Gratuity Tucci

Daniel Landry Middle School

8th Grade

THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY

It was Moving Day.

Should that be capitalized? I never would have capitalized it before, but now Moving Day is a national holiday and everything, so I think it should be.

Capitalized.

Anyway.

It was Moving Day, and everybody was crazy. You remember. It was chaos; people running around with armfuls of heirloom china and photo albums, carrying food and water, carrying their dogs and kids because they forgot that their dogs and kids could carry themselves. Crazy.

I remember one lady with a mirror, and I thought, Why save a mirror? And then I watched her run down the street with it in both hands, arms outstretched like she was chasing vampires. I saw a group of white guys dressed as Indians who were setting fires and dropping tea bags down manhole covers. There was a man holding a chessboard high over his head like a waiter, looking all around him on the pavement, shouting, “Has anyone seen a black bishop?” over and over. I remember Apocalypse Hal was on the corner by the Laundromat. Hal was a neighborhood street preacher who worked at the fish and crab place next door. He wore a sandwich board sign of Bible verses and shouted angry things at passersby like “The end times are near” and “Seafood sampler $5.99.” Now his sign just read “TOLD YOU SO,” and he looked more anxious than angry.

“I was right,” he said as I passed.

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“About the fish or the apocalypse?” I asked. He followed beside me.

“Both. That should count for something, shouldn’t it? That I was right?”

“I don’t know.”

“I didn’t think it would be aliens,” he mumbled. “I thought it would be angels with flaming swords. Something like that. Hey! Maybe they are angels! You find some pretty weird descriptions of them in the Good Book. There’s this one angel in Revelation with three heads and wheels.”

“I think they’re just aliens, Hal,” I said. “Sorry.”

Apocalypse Hal stopped, but I kept walking. After a few seconds he called after me.

“Hey! Girl! D’you need help carrying stuff? Where’s your pretty mom?”

“I’m going to meet her right now!” I shouted. I didn’t look back.

“Haven’t seen her in a while!”

“’Sokay! Meeting her!” I said. It was a lie.

I was all alone because Mom had already been called up to the spaceships by signals from the mole on her neck. It was just me and my cat, and I have to tell you, I wasn’t feeling too friendly toward the cat. I’d carried her for a while, but she squirmed like a bag of fish, so I set her down. When I walked she followed me, flinching whenever someone ran by or honked a car horn, which was all the time. It was step step jerk, step step jerk, like she was doing the conga. Eventually I looked behind, then all around, and didn’t see her anymore.

“Fine,” I said. “See ya, Pig.” And that was that. My cat’s name is Pig. I probably should have mentioned that.

The weird thing about writing for people in the future is that you don’t know how much you need to explain. Do people still keep pets in your time? Do you still have cats? I’m not asking if cats still exist—right now we have a lot more cats than we know what to do with. But I’m not really writing this for people right now.

I mean, if anyone besides my teacher ever sees these words, it’ll be because I won the contest and this essay was buried in the time capsule with the photographs and newspapers, and it was dug up a hundred years later, and now you’re reading it in, like, a five-legged chair while snacking on roast planet or whatever. And it seems like you should know everything about my time already, but then I think of how little I know about 1913, so maybe I should clear up a few things. This story starts in June 2013, about six months after the alien Boov arrived. Which also makes it six months after the aliens completely took over, and about a week after they decided the entire human race would probably be happier if they all moved to some little out-of-the-way state where they could keep out of trouble. At the time I lived in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was on the eastern side of the United States. The United States was this big country where everybody wore funny T-shirts and ate too much.

I’d been living by myself after Mom left. I didn’t want anyone to know. I had learned to drive our car short distances by nailing cans of corn to my church shoes so I could reach the pedals. I made a lot of mistakes at first, and if anyone was walking on the sidewalk at 49th and Pine after dark on March 3rd, 2013, I owe you an apology.

But eventually I got really good. Like, NASCAR good. So, while most people were reporting to the Boovish rocketpods for relocation to Florida, I figured I’d drive there myself, with no help from anyone. I got directions off the Internet, which wasn’t as easy as it used to be, because the Boov had started shutting it down. But the route looked easy. The website said it would take three days, but most drivers weren’t as good as I was, and they wouldn’t be eating frosting and root beer so they could drive nonstop, either. I worked my way through knots of people, past a woman with a baby in a crystal punch bowl, past a man carrying rotting boxes that bled baseball cards all over the streets, and finally to the community tennis courts, where I’d left the car.

It was a little hatchback, the size and color of a refrigerator and only about twice as fast. But it didn’t use much gas, and I didn’t have much money. I’d drained our bank account, and there was less than I’d expected in the rainy-day fund that Mom had kept at the bottom of an underwear drawer in a panty hose egg labeled “DEAD SPIDERS.” As if I hadn’t always known it was there. As if I wouldn’t have wanted to look at dead spiders.

I threw the camera bag and backpacks into the backseat, and suddenly got a dead weight in my stomach from the loneliness of it all. I turned my head this way and that, looking past the panicky people. Looking past a man wearing oven mitts and holding a pot roast, for God’s sake, pardon my language. I don’t know what or who I was looking for—certainly not the cat. But I called her anyway.

“Pig!” I yelled. “PIIIIIIIIIIG!”

Shouting “Pig” outdoors usually attracts some attention, but no one paid me any that day. Actually, on my third “Pig,” one guy ducked, but I’m still not sure what that was about.

Anyway, just as I was turning to get in the car, a fat gray cat came barreling across the street and leaped up onto the dashboard. She turned around and stretched her cheek out for a scratch.




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