The party will be boring until my cousins get here. Mom and Grandma are both too busy talking to pay any attention to me. Grandma strokes my hair, though, while I hang on to her knees. Her coffee smells good, and she smells good too; clean, like crayon wax, like she always does.
I like to sit at the kitchen table and draw while she cooks breakfast or washes dishes. She always listens to me. She never tells me I’m being dumb like my big sister Kenza does. I like to learn about the ancient Egyptians. I think they’re mysterious and magical, and Grandma tells me I might have been Egyptian in a past life. I wish we could talk about that now, but Grandma is listening to Aunt Trudy talk about Uncle Gary’s boss and how he had to get a triple bypass. I ask what a triple bypass is. Grandma says she’ll tell me later, but I worry she’ll forget.
I try asking Kenza and Marti about the triple bypass, but they yell, “Go away!”
They are in the room they share, bent over a tablet, giggling. I know they won’t tell me what they’re giggling about, so I don’t ask. Marti used to play with me, but lately all she wants to do is talk to Kenza about kissing and other stuff I’m not supposed to know about. I think they have all kinds of big fun in their little room without me. Some nights I feel lonely and wish I could sleep there too, but I have my own small sleeping cabinet right off the living room. It is very cozy, and has a tiny window I can look out of. During the day, the hills look red, but at night they look blue. I imagine all kinds of things at night before I go to sleep when I’m looking out that window.
Mom is angry because Uncle Joe is late. He’s always late. Mom says you have to tell Joe to be here an hour before you actually want him here. Mom is never late. She is upset because the food is getting cold, and the Big Finish is going to start in just twenty minutes, and she wants everyone to get their food before it starts, but she can’t serve the food until Joe and the kids get here. It’s a live stream, so we can’t watch it later like we usually would. It’s weird that we’re watching something on a Tuesday afternoon, and that my whole family is going to be here all at the same time.
My family has been talking about the Big Finish for months and months, and I am tired of hearing about it. I don’t even remember living on Terra. Mom says I was born there, and we came here to Reunion Station on Mars when I was a tiny baby. We spent a whole year on the ship before we got to Mars. It took me forever to learn how to walk because I’d gotten so used to floating around. That sounds fun, and I wish I could remember it, but I don’t. I’m a good swimmer, though, and my uncle Gary says it’s because I trained in zero gravity. But it’s also why I’m so small, just like the other kids who came over when they were babies. Our bones and muscles didn’t grow right on the ship. They knew that would happen, but we had to go anyway, all of us, because it wasn’t safe to stay on Terra anymore.
Sometimes I wish I got to grow up on Terra and get bigger. Other times I’m glad I’m so small: Even though I’m almost six, Mom and Grandma can still pick me up and carry me places.
I am sitting on Mom’s lap when she complains to Aunt Trudy about Uncle Joe. Mom is wearing a red silk dress with a pattern of flowers and swirly things on it. It’s pretty. I like to rub the front and back of the material together because it feels slick and swishy to my fingers when I rub it one way, and bumpy when I rub it the other way. Mom keeps telling me to stop because it’s making her dress ride up, but she is too mad and busy talking to notice all that much. Her voice is loud and it hurts my ears.
The front door chamber hisses open — it’s Uncle Joe with my cousins! I hear him telling Mom he was late because he couldn’t figure out how to get the ribbons in Judy’s hair. Max and Cody run inside, and Max makes a big fart noise behind my grandpa Jayden. When Grandpa turns around and pretends to be mad, we run away as fast as we can to hide in my cabinet and laugh so hard our stomachs hurt. Then we chase Cody with one of my dolls, and Max makes the funniest kissy faces and noises, and I laugh and laugh even though I think Cody is getting mad. Kenza and Marti yell “Shut up!” from their room, but we don’t shut up. We keep running through the kitchen and living room, back by the bedrooms and through the kitchen again, and I never want to stop even though I am tired and breathing hard, but then my uncle Joe yells at us to quit tearing around the house, to come in and sit down, because it’s time and he means it.
There are folding chairs set up around the couch. Everyone has a little plate or cup with coffee in it, but no one is eating or drinking, they are just watching the screen. Max and Cody go sit on the couch next to Grandpa Jayden, and Judy is curled up on Uncle Joe’s lap with her fingers in her mouth. Kenza and Marti have come out of their room, and they stand close to Mom. Marti is holding Mom’s hand and she looks scared, but Kenza is scowling. Max is making silly faces at me, but I notice that Grandma is crying a little. I walk over to her and pull on her arm; I ask, “Why are you crying?” She doesn’t answer, but she picks me up and cuddles me. I wrap my arms around her neck and smell her good Grandma smell, and I play with her blue dangly earrings. Everyone is so quiet, and all I can hear is the voice of the lady on the screen, and Judy sucking her fingers.
The lady is in a small box in the corner of the screen, with numbers counting down below her, and the rest of the screen is full of a picture of Terra. It’s all gray and brown and blue, like the bouncy balls with swirly colors that Grandma buys me at the commissary.4 The lady is talking about how things used to be on Terra, but when the numbers get to ten she is quiet. I watch the numbers go down: seven, six, five… and when they get to zero, I see bright orange circles lighting up in different spots on Terra, getting brighter and brighter. There are one, two, three, four, fix, six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven, and then there are too many to count, and the sides of the yellow-orange circles start to touch each other until all of Terra is bright yellow and red and orange and glowing. When this happens I hear all the grownups in the room sigh and gasp, and I hear Mom make a noise that’s like yelling and crying together. It scares me, and I start to cry too. Grandma squeezes me tight, and I bury my face into her neck. I don’t want to look at Terra anymore.
After a little while Grandma whispers, “It’s over.” I look up and the screen shows just a black ball. Then, the whole screen is filled up with pictures of Terra and how things were long ago, with lots of green plants and flowers I’ve never seen before. The grownups begin talking in low voices, and Judy’s asleep on my uncle’s lap. My boy cousins jump up, and Max yells to me, “Come on!” but I’m not ready yet. I stay in Grandma’s arms, and she hums to me. I hear the hum with my ears and feel it with my heart too, coming from Grandma’s heart and going into my heart. I want to stay here for a little while before I go play again.
Why does the author most likely include the following detail?
"The lady is talking about how things used to be on Terra, but when the numbers get to the ten she is quiet." (Paragraph 11)
A. to highlight how beautiful Terra once was
B. to contrast the loud playing of the children in the house
C. to emphasize the seriousness of what is about to happen
D. to suggest that the lady is uninterested in the end of Terra