What Happens Next

by Claire Swinarski

  “Your back, Leo. Stop,” said Simone.

  But she and I couldn’t get it out—we were a grad student who loved Shakespeare and a twelve-year-old liar. Not exactly power lifters. We needed all the help we could get, even if it was from a scientist with an achy back.

  “Good thing we came,” panted Simone. “What were we thinking? You’d never be able to get this out alone. Science Genius and Literature Dork need a Common Sense 101 class.”

  “We’ll never be able to get it out together,” I said, hoping desperately that I was right and that that box would stay buried where it belonged.

  We only had it up halfway, but Leo, in a stroke of unfortunate brilliance, just leaned down and heaved the top off.

  “We should have thought of that,” hissed Simone, smacking herself in the forehead. “Duh.”

  Leaning down, they started pulling out items. Baseball cards. A Bible. But no telescope.

  “No,” he whispered. “No.”

  It wasn’t there.

  I knew it wouldn’t be there.

  And that was the lie.

  Because I knew exactly where that telescope was. And I knew it wasn’t in that hole.

  “Leo,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. He was practically shaking. “But—but that picture. And she swore! She swore this is where she put it!” He put his head in his hands.

  “Leo,” I said louder. “I . . .”

  Simone put her hand on my arm. “Not now, Abby,” she said quietly. The sun was completely blocked and we stood in darkness. It was incredible, like the middle of the night in the middle of the day. Some confused birds started chirping, and we heard a dull roar come from Main Street. Here it was, the moment I’d been waiting for all summer. Here it was, the moment I could tell the truth.

  Tears started to poke behind my eyes, and no matter how hard I blinked, I couldn’t get rid of them. I wished I could go back to when Dr. Leo Lacamoire had first told me about the telescope. No, I wished I could go back to the night I first saw him, when I wished for adventure and the stupid universe gave me exactly what I’d asked for. I would tell the truth this time. I would.

  But we couldn’t go back—none of us could. Not me, not Blair, not Dr. Leo Lacamoire, PhD.

  “Leo. I know where it is,” I said, choking out a sob. “The telescope . . .”

  A car door slammed and we all jumped.

  “Who is it?” called out Simone, practically shaking. “Crap,” she muttered. “Crap, crap, crap.”

  “Abby?”

  And there was Jade. My sister, holding a heavy black case—the same case she had taken from under my bed while Simone and I were picking up Leo. That case had not been underground. It had been in my very own house, in my very own room, waiting to be revealed. The center of that tangled web was inside, being lugged this very minute by the sister I had thought hated me.

  Dr. Leo Lacamoire looked at me. Then back to the case. Then back at me. His eyes were confused.

  “What’s going on, Abby?” he asked. Simone was staring, too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice cracking. I was going to cry.

  “I tried to hurry,” Jade said, her own voice wobbling. “I thought I could beat you here. I thought—”

  I shook my head. This wasn’t Jade’s fault. She dragged the case over, unsure of what to do with it, before deciding to just lay it at my feet. I opened the clunky silver clasps, and there it was—the Star-Gazer Twelve, lying in red velvet.

  Just as it had been when I stole it five years ago.

  Simone looked at me, completely confused.

  “What on earth is going on? Where did that come from?” asked Simone.

  But Leo didn’t even care. He reached for it, and before I knew what he was doing, he picked up the heavy scope and unscrewed the focuser. He shook it, and out fell a small, rolled-up piece of paper. He unrolled it. It was a picture—a super faded one—of a young Dr. Leo Lacamoire, and a little girl. They were pressed cheek to cheek, laughing.

  Then the great Dr. Leo Lacamoire, PhD, world-renowned scientist, bent his head and began to cry.

  And the sun began to shine again.

  18

  AUGUST, FIVE YEARS AGO

  Seven years old

  Five years before I dug up that time capsule for the second time, when the middle of the day turned as dark as the night, I was seven years old.

  A summer of being seven means sunshine and library books and the freedom of days with no responsibilities. My sisters were eleven and thirteen, both older and younger than I was the summer of Dr. Leo Lacamoire. We did everything together when Blair wasn’t at dance and Jade wasn’t at piano lessons, which she still took back then. They were my best friends.

  I didn’t have a ton of other people to hang around. Sophie had gone to spend the summer with her grandparents in Denver, and Lex still lived in Minneapolis. All I had was Blair and Jade, really, and all they had was me, because our town was tiny and neither of them could drive yet. But that was fine. They were all I needed. I would have chosen them, anyway. Blair was our fearless leader, throwing down dares and trying to be the bravest. Jade was fierce, flighty, funny, always making us laugh. And me? I was just along for the ride.

  One day, we were at the library. We were almost always at the library. Blair liked to read comics, Jade always chose books about girls her own age going to normal schools and having normal problems, and I would read pretty much anything. We would pick out books and bring them by the bagful to the dock, where we’d smear on sunscreen and peel clementines and read for hours.

  “Nice shirt,” someone snorted. I turned and saw a boy a little older than me; maybe Jade’s age.

  I looked down. I had a Stormtrooper on my shirt. So what?

  “Thanks . . . ,” I said nervously.

  He rolled his eyes. “Bet you don’t even know the difference between a clone trooper and a Stormtrooper.”

  My face got hot. I do, too, I wanted to yell.

  “Girls don’t know anything about Star Wars,” he said. “Do you even know what Luke’s home planet is?”

  Tatooine.

  “Or who Ahsoka is?”

  Anakin’s Padawan.

  “Or who became the first chancellor of the New Republic?”

  “Mon Mothma,” a voice snapped. It was Blair, with her hands on her hips. She glared at the boy.

  He rolled his eyes and turned around to leave, but not before Jade walked over.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you being a jerk to my sisters?”

  “No,” he muttered.

  “Good,” said Jade. “Because I’d hate to have an issue.” Jade had no idea what a Padawan was, let alone who had been Anakin’s, but she was the only one allowed to tease me and Blair, and everyone knew it.

  If someone had talked to me like that, I would have burst into tears. But he grumbled something under his breath and left, chasing after his parents. My face was still hot. I felt like I was going to cry.

  “Abby,” said Jade, shaking her head. “You have to stand up for yourself. You can’t just let people be jerks like that.”

  Blair snickered. “Did you see his face when Jade laid into him?”

  Jade flipped her hair. “Ooh, big tough guy, picking on a little kid. Whatever.” She made a face, mimicking his wide eyes, and Blair and I cracked up.

  “Me bully,” Jade groaned like a caveman, stomping around. “Me Star Wars expert. Me eat little girls for breakfast.”

  Harriet walked over, her hands overflowing with books. “You girls,” she said. “I heard that little runt. What an idiot.” Were adults allowed to call kids idiots? Harriet did whatever she wanted.

  “You all right, Abby?” I nodded, feeling better. Blair and Jade were like my own superhero cape. You couldn’t mess with me without messing with them. I didn’t need to be tough. I had them. And they were always there, a million times stronger than I was.

  “Well, I know something that might cheer you up,” she said quietly. �
��I know a secret.”

  “What?” asked Blair excitedly. Summer days were all starting to look the same. We wanted adventure. We wanted a quest. A secret, whispered to us by Harriet, one that would transform our day into an epic battle. We wanted to be like girls in books, ones with voyages to go on. We wanted to be larger than we were.

  That’s when Harriet told us about the telescope buried outside. She had just stumbled upon the archives while helping Waukegan County scan them to the library database, and she knew I loved everything about outer space. Even though Jade couldn’t have cared less about the stars, it was still exciting—a telescope worth a gazillion dollars, buried underground? A hidden time capsule right here in Moose Junction?

  I wanted that telescope. It was all I could think about for days. When Blair came into my and Jade’s room one morning, we knew instantly she had a mission. She was holding a bowl of cereal, but she hadn’t even touched it.

  “I say we dig it up,” she said.

  “Dig what up?” Jade rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She had already forgotten.

  “The Star-Gazer Twelve. The telescope! It doesn’t deserve to be buried underground. It should be used,” she said.

  “First of all, it’s a telescope, not a lost puppy. Second of all, we can’t dig it up! Are you crazy? It’s a time capsule. It’s supposed to stay buried,” said Jade. “We’d probably go to jail or something.”

  Blair shrugged, turning around.

  Then she made some chicken noises. The sisterly kiss of death.

  Jade threw a pillow at her, bawking right back, and that’s when I knew—we were digging up that time capsule.

  That night was the perfect time to do it. Mom and Dad were going into Washport with some friends, and we had rented a movie and ordered pizza. Blair was thirteen, old enough to babysit us. We waved goodbye, promising to lock the doors, knowing they wouldn’t be home till late. They didn’t go out often, but when they did, they made the most of it.

  We all rode our bikes to the library. It was the most exhilarating thing I had ever felt. It was pitch-black outside, and we were in thick sweatshirts. I was practically shaking I was so nervous, but Blair and Jade were just laughing. They weren’t nervous at all. They would have walked through fire and dared it to burn them. They were made for voyages.

  When we got there, we dug up the time capsule. Harriet had told us right where it was, and Blair had brought a shovel from the garage. She did most of the digging—she was so strong from ballet back then, when food meant fuel and muscle and endurance—while Jade cleared away rocks and dirt. I kept a lookout. When the shovel hit the case, we realized how big it was—that sinking realization Simone and Leo had had, that this box was not a shoebox but a heavy metal thing that five strong townspeople had had to lower into the ground in 2000. Jade had been the one who reached down and simply yanked the top off. That’s when we saw it—there was the telescope, in its heavy black case. We opened it up and just stared at it.

  “Holy crap,” Blair breathed. “This is awesome. I can’t wait to try it out.”

  “Try it out? I thought we were just looking at it,” I said.

  She laughed. “No way! This thing is ours now. No one will ever know. Besides Harriet. It’s our secret.” A secret, like a pact—like a promise that would tie us together. Blair and Jade and me. The three of us braided together over this amazing thing we had discovered.

  We did take it home, but we couldn’t even figure out how to put it together. It didn’t matter—the fun part had been discovering it, and reburying the time capsule. Nobody even noticed the lump of dirt, and if they had, they wouldn’t have cared. It was Moose Junction. I’d explained that to Dr. Leo Lacamoire and Simone, but they didn’t get it. People here saw a lump of dirt, they assumed it was just a lump of dirt.

  I kept the Star-Gazer Twelve under my bed. Blair probably forgot about it. I was almost positive Jade had. Even I forgot about it most days. But once in a while, I would lug it out and run my hand over it. I never did figure out how to put the parts together, and besides, I couldn’t risk Mom and Dad bursting in and noticing a telescope that definitely wasn’t mine. Instead, I would just admire it, in its weather-protectant case that had kept it safe all these years. I would remember a time when everything was perfect.

  I’ve had it ever since.

  I am a liar, remember? I told you that, way back on page one. It’s not my fault you didn’t listen. You should trust people when they tell you what they are. You should believe them when they are admitting their own smallness.

  19

  Once upon a time, there was a brilliant scientist named Dr. Leo Lacamoire.

  Leo found new planets and studied the ones we already knew. He made maps of the stars. He knew everything about the moon. He once went to the White House to advocate for the space program.

  This scientific genius was madly in love with a woman named Trish. Trish was from Wisconsin, and she was a journalist. She interviewed Dr. Leo Lacamoire for Time magazine, and he told her that her eyes were more beautiful than all the stars in the sky combined. (Simone rolled her eyes at that part, but I thought it was nice.)

  Dr. Leo Lacamoire and Trish didn’t get married, though, because they traveled too much. Leo was always giving talks in places like Beijing and Venice and London, and Trish was busy traveling around the world to write stories for publications. But whenever they could meet up, they did. Leo wrote her love poems and sent her roses, and Trish said that if he stopped traveling and settled down, she would, too. But the only thing Leo loved more than Trish was space, and you couldn’t study space in one place. You had to go find it.

  Trish and Leo ended up having a baby. Trish pleaded for him to quit traveling the world and spending time looking up at the stars and instead just take care of her and the baby. But the truth was, even though Leo loved Trish and the baby very much, he was blinded by his work. (“Like you can be blinded by the sun,” I said. “Exactly,” Simone smiled back.)

  Over time, that baby grew and grew. Dr. Leo Lacamoire always sent her nice birthday presents and called her on Christmas and saw her when he could, but he was becoming more and more famous. Then MIT asked him to be a professor. Trish thought finally, she and the baby could move out to Massachusetts and they could be a family. But the world-renowned scientist told her not to. He wasn’t in love with her anymore, even though he still loved her. (“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I sighed. “You’re telling me,” said Simone.)

  Trish was heartbroken, but so was the baby, who was now not a baby at all but actually a little girl. Trish pointed Dr. Leo Lacamoire out to the girl when he would be on TV, but slowly he called less and less, and he never went to visit them anymore. He still sent presents on her birthday, but that little girl started to not like her dad so much. Because what kind of dad has time to find new planets but doesn’t have time to find McFarland, Wisconsin? No kind of dad.

  So that little girl grew and grew, watching her dad on TV, but getting really mad at him. One day, when she was seventeen years old, she went out east to look at colleges with her mom. She asked her dad if they could get lunch. She was going to tell him everything she thought—that he had been a bad dad her whole life, and that she didn’t understand why he acted that way, but that she loved him and wanted to give him another chance. They met up in his office, but after she’d been there for less than a minute, someone knocked on door. The New York Times was on the phone and needed a quote about some new black hole images. Dr. Leo Lacamoire left, and the little girl—not a little girl anymore, a teenage girl—had to wait and wait and wait. And while she waited, she got even angrier. Because she was being very nice giving him a chance, and he was taking advantage of her. So she saw a fancy telescope behind his desk, and a case next to it, and she just snapped. She stole that telescope and ran out the door.

  Dr. Leo Lacamoire called her and called her, but she wouldn’t answer the phone. She waited for the cops to show up at her door and demand the telescope
back, but they never did.

  Every summer, she and Trish went to a town called Moose Junction for a week. That summer was going to be the town’s hundredth-birthday celebration, one that would include the creation of a time capsule, she’d heard. And that’s when Lyra Lacamoire had an idea: an idea that snuck into her heart and spun a web around a secret.

  She hated that stupid telescope. Every time she looked at it, she thought of her mean dad who loved his newsletter subscribers more than he loved her. And so when the town created the time capsule that summer, she did the most horrible thing she could think of—she buried that telescope right down in it, so that nobody could ever find it. It would never be used—it would gather dust, buried deep in the ground.

  Eighteen years later, that little girl was thirty-five years old. She had not talked to her dad since. But she was very, very sick. She had lung cancer, even though she’d never smoked one cigarette. She was thinking about her life and her greatest mistake: stealing that telescope from a man who simply didn’t know how to love people the way he loved planets. She called her father, who had been trying to track her down for years, and told him everything.

  But Dr. Leo Lacamoire, PhD, had learned so much in those years, and not just about gamma-ray bursts. He had seen so much of the galaxy that he had begun to feel small: so small, like a dot in the huge landscape of the world. He had thought that the more he knew, the more important he would become, but with all the speeches and awards and TV appearances, he had realized that the opposite was true. The more he knew, the sadder he was. He was no longer Leo, the guy who loved the stars and research and a pretty girl from Wisconsin. He was Dr. Lacamoire, and that person felt entirely different. When he filmed his Netflix special, he came home at night to a sad, empty hotel room and had vending machine candy for dinner. That can make anyone reevaluate their life choices.