Susan Pfeffer - Life As We Knew It

I guess Ms. Hammish thinks this moon thing is historical, because in history that’s what we talked about. How people throughout history have looked at the moon and comets and eclipses. Actually, that was kind of interesting. I never really thought about how when I look at the moon it’s the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. Not to mention all those zillions of people I’ve never heard of. All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.

Of course Ms. Hammish wasn’t satisfied with inspiring us like that. She gave us an assignment, too. We can write either an essay about astronomy in the past and how it affected someone in history (like if they saw a comet and it scared them or prophesied something) or an article about what’s going to happen Wednesday night.

Either way it’s due on Friday.

I don’t understand teachers. You’d think they’d talk to each other and at least one of them would realize how unfair it is to give us all assignments due on Friday. I wouldn’t mind if I could figure out how to double up on them, write my history essay and translate it into French (which I could maybe do if my French was good enough, which it isn’t). But I don’t see how to do two for the price of one, so I think I’ll have to write three separate papers (and one in French) and hand them all in on Friday.

I’ll really be sick of the moon by then.

This moon thing is supposed to happen around 9:30 Wednesday night, and Mom was interested enough that we watched the news tonight. They said asteroids hit the moon pretty often, which is how the moon gets its craters, but this one is going to be the biggest asteroid ever to hit it and on a clear night you should be able to see the impact when it happens, maybe even with the naked eye but certainly with binoculars. They made it sound pretty dramatic, but I still don’t think it’s worth three homework assignments.

Mom watched the local news, too, which she almost never does because she says it’s too depressing, and they’re predicting a really nice night. Clear skies and temperatures in the low 60s. They said in New York people are organizing parties for Central Park and on apartment rooftops. I asked Mom if we could have a party, and she said no, but people on our road will probably be out watching and it’ll be like having a block party.

I don’t know how interesting it’s really going to be, but compared to everything else in my life, at least it’s something different.

I got an 82 on my math test. There were at least four questions I should have gotten right but made careless mistakes on.

I know for a fact that Sammi’s mother hasn’t looked at a test result of hers in years, and Megan’s mom has always worried about who Megan hangs out with, but I don’t think she cares all that much about her grades. I had to get stuck with the mother who works at home and has plenty of time to check things out and hover and demand to see tests.

We didn’t have a big fight over it (I did pass, after all), but Mom gave me one of her famous You Shouldn’t Be So Careless lectures, which I get at least once a week and sometimes more than that if the mood strikes her.

Mom said since I’m prone to carelessness, etc., it might be a good idea if I got a head start on all my moon papers, especially since they didn’t have to be about whatever is going to happen tomorrow.

She suggested writing about the 1969 moon landing, so I Googled it, and I found out lots of people didn’t really care that there were men walking on the moon. They all watched Star Trek (the original, old lousyspecial-effects Beam Me Up Scotty Star Trek) and they were used to seeing Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock hopping around the universe so real people walking on the real moon wasn’t as exciting.

I think that’s funny. Men were walking on the moon for the very first time in history and people preferred watching Dr. McCoy say, “He’s dead, Jim,” for the thousandth time.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to turn that into a paper, so Mom and I talked about it, about how fiction can have more power than reality and how in 1969 there was a lot of cynicism because of Vietnam and the sixties and all that and there were people who didn’t think men were really on the moon and thought it was a hoax.

I think I’ll do my French paper on what happens tomorrow night, because my French isn’t good enough for stuff like hoaxes and cynicism. For English I’m focusing on how fiction can be more exciting than reality and for history I’ll focus on how people in the ’60s were cynical about what the government told them.

I told Mom that Sammi said it was sure to rain tomorrow night because it always rains when something important is supposed to happen in the sky and she laughed and said she had never known a more pessimistic 15-year-old.

I’ll be at Dad’s when Sammi turns 16. I have a feeling if she has a party, it’ll be all boys, so it probably won’t matter.

Around 10, something kind of odd happened. I was working on my paper and Mom was arguing with Jonny about going to bed, when the phone rang. We never get calls that late, so we all jumped. I got to the phone first and it was Matt.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. Matt never calls that late and he pretty much never calls on a weekday night.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just wanted to hear your voices.”

I told Mom it was Matt. Jonny took the kitchen phone and she used the one in her bedroom. We told him what was going on (I complained about my three moon papers), and he told us about what he has left to do at school. Then he and Mom talked about the arrangements for him to get home.

This was all perfectly normal stuff, but it didn’t feel right. Jonny hung up first and then Mom, and I managed to get Matt to stay on a minute longer.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” I asked him.

He paused for a moment. “I have a funny feeling,” he said. “I guess it’s this moon business.”

Matt’s always been the one to explain things to me. Mom had her writing and Jonny, and Dad was at work (for as long as he was here), so Matt was the one I turned to. I don’t think he’s psychic and maybe it’s just because he’s three years older than me, but whenever I’ve had a question he’s seemed to know the answer.

“You don’t think anything is going to go wrong?” I asked him. “It’s not like the meteor is going to hit us. It’s just the moon.”

“I know,” he said. “But things might get a little crazy tomorrow night. Phone lines might get tied up, people calling each other. Sometimes people panic even if there’s no reason.”

“You really think people are going to panic?” I asked. “Around here, it just seems like an excuse for teachers to give us even more work.”

Matt laughed. “Teachers never need an excuse for that,” he said. “Anyway, I figured I’d find you all home tonight and it’d be a good chance for me to say hello.”

“I miss you,” I said. “I’m glad you’re coming home.”

“Me too,” he said. He paused for a moment. “Are you still keeping that journal of yours?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Be sure to write about tomorrow. You’ll probably enjoy reading all the details twenty years from now.”

“You just want me to keep a record of all your clever sayings,” I replied. “For your many biographers.”

“Well, that, too,” he said. “See you in a few days.”

When we hung up, I couldn’t figure out if I felt better because he’d called or worse. If Matt’s worried, then I’m worried.

But maybe all Matt is worried about is getting through his papers and exams.