitest of white ladies: blond, Karen haircut, mom jeans, the whole package.
Her smile is another fishhook but since it’s baited with Hot Pockets, I’ll bite.
I squealed like a rabid possum and threw my hands over my face. But Kevin doesn’t seem to be teeing up that story, and his mom is giving me a well-done-young-man nod, like I just went way up in her books. I don’t get it.
It didn’t feel like a good job when I was doing the sick marsupial impression, but it feels better now that someone is telling me why.
Like Kevin, she’s acrobat quick.
“Behold,” he says, “the Kennel of Science.” “We’re not calling it that,” says Zeny. “We’re totally calling it that,” I say. Because now that I see it, the name is perfect.
It is exactly like a giant dog kennel, with a couple of desks with serious computers inside. There are gamer chairs and wires and gadgets around, plus the forbidden microwave, of course. The whole setup is what would happen if Fido ran mission control.
Zeny flips him off casually, then gathers her hair into a ponytail like she’s Black Widow heading into a fight scene, snapping the hair elastic off her wrist and setting her jaw.
I dig around in his mines a little and get blown up by a few creepers, but it’s not as much fun when it’s not your world. And of course mine is gone.
In most parts of her life, Mom doesn’t back down for anything short of an oncoming semi, but she’ll swallow a lot to make sure things go smoothly for grieving people.
Kevin and me lean back against the cold glass curve of the counter and watch his dad hovering over the junior scientists like a teacher reassuring some weeping kindergarteners.
Maybe Kevin’s not worried, but me? I start to get this horror-movie feeling, the one where you realize you did not leave that door open. My fingertips get cold, and hot pulses start behind my eyes. If the SETI scientists don’t get their funding fixed, then the internet will come to town, and that radar I’m flying under will lock on to me like it’s a bombing run, like it’s the end of the world.
Okay. So maybe I was mostly playing along with the whole fake-a-mission-from-aliens mission. My mom calls this my Simon Says mode, where I do what I’m told and don’t ask questions, because, hey, that’s what keeps you alive in the game. Maybe it’s even simpler than that: Maybe I like Agate, and I want a friend. But maybe, just maybe, her idea about keeping the SETI scientists employed is—like my therapist always used to say—“worth exploring.”
Miss Rose hasn’t stopped looking at me like I’m the shivering puppy in an animal cruelty commercial—and to top that off, we’ve just launched a journalism unit.
I dodge this incoming disaster by whipping my chair across the classroom so fast that the rubber foot thingies squeal against the hard tiles, and I latch on to Agate like I’m Pretty Stabby spotting a green umbrella. Her face does a weird thing: Her eyes get wide and her mouth kind of opens, and I wonder if this is the first time she’s been someone’s first pick.
The whole time Agate is doing her interview she’s also writing and doodling on another piece of paper and slowly blushing hot pink like the world’s worst redhead spy.
They look both terrified and overjoyed, as if they have been visited by angels. I see them actually take each other’s hands as I ride away.
The disk is a dusty white saucer, tipped up to catch the sky, like something God’s cat could drink out of.
“Time is going to be key,” she says. “Four minutes. That’s the key.”
“He was supposed to be a service dog,” Agate explains. “What for, bartending?” “No, mobility. Like, for someone who needs to reach stuff or grip stuff. So he learned skills like opening the fridge and turning on the lights and stuff. But then he flunked out.” “Because of the drinking?” “No, because he doesn’t have enough drive to please people. A service dog has to have special skills and good judgment, but also he’s really got to care about his human.”
“So. You’ve got a genius dog that can open doors and turn on lights and operate heavy machinery or whatever, but he doesn’t care about pleasing people?” “I admire him,” says Agate, and she smiles like the moon.
Todd finishes his beer. He flops down on his dog bed, sighing like he’s just had Thanksgiving dinner and settling his jowls across his folded paws. Todd is living his best life.
I think that’s bananas. I think it will take a lot more than that. I think I’m still mostly playing along. But also I think the big telescope looks like it’s made of toothpicks, and I think about my toothpick bridge, and I wonder how much internal stress the telescope can store. I think about what might happen if it blows. I think: Four minutes is the difference between this and another world.
