No kid wants to wake up early and go to school.
Luckily, for twelve-year-old Nash Asterfield and his younger siblings, Tricia and Shawn, that is not the case for the next twelve to thirteen weeks. Summer vacation starts today, and he plans on spending it like he always does. Getting out of the house, soaking up the warm weather, and hanging out with his friends in the neighborhood and parks. Skateboarding, shooting hoops, and trading baseball and Pokémon cards, while also enjoying classic summertime activities such as the town swimming pool and water balloon fights. But most of all, he hopes to get a break from Tricia’s constant insults and cruelty as well as Shawn’s whining and needy behavior during the day.
First things first: his plans is to sleep until noon to celebrate. Right now, Nash is sleeping in his room at his father’s house. Okay, it’s not exactly his room. He has to share it with Shawn who is four years younger than him. Nash has wanted to decorate this room with all sorts of sports equipment, cookbooks, and other things he likes. But as life would have it, most of the room is covered in race car posters and toy trucks in so many sizes, from as big as you can fit a large teddy bear in the driver’s seat to as tiny as you can step on it before you realize it’s there. That’s always a pain for him.
Nash is insatiably jealous that Trisha has her own room whenever they stay at their father’s house. However, he isn’t going to let it or his siblings ruin his summer.
But, all of a sudden, his alarm clock on the bedside table in between the two boys’ beds goes off at precisely six o'clock in the morning. It is not its usual beeping sound, either. Instead, it is a recording of their father’s voice saying the same thing over and over while laughing somewhat maniacally. “It’s time to wake up! Adventure awaits! Hahaha!” He—or rather, the alarm itself—repeats.
Shawn is woken up, startled by this, and then he groans out of frustration. Nash pulls his pillow up over the back of his head to try and block out the noise. He could have sworn that he turned off the alarm setting the night before, so why is it acting like the school year never ended? And how did the noise change from beeping to this strange message sounding like his father? They try to ignore it, but a minute or two later, the clock’s recording is unable to bear anymore.
“Nash, the alarm,” Shawn says groggily through his blankets that he has pulled up over his head, “Shut the alarm off now!”
Nash reaches out one hand and slams the side of his fist on the snooze button as hard as he can, and he does it all while his eyes are still closed and drawn to sleep. The alarm cuts off in the middle of its message and there is peace and quiet once more. Both boys think it might just be a glitch, or worse, another prank from their sister, brushing it off as nothing more than that because they are way too tired to think right now.
The next couple of minutes pass quietly until the sound of their bedroom door swinging wide open spooks them right out of their sleep. They both sit upright in bed to see their ten-year-old sister, Tricia, standing in the doorway. She is still wearing her pink plaid satin pajamas, with her foot raised as she has just kicked the door open, and she looks furious.
“You two are going to pay big time!” she shouts at her older brother.
“Hey! Don’t just kick the door in,” Shawn yells back, “I’ve told you to stop doing that.”
“Yeah, what's your problem?” Nash says, annoyed, as he plops back down into bed like nothing happened.
“I should be the one asking you that! Because if there's one thing you morons should know by now, it's to STAY OUT OF MY ROOM!” Tricia shouts. “And you especially don't mess with my stuff or reset my alarm clock on the first morning of summer! Not to mention you dubbed it over sounding like Dad with a stupid message about adventure or something!”
Nash peeks his face out from under covers, his eyes showing genuine confusion. “What are you talking about? I never went in your room,” he says, then he points his thumb towards Shawn, “Maybe it was the shrimp over there.”
“It wasn’t me, I swear!” Shawn protested, “And it’s not nice of you to call me a SHRIMP. It had to be Nash, because I certainly didn’t touch your alarm clock. And what makes you think either of us would make ourselves sound like Dad to do that, anyway?”
Tricia stomps over to her older brother's bedside, hops onto it and starts jumping on the mattress with Nash still laying on it. More than several times, her feet land on parts of Nash's body parts—like his legs, arms, and stomach—but she maintains her balance and keeps jumping.
“OW, OW, OW! Hey! Stop that! Ow!” Nash cries out in pain.
“I. Want. The. Truth. NOW!” Tricia demands, each word coming out with a pause in between them in precision with her jumping.
“Tricia, stop that,” Shawn says, “Are you trying to get Nash into the hospital on the first day of summer?”
“You don’t tell me what to do, you little runt!” Tricia shouts at her little brother, “But if you’re that jealous of a broken bone or two, you’ll be next!”
Her remark makes Shawn all teary-eyed.
All of a sudden, the twelve-inch screen on Nash’s desktop computer across from the foot of his bed turns on with a brief showing of static at first. This catches both kids’ attention just before the screen displays a video chat showing their father’s head on the monitor. He looks chipper as ever with a huge grin and the pair of goggles that never stop covering his eyes, and he talks through the side-by-side computer speakers, “GOOD MORNING, my non-Earlybird children! I trust you’ve noticed the new improvements I made to your alarm clocks,” he says.
“Hold on, you did this?” Nash inquires. “Why?”
“To wake you up early enough for all the fun we’re going to have this summer, obviously! Anyhow, I’d like you to come downstairs and—” that is when he pauses once he sees Tricia slowing her jumping on Nash’s bed but still hurting him with each bounce, “Hey, what are you two doing right now?” he asks.
“Just trying to get some truth out of this punk, Dad,” Tricia replies as she grinds her bare foot into the side of Nash’s face, forcing him to smell the stink.
“Haha! You’re my persistent, justice-seeking child, indeed,” the father bursts out into laughter. He continues, “Just come downstairs to the kitchen and eat with your good old dad. Don’t want your breakfast getting cold.”
“Wait…you made breakfast?” Tricia asks, unconvinced of the reality that their father actually took time out of his busy schedule to take care of his own family.
“Of course!” he responds. “Hurry now!”
“She’s a LIAR, Dad. She’s hurting me. Help me, please!” Nash says, practically begging, but the father signs off of the video chat halfway through the sentence.
As the screen goes to black again, Tricia stops jumping. She stands there, staring at the computer screen, and just then, the alarm clock on the boy’s nightstand table starts up again. “It’s time to wake up! Adventure awaits! Hahaha!” The alarm clock says again in the father’s voice.
Tricia looks in its direction, with one of her eyebrows higher than the other and her head tilted to one side.
“Why are you just standing there?! Get down now, Tricia! You're seriously hurting me. You’re lucky Dad won’t let me press charges against you,” Nash says through gritted teeth, trying to catch his breath after having the wind knocked out of him.
Tricia surprisingly does as he says, carefully stepping down from his bed. Shawn leans over and yanks the plug from the alarm clock out of its outlet out of frustration while also holding back his tears welling up in his eyes. Not that either of his siblings have cared about his feelings.
“Jeez, have you ever considered you might be gaining too much weight these days, because that really hurt!” Nash snaps at his sister.
He then gets out of bed and proceeds towards the window to open the curtains. He also expects his little sister to refute his remark with a snappy comeback line, but instead she stays silent, deeply in thought.
“Something’s fishy,” Tricia finally says.
“Huh?” Nash tilts his head.
“What do you mean?” Shawn asks.
“Think about it,” she begins, “Dad tweaked with both of our alarm clocks to go off at six A.M., and with that annoying message. But what’s more suspicious is that Dad is up at this time and telling us to come for breakfast. Doesn't he usually spend most of his time in the basement? Plus, since when does he ever cook for us?”
Hmm. She does have a point there, Nash thinks to himself, scratching his chin.
Their father, Dr. Ashton Asterfield, has never been the responsible fatherly parent. The man tends to tinker with his inventions almost every hour of every day, leaving his children to fend for themselves when it comes to meals and self-care.
He usually leaves them their weekly allowances on the kitchen counter every Monday morning before they go to school and before spending most of his time in the basement that he modified into his own personal laboratory where he creates wacky things like something out of science fiction movies. The only time the kids get to see him is just before their bedtime when he tells them “Goodnight” before returning to his precious basement.
No reading bedtime stories. No tucking into bed. Not even a simple “How was your day?” out of genuine curiosity.
But right now, Nash is still too sleepy and in pain from his sister literally jumping all over him to think about anything so complicated. “Well, maybe he just had a revelation and is finally getting his act together as a dad. He is going to be looking after us the most this summer while Mom’s off teaching at that university in New York,” he says sleepily, while rubbing his eyes.
“Maybe Nash is right,” Shawn concurs with his older brother for once, “Maybe Daddy is just trying to take good care of us for the time being. What’s so wrong about that?”
“Nice thought, morons, but I doubt Dad is the type of guy to have that kind of epiphany overnight.” Tricia scratches the back of her head while pacing the floor.
“I think you’re reading too much into things this early in the morning.” Nash says as he pulls back the curtains. “You’ve been playing way too many video games before bedtime. Maybe just relax and—HOLY CRUD!”
As soon as he looks out the window, beyond the glass is what looks like nighttime darkness with a more than usual twinkling starry sky, but that’s not what has got him so shocked.
Tricia and Shawn hurry over to the window and stand beside Nash, and they stare out the window totally dumbstruck.
“Hey, why the heck is it still dark out?” Tricia asks.
A space satellite passes by the window. The three kids watch silently as it floats across the way. Then, on a whim, they look down and see the most beautiful yet terrifying thing in all of their lives. The Earth. From the view of Nash's window, the little blue planet that they have called home now looks no bigger than a soccer ball, like it can fit in the palms of their hands.
“This…This can’t be real, right?” Shawn asks aloud, not sure if he is going to like the answer.
“This has to be a sick joke,” Tricia says, her eyebrows furrowed into a mean glare.
“Hey, where are you going?” Nash asks as he watches as Tricia suddenly gets down from the windowsill and starts running out of his bedroom and into her room.
“NO. FREAKING. WAY!” Tricia shouts.
Nash and Shawn hear her from down the upstairs hallway. They follow her shortly after, but they don’t actually enter the room, just stand in the doorway. And from that angle, both boys can see that the exact same view from their bedroom window with the Earth floating in an endless expanse of starry black nothingness is out the window next to Tricia’s pink cupboard closet.
Tricia turns back around with her eyebrows getting wrinkled and says, “Come on. I say we go check all the other windows in the house.”
Both Nash and Shawn nod their heads. For once, they are all on the same page.
One by one, the three young siblings go to every available window in the house from the bathrooms to their father’s bedroom and then rushing downstairs into the living room. The living room has a sliding glass back door at the rear of the house. Another view of dotty star-filled darkness and the Earth. Next, they go into the kitchen where their father, Dr. Ashton Asterfield, has been waiting for them.
“Ah, my three lovely and naïve offspring, procreated from myself and your beloved mother. Good to have you here on this fine morning. Shall we—WHOA!” He says as he gets up from his chair to greet his children, but they push right past him to look out the window above the sink. Still inky blackness speckled with countless shining stars.
“It sure doesn’t look like morning outside, does it, Dad?!” Tricia tells off her father as she points her index finger out the window.
The last place they need to check is the dining room. The dining room is at the front of the house with a row of four large windows spread across the wall on the front face of their home. Nash, Tricia, and Shawn stare out the dining room windows as panic washes over both of their trembling small bodies, eyes widened and jaws dropped toward the floor.
There is no denying it. This is not their neighborhood at all. They are not even on Earth at all anymore. They look at each other for a brief moment then back out the windows before they begin screaming at the tops of their lungs.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
ns216.73.217.123da2
and then Add to home screen.