Life on Mars by Jennifer Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

threw a Fruit Roll-Up at me. Strawberry. My favorite. Tripp and I once brainstormed a whole list of fruit-roll flavors that would be even better—bacon, cheese dip, doughnut, buffalo wings. But eventually we decided that you couldn’t call them fruit rolls unless there was some fruit in them somewhere, and who wants to eat a banana-bacon roll or a chewy sheet of pomegranate-flavored buffalo wings? We considered renaming them
Food Rolls
, but Priya said that sounded gross, and she started counting off about a billion reasons why Tripp and I could never be trusted with our great ideas, and by the time she was done, we had forgotten all about the business of rolling food into sheets. “No, Aunt Sarin didn’t have her baby yet. She’s coming to stay with you and your sisters for a couple days while Dad and I go house hunting in Las Vegas.”
    I grimaced, trying to swallow, but the food got stuck in my throat halfway down. They were house hunting. In Vegas. For some reason, this made our impending move all the more real. “Oh,” I squeaked.
    Mom shut the cabinet and zipped the bag closed, stuffing it into her purse on the counter and looking at her watch. “Now, you’ll be fine while we’re gone. Aunt Sarin will play games with you like she always does. This may be your last chance to spend some time alone with her before the baby comes.”
    Even better, Aunt Sarin would come up to CICM-HQ with me. She’d flash the lights toward Mars and look through Chase’s Mickey Mouse binoculars and would swear she sawmovement—a boat on a Martian ocean, maybe?—and wouldn’t call me weird or make fun of me. She might even help me rename it so we could make shirts.
    Finding Arty’s Real Terrestrials. FART.
    Ugh.
    â€œBut don’t you think Dad should make sure he’s tried all the other jobs here first? Maybe he missed one.”
    Mom sighed and leaned against the cabinet. “Arty, we’ve talked about this …”
    But she couldn’t finish her sentence, because just then the front door burst open, and a wailing rainbow rushed into the kitchen at us.
    â€œOh, Ayyymeee,” the rainbow cried. “I can’t gooo without saying good-byeee!” The rainbow engulfed Mom under seven thousand layers of fabric.
    â€œHey,” I heard behind me, just before someone bumped my shoulder. Priya stood behind me, her bracelets clanking.
    â€œHey,” I said. “I thought you were at engineering camp.”
    â€œI’m on my way there now,” she said. “But my mom was convinced that when we came back in four days, you would already be gone forever. She’s freaking out about you guys moving.”
    I am, too
, I wanted to tell her, but I clenched my teeth so no words would slip out. I didn’t want to look like … like Orion. Weak, sappy, afraid of a wimpy little move.
    â€œDevani,” my mom said, pulling herself out of the folds of Priya’s mom’s sari, which she wore over a pair of fancy-lookingjeans and high-heeled sandals, just like always. “We’re just house hunting. We’ll still be here when you get back from Lawrence.”
    Priya’s mom stepped back and wiped the corners of her eyes. “I just didn’t want to take any chances. I can’t believe my best friend in the world is moving … away.” With the word “away,” she burst into tears, and my mom was eaten by a rainbow again.
    My mom and Priya’s mom had been best friends since we were born. They washed their cars together and they took us to movies together and they sat in lawn chairs and watched us play together for our whole lives. It was going to be weird to look out the front window of our Vegas house and find someone else sitting in the front yard with Mom. Someone not wearing a brightly colored sari and high-heeled sandals.
    â€œI wished dry rot on you,” Mrs. Roy said, stepping back and wiping