Read Online First Day On Earth by Cecil Castellucci - Free Book Online
Authors: Cecil Castellucci
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are standing on a tiny planet, orbiting a small, uninteresting sun, on an outer arm of the galaxy we live in,” Hooper says.
He opens his silver bag and unfolds a star chart. The chart is alive with lights that blink and twinkle. There are things that rotate, and points that move slowly, almost imperceptibly, in the form of rocket ships.
He points to the stars on the ceiling and then to their corresponding spots on the star chart.
“Every star a sun. Many planets. Many are dead. Lifeless rocks with nothing, not even an amoeba. Some gaseous giants where no life, not even a creative or spirited life-form, could figure out how to survive there.”
Next to some of the stars, there is a symbol. Along the bottom of the chart there is a string of them.
The symbols roll along blinking and changing, like a news ticker.
I run my finger along them. The symbols and the stars are slightly raised, like Braille.
I don’t know if they are really moving. I don’t know if I can trust my eyes. Or my fingers. Or my heart.
“All these stars, the ones with small symbols on them, lifeis there. Some planets have a kind of life that is unfamiliar. We might not call it life. Bugs. Single-cell life-forms. Plant life. Even animals. I have stepped on some of those worlds. Observed. Never harmed.”
Then he moves my attention to another symbol.
“All these symbols are the ones with life that thinks. The ones with civilizations. The planets that house a sort of life as we know it, planets with life-forms that speak and build and think and dream.”
There are thousands of stars on the chart, but only twenty-seven stars with those symbols.
“One of those stars is the star that shines on the place where I live,” I say.
“Sol,” Hooper says, pointing to this one lonely star, far away from the others.
It’s sitting there. Far-flung, away from anything else. Alone. Abandoned. In exile from all the other stars that have even simple life on the planets around them.
“That kind of life. That kind of heart. That kind of dreamer, it’s rarer than anything.” Hooper pushes the chart toward me. “You can keep that if you want.”
It’s too beautiful a thing to give to me. I would lose it in a pile of mess in my room. Or shove it in my locker at school with a tuna sandwich. Or leave it open to fade in the sun on the front seat of my car.
“This is the copy,” Hooper says.
He hands me the star chart now, closing my fingers around it. “No, I couldn’t. I mean, what would I do with it?” “I find it a pleasant thing to look at.” I fold up the map carefully and put it in my bag. In my gut, I believe him.
40.
When she is a certain kind of drunk, my mother loses all of her words. But just because she has no way to express how she feels, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to say something. She pulls a book off the shelf and she reads. Dramatically. Slurred. Tearfully. Hysterical. Sometimes it’s poems.
I know that it is all
a matter of hands.
Out of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes love
—A NNE S EXTON (“T HE F URY OF A BANDONMENT”)
Sometimes it’s passages from books.
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, likeme, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love
.
—C HARLOTTE B RONTË (
JANE EYRE)
Sometimes it’s Shakespeare.
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o’er ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must
.
For women fear too much, even as they love,
And women’s fear and love holds quantity,
In neither aught, or in extremity
.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as
He opens his silver bag and unfolds a star chart. The chart is alive with lights that blink and twinkle. There are things that rotate, and points that move slowly, almost imperceptibly, in the form of rocket ships.
He points to the stars on the ceiling and then to their corresponding spots on the star chart.
“Every star a sun. Many planets. Many are dead. Lifeless rocks with nothing, not even an amoeba. Some gaseous giants where no life, not even a creative or spirited life-form, could figure out how to survive there.”
Next to some of the stars, there is a symbol. Along the bottom of the chart there is a string of them.
The symbols roll along blinking and changing, like a news ticker.
I run my finger along them. The symbols and the stars are slightly raised, like Braille.
I don’t know if they are really moving. I don’t know if I can trust my eyes. Or my fingers. Or my heart.
“All these stars, the ones with small symbols on them, lifeis there. Some planets have a kind of life that is unfamiliar. We might not call it life. Bugs. Single-cell life-forms. Plant life. Even animals. I have stepped on some of those worlds. Observed. Never harmed.”
Then he moves my attention to another symbol.
“All these symbols are the ones with life that thinks. The ones with civilizations. The planets that house a sort of life as we know it, planets with life-forms that speak and build and think and dream.”
There are thousands of stars on the chart, but only twenty-seven stars with those symbols.
“One of those stars is the star that shines on the place where I live,” I say.
“Sol,” Hooper says, pointing to this one lonely star, far away from the others.
It’s sitting there. Far-flung, away from anything else. Alone. Abandoned. In exile from all the other stars that have even simple life on the planets around them.
“That kind of life. That kind of heart. That kind of dreamer, it’s rarer than anything.” Hooper pushes the chart toward me. “You can keep that if you want.”
It’s too beautiful a thing to give to me. I would lose it in a pile of mess in my room. Or shove it in my locker at school with a tuna sandwich. Or leave it open to fade in the sun on the front seat of my car.
“This is the copy,” Hooper says.
He hands me the star chart now, closing my fingers around it. “No, I couldn’t. I mean, what would I do with it?” “I find it a pleasant thing to look at.” I fold up the map carefully and put it in my bag. In my gut, I believe him.
40.
When she is a certain kind of drunk, my mother loses all of her words. But just because she has no way to express how she feels, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to say something. She pulls a book off the shelf and she reads. Dramatically. Slurred. Tearfully. Hysterical. Sometimes it’s poems.
I know that it is all
a matter of hands.
Out of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes love
—A NNE S EXTON (“T HE F URY OF A BANDONMENT”)
Sometimes it’s passages from books.
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, likeme, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love
.
—C HARLOTTE B RONTË (
JANE EYRE)
Sometimes it’s Shakespeare.
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o’er ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must
.
For women fear too much, even as they love,
And women’s fear and love holds quantity,
In neither aught, or in extremity
.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as
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