“It’s like a candy sandwich,” he said, trying to make it sound like a good thing.
She smiled, nodding, but there was sadness in her voice when she told him, “My mom used to make them for me.”
“She doesn’t anymore?”
A brief pause, a quick frown. “She’s dead. She died a long time ago.” And then she brushed it away, as if it were nothing, as if she were telling him about a pet goldfish. Her smile returned, though a little dimmer now, and the excitement in her voice sounded more strained than before when she asked him, “So, Nolan, tell me your life story. Start at the beginning and leave nothing out.”
He wanted to go back to what she’d said about her mom, he wanted her to feel comfortable enough to confide in him, to share with him things she had never shared with anyone, but he could tell by the look on her face and the tension across her shoulders that she wasn’t ready for that. Don’t ask, her body language told him. Move on. So he did.
“It’s not very exciting.” He squinted into the distance. “I was born here. I’ve lived in the same house my whole life and have never left the state. I have a sister, just one. She’s younger and better-looking.”
Celeste laughed, a full and melodic sound like before, and Nolan felt his chest puff up a little knowing he had this effect on her, that he could bring her back from sadness.
“I work at Bishop’s Grocery,” he continued. “But you already knew that. I hate school, but get pretty good grades. My mom’s a nurse. She works a lot. I don’t know what my dad does anymore, but he used to run some kind of software company. They’re divorced. He lives in LA now. I don’t see him very often.”
“Oh, that’s . . . I’m sorry.” She sounded like she meant it, too.
“It’s okay,” he said. “They split up when I was little. And anyway he’s kind of an asshole.”
He didn’t tell her that sometimes he sat in what used to be his father’s favorite leather recliner and whispered to the cushions about his day, or that he kept a half-spent cigar in a box at the top of his closet so he would never forget the way his father smelled. He didn’t tell her either that sometimes he woke in the middle of the night in a panic, feeling too much and all at once, overwhelmed by his own irrelevance. Abandoned, unlovable. In those dark moments, he was the loneliest person on the planet, in the whole universe, convinced that there had never been—would never be—any creature as lonely as him.
He didn’t tell her any of this, but she seemed to know because she reached over and covered his hand with hers, giving a gentle squeeze. She had freckles, a splash near the base of her thumb in the shape of the constellation Cassiopeia. Nolan stared at them and wished for her to never let go. But she did, and it took him a moment to gather himself before he spoke again.
“Anyway, when I’m not at school or work, I’m out here with my telescope, trying to find something that no one’s ever seen before.”
“Like a new planet?”
“Yeah, or a star, or . . .” He hesitated, wondering if he should tell her what he was really searching for.
Before he had a chance, she changed the subject. “I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little.”
“But not anymore?”
She touched her stomach. “Motion sickness. I can’t even ride in the backseat of a car without wanting to puke.”
“So what do you want to do now?” He balled up the plastic wrap from his sandwich and tucked it back inside the picnic basket.
“First, I want to see the Pacific Ocean. Have you been?”
He shook his head, and her mouth popped open in surprise.
“But you live so close!”
“It’s like a five-hour drive,” he said. “On a good day.”
“Well, that’s closer than I’ve ever been.” She laughed.
He shrugged, not wanting to talk about it anymore, not wanting to remember that hot summer day five years ago, the beach outing his dad planned for them, a father-and-son trip, how Nolan waited all morning at the bottom of the driveway with an overnight bag and a boogie board Patrick let him borrow, how his mother came out of the house around eleven to tell him Robert called, something had come up and he wasn’t going to make it. She told Nolan to come inside for lunch, but he refused. Instead, he sat on the curb, the bag and the board next to him, and stared down the empty road as the sun blazed hotter and hotter. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, Lucy appeared beside him with a ham and cheese sandwich, a glass of ice water, and his favorite baseball cap. She put the cap on his head and set the rest on the curb, then stood for a while with her arms crossed, glaring at the road. Then she sighed and kicked a rock. “Who cares about the stupid beach anyway? It’s crowded and you get sand everywhere, and the ocean’s full of poisonous jellyfish and toxic waste and I wouldn’t be there so it’s probably good that you’re not going because you’d be bored to death. We’ll go together when we’re older and can drive ourselves.” She was trying to make him feel better, but it only made him feel worse, his stomach knotting, tears burning his eyes. “Did I ask your opinion?” he’d snapped at her, and when she still didn’t leave: “Don’t you have Barbie dolls to play with or something?” She’d gone away then, storming off in a huff and leaving him to cry alone.
Nolan didn’t like thinking about that day, and the ocean could go drown itself for all he cared. What was a single, tiny ocean compared to an entire universe?
“And after that?” he asked Celeste. “After you see the Pacific? What then?”
“Hollywood,” she said, a dreaminess settling on her face. “I want to be an actress.”
Right after she said this, she tensed and dropped her gaze, like she regretted telling him. She didn’t say anything for a while and neither did he, and finally she raised her eyes to his again. “You didn’t laugh.”
He smiled. “Why would I do that?”
“Everyone else I’ve ever told laughed.”
This time he was the one reaching for her hand, and he didn’t let go.
For a second, neither of them moved except to breathe. He stared into her copper eyes and saw his reflection there in miniature. He wondered if her eyes were special, if that’s why he could see himself, or if she, too, saw her reflection in his eyes, his dull brown, undeniably plain and human eyes. He leaned a little closer. Celeste blinked, breaking the enchantment, and lifted her face toward the sky. “I’ve never seen so many before.”
The sun had set while they ate their sandwiches, and the sky above them was dark now, the moon barely a sliver, which made the stars stand out, many and bright. A canvas of white and blue and yellow twinkling lights, more than anyone could possibly hope to count, and these were only the stars they could see. There were even more that were too dim or distant to be visible with the naked eye. An impossible number of stars made more beautiful with her beside him. The longer he looked, the more he saw. They seemed to leap to the foreground, blasting like trumpets, making his head spin. He had never seen so many either. All the stars in the universe had come out for them. For her.
Nolan traced her profile with his gaze, chasing starlight along the soft curve of her neck. He had a sudden yearning to take his finger and brush her hair back, press his mouth to the hidden spot behind her ear, feel her skin on his lips, discover what she tasted like.
“What are we looking at?” she asked. “I mean, is there anything special up there? Anything interesting?”
He pointed toward a pinpoint of light no brighter than any of the others. “That’s the Orion Nebula. It’s 1,344 light-years from Earth. Give or take.”
Even if they’d been looking through his telescope, it wouldn’t have looked like much, but he’d seen pictures of it online, amazing images filled with light and color and stars emerging from voluminous clouds of cosmic dust. Beauty enough to soften even the hardest soul.
“It’s not a star, not technically,” he said. “It’s a whole bunch of them. A stellar nursery.”
As they watched, even now, new stars were
forming, new worlds born.
He pointed to a different bright splinter. “That’s Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.” He moved his finger over an inch. “And that bright spot there is the Andromeda Galaxy. Which is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, and the farthest interstellar object that can be seen with the naked eye.”
She looked where he pointed. Every part of him was tuned to her, aware of her body in relation to his, of her heat, her pulse, the quiet rustling of her hair against her shirt, her hand still wrapped up in his, anchoring him to Earth. He felt her fingers individually—thumb, pointer, middle, ring, pinky—each with its own distinct weight, and he was reluctant to move, for fear she might slip away. But he continued to point out interesting things in the sky, constellations, Cygnus and Orion and Gemini with its twin stars, Castor and Pollux. He told their stories, and then she asked about the dark space in between.
“What about those shapes? How come they don’t have names?”
“We can name them if you want,” he answered.
She lay back then, pulling him down onto the blanket with her, and keeping their fingers intertwined, she lifted their hands together and traced shapes in the air, outlining a spot in the sky near Pegasus where no stars were visible. “This right here . . . Perdita. The lost girl.”
She lowered their arms back to the blanket. Distant voices from some other part of the Buttermilks reached them, but they stayed far off, not coming any closer, and after a while, Nolan barely noticed. He was too focused on listening to Celeste breathe, the stars dimming with each inhale, swelling brighter each exhale.
They were two alone under a nothing moon and dazzling stars, and there was no better time to ask her all the things he’d been holding back. Where had she come from? Why was she here? What did she want with him? He turned toward her with the words on the tip of his tongue, only to find that she was turning toward him, rising up on her elbows, moving closer.
He’d kissed a girl only once before. In fifth grade. Molly Condell, on the bus ride home from a field trip. Patrick had dared him, and he’d done it, and Molly’s lips had felt like gummy fish, dry and sweet from her strawberry lip gloss. She’d shoved him away after a few seconds and wiped her hand across her mouth, squealing, “Gross!” Her girlfriends laughed. Patrick laughed hardest of all.
Nolan almost backed away from Celeste then, thinking of how humiliated he’d been after, but she hovered, waiting, and he recognized want in her eyes, a question only he could answer. He cupped her face with one hand, pulling her down to him. Their lips touched.
He closed his eyes and they spun together, up from Earth, out through the atmosphere, rising above the Milky Way Galaxy, looking down as it grew smaller and smaller, feeling the pull of the whole universe inside him. A humming started in the back of his mind, quietly at first, like a room full of people talking, and then louder, louder, turning to a vibrating thrum, an electric current coursing through him to her, or her to him, he couldn’t tell. Did it matter? The thrum turned to a song, a haunting and vaguely familiar melody. The stars, the stars were singing, and Celeste was the reason why. All loneliness, all worry, all fear, forgotten. The stars, her lips: the antidotes, the only splendors that mattered now.
Sunday morning arrived too soon. Nolan couldn’t let Celeste go. They were just getting to know each other, just getting started. But neither could he force her to stay. He picked her up from Gabriella’s at nine o’clock and, by nine fifteen, they were headed south toward Lancaster, flying it seemed. Celeste clutched her backpack in her lap. She had the window rolled down, her hair a tornado, and the radio tuned to the same oldies station as before, the volume cranked high, static crackling. Between the noise and the smell of her coconut shampoo, Nolan was having trouble thinking straight.
They were almost to Big Pine now, and panic set in. If he didn’t think of something soon, it would be too late to suggest turning around, and then it was only a matter of hours before they were in Santa Monica and Celeste was getting out of the pickup, swinging her backpack over her shoulders, saying good-bye, walking into the sunset, lost to him forever. The best idea he’d come up with so far was to run his pickup off the road. He imagined losing control, slamming into a fence post, one or both of them getting seriously injured—so, not the best idea. He tried to think of something else, but the music made it impossible.
Without warning, Celeste switched off the radio. She bent forward, squinting and pressing her face close to the windshield, then gasped and said, “Stop! Stop the car! Pull over!”
Nolan slammed on the brakes. Tires squealed. Celeste lurched in her seat, the seat belt tightening across her chest. Her backpack fell off her lap and into the foot well. Nolan steered onto the highway shoulder and stopped. He had been so consumed with trying to come up with a plan to get Celeste to change her mind and stay in Bishop, that he hadn’t even realized how close they were to the observatory.
A few miles ahead, three massive radio telescopes rose from the valley floor. Some people called them the Big Ears, but Nolan thought they looked more like umbrellas turned inside out by a great gust of wind. Ears, umbrellas, however else they might appear, one thing not in question was their imposing stature. They were the tallest man-made objects for miles in any direction, giants with skinny bodies and oversized heads, bright white faces always pointed toward the sky. He knew it was only an optical illusion, but sometimes when he saw the telescopes from a distance, they appeared taller even than the mountains.
“What are those?” Celeste asked, her voice a mix of fear and wonder.
“Telescopes,” he answered. “It’s a radio observatory. We can get closer to them if you want.”
She nodded, keeping her wide eyes fixed on the telescopes as he steered back onto the highway toward Leighton Drive, a single-lane road leading to the observatory. He snuck glances out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge Celeste’s reaction. Was she simply impressed with their size, curious about these strange-looking machines pointed at the sky? Or was it something else? Recognition, maybe, or déjà vu.
Only three nights ago, Nolan saw what he believed to be an extraterrestrial craft touch down at this very spot. Two nights ago, he met Celeste. And now, they were here together, and she was leaning as far forward as she could, her hands pressed against the dashboard, her fingernails pale from the force of her grip. A muscle in her jaw twitched.
Nolan parked in the scrub in front of a large Authorized Personnel Only sign. Fifty yards past this stood one of the three telescopes. The other two were set up farther away, though still close enough to be intimidating. Celeste got out of the pickup, and Nolan did too, following her to a flimsy-looking barbed wire fence meant to dissuade people from trespassing. If they drove through the gate and another half mile down Leighton Drive, they’d come to the observatory itself, a squat beige building that all but disappeared into the desert landscape.
Nolan had been there once, when he was younger, with his mother and father and a dozen other people he didn’t know, for a public tour of the facility. Lucy had been a toddler still, barely old enough to walk. Nolan didn’t remember much about the trip except the way his father treated the astrophysicist leading the tour. Like he was some kind of superhuman genius who made the Earth spin and the stars appear.
Celeste stopped a few steps from the fence and tilted her head back to take in the full height of the closest telescope. “What are they for?”
“They’re listening to the universe,” Nolan said. “I like to think of them as eavesdropping on the stars.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “It’s similar to studying stars with an optical telescope, only instead of gathering light waves, these telescopes gather radio waves. Every object in interstellar space emits different wavelengths and these telescopes gather that information. It all gets focused into the antenna, and then the receiver converts them to electrical signals and then those signals get turned into data that astronomers and other scientists can sort through and interpret
to develop new theories or confirm old ones about the universe and our place in it.”
She lowered her gaze to his, and for a second he couldn’t breathe. Then she blinked, releasing him, and walked back to the pickup. She swung the tailgate open and climbed onto it. He came and sat beside her.
They were quiet a moment, then Celeste asked, “What do you think your place in the universe is, Nolan?”
The question surprised him, and he didn’t know quite what to say.
“I mean, why do you think you’re here?” she clarified.
“Here . . .”
“On Earth,” she said. “In Bishop. At this particular point in time. Why here? Why now? Why you?”
“I . . .” He paused, scratching at a fleck of blue paint peeling off the tailgate. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it. No, I have. Thought about it, I mean, but I haven’t come up with any good answers.”
She sighed and took his hand, interlacing her fingers with his. “Yeah, me neither. Before I met you, I thought I was destined to be alone. I thought that in order to be safe, to be free, to be . . . myself . . . I had to keep moving.”
In the distance, cars passed on the highway, some traveling north, some traveling south, all traveling on without her.
She smiled like she was remembering something nice, something she hadn’t remembered in a long time. “I had this feeling about you, you know. The night we met.” Her fingers traced her collarbone like she was searching for a necklace that was no longer there. “Do you ever get that? Like a buzzing under your skin? Intuition, I guess it’s called. Like . . . you just know things? About a person? Or a place?” She looked back up at the telescopes. “I got that when I saw these. A feeling like we were supposed to stop here. I don’t know why, I don’t know what it means, but I got that same feeling with you, too. Like you were the person I was supposed to find, the one person in the whole world who would be able to help me.” Before he could respond, she rushed on, “Tell me a secret. Something you’ve never told anyone else before.”
Everything We Lost Page 9
