First Day On Earth Read Online Free Page A

Longstocking. Or a Viking. He says though he’s never met her, if he saw her in the street, he would know her. He says that whenever he’s in an airport, he looks around, scanning the crowds, wondering if he’ll see her. He never has, even though he’s traveled a lot.
    I bet there’s a mathematical equation for that. One person in California and one person in Sweden and the odds of meeting someone on a planet with more than six billion people.
    In a way, I am kind of jealous of Earl.
    He wraps up the meeting and everyone files out of the room. But I’m still sitting in my chair. My mind is racing.
    At first nothing I’m thinking is coherent. Thoughts burst like summer lightning in my brain. It’s so random, and scary, that I’m sure that my synapses will explode into an unmanageable fire.
    All this time, I knew I couldn’t have been alone. But somehow I was. And whenever I tried to look for others and to reach out, it seemed so silly. How could a person sift through what was real and what wasn’t real out there? Part of me always believed that if it had happened, then they would come and take me again. And that would prove it. But they never did.
    That’s when I began to doubt myself.
    Of course there were people who were just plain crazy. Who made it up. Who were crying out for attention. And I alreadyhad doctors saying that I was crazy. I didn’t want to add to it. So I never said anything. I just hinted. Hoping that someone would say, “
Oh, yes. That could be what happened
.”
    But now, I had found others, and to them there was no question. It was real. The way Nadine shook when she talked about the Atfatfatf and the way they turned colors depending on their mood. Or the way Earl looked like he really missed that lady. Or the way Devon talked about the reptilian men made me think I wasn’t crazy.
    But what scared me, what made me feel like I would explode, was that if it had happened, then I couldn’t sometimes pretend that maybe the doctors were right and I was crazy. Maybe I had a hallucination. Maybe I had wandered all that way on my own. Maybe I was too sad.
    Because like everyone in the room said, there is no evidence. There is no proof. There is only this weird feeling, sitting at the edge of your memory.
    After listening to everyone speak, I feel embarrassed. Because now I know for sure that I had never had to be alone.
    I squeeze my eyes shut because something is breaking through, right up to the surface. Then, in my brain, there is a buzz and a hum and it feels familiar and not scary. So I relax into a calmness that I haven’t known in years.
    I know what I’m going to do.
    I know that when I’m ready,
I’m
going to share.

16.
     
    Before and after is how things are divided.

17.
     
    It had been eight months since my dad had left.
    It was a little bit cold for the beginning of July. I remember I rubbed my arms to get warmth into them. My mother was over by the sausage truck. She was drunk, and no matter how many times she tried putting the sauerkraut onto the bun, she kept missing. There were little piles of kraut by her feet. I was embarrassed.
    There was a man selling sparklers. He wore a hat. It wasn’t a porkpie hat. It was a cowboy hat. But it triggered something inside of me. Like, who was this man, standing there, casually selling sparklers? Smiling. Having a good time. I didn’t know him. But he had a little boy with him. His kid, who he kept touching on the head. And leaning down to smile at. There was so much love there.
    Whenever the little boy got a little too far away from the man, the man would remind him that he was right there. That he wasn’t going anywhere.
    And I think I broke.
    Right then.
    There was this stinging in my eyes. And this swell of salt. I had been numb for what seemed like an eternity. Sitting on myfront porch, looking out the window, waiting and hoping that my dad would come back.
    Surely he was going to come back. Surely he wasn’t going to leave me