by Meg Leder
“Good, good,” I say, looking out the window at the water tower we’re passing. That’s when I see it: another spray-painted message like the one on the I-71 overpass this morning, all in red capital letters, only this one spreads across the body of the metal tank: WHAT DO THE STARS LOOK LIKE YESTERDAY.
“Look,” I say, pointing as we pass it.
Em laughs. “What do you think it means?”
“I have no clue. But whoever put it up there clearly isn’t scared of heights. Charlie and I saw another one over I-71 this morning.”
“Can you imagine being that fearless?” Em asks.
“No.” What I can imagine is falling to my death onto the highway or crashing down onto the parking lot from the top of the water tower, but I don’t say that. Instead, I sit back in the seat and try to pretend everything is just fine, which is a lot less terrifying than the alternative.
Nine
MAYBE BECAUSE IT’S HOT everyone thinks it’s the perfect day for a root-beer float, or maybe the Friday lunch crowd is always this big, but there’s a surprisingly long line at the Float, so Em drops me off while she runs to the bank to get some euros for her trip.
I stand in line, trying not to feel too bad for missing my first day of my internship and trying harder not to obsess over my conversation with Em. Instead, I study the sneakers of the girl in front of me, rearrange the letters in the first line of the menu to spell other words, try to recite all the words from the newest Taylor Swift song by heart, look at all the nearby buildings.
I realize there’s a new storefront next to the Float where the Lucky Pup Day Spa used to be. The signage catches my attention. It’s bright red and sky blue, painted like a graffiti tag, and it simply says CARLA’S CERAMICS. I always wished I could take ceramics or painting as electives in high school, but I packed my schedule with extra AP science classes instead. I wish I had time to do something like that this summer.
A perky voice interrupts my thoughts.
“Your order?”
The black girl at the counter has thick curls pulled up in a high ponytail, but even with that, I still have about two inches on her height-wise. She’s wearing dark-framed glasses and has at least twenty dangly silver charm bracelets on her wrist. She stands patiently, smiling at me and waiting.
“Um, yeah,” I start, but she’s scrunching her nose and staring more closely at me. “Two root-beer floats, one with just half the ice cream.”
Her face jolts with recognition, and deep dimples appear. “Wait! Aren’t you this year’s valedictorian?”
My face goes red, wondering if she heard me botch my speech at the end. “Yeah, that’s me.”
She leans forward on the counter. “Oh my God, you are, like, literally my total hero.”
“I am?” I ask, letting out a surprised laugh.
“I pretty much want to be you when I grow up. Harvard, perfect SATs, scholarships from the National Merit Foundation and the Women in Medicine Foundation? It’s awesome.”
“Trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. My head’s kind of a mess these days,” I say, trying to make it sound lighthearted. However, I can tell by the way her expression stills that I wasn’t successful. I immediately wish I could take it all back.
But then, surprisingly enough, the girl’s face softens in sympathy. “I get it,” she says, almost more to herself than to me. “My head is too.”
Her honesty takes me off guard, and something vulnerable in me warms toward her.
The guy in line behind me interrupts the moment, saying loudly, “Any day now.”
I cringe. “Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m holding up the line. I wanted to order two Jackie dogs. . . .”
She waves her hand. “He’ll be fine. By the way, I’m Ruby Collie. I’ll be a junior next year. You probably don’t know me because I was just a sophomore, but I’ve seen you around. Maybe we could hang out sometime so I could ask you some questions about Harvard and your SAT strategy? I could really use your help.” The words come out with a rush and halt to a stop, and she smiles hopefully, twisting her hands together.
And even though the last thing I want to do is to talk about Harvard, I think about what she said, about her head being a mess too. “Sure,” I say. “I’m Parker, by the way.”
“I know,” she says, then cringes in embarrassment. “Not that I’m a stalker or anything.”
A guy’s voice calls from the grill. “Ruby, what’s the order already?”
“Hold on to your butt, jerkface,” she yells over her shoulder, and the sudden change in tone surprises me. She smiles awkwardly at me. “Sorry!” She grabs a pen and napkin, scribbles down her number and e-mail address, and slides it to me across the counter. “Call me, okay?”
“I will,” I promise.
“Ruby, come on!” The guy from the kitchen emerges, wiping his hands on his apron, and my heart trips.
It’s Finn Casper.
Even though I haven’t seen him since first grade, I’d recognize him anywhere.
He’s still pale with white-blond hair, but since I saw him last, his childhood scrawniness has become wiriness; he’s all ropy sinews, and there’s something that looks like a tattoo peeking out from under his T-shirt sleeve. His left eye is shadowed by a bruise—dark red and purple mottled spots.
His gaze moves over me as he takes in the crowd, clearly irritated. “Ruby! For chrissakes, there’s a huge line!”
“Finally,” the guy behind me mutters.
Without realizing it, my left hand has gone to my right wrist, circling it carefully. I drop my hand.
Ruby smiles at the line. “It’s a beautiful day. I’m sure these fine people don’t mind taking a few extra minutes to enjoy it. Am I right?”
More than a few people look surprised at being addressed but still nod in agreement.
Finn shoots an exasperated look at the flickering neon menu above him and rubs his hands over the back of his neck, under his short ponytail. His lips move, like he’s counting to himself.
He lets out a long exhale and meets Ruby’s eyes. “What’s the order, Roo?”
“I told you not to call me that. God, you are such a crap bird, Finn,” she says, giving him two middle fingers at the same time.
“Crap bird, that’s a new one,” Finn mutters. “Do you even know what the order is?”
Ruby looks back at me, putting on a sweet smile. “Two Jackie dogs and two floats, one with double the ice cream, right, Parker?”
I freeze when she says my name, but as Ruby looks triumphantly over her shoulder at Finn, I don’t see any hint of recognition on his face.
I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed.
“Half the ice cream. One with half. And extra sauerkraut on both dogs,” I say tentatively, but Ruby’s currently pretending to wind up her hand, just like a jack-in-the-box, as her middle finger slowly emerges in Finn’s direction. She gives a triumphant “Ha!”
Finn rolls his eyes.
“You heard Parker’s order. She is, in case you care, a total genius, the smartest person to ever live in this town, and she’ll probably get a Nobel Prize in Life someday. Why are you keeping her and all these other fine customers waiting?” She gestures at the growing line.
Finn stalks back to kitchen.
“Extra sauerkraut, please,” I call out.
“Parker, let’s hang out soon, ’kay?” Ruby says as I hand her a twenty.
After I get my change, I move to the side, letting the impatient man behind me step up to order.
While I wait for the order, not entirely convinced the Jackie dogs will have any sauerkraut, let alone extra, Ruby shoots me an occasional conspiratorial grin, holding up her hand and mouthing, Five more minutes!
I realize why I instinctively like her so much: Her energy reminds me of Em’s—immediately open and completely genuine.
Just then, Finn pokes his head out from the kitchen. “Order up,” he says.
My mind flashes back to that day on the playground
in first grade, the principal pulling Finn back by his arms as he kicked and screamed, how his hate echoed in my chest, and my hand returns to my wrist.
I feel a little sick again.
Ruby snatches the bag from him and hands it proudly to me. “For you!”
“Thanks, and nice to meet you, Ruby.”
“You too, Parker!”
It isn’t until I hand Em her order that I realize something: Even with Ruby busy teasing Finn and giving him the bird, he still must have listened to every word I said, because the order is perfect, right down to the extra sauerkraut.
Ten
CHARLIE AND I SPENT our first three years of school—two in preschool and one in kindergarten—in the same classes. But in first grade we were assigned to different teachers as well as different lunch hours.
Despite our parents explaining what this meant, I still wasn’t prepared for the moment on the first day of school when Charlie was ushered through one door and I was ushered through another.
It was terrifying.
I slid into my desk and folded my hands tightly together. I blinked hard, hoping my eyes wouldn’t tear up, and if they did, hoping no one would call me a crybaby. But then our teacher, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, came in and she gave us all a warm smile, and I felt myself relax just a little bit—not enough to talk to anyone during recess, but enough to get through the day.
There, I thought. Done.
I couldn’t wait for the bus ride home, when I could catch up with Charlie again.
But when I climbed on, he was sitting with a boy I didn’t recognize. “Parker, this is my new best friend, Matty Stephens!” I froze in the aisle, looking at the boy with wavy brown hair sitting in my spot, and then at all the other seats, filled with older kids I was too scared to sit with. Someone behind me jostled my backpack and I heard some girls laughing. My chest felt tight and my skin felt hot, and I didn’t know what to do. But then Charlie flattened himself against the window. “Scoot over, Matty!” he said, and Matty grinned and squeezed himself against Charlie, and then I perched on the edge of the dark-green seat, hugging my backpack stiffly against my chest, trying not to topple into the aisle whenever the bus driver made a turn.
The next morning at breakfast, when I learned I had to go back to school again and that I still wouldn’t be in Charlie’s class, I cried so hard I couldn’t get on the bus with Charlie, so Mom drove me to school.
When we pulled into the parking lot, she smoothed the bangs on my forehead, giving me a soft kiss. “Parker, I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but it’s good for you and Charlie to find your own paths. That’s what growing up is about. You’ll always have each other, but this gives you a chance to see who you are on your own.”
That afternoon I wet my pants because I was too scared to ask Ms. O’Shaughnessy if I could go to the bathroom.
Over the next few weeks, things didn’t get much better.
I missed being around Charlie with a loneliness so sharp it made me get a weird fluttery feeling in my heart. Charlie was the friendly and brave parts of me—without him, I could barely talk to the other kids, words sticking in my throat like glue.
Charlie was the opposite. Even though he and Matty always made room for me on the bus, I was pretty sure Charlie didn’t need me anymore. He and Matty joined Cub Scouts and started playing baseball after school, so they could be on the Reds team together when they grew up. Charlie talked about Matty all the time: how Matty insisted you could get gum out of your hair with Diet Coke, how Matty was having his next birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, how Matty got the highest score in the world in Super Mario Bros. When Matty came over after school, Charlie always invited me to join them, but it wasn’t the same.
I didn’t have a best friend anymore.
But then, one blue-skied October day, a kid from my class, Finn Casper, sat next to me on the playground.
“Do you want to hear something cool?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure. Like me, Finn didn’t have any friends. He frequently wore the same ratty Incredible Hulk T-shirt to school, and even though I’d never noticed it, I’d heard the other girls say he smelled and that he got his clothes from the lost-and-found box. He was loud and furious most of the time, the only kid in either first-grade class to routinely get time-outs, mostly for talking back to Ms. O’Shaughnessy, but once for shoving Eric Peterson over on the playground. While my unpopularity was silent, the type that at least allowed me to sit at the edge of the girls’ table at lunch, Finn’s was hard to miss.
I didn’t know then about the rest of the Caspers: about how his brother, Johnny, a seventh grader, had been suspended for threatening to kill a teacher during the second week of school because she caught him smoking by the Dumpster; or Devin, his uncle, who was currently serving time for running a meth lab in a trailer in the woods behind his house. And then there was Mr. Casper, who ran Casper’s Auto Body Shop, a store that never had any customers—clearly a front for something, but no one knew exactly what.
No, at that moment, I knew only that Finn was sitting right there, waiting, greasy white-blond bangs hanging in his eyes, and he wanted to talk to me.
“Okay,” I whispered.
He pulled a duct-taped plastic box from his pocket, holding it out for my inspection. “It’s called a Walkman and it plays music,” he said, then continued to dig until he triumphantly held up a set of earbuds, grinning.
“Like an iPod?”
“Yep. But the music isn’t on it—you have to put in old tapes.” He showed me something he called a cassette, which had “David Bowie Greatest Hits” written in purple across the top, a heart dotting each of the i ’s. “It was my mom’s before she died.”
I nodded, feeling sad he didn’t have a mom, but he was too busy popping open the Walkman on the non-duct-taped side and placing the cassette inside to notice.
“You ready?” he asked, handing me an earbud.
I nodded. He started to press a chunky button, but stopped. “You have to close your eyes.”
I closed them, hoping it wasn’t all some mean joke.
But then I heard music start from far away and begin to march closer, getting louder by the second. A man began to sing, his voice deep and twisty like a wizard’s, talking to someone named Major Tom, telling him to take pills and to put on his helmet.
In the background, another voice started counting down from ten to one, and my body leaned forward, wondering what would happen when he got to zero.
Then the guy said “Liftoff” and everything changed: the music twanging down to my toes before swelling back up, blasting through my chest and heart, up along my spine and through my ears, until it broke through the sky, flying.
It was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard, and I loved it.
I listened carefully to the words as Major Tom stepped outside the door into space. I wondered if that’s where Grandma McCullough’s helium people lived. I tried to imagine what being alone in all that dark sky would feel like. If it were me, maybe I’d try to steal a star, something prickly and hard and bright, something to keep close so I wouldn’t be lonely, something that was mine.
My attention snapped back to the song when Major Tom said to tell his wife he loved her very much, which made me sad because I thought of Finn’s dead mom and how much I loved my mom.
And then something went wrong, and the singer kept calling for Major Tom, but he said there was nothing he could do, and the music spiraled into mismatched blips and bleeps before it faded into silence.
I waited for Major Tom to come back.
Instead, I heard the click of the Walkman.
I kept my eyes closed for a second longer, and when I finally opened them, Finn was looking straight at me, and I could see the gap between his two front teeth, could see his eyes—the gray before a summer storm, occasional lightning at the edges, heavy with rain.
“My brother, Johnny, told me it’s a true story,” he said.
“Really?”
“
Yeah. They still don’t know what happened to Major Tom.”
I thought about it for a second—about how his wife probably still missed him every day, how scared he must be lost in space. “That’s really sad.”
“Don’t worry. I’m gonna find him someday,” Finn assured me.
“You are?”
“Yeah. I’m learning to fly, and when I grow up, I’m going to fly into space to rescue him.”
“You can fly?”
“I’m working on it,” he clarified.
I thought about the helium people. The idea of flying made my stomach hurt. “That doesn’t seem safe.”
“It is. Trust me.”
I looked doubtfully at the bruises on his arm, wondered if he got those from trying to fly. I felt a knot of worry start in my chest.
“This is all top secret,” Finn said, his voice urgent. “You have to promise not to tell anyone about any of it.”
“Can I tell my brother, Charlie?”
“Nope. Sorry. You can’t tell anyone. You have to swear.”
Even though I was still worried—about Finn’s bruises, about him breaking bones, about him falling from the sky—right then I felt a flush of warmth in my chest. This was what Mom was talking about: I finally had something that was mine, a secret, prickly and hard and bright like a star.
“Okay. I swear, cross my heart.”
From that day on, first grade got a little easier.
I had a friend, someone who was just mine.
Finn frequently forgot his lunch money and never brought lunch, so I always split my PB&J sandwich with him, divvying up my carrot sticks and grapes. We made up knock-knock jokes, testing them out on each other. We ignored the girls who called him smelly.
On some days, Finn was extra quiet, moving his body stiffly, like he was a robot, and I knew then that he’d been practicing his flying. During those lunches, I gave him all my cookies. And I made sure we stayed extra still at recess, listening to the Major Tom song and then the other songs on the tape.
I especially liked the one about being heroes, and even though I never told him, I imagined him being king and me being queen, just like the song said.
