The Year We Fell From Space: Parts Two–Three

As for Finn calling me a feminist, I don’t think he knows what that word means. How could he know what it means growing up in a house like that?

She tries her best to stay friendly because it’s what she reads about couples with kids going through divorce. Keep things civil. Stay as friendly as you can. Don’t talk badly about each other in front of the children.

She tells me some vague stories about Dad’s family. Nothing remarkable. I already knew all those stories already.

Mom and Jilly are in the kitchen by the time I come in and even though Jilly is the nosiest sister ever, she’s too preoccupied by helping Mom make her magic meatloaf to notice that I have mud on my clothes and that I need the railing to pull myself and the rock up the stairs.

The womankind of sixth grade recess shunned me once they found out.

Nobody likes you. No one will sit with you at lunch anymore and no one will talk to you. You're excommunicated from the sixth grade class.

She’s not crying or anything. She’s just mad. I kind of envy her.

“I mean, you wouldn’t be sitting here if it was going really good, you know?” For a fifth grader, Malik is perceptive.

I don’t care now if he needs a long walk in a metaphorical forest.

And I don’t know how to be in this new family. A family of three. A galaxy missing a vital planet.

I am the meteorite. I fell from space, endured impossible atmosphere.

“I’d know about space travel and other species and I’d see humans as an inferior race and not want to, like, fit in with them or anything.”

I knew I would eventually end up in here.

I guess people who don’t know much about depression think that people who have it walk around crying or being pessimistic all the time.

And now he’s disco dancing to some funky music on the radio while he squeezes fresh orange juice and sings off-tune.

“I saw it with my own eyes.” She looks at me sternly.

She looks like she wants to say more, but she cleaves another part of the log in two.

I start feeding the poles into the sleeves of the tent and tell her to get the pegs to secure it to the ground.

There is nothing like watching her cook fresh food on a fire, time it perfectly, and serve up a huge meal. And while we eat she puts a little water in the dishes she cooked with and boils them clean on the fire because that’s Mom. Efficient. Always thinking ahead.

Ready to split logs with a bowie knife or build an emergency bivouac.