The girl leaned close to him, squinting to read the map. She smelled faintly of coconut. Her hair brushed his arm, and he shivered. It was only a coincidence that she looked so much like his warrior princess, and yet, Nolan didn’t believe in coincidence. Not anymore. Not since meeting Wyatt and the others. But if it wasn’t coincidence, then what did it mean? He wasn’t sure. He had an idea, but it was just as ridiculous as her being here now, leaning close enough for him to breathe her in, close enough to touch.
When she finally pulled away, Nolan experienced an ache in his chest, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. Worse than the time when he was five and his favorite toy was reduced to tattered stuffing and bits of thread in the washing machine. Poor Owley had to be thrown out; Nolan cried for days. Worse, too, than how he’d felt after the death of their second-grade class guinea pig, Petunia, for whom he’d stayed up all night writing a eulogy and decorating a shoebox coffin. Worse even than when his father left. Nolan didn’t know this girl’s name, but she felt familiar to him; already she was important.
She refolded the map and returned it to the front pocket of her backpack.
“I’m Nolan.” He pressed his fingers to his chest, introducing himself and hoping she would do the same.
She ran her eyes up and down the length of him, as if trying to decide something. Her fingers tapped her backpack. A song, a beat, a message. She stopped drumming and said, “You’re not a creep, are you? You don’t look like a creep.”
His mom said he looked like a young Keanu Reeves, but less tormented. After he grew his hair out last year, his sister said he looked like a sheepdog. Nolan thought he looked normal and boring, like any other sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old boy who was fighting acne and still growing into his loose skin and too-long bones. He smoothed his fingers over his hair, worried that it was doing that thing it sometimes did if he sweat too much, flipping and curling at impossible angles, making him look less like a sheepdog and more like an electrocuted poodle.
The girl watched him closely. Those eyes.
He dropped his hand to his side. “I’m not a creep.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
He worried about her then, how she could so easily trust someone she just met. But wasn’t this the reason for all of Earth’s turmoil? Because humans were all too eager to rush to suspicion, to shoot first and ask questions later? Because no one trusted anyone anymore, no one allowed themselves to be vulnerable? Earth would be better off with more people like her, people who were brave. Fifteen minutes in her presence, and he already felt different, felt himself changing. He wondered what might happen if they spent an entire day together.
The girl, who still hadn’t said her name, asked, “Do you know if there’s a bus station around here? Like a Greyhound or something?”
There were local buses, but these were notoriously unreliable. He’d seen people waiting outside the grocery store for hours and hours for a bus that never came. “I don’t know of any Greyhound stations,” he said. “Your best bet would probably be Reno or Lancaster, but they’re both three hours away by car so . . .”
She thanked him and started walking into the night. His heart tugged after her, whatever thread that brought them together not yet ready to be severed.
“Wait!” he called out.
She stopped and came back to him.
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged. “Stand on the side of the highway, I guess, stick out my thumb, and wait for someone to pick me up.”
“You can’t do that.” The very idea horrified him.
“Why not?” She seemed intrigued that he should care so much.
After all, they’d only just met. After all, he knew nothing about her. But he wanted to. He wanted to know everything.
“It’s not safe,” he said.
“It’s all right. I know what I’m doing.” She started to walk away again.
He grabbed her elbow and then, feeling her arm tense up, immediately released her. She cinched her arms close to her body and brushed at the spot where his hand had been. She stared at him, the gleam in her eyes like a dare. She was a foot shorter and probably forty pounds lighter than him, but he had this thought that if she wanted to, she could flip him on his back with a simple flick of her wrist.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He softened his tone. “It’s just, it’s the middle of the night. The highway’s dark. Cars aren’t going to be able to see you. They’ll be speeding.”
“What do you suggest then?” She crossed her arms defiantly.
“Wait until morning.”
“And what do I do in the meantime?” she asked with a hint of frustration. “Sleep on a park bench? Under a bridge, maybe?”
Don’t leave my side, he almost said, but stopped himself, realizing how stupid that would sound, how strange. He wanted to convince her to stay another day or two, not scare her off.
“There’s this motel.” Heat spread through his cheeks as he said it. “The Creekside Lodge. It’s clean, safe. I know the woman who runs it. I can probably get you a discount.”
She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “I barely have enough money to pay for a bus ticket.”
“I’ll drive you to Santa Monica.” He blurted the words without thinking, startling himself as well as the girl. He rushed on, improvising his plan as he did so. “I mean, I couldn’t drive you until Sunday because I have to work tomorrow, so I guess that’s two nights, but I could pay for one, or even both, and—” He stopped. She was staring at him like he’d lost his mind. He was talking too fast, sounding too desperate. He took a breath before continuing, slowing himself down. “I’m sorry. That’s weird. It’s too much, I know . . . it’s just . . . I kind of believe that there’s no such thing as coincidence, that things in life don’t just happen by accident. Crazy, right? But hear me out. What if . . . I mean, maybe our paths crossed for a reason, you know? What if . . . ?” But he was too embarrassed to finish the thought.
He stared at his shoes. The left had come untied. Quietly, he said, “It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind and think I’m a creep now. I’d understand completely if you did.”
He waited to hear the girl moving away from him, her footsteps growing faint. Instead, she laughed, a tender sound, and her fingers brushed his arm. He looked up. Her eyes were bright, edged in starlight and secrets.
“I believe in destiny too.” She walked around to the passenger side and climbed into the cab.
They stopped by an ATM on the way to Creekside Lodge. Every week, Nolan deposited half his paycheck into an account he opened a year ago with fifty dollars his father sent for his birthday. The rest he used to pay for gas, clothes, comic books, art supplies, and sometimes groceries. He had almost seven hundred dollars in his account, which he called his Rainy Day Fund, and lately, he’d been thinking of doing something special with the money, like taking Lucy and his mom to Disneyland or paying for ski lessons at Mammoth. He wasn’t sure how much Gabriella would charge him for two nights at the Creekside, but he withdrew two hundred dollars, thinking that would be plenty and he’d still have money left over for a trip with Lucy and his mom later. If the Creekside turned out to be more expensive than that, he could always come back for more. He handed the money to the girl with the copper eyes, who still hadn’t told him her name.
“It’s too much,” she said, but took the money anyway, slipping it into her backpack.
At that moment, a patrol car drove into the bank parking lot. It wasn’t running lights or sirens, and anyway, they weren’t doing anything wrong, but the girl froze a second and then shrank down in the passenger seat, putting up a hand to block her face. Her eyes tracked the cop car as it circled the lot. She relaxed again only after it turned a corner and drove away. Then she laughed nervously. “Sorry, old habits.”
Nolan didn’t ask her to explain.
When they arrived at the Creekside, they found Gabriella working the front desk. Her hair wa
s piled on the top of her head. Three pencils stuck out from the knot. She smiled when Nolan came through the door. “Well, what a lovely surprise! And to what do I owe this visit, my dear boy?”
“My friend . . .” He gestured to the girl who hesitated at the door, suddenly shy. “She’s in town for a few days.”
Gabriella waved her hands, motioning him to say no more. “Of course, of course. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.” She turned and frowned at the wall of empty hooks behind her, then clucked in dismay and turned back to Nolan. “I’m sorry, dear.” She gestured outside to the No Vacancy sign glowing venomous red. “It’s the busy season, otherwise you know I would gladly—” She stopped midsentence, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully, then she smiled again.
“You can stay with me,” she said, speaking directly to the girl. “I have a guest room. You’d have your own private bathroom, too.”
“Oh, we couldn’t ask you to do that,” Nolan protested.
“You didn’t ask.” She winked at them both.
“We can pay you,” Nolan said.
“Nonsense.” Gabriella rummaged under the counter until she found a set of keys. She took one off the ring and pressed it into Nolan’s hand, squeezing gently before letting go. “This is what we do, we take care of each other. This is how we heal the world.”
Then to the girl, she said, “Please, make yourself right at home. I’m working late tonight, so don’t wait up. Oh, and there’s cheesecake in the fridge.”
“Thank you.” She was clearly baffled by Gabriella’s generosity. “That’s . . . thank you.”
“All I ask is that you remember kindness, and pass it along when you can,” Gabriella said.
The office door opened and a balding man entered, rolling a suitcase behind him. Gabriella shooed Nolan and the girl away from the counter with a reassuring smile and then turned her full attention to the man. “Welcome to Creekside Lodge. Do you have a reservation with us this evening?”
The girl waited until they were back inside the pickup before asking, “How do you know her?”
Nolan hesitated and then said, “We’re part of this group. It’s kind of like a church.” Or what he thought a church might be like, since he’d never actually set foot inside one. “We meet once a week in the basement of the senior center and we talk and . . .” He drifted to silence, not sure how to explain it in a way that wouldn’t make him sound completely nuts.
“And you take care of each other,” she added.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“It sounds nice.” There was a wistfulness to her voice, a longing.
“Maybe you can come with me sometime.”
The smile she gave him was cluttered with sadness. She turned and stared out the window, her gaze distant, stretching toward the mountains. “Maybe.”
They were silent the rest of the way to Gabriella’s house. Questions tangled on the tip of Nolan’s tongue. There were so many things he wanted to ask her, so much to discover, but every time he started to speak, something stopped him. She would sigh or shift in her seat or clear her throat or twirl a section of hair around her finger. She kept her head turned away from him. Halfway to Gabriella’s she leaned over and turned on the radio.
“Do you mind?”
He shook his head, even though the oldies station she stopped on wasn’t coming in very clear and the static made his teeth hurt.
They arrived at Gabriella’s around eleven thirty. Nolan shut off the radio. “This is it.”
The house itself wasn’t much to look at, a single-story bungalow in need of new windows and paint, but the front garden was magic. Sunflowers craned their long necks toward the stars. Jasmine climbed along the white picket fence. Glass globes of varying colors spun from the spreading branches of a maple tree. Tiny white lights danced inside the glass like fairies.
“So tomorrow I can come by after work, if you want,” Nolan said. “We could get something to eat, I don’t know, and have you heard of the Perseids? It’s this incredible meteor shower and it’s happening right now, it’s at its peak.”
“Yes,” the girl said. “Yes, I think I’d like that very much. All of it.” Then she reached into her backpack and took out the two hundred dollars he’d given her. She started to hand it to him, but he pushed it away.
“You keep it.”
She bit down on her lip and stared at the money, trying to decide. Finally, she curled her fingers around the bills. “Okay, but I’m buying dinner.”
He smiled. “Deal.”
She opened the door and slid out of the pickup.
“Hey.” He leaned across the seat. “You never told me your name.”
For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to tell him, then she did. The whole way home Nolan repeated it to himself, shaping his lips around the contours of each letter: Celeste. Like the heavens, the stars in the sky, like a meteorite cratered in his soul.
After his shift ended Saturday night, Nolan found Celeste waiting for him in the parking lot, sitting on the lowered tailgate of his pickup, swinging her feet in the air. A picnic basket sat atop a folded blanket beside her. She smiled as he approached and patted the wicker lid. “Gabriella let me borrow these. I thought we could have a picnic under the stars.”
“You read my mind,” Nolan said.
She laughed, and he wanted to capture the sound so he could listen to it anytime he wanted. She hopped off the tailgate. “You know of a good place to go?”
“I know the perfect place.”
He took the basket and blanket from her and loaded them into the small cab space behind the driver’s seat. The entire drive to the Buttermilks, he couldn’t stop grinning.
Instead of taking the path from the house on Skyline, Nolan parked in the public lot on the north side, and he and Celeste hiked up the main trail toward the flat rock. He doubted Lucy was home, but he didn’t want to risk running into her and having her ask questions about Celeste.
Watching the Perseids was a thing they’d done together as a family every August since their father left. It had been their mother’s idea. “We need a new tradition, something with just the three of us.” They drove out to the desert and pitched a tent, which they rarely slept in. Instead, they would spread their sleeping bags by a small fire, eat hot dogs and s’mores, tell stories, and look through Nolan’s telescope until the fire died to coals. Then they would stretch out on their sleeping bags and spend the rest of the night oohing and aahing over small bursts of light, meteors streaking like match flames across the dark sky, a flash and then gone. Nolan looked forward to the trip every year, had been looking forward to it this year too, but Sandra was working graveyard at the hospital now and couldn’t get the time off. She’d told Lucy and Nolan they could go without her, but Lucy had mumbled something about how once you’ve seen one meteor, you’ve seen them all, and shuffled to her room. They hadn’t talked about it again.
The weather tonight was perfect for stargazing. Clear skies, not a single cloud, and warm too. Warm enough Nolan wasn’t worried about Celeste getting cold in her purple paisley short-sleeved shirt and billowing gray pants, but he grabbed a sweatshirt from his pickup just in case.
As they hiked, they made small talk. Favorite colors: his was blue, hers was rainbow—even after he argued that wasn’t one color, but many. Favorite foods: he liked bacon cheeseburgers, she was partial to calamari and caramel pecan ice cream, though not at the same time. Favorite television shows: his was X-Files, hers was Bewitched. Favorite animal: they both loved blue whales. When they ran out of silly questions to ask each other, Celeste told him how Gabriella woke early that morning and made blueberry pancakes. “They were crisp on the outside, but fluffy in the middle. They were perfect. I can’t figure out how she made them that way.”
“I’ve never had her pancakes,” Nolan said.
“Next time I’ll invite you.” She smiled at him, and though he tried to push it down, a thread of hope began to inch its way into his heart.
They reached the rock after a moderate, twenty-minute climb. The last section of trail was also the steepest and when they reached the top, Celeste leaned against a boulder, panting a little, trying to catch her breath. “Where are you taking me?”
Nolan pointed to the expansive view of Owens Valley behind her. She turned, and her breath left her a moment, her whole body going very still. Then she sighed and said, “It’s . . . a dreamscape.”
He had never thought of it like that, but once she said it, he couldn’t see it any other way. From this high up and this far away, all of Owens Valley shimmered. The tiny buildings seemed made of spun sugar. The thin highway a licorice road. The Inyo Mountains rolled on the horizon, purple gumdrops against a Kool-Aid sky. In this moment, seeing it new, through Celeste’s eyes, it seemed too beautiful, too perfect, to be real.
Nolan spread the blanket over the flat rock and climbed on top of it, then stretched out his hand to help Celeste up with the picnic basket. The rock was wide enough for both of them to sit comfortably side by side and stretch out their legs with room for the picnic basket between them.
Celeste opened the lid and pulled out two plastic-wrapped sandwiches. She handed one to Nolan and unwrapped the second for herself. “Fluffernutters. It’s the only thing I know how to make.”
She took a bite. Marshmallow fluff and peanut butter squished from between the two pieces of bread onto her cheek. She wiped it off and then stuck her thumb in her mouth, sucking the sticky concoction clean, laughing as she did. “I know,” she said. “It’s such a little kid thing to eat.”
“I’m sure it’s delicious.”
“You’ve never had one?” She seemed surprised.
Nolan shook his head. He’d never even heard of fluffernutters before. He unwrapped his sandwich and bit into it. His teeth ached from the shock of sweet, and he wanted to spit it out, but the way she looked at him, so eager for his approval, he could do nothing but swallow and take another bite.
Everything We Lost Page 8
