What Happens Next

by Claire Swinarski

  It seemed nice—the idea of capturing a moment just as it was. Maybe that was why Sophie and Lex felt the need to post every single thing they did on their iPhones. I thought of the photo from the newspaper. Those poor people from twenty years ago didn’t know about all the bad stuff that would happen afterward, all the sad things taking place in the world. Mom didn’t even like to have the TV on because there was always some serious-looking newscaster talking about bombs or wars or car crashes. When Moose Junction residents put together their time capsule, it was like they were taking a picture of a time everything was perfect. What came next was just a big empty slate—until real life set in, taking over.

  I suddenly felt bad about uncovering the time capsule. Didn’t those people, like my own grandma, deserve to leave their stuff buried in a nice safe box? Weren’t some things better left underground?

  Jade let out a particularly loud snore and I knew the coast was clear. The TV had been turned off in Mom and Dad’s room, too; they usually went to sleep early.

  I got out of bed as quietly as possible and pulled on a black sweatshirt of Jade’s that I had grabbed from her closet. I tiptoed down the stairs, past a sleeping Norwegian elkhound, and out the door.

  The bike ride to the library wasn’t far, but it was chilly out. By the time I showed up, Simone and Leo were already walking around with their detectors.

  “You look like a bank robber,” said Simone.

  “You look like a neon sign,” I shot back. She had on a bright purple jacket you could see from a million miles away. Leo was in an MIT sweatshirt, which was at least a darker gray.

  “Just get to looking, stargazer,” she said, shoving the third metal detector into my hand.

  We split up and walked around the grounds to cover our bases. Just because the photo was taken out front of the library didn’t mean the capsule was actually buried there. Simone went to the side of the building, and Leo and I stayed out front, walking slowly with our metal detectors. I kept peering down the street. I had talked a big talk earlier, but this wasn’t illegal, was it? Officer J.J. couldn’t haul us off to jail? Was a library public property? I couldn’t help stealing glances up at the sky, too. There were so many stars out, it felt like we were in a painting. The Big Dipper danced across the sky, so easy to find, even without a telescope. No matter what craziness was happening down here on Earth, those stars just kept doing their thing.

  “So,” said Dr. Lacamoire. “You want to write a book?”

  “What?” My breath came out in a puff of air.

  “Joanna,” he said. “Why else would you want to meet her?”

  I was glad he couldn’t see how awkward I looked. Some people will just tell anyone who will listen what their dreams are. Hand them a megaphone and they’ll go to town. Like Jade’s friend Cassidee who’s always blabbing about how the second she turns eighteen she’s moving to Los Angeles and becoming an actress. Guess what? If it doesn’t happen because, hello, tons of people want to be on TV, everyone will be embarrassed for her. If you really want something, you shouldn’t tell the world about it. Then when it all goes to crap, the only person who thinks you’re stupid is you.

  Blair. The Joffrey. All those disappointed looks, all those questions about New York? She shouldn’t have let herself dream. She shouldn’t have—

  “Guys!” hissed Simone. “I’ve got something!”

  We dashed to the side corner of the property where Simone was standing. She waved us over hurriedly. Her detector was going nuts.

  “We’ve got it,” said Leo excitedly. “This has to be the capsule!”

  Simone grinned. “Finally.”

  “Why don’t we just dig it up now and be done with it?” said Leo. “We’re so close.” He squatted down and held a hand to the grass, as if he could reach through the Earth and snatch up his telescope. More than the telescope. He was desperate to find—

  No! We aren’t there yet. We’re at the part of the story where he’s frantic and fraught over the Star-Gazer Twelve. Where I’m making promises I’m not sure I can keep.

  “We can’t,” I said. “Too risky.” As if to prove my point, a lone car rumbled by. We all jumped about a foot.

  “Soon,” said Simone, putting her hand on Leo’s shoulder. “You’ll have it back soon. Right, Abby?”

  I swallowed. To dig up that time capsule would be a lie—to Harriet, to all the people who had buried it.

  But I could save Blair. Or, at least, Joanna Creech could. There wouldn’t be any pretending. We could send Anna Rexia away for good, waving as she drove down the street and out of our lives.

  I nodded.

  “Soon.”

  10

  AUGUST, TWO YEARS AGO

  Ten years old

  Two years before we set out with metal detectors to find hidden things, Dr. Leo Lacamoire was on a mission to repair something that had been broken. He wasn’t looking for a telescope; he was looking for a person, and he was desperate to find her. Two years ago, the Star-Gazer Twelve was safe underground, but he did not know that yet.

  Two years ago, I didn’t know who Dr. Leo Lacamoire was. I was about to enter the sixth grade. Middle school, where you didn’t get recess and had to switch classrooms for different subjects. Sophie, Lex, and I had decorated our binders with lyrics we liked and photographs of the three of us. Lex had a picture of Harry Styles without his shirt on glued to her science one, which my mom would never let me do.

  Blair was going to be a junior in high school, but she didn’t want to go. She wanted to be tutored.

  “Aleksander says that it’s time I start taking my career seriously. If I want to do ballet as a profession, I can’t be wasting my time learning about geometry,” Blair complained.

  We were at dinner, eating baked chicken. We’d all been trying to eat healthier since Mom had seen some documentary about the horror of trans fats. The night before, Dad had snuck the three of us out to get milkshakes, making us swear up and down we wouldn’t tell her. Blair wouldn’t order one, though; she said junk food slowed her down at ballet. She thought it was why she didn’t get the lead in Swan Lake this year even though she had done so well in Coppélia. The girl who had gotten the part Blair wanted was so skinny you could have broken her in half. I didn’t think it was pretty at all, but when I told Blair that, she just rolled her eyes, which made her look like Jade. Blair was always asking Mom if she could help cook, now—I heard them arguing about butter and whether or not Greek yogurt could really match up to sour cream.

  “I don’t know, Blair,” said Mom. “You’d miss out on so much. Don’t you want to be a normal kid for just a little bit longer?”

  “What do colleges think of homeschooling?” asked Dad, pointing his fork at her. “What would this do to your transcripts?”

  “You guys. I’m not trying to be a normal kid! I’m trying to follow my dreams, here.”

  “I say if she wants to be a homeschool freak, let her,” said Jade. “Then we wouldn’t have to go to the same school.” Jade was a freshman, thinking she was all that, wearing more makeup than she was supposed to and talking back to Mom and Dad. She was starting to get really annoying. Why did she have to say things like that? It was like she had forgotten that we had ever been best friends. If she was snarky enough, maybe she thought we’d all just poof into thin air.

  I picked at my brussels sprouts. Why do parents even make brussels sprouts? Does anyone in the entire world like them? I mean, I know they’re healthy, but man, at what cost?

  “Dad, you’re thinking too small,” said Blair. “Transcripts? I don’t care about transcripts. I’m not trying to go to Yale. I’m trying to get accepted into a professional company.”

  “But your grades are so high,” said Dad, looking a little crushed. Mom cared about your friends, your social life, your dental hygiene, and your general happiness. Dad cared what your report card said. “You won the science fair that time, remember? With the lava lamp . . .”

  “In fifth grade,” said Bl
air flatly. “Do you realize how much these girls who get hired practice? Seven, eight hours a day! They aren’t making homemade lava lamps!”

  They said they’d think about it. I already knew what would happen. Blair could be persistent when she wanted to be. Whether it was a custom-made tutu or a summer dance camp in Chicago, what she begged for, she usually got. She had Dreams. A Passion. She was Going Places. We were just standing in her shadow. Jade, with her eyeliner obsession and bad attitude, could try all she wanted to get out, but I was just fine in the shade.

  Sure enough, a few weeks later, Jade and I headed off on the bus while Blair got driven by my mom to Milwaukee every day. She had dance for seven hours and would then come home and race through math workbooks, checking all the right boxes to make sure she kept our parents happy. But she was no longer Blair who danced. She was a dancer named Blair. And it felt different.

  Other times, she felt like the same old Blair. That Halloween, she somehow convinced Jade to be the third Sanderson sister from Hocus Pocus, and we won the costume contest at Town Hall. I still have the picture of us leaning over a cauldron, crazy-eyed and wild-haired. That picture would probably go in my time capsule, too.

  There were things that had changed. Blair had always been stressed out about stuff, especially when it came to dance, but she started to take it to a whole new level. I’d see her light on in the middle of the night and hear her stretching, running in place, practicing her turns. When we went shopping for new Christmas dresses that year, Blair had suddenly started crying in the dressing room and wouldn’t tell anyone why. Mom had rubbed her back and talked to her in a quiet voice, just handing over her credit card to Jade and telling us to buy whatever and meet them in the car.

  Blair was working a ton on Planet Pirates, too, constantly drawing on her way to and from the ballet studio. It seemed like art was the only thing that calmed her down after dance got her all worked up. If she got done with homework after I’d gone to bed, I’d wake up to her drawings shoved under my door, a sticky note on top. What happens next? it read.

  None of us knew. That was the problem. If we had seen what was coming barreling down the road, we would have stopped it. But we were like those poor suckers burying their memories underground, and like Dr. Leo Lacamoire as things slipped out of his grasp. We had no idea of what was to come.

  11

  AUGUST, PRESENT DAY

  Twelve years old

  The morning after my midnight escapade, Mom and Dad dragged Jade and me to church, same as every Sunday. Usually I don’t mind Mass that much, but it was hot, and St. Rita’s didn’t have air-conditioning. Whenever anyone complains, Father Peter Patrick reminds them of Jesus living in a desert for forty days with no food or water, and everyone shuts up real fast. But it’s hard to listen to some Big Important Message when you’re sweating through your dress. Jade was trying to text, but Dad took her phone.

  Father Peter Patrick was going on and on about perseverance in the face of trials. I thought about what trials I’d been through. The time trials at school when we had to run around the track and I was usually the last one to finish. But I knew that wasn’t what he meant. He meant stuff like Sophie and Lex dumping me, or losing Blair, or figuring out what to do about this time capsule.

  Something about what he was saying got to Mom. She talked to Father Peter Patrick for a few minutes after church, and when we got home, she announced that she was cleaning out Blair’s room.

  “It’s time for a fresh start,” she said. “A reset.”

  “You’re just gonna go in the Sugar Plum Fairy’s room and dig through her stuff?” asked Jade.

  “She asked me to,” said Mom. It was only six days until the eclipse, seven until Blair was supposed to come home. “She said dance made her think bad thoughts, and she wanted anything related to it out of there. She even asked me if I could paint. It’s about a billion degrees outside, but I’m in the mood.”

  “I’ll help,” said Jade, which surprised me.

  “Aren’t you going to go floating or something?” I asked her.

  “God, do you think I’m incapable of doing anything nice?” snapped Jade. “Besides, it’s too hot to be outside. Even on the water.”

  “You better be praying with that language, Jade Marie. But I appreciate the extra set of hands. You in, Abigail? Your dad has to go fix the water heater over at Heron.”

  I shrugged. Something about it felt wrong. I went downstairs and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, scrolling through Sophie’s Instagram account while I ate. She’d perfected the selfie. We used to make fun of girls for pictures like that; zoomed-in squares of their face where they were trying to look serious but smile with their eyes. She had on a ton of mascara. Her mom hadn’t even let her wear makeup to school last year.

  Laughter.

  I glanced upstairs. Mom and Jade were laughing; howling, like they were watching the funniest movie in the world. What could be so hilarious about digging through a treasure trove of all the things we’d lost?

  I took the steps to our floor and saw them—Mom and Jade, lying on Blair’s bed, flipping through a photo album. It was chaos around them. There was a pile of tutus haphazardly thrown together in one corner, and papers all over Blair’s desk. Some of her old school workbooks were stacked to the side with a pencil cup she had made in third grade. Everything that had been under her bed was dragged out. A handful of paint swatches was lying on the ground, abandoned. Poor Misty Copeland was folded in half.

  “Oh, Abigail,” said Mom, gasping between her giggles. Jade was wiping away tears. “Get in here. This is too much.”

  Jade scooted over and I plopped next to her on the bed. Mom held out the album and showed me. The three of us as the Sanderson sisters, making ridiculous faces. Blair even had fake teeth.

  “You girls!” said Mom. “That was such a fun year. Even though Jade threw up all of her candy the next morning.”

  “Don’t remind me. Show her the one with the newspaper,” said Jade, barely able to speak from laughing. Mom flipped the page, and there was toddler Blair, making a ridiculous face, butt naked, with a newspaper draped over her head.

  “That face!” cried Mom. Jade cracked up. They paged through more photos, some I remembered, some I didn’t.

  Click. Blair, Jade, and me, in sparkly swimsuits, running through a sprinkler.

  Click. Obi as a puppy, licking Blair’s face.

  Click. Blair after one of her first recitals, in way too much makeup, sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. Jade next to her, pulling her nose up like a pig.

  Mom and Jade laughed and laughed, but I wanted to scream.

  This was just light from stars that had already died.

  This Blair—putting newspapers on her head, playing with Obi, being silly—she was gone. Gone in a pile of calories and toe shoes and therapy appointments, of lies and deceit and tears. We see those stars, and we pretend they’re there, but they’re not.

  I slammed the photo book shut and left, abandoning Mom and Jade silent behind me. I went into my room and closed the door, not even opening it for Obi’s scratches.

  “Abigail?” Mom asked an hour later, poking her head in. “You okay in there?”

  No. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Why was I the only one who could see the truth? They all still had that prom night feeling, like Blair could magically go backward. That hope kept knocking on their doors. I had lit mine on fire. It was gone, as gone as those stars, as gone as my sister and her dreams.

  Only I could bring them back. With Dr. Leo Lacamoire’s help.

  That night, there was a knock on our front door. It was Simone, inviting me to Leo’s observatory. The stars were particularly bright tonight, she told my mom. They were really something.

  I wanted to ask my dad along—he would have loved those telescopes. But Simone was giving me a Look, a we-have-something-to-discuss Look, and Dad was at the Green Lantern with Harrison anyway, so I hurried up to my room to grab Jade�
��s work sweatshirt.

  As I was walking back downstairs, I peeked into Blair’s room. So much of her stuff was gone, tucked neatly into boxes that would be placed into storage. Mom was nothing if not organized. Some of the posters were gone; Princess Leia and Hermione Granger still stared down from her walls, but Misty Copeland had disappeared without a trace. So had her certificates from ballet summer intensives and a few newspaper articles about her dance company that Mom had framed. Everything she had worked so hard for now had to be hidden, tucked away where no one could find them.

  Simone and I walked right past Eagle’s Nest.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Leo wants to set up a scope down by the shore, in this little cutout area. Zero lights. Also seems like a good place to go over the plan,” said Simone. “It really is a nice night.” She was right; it was so warm I really didn’t even need the sweatshirt. Once the sun had vanished, the intense heat had gone away, and we were left with the perfect temperature for a summer night. The stars were sprinkled around the sky, fireflies were sputtering across the lake, and you could hear the loons calling. It felt like we were in a postcard for northern Wisconsin.

  We walked a little farther in silence.

  “Ran into your mom earlier this afternoon at the hardware store,” said Simone.

  “I thought you were afraid of being caught in the hardware store,” I said.

  “I had to get some Sharpies. Leo’s very particular about his writing utensils. But anyway. I saw your mom buying paint. She said she was putting a new coat on your sister’s room.”