Everyone knows that the sky is going to fall, but nobody can seem to agree on why. Peter thinks if we poke enough holes in the ozone the Earth will start to deflate like a giant balloon, the sky folding down on us like a giant bedsheet. Charlie says there are termites that live in the sky and are slowly eating it away, piece by piece. Beth is convinced that Atlas is getting senile in his old age, and that eventually he’ll forget why he’s holding it up and wander off somewhere.
It’s not just the kids in my class, either. Every Thanksgiving my uncle ruffles my hair and reminds me it’s only a matter of time before the aliens come and steal the sky away from us, and then my dad calls him a racist and they start arguing. But my dad has theories too–-and so do all my friends, and all my friend’s dads, and even the president, though I think the president’s dad might be dead. Honestly, it feels like everyone seems to have some idea about why the sky is going to fall–-everyone except for me.
It’s not like I haven’t been trying. At lunch last week Veronica said her mom had to fire their cleaning lady because of something called ‘inflation’, and I thought that maybe if we ran out of whatever that was there wouldn’t be anything left to hold the sky up, but deep down I knew that sounded dumb. It was too much like Peter’s idea, anyway.
I know it doesn’t have to be original-–most of the kids in my class probably got their theories from older siblings or parents. My dad used to think it would be an asteroid, but last week he decided it would probably come from an interdimensional rift, whatever that is. My brother Jake agrees with him, but that’s only because he wants a laptop this summer. Jake plans things in advance. I asked him if he was going to tell dad what he really thought once he got the laptop, and Jake said no because he wanted a new bike for his birthday in November. Then I asked him if he ever planned on having any thoughts of his own, and he pushed me off the couch. I didn’t think that was very thoughtful of him.
In the third grade there was this girl at my school who almost drowned and said she saw how the sky was going to fall while she was dead. Her heart stopped for two whole minutes, it was on the news and everything. She said she was thrashing around in the water trying to come up for air, but the current had turned her all topsy-turvy and she accidentally swam down instead of up. She swam down and down and down and when she got to the riverbed there was some sort of weird membrane there, like watery Jell-o, or syrup if it wasn’t sticky. She pushed her head through and said she was looking down at the world through a huge tear in the sky, and as she watched the membrane dissolved, all the river water poured out, and the world filled up around her like a bathtub. She said the Earth is really just the bottom of a giant, cosmic river, and one day The Lord Our God is going to push through the membrane and drown us all, just like he did with Noah and the ark.
I think she’s full of shit, and I got suspended for two days for telling her so.
Last week my dad got a new boyfriend, and so we had to invite him over for dinner. Dad told me I needed to behave myself. I hate it when he says that. Still, I think I did pretty well, even when dad’s boyfriend tried to talk to me like we were already best friends. It went like this:
“And how old are you, Margaret?” he asked.
You shouldn’t start sentences with ‘and’. He wasn’t even saying anything before, and Mrs. Pinkleburry told us you’re not allowed to start sentences with ‘and’ or ‘because’. But I didn’t say that, because I was behaving myself. So, I said “eight” instead.
“Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?” he asked. I don’t like that question either, because I don’t know, and every time someone asks me it feels like I should have found an answer by now.
“Nine,” I said, not breaking eye contact. I’ve been told I have a way with words.
Dad twitched, but the boyfriend just smiled in that way you do when you aren’t really listening.
“Tell me, why do you think the sky is going to fall?”
I hate this question most of all, but I’ve been keeping an answer ready, just in case.
“Gravity, I expect. Isn’t that why most things fall?”
Dad’s boyfriend nodded, as if I’d made a really good point.
“That’s a really good point, Maggie–-can I call you Maggie? Great. Personally, I think it will be an interdimensional rift. Something your father and I happen to agree on.”
Dad nodded sagely, placing his hand on the boyfriend’s. That’s how I learned dad plans things in advance, too.
When I got to middle school, I decided the sky wasn’t going to fall at all. I know, I know, but I didn’t understand how cliché it was at the time–-that everybody goes through a phase like that. I guess it was just my turn. I only hung out with kids who didn’t think the sky was falling either, and we waxed poetic for hours about mass hallucinations and acid in the drinking water. But that was sixth grade. I’m an eighth grader now, and I know better: I keep that shit to myself.
Dad’s new boyfriend became dad’s new husband over the summer, and he likes asking me the same questions at dinner, night after night. He thinks it’s a little game we play, an inside joke that’s bringing us closer together. I can’t stand it, but he hasn’t noticed yet. Sometimes I feel like a politician at one of those debates my dad always makes me watch: I’ve become an expert at answering questions without actually saying anything at all.
Q: And how was your day, Mags?
A: If you ignore all the bad parts, it was pretty good.
Q: Have you thought any more about what you wanna be when you grow up, Magster?
A: Deaf.
Q: That’s very funny. You’re such a little jokester. Any boyfriends running around that I should know about, Magpie?
A: Not unless they’ve escaped the enclosure.
Q: Ever figured out why the sky is going to fall, Maggothy?
A: To get to the other side, of course.
Every night the same questions, every night the same answers, the same dry chuckles, the same ratatat of Jake’s fingernails on the table, his plate, his fork, his skull. Jake hasn’t been doing great, lately. Dad says it’s anxiety, that it’s very common with kids in our generation. Dad says the experts say spending your whole life under a sky that could fall at any moment for any number of reasons takes its toll on a person. And now, with social media and the internet, kids are doused with theories and graphics and deep dives 24/7, a constant stream of catastrophizing millennia in the making.
Dad shouldn’t start sentences with ‘and’, but I didn’t say so, because I am behaving myself.
That’s not why Jake is stressed, though. He’s stressed because he didn’t get into college. Eight applications, eight rejections. I know because I’ve been reading his mail. I’m good at slipping the envelopes open without tearing them and then sealing them back up again just right.
I’ve learned a lot of things from the mail. I learned that dad doesn’t know how to turn off paperless billing, and that his credit card statements say he spends more money on Magic cards than he does feeding us. I also learned that dad’s new husband orders pornographic magazines. Through the mail. I didn’t even know they still did that.
Jake’s been a lot more thoughtful lately, though. He asks me how I’m doing and doesn’t push me off the couch so much anymore. He even gave me the bike he got for his birthday way back when, since he’s got a nicer one now. I want to tell him that I think he’s cool, even if he doesn’t go to college. Especially if he doesn’t go to college. But then I’d have to admit I’d been reading his mail. Being nice to your brother is hard.
Last night I tried something new. When dad’s new husband asked if I’d decided on why the sky was going to fall, I told him I had. I told him I thought the Earth was just one ball in a string of anal beads the length of the solar system, and one day The Lord Our God was going to rip us out with enough force to shatter the sky into a million pieces of atomic confetti.
For some reason dad didn’t like that answer. But Jake did, and it was worth getting grounded to see him smile.
When Sam E. Sutin is not writing fiction he is Sam Macdonald, a graduate student pursuing his Ph.D. in mathematics in Lincoln, Nebraska. He has publications in both speculative and mathematics journals, and enjoys rock climbing, neglecting his cats, and the axiom of choice.