The Half-Life of Planets by Emily Franklin Read Free Book Online Page A

I can’t tell right now.
    Hank stops jabbering—finally—but can’t stop his eyes from swiveling down and up, sort of like he’s trying to follow a fly. “So you’re going?” I nod and move toward my mother, who is watching but pretending not to. “I’ll see you Thursday, then,” he says. I raise my eyebrows to ask why, but he does me the favor of rambling on. “At Espresso Love.”
    â€œThe soundtrack?” I cross my arms so I’m sort of hugging myself. What is my prediction here? That we will meet at Espresso Love. Have coffee and never speak again? That I won’t even show up? That we will ride off into the proverbial smoggy sunset? That someone will see us together and assume that he’s just one of the many, that I’m up to my usual tricks, whatever people think those are, and we’ll lock lips and then nothing? I bite my top lip and listen to the blips and bleeps coming from my father’s room. You cannot predict anything.
    He nods. “The soundtrack session. You’ll meet me, okay?” He pauses. “Hey—now that’s a great title, isn’t it? For an album. The Soundtrack Sessions .”
    It is a good title, but I can’t tell him now. Now is me turning away from Hank, who is leaving. Now is me going over and hugging my dad and having him cry—not hard like the old man in the cafeteria; just a few quiet tears.
    â€œI’m so relieved,” he says. My mother nods, patting his shoulder as he hugs me. The hospital gown is scratchy against my face.
    What gets me is that they don’t talk about the pattern. They don’t acknowledge the fact that we were here four months ago with his potential appendicitis-or-is-it-liver-cancer scare. If I confronted my mother, she and I would end up like those explosions in the universe, only not as short-acting. My mother behaves as though holding a grudge is an Olympic sport. She still hasn’t gotten over the kissing-in-the-basement incident. Only, her reaction is to not react. To avoid confrontation and discussion altogether.
    My dad holds my hands in his, relieved. “What a day, huh?”
    Wake up, people! I want to yell. He’s fine! He will always be fine! It’s something else that’s the problem. But I can’t scream this. And I can’t even point to what exactly the other thing is that is the problem. I have my suspicions, though.
    On the day of the soundtrack sessions I’m in the lab. When I’m there I feel the way some people must feel in church. The whole cavernous room is filled with all this mystery. Why are we here? How did we get here? Why does sunlight matter? What happens to water when it vaporizes? It’s sacred somehow. The cool concrete walls tower over me, a safe and calm room with rows of soapstone tables, small sinks, and industrial shelves filled with Bunsen burners, textbooks, and model solar systems.
    I take notes, jotting them in my looping scrawl onto the pages of my speckled green-and-white notebook, while studying the picture in front of me. It’s an artist’s rendition of a black hole devouring a neutron star. Mr. Pitkin, a.k.a. resident science guru, has left a question for me in my notebook and I have to answer it, or at least try to. He wants me to combine a whole ton of data from published star census reports in the hopes that mine will fit in there somewhere. That’s where I get the academic credit. Stars and planets, those are my real interest. In his immaculate printing he has written: Condensation theory says that the planets developed through coagulation of dust grains in a disk of gas and dust. Do you have evidence to support this? This is some people’s idea of hell, spending a perfectly decent summer day answering, “Asteroids and comets all hold clues from the original solar system formation. A lot are traceable right to the origin of the solar system.” I pause. What