by Nikki Godwin
“Out of town visitors…distant relatives,” Aralie says. “So distant you’d think they were from another planet.”
My face flushes in shades of red that would put Mars to shame, and I feel like this blonde-haired girl behind the register knows. She knows we have a boyband hidden in our house. She knows that Benji was sitting at our table this morning while Emery showed Noah and Tate around the backyard. I look away so I can’t inadvertently give her too much info through eye contact. I didn’t think I’d be this paranoid.
The tabloids and teen magazines stare back at me now. And there they are – even in the freaking checkout line at the grocery store – Spaceships Around Saturn, plastered on a magazine cover, decked out in tuxes for an awards show. I don’t even like the color bronze, but Milo’s vest and tie are as bronzy as a statue, and damn, it does him well.
By now, I’ve bypassed Mars and am certain my face is flaming like that big red bubble on Jupiter. I can’t look at the cashier, I can’t browse the tabloids, and I feel like every person in this grocery store is staring at us because they know!
“Don’t look back,” Aralie whispers as she eases toward my shopping cart. She grabs a few items, places them on the conveyor belt, and whispers again. “Deacon is two registers over.”
I drop my head quickly, hoping he won’t see us if we stoop down low enough to hide behind the candy racks.
“Has he seen us?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Just lay low, and he’ll be gone in a minute. He probably won’t even recognize my car out there.”
I begin to empty the second cart. The items beep and beep and beep until I hear the gum-smacking cashier complain about a scanning issue. Before I can fully process what’s not scanning, I hear her voice through the loudspeaker.
“Price check on register three. I need a price check on the poster A7 of Benji Baccarini,” she announces. “Price check, register three. A7 poster of Benji Baccarini.”
Her voice echoes across the universe. An older lady rushes over to help her, explaining that she only needs to announce ‘price check’ and her register number. She says something about customer privacy and how not everyone wants a public service announcement of what is being purchased. The cashier answers the register’s phone and types in some numbers to get the poster’s price. I could’ve told her the price – the Canadian equivalent of one million US dollars’ worth of humiliation.
I can’t get in the house fast enough. There’s a good chance Mom will be receiving a phone call soon from the grocery store telling her that Aralie and I are banned from shopping there until further notice. It would’ve been okay if Aralie hadn’t opened her mouth. I was doing just fine. I’d scooped up the last bit of my dignity and took the walk of shame to the sliding doors with Emery’s A7 poster in hand. I was fine.
Until we spotted that fancy little blue sports car blocking the path to Aralie’s trunk. Deacon was hanging out the window, with his two best friends tagged along, clucking out the words, “Bock, bock, Baccarini!”
As if that weren’t enough to make me want to splatter onto the pavement and become part of the asphalt, Aralie’s backlash and obscenities were. And in pure high school fashion, the manager ran outside, jumped down Aralie’s throat for her “use of profanity on the premises,” and he politely asked Deacon to leave so as not to “provoke her” anymore. Deacon smiled that classic Deacon McCullough smile. Then he said, “Yes sir,” and drove on his way.
Now, rushing across the garage toward the kitchen door, I don’t think I’ll even be able to find words to tell Mom how awful it was. Even if I’m quoting Deacon, I don’t think I can bring myself to actually say the words “bock, bock, Baccarini.”
Yeah, there’s absolutely no way I can cluck Benji’s last name out loud. Especially when he’s in our house.
The door bursts open in front of me, but I keep my head down. I cannot face a Saturn boy right now – especially one whose last name is Baccarini. I hurry across the kitchen, but I slam smack into one-fifth of Spaceships Around Saturn. I don’t even have to look up. I know who it is by the smell of his body wash.
“Are you okay?” Milo asks.
I don’t look up at him. I can’t. Those caramel eyes are way too beautiful to look into again. There’s no freaking way.
I nod my head. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
I try pushing past him, but he doesn’t let me go around. Instead, he pulls me to the side and allows Godfrey to squeeze past us. Aralie runs in behind me. She doesn’t slam into a fifth of Saturn, though.
“Oh my God. Mom!” she screams instantly.
Milo can’t stop me this time. I sprint around him, chasing after Aralie, but Mom hurries into the kitchen before we can escape to the land of private mother-daughter conversations. You’ve gotta be kidding me. We’re not really going to have the bock-bock-Baccarini conversation in front of Milo, are we?
Aralie begins the story with Emery’s poster not scanning. She tells it so dramatically, in grave detail, down to the gum-smacking and loudspeaker announcement.
By now, Tate and Noah have joined ‘Story Time with Aralie’ and stand in the archway between the kitchen and dining room. Milo lingers between us and the garage door until Godfrey comes inside carrying too many bags at once.
Milo rushes to the door and grabs two of the bags.
“I can help you bring these in,” he offers.
Godfrey thanks him for the offer but tells him it won’t be necessary.
Milo hesitates for about three seconds before walking out toward Aralie’s car.
“Suck up,” Noah mutters behind us.
“Oh shut it,” Tate says. “You know he likes to make a good impression.”
“Really? We’re on lockdown. We’re missing out on our lives, and Milo is worried about good impressions? Give me a break,” Noah says.
I’m so with Noah – I need a break! I need a break from Deacon drama, Milo’s eyes, and bock-bock-Baccarini. I make a mad dash between Tate and Noah toward the stairs. I absolutely cannot listen to Aralie cluck Benji’s last name. I can’t bear the humility of Tate and Noah laughing while Milo tries to play Mr. Nice Guy because he pities me and my misfortune.
“Chloe!” Mom yells after me.
Oh God, please don’t make me come back in there and listen to this. I was there. I know all too well what went down.
“Can you please go relieve Benji of Emery? He’s been in Saturnite Hell since you left,” she says.
I nod and continue my ascend toward Mr. Baccarini.
For once, I don’t mind dealing with Emery.
I manage to stay hidden within Emery’s Saturn-covered walls for two hours. We sort out her five zillion plastic beads by color so she can bake them later and make suncatchers. She wants to make a blue and green one for Benji. We string together six attempts at a friendship bracelet until we finally have one that looks boyish enough. The blue string frays a bit, but I don’t point it out because I don’t want to go for a seventh attempt. It’s for Benji.
But aside from making things for Mr. Bock-Bock-Baccarini, Emery has enlightened me on all things Spaceships Around Saturn. 1) Noah is a jerkface – Emery’s words – until he has his strawberry milk each day, but then he’s fun. That’s what Benji told her anyway. 2) Tate laughs at everything. 3) Milo is way too serious and acts like a grown up. Emery says he’s really boring. 4) Benji sings in the shower. 5) Jules smells like crushed ladybugs, but I’m pretty sure it’s his cigarettes that Emery smells on him.
Aralie screams down the hallway, and I knock over a bowl of pink beads in the process of jumping up. Emery’s eyes widen, but I don’t stop her from following me. Clothes fly around in the hallway as soon as we step out of Emery’s room.
“Who do you think you are?” Aralie screams. “I’m not your mom or your maid or whatever you have on tour!”
Jules tumbles backward out of her room. Two T-shirts and a pair of jeans fly out of her door and smack him in the chest.
&n
bsp; He regains his composure and leans back toward her room.
“You said you were doing laundry,” he says.
Is he really that stupid? A pair of black boxers and a blue T-shirt fly from Aralie’s room into the hall. I keep Emery back and don’t dare venture forth myself. Jules is on his own. The wrath of Aralie is a force not to be messed with.
She screams about his laundry, the smell of his cigarettes, the fact that he clearly dyes his hair black to look like a badass because his eyebrows aren’t as dark, and there’s mention of his tattoos before Mom and Godfrey make it upstairs.
Even through Aralie’s protests, Mom continues saying, “I’m sure this was just a big misunderstanding.”
Godfrey gathers Jules’s clothes while Tate does his best to calm Jules down. Emery was right – Tate laughs at everything. He’ll learn quickly enough not to laugh when Aralie is pissed or he’ll be on the receiving end of her verbal slaughter, just like Deacon and Jules. She’s two for two today. Tate shouldn’t push it.
I slip away from Emery, disappear into my own bedroom, lock the door, and tuck my headphones into my ears so I can drown out the world with the screams of Sebastian’s Shadow.
My bedroom light blinds me when I open my eyes. I bury my face into my pillow and feel around for my phone. 12:37 AM.
One message from Aralie:You missed supper. Jules is an ass.
One message from Emery:U miss food. Aralie hates Jools.
I’m surprised my parents let her keep her phone. Then again, the only numbers she has are ours and Godfrey’s. That phone isn’t much of a threat. Aralie and I have to tell her how to spell everything anyway, so we know what she’s texting.
One message from Mom. It’s the longest of them all. And it’s disheartening.
I decided not to wake you. I’m sorry your summer hasn’t turned out as planned. Don’t let Deacon and those other guys get to you. You’re a beautiful girl with so much ahead of you. I don’t want to see you slip into a depression over a boy. Things will get better. Food is in the fridge if you wake up.
I’m officially starving, and Mom thinks I’m depressed. Great. I’m far from depressed over Deacon. Humiliated, yes. Pissed off, yes. But depressed? No. That boy isn’t getting any more of my tears. I push myself off of the bed, shake my hair around until it looks half-decent, smear my eyeliner around evenly under my eyes, and then venture downstairs. Hopefully everyone else is asleep and no one will see this zombie-ish makeup job I have going on.
The fluorescent light above the kitchen sink hums when I flip it on. I dig through the fridge, but nothing sounds good. Nothing but milk and Oreos. I open the cabinet, grab the cookies, and settle in alone at the adjoining dining room’s table. Benji’s tattoo magazine stares up at me, so I flip through the pages looking for cute, easy designs that I could draw later.
Between the sleeve of Oreos and the flipping of the pages, I never even hear footsteps until he’s in the dining room, standing across the table from me.
“Well, good evening, Ms. Branson,” Milo says. “Is this a private party or may I join you?”
Chapter Four
Be witty. Be cute. Be something but don’t just sit here with your jaw dropped!
“Are you always so formal, Mr. Grayson?” I ask.
I amaze myself with how steady my voice is. I was certain I’d stammer through that.
He scrunches his mouth to one side, glances down at his T-shirt and sweatpants, and looks back at me.
“If I were wearing khakis, I’d say yes, but in this case, eh, not so much,” he says.
This boy is so beautiful that I’d take him to a five-star formal restaurant in swim trunks and flip flops. He’s modest, though, which makes him even more likable. Damn him.
“Well, this isn’t much of a party, but you’re definitely welcome to join,” I say.
I look down at the clover tattoo staring up at me from Benji’s magazine. I hope Milo doesn’t plan on staying down here for too long because I’m not sure my pounding heart can hold out. It might literally thump out of my skin and onto the table.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Milo says.
He leans down onto the table, propping up on his elbows. His figure shadows the little bit of light in the room so I’m forced to look at him.
“It’s after midnight, and I’m alone with a pretty girl and Oreos. That’s definitely a party,” he says. “The only thing I’m missing is a glass of milk, so if you’d point me in the right direction, we can get this party underway.”
Oh. My. Saturn.
He’s totally flirting with me. This is flirting, right? Maybe I’m over-thinking it. Maybe he’s just being nice. Ugh, why does Aralie have to be sleeping when I need her to decipher weird boy code for me!? Then again, if she was in here with me, the alien from Saturn, and the Oreos, I’d have to admit to her that I’m so craving him more than I’m craving these cookies.
I manage to point in the direction of the correct cabinet and avoid eye contact while he takes it upon himself to pour some milk. Then he settles in across from me at the table.
“Word of unsolicited advice,” he says, reaching across the table and tapping Benji’s ink magazine. “Tramp stamps are trampy. Butterflies are boring because all girls get them. And never use ‘it was cute’ as an answer when someone asks why you decided on a certain tat.”
His hand moves from the magazine to the tray of Oreos. He chooses the third cookie from the left, leaving a gaping hole in between the Oreos.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I wasn’t planning on inking myself any time soon.”
“I’d hope not,” he says. “I doubt you’ve had the proper training to ink yourself.”
He smiles, drops his Oreo into his glass of milk, and lets it sink to the bottom. He reaches back over and picks up the cookie that had been in front of his sunken treasure, leaving one Oreo teetering out of orbit in the pack.
“So, exciting day?” He changes the subject. “Sounded like it from your sister’s checkout line story. She was dramatizing it, right?”
I wish she had been. Aralie has always had a flair for the dramatic, but even as she acted out Deacon’s goofy facial expressions and squawked out Benji’s last name, I’m sure she performed a stellar reenactment of how it went down. Thank God I didn’t have to see it.
“Afraid not,” I say. “It was just as awful as she probably said it was, if not worse.”
He dips his Oreo into his milk and takes a bite of it. I reach toward the tray and debate if I should grab the lone cookie he left behind. Maybe he has a good reason for leaving it. I grab a different one, leaving the outcast to flounder.
I flip the page in the magazine and focus on a tattoo of a maple leaf. I bet Milo wishes he could be back home in his own house in Canada right now instead of trapped here.
“But your life is probably a lot more dramatic than mine,” I say.
I’d much rather not talk about Deacon right now – especially with a gorgeous boy from Spaceships Around Saturn.
Milo laughs. “It has its moments,” he says. “Sometimes fans can get a little crazy. Paparazzi does too. We don’t get much sleep. But that was definitely the first time we’ve ever been shot at before.”
“Maybe you guys will be able to catch up on some sleep while you’re here,” I say.
God, Chloe. Lame much? They don’t care about sleep. They run on caffeine, adrenaline, Oreos, and magic boyband juice from Saturn. They would rather be on a sleepless tour than a sleep-filled lockdown.
“Doubt it,” he says. “Well, the other guys will sleep, but I’m nocturnal. And – no offense – but it’s hard to sleep late with the little Saturnite running through the house.”
I shouldn’t smile at Emery’s expense, but I can’t fight it.
“No kidding. I live with her fulltime. I have to stay up late to get anything done. But it’s still weird to see teenage boys crash before midnight,” I say.
Milo looks away from his half-eaten Oreo and scrunches his
mouth to one side again, like he’s puckering up to kiss someone next to him without turning his head.
“You really don’t know your Saturn trivia, do you?” he asks. “I turned twenty in November, thank you very much.”
That explains his maturity level. He’s so level-headed and clean-cut and every parent’s dream of what kind of guy a daughter should bring home. Not to mention he’s brunette and super hot on top of that. He’s the all-American non-American guy. All-Canadian maybe?
“And Jules will be twenty in about a month,” he says. “Not that he acts it or anything. Benji and Noah are nineteen. Tate’s the baby, eighteen.”
I wonder if Emery even knows how old they are. In her mind, they’re probably all sixteen, and she’ll stand a chance with Benji when she’s older. Hopefully they’ll be out of here before Jules’s birthday. I’m pretty sure he’ll be pissed if his venture out of teenage-hood is spent on lockdown with the Branson sisters.
“I expected more from you,” Milo says. “My Twitter followers should at least know my age.”
“How did you–”
He cuts me off mid-question. “The aforementioned little Saturnite filled us in on your misfortune with the coin toss,” he explains.
Note to self: Don’t say anything in front of Emery that you don’t want the guys to know about. Obviously she likes to share stories. Hopefully she hasn’t told them too much.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Benji didn’t have something to say every five seconds,” I reply. “You think he’ll be able to handle the withdrawals while he’s here?”
Milo shrugs. “I’m sure Emery would listen to anything Benji wants to tweet about. She could be his sounding board.”
Speaking of Twitter…
“Why the extra letters? Do you really need four extra Zs in the word ‘amazing’?” I ask.
He smiles. “Yes, I do actually. You can’t use bold or italics on Twitter. I have to make my point somehow.”
He reaches toward the tray and grabs the lone Oreo.
