Read Online Life on Mars by Jennifer Brown - Free Book Online

space.”
    She lowered the flashlight. “Really?”
    I nodded. “Well, I mean, with a satellite or something you probably could.”
    â€œHuh. Still, the point is, you can see stuff from space. So what?”
    â€œYeah, but do you know
why
you can see Vegas from space?Because of the lights. And you know what you can’t see when there’s a ton of lights?”
    She locked eyes with me. “Stars,” she said. And she didn’t try to tell me I was crazy or wrong, and that was what I loved most about Aunt Sarin. She could spot a bad deal when she saw one, and she didn’t try to make it into something good. Mom would have told me we’d see plenty of sky and then asked me if I wanted some raisins.
    â€œWhat are you going to name your baby?” I asked, too depressed to talk about space anymore.
    â€œI don’t know. I was sort of thinking about Castor.”
    Castor, as in Castor and Pollux, the two stars that make up the constellation Gemini. Although the Gemini stars are technically supposed to be twins, Castor must be the pushy twin because he’s the first to appear over the horizon at night.
    â€œCastor’s good,” I said. “I like it.”
    â€œI thought you might,” she said. “Did you know that a
Castor canadensis
is actually a North American beaver? Isn’t that funny? Name him after a star and he’ll get a little bucktoothed rodent for a side name.”
    â€œYeah, that’s funny.” (Translation: Not to a guy named after an armpit.)
    â€œSpeaking of names, what are you calling your Mars operation these days?”
    I hesitated. “CICM-HQ,” I said. “But I wish I had something that spelled an actual word so I could put it on a T-shirt.”
    Aunt Sarin thought for a few moments.
    â€œHow about COMET?” she said. “Calling Out Martian Extra Terrestrials?”
    â€œAren’t Martian and extraterrestrials the same thing?” I asked.
    â€œNot really,” she said.
    â€œAnd, besides, ‘extraterrestrials’ is one word.”
    â€œIt is?”
    â€œAnd, traditionally, comets were seen as bad omens. Like, if you were a Chinese emperor and you saw a comet, which they called ‘broom stars’ in case you were wondering …”
    â€œI really wasn’t.”
    â€œWell, seeing a broom star meant you were pretty much going to be out of a job soon.”
    â€œThat’s not good.”
    â€œOr possibly die.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œPlus, Comet is my dog. And he peed on my magnifying glass, so I kind of don’t want to name anything after him right now.”
    â€œOkay, okay, understood,” she said. “Not Comet. Tough crowd.” She thought some more. “How about SPACE?”
    â€œWhat does that stand for?”
    She scrunched up her brow, stopped pressing the flashlight switch. “Sending … People … Around … Celestial … Enterprises?” She looked pleased with herself.
    I gave her a look. “That makes no sense. I’m not sending people anywhere. If anyone is going to be sent, it will be me,and then it would be Sending Myself Around Celestial Enterprises. Which spells SMACE.”
    She grunted. “Okay. MOON. Manned Observation OperatioN.”
    â€œYou can’t use the last letter of the last word to finish your acronym. That’s cheating.”
    â€œSays who?” she asked.
    â€œSays everybody in the history of naming stuff,” I shot back. I put the binoculars back up to my eyes and squinted, hoping to find the red planet.
    She was silent again for a moment, and then she sucked in a great gasping breath. “BABY!” she shouted.
    I didn’t even bother to put down the binoculars. “Oh, what’s that supposed to stand for? Boy Alien Binocular Yielder? That’s terrible. It makes me sound like I’m the alien. Besides, I don’t want the word BABY written across my