by Ally B
He’s not exactly being subtle about it.
I can’t focus on the lecture that occupies the rest of the period. I write down everything in the slide show on the board, but I don’t process any of it.
All I can think about is Max.
Would it be worth it to end whatever I have with Graham? It was just one stupid date. It wasn’t even a date. We just got breakfast. How could getting breakfast with someone push him away so much?
“I’ll stop talking to him,” I tell Max as the class begins a speaking activity in Spanish.
“No,” he says immediately. “I don’t care who you date.”
I nod, staring down at my paper.
“I mean, I care, but my first impression of his vibe isn’t that big of a deal.” He elaborates.
“Since when do you say vibe unironically?” I raise an eyebrow.
“I have no clue. I think St. Paul finally ruined me.” He laughs, his eyes lighting up in a familiar way that I’ve missed for the entire day.
“So, we’re good?” I ask him, hopefully.
“All good,” he answers with a reassuring smile.
And I finally feel like I can breathe.
Biology is quiet, and the tension between the two boys isn’t nearly as high as it has been.
“How do you get your hair to stay like that?” Max asks Graham after we finish our lab.
“Liquid cement and a prayer,” he jokes.
And Max laughs. Actually laughs. Not just a scoff or a smile, a real laugh.
And that’s when I realize this whole Graham thing could actually work out.
Apus
The Bird of Paradise
“Oh my God, it’s not a big deal!” I hear Jackson shout over the loud debate happening at our lunch table.
“This is war.” Violet scowls at him before taking an aggressive bite of her salad.
“Calm down!” Max shouts over them as we take our seats. “What’s going on?” He asks Kendall.
“Cap’n Crunch versus Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” she answers. “We’re in a deadlock.”
“Cap’n Crunch.” I blurt out, earning a disapproving headshake from Jackson.
“Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” Max says, earning groans from everyone at the table.
“Kendall, where’s Tommy? We need someone to settle this.” Violet glares at Jackson, but I can see her trying to keep a smile off of her lips.
“He’s going to agree with me, Vi, Cinnamon Toast Crunch is better.”
“No. Tommy has good taste.” Riley shakes his head.
“Exactly.” Jackson defends.
“Ava!” Max shouts at her as she walks toward the door.
She walks over to her table, standing behind Max’s chair. “What’s up?”
“Cap’n Crunch or Cinnamon Toast Crunch?” He asks her. The table goes silent, everyone staring at her.
“Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Definitely,” she says with her signature, sweet smile.
“Damnit, Ava!” Violet groans.
“Ava, you’re an absolute babe. Never change.” Max tells her.
“Thanks.” She grins, walking toward the cafeteria doors.
“An absolute babe?” Violet says what everyone at the table is clearly thinking.
“It was just weird phrasing.” Max groans, tilting his head back toward the fluorescent lights.
“Go for it, man.” Jackson encourages.
“You go for it.” Max retaliates.
“No thanks, I’ve got someone else on my mind.” He shifts his gaze to Violet, causing her to go bright red.
“Awww, Vi!” Riley jokes.
Violet hides her face in her hands, allowing her collarbone-length hair to cover her rosy cheeks like curtains.
“I’m sorry, is Violet Nakamura really embarrassed?” Max asks.
He has a point. Violet does everything with a little too much pride. Even if she’s wrong, she won’t hesitate to make a fool out of herself. If anyone picks on her, she’s in on the joke within seconds. Once in the first grade, Mrs. Woodsworth wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom, so she stood in front of her desk and peed her pants. A bright smile accompanied her walk to the nurses’ office for a new pair of pants to replace her checkered shorts.
“I’m not embarrassed! I’m taking a break from you guys,” she lies.
“Let her be,” I tell Max, still not able to keep the smile from my face.
“Yeah, Max, back to you. Ava?” Kendall raises her eyebrows in amusement.
“This isn’t new,” Violet says, finally sitting up. “You should see him in Government.” She sticks a finger toward her mouth and makes a gagging noise.
“I don’t even talk to her in Government.” He rolls his eyes.
“Ask her to homecoming,” Violet suggests.
“And let you beat my streak of going solo? I don’t think so.” He shakes his head.
“Something tells me Vi might have a date this year, too.” I take a sip of my water, eyeing Jackson.
Vi looks like she’s ready to slap me from across the table, but thankfully she just shakes her head.
“Tommy!” She shouts. “My best friend in the whole wide world. I have a very pressing question to ask you.”
“Excuse me?” Kendall scoffs at the statement.
“What’s up?” Tommy asks, sitting in the empty chair between Kendall and Riley.
“Answer carefully,” Kendall warns.
“Your answer will affect your relationship with everyone at this table,” I say in a low voice.
“It’s a very serious question,” Jackson adds.
“Okay, I get it! What’s the question?” Tommy asks frantically.
“Cap’n Crunch or Cinnamon Toast Crunch?” Kendall asks.
“Fuck you guys.” He slumps down in his chair. “I thought something was actually wrong!”
“There is something wrong! We’re tied!” Violet slams her hand on the table.
“Fine.” He huffs. “Cap’n Crunch.”
“Yes!” Violet shouts. “Ha.” She points at Jackson. “Ha.” Kendall. “And ha!” And finally, at Max. “I’d like to thank the academy, and my parents for raising me with functional taste buds,” she says before finally smoothing her tight blue gingham dress and taking her seat.
“Not cool, man,” Jackson shakes his head at Tommy, still clearly amused by Violet’s speech.
“We’re tied though! Because of Ava!” Kendall defends.
“Ava doesn’t count. Lunch table only.” Violet shakes her head, defiantly. “Just accept that Cap’n Crunch is better.”
“Sure, if you like faintly flavored colored cardboard!” She huffs, running a hand through her long blonde hair and glaring at Tommy. “We’ll discuss this later.”
The rest of the lunch period is spent with half of the table shunning Tommy and the other half making fun of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch lovers.
“I’m going to fail this,” Max says definitively as we walk into the Astronomy room.
“It’s naming constellations! We’ve taken this quiz three years in a row!”
“It’s your job! You think I can remember eighty-eight of these?”
“Just look at the pictures,” I suggest. “You’ll be able to tell. They look like what they’re named after.”
“Half of the constellations are like ‘here’s three stars, we’re going to name it dragon-princess-destroyer-3000 because that’s what they think it looks like! It’s not helpful.” He huffs, plopping down into his seat.
“Fine. But you have to agree that they kind of look like what they’re named after.”
“Maybe if I spoke Latin!”
“You can tell by the root word!” I defend.
“Cygnus, Phoebe. Cygnus.”
“How do you say it in Spanish? They’re both romance languages.” I cross my arms.
“Cisne,” he says matter-of-factly.
“There’s a ‘c’ there.” I try to come up with a way to prove myself right, but I know I won’t be able to.
“Yeah. Good one.” He rolls his eyes.
The quiz is the same one it’s been every year prior. Miss Salazar didn’t exactly plan the class with the idea that kids might take it over and over, so everything is the same every year.
Making it the easiest elective in our school, especially for people who’ve taken it years in a row.
The only people stupid enough to do such a thing are Max and me, but still.
The quiz is easy, and so is the one in Calculus.
“You’re going to kill it tonight. I wish I could be there.” I tell Max as we walk down the stairs from Calculus.
“Is your mom working tonight?” He asks me.
“Yeah, why?”
“You can come over for dinner if you want. Dad’s grilling after the game. I know it’ll be late, but—”
“I’ll be there.” I cut him off. “I love midnight barbeques with the Sanchez family.”
“A time-honored tradition. I’ll see you then?”
“See you then,” I say, turning down the hall toward the parking lot.
“We need to do something on Tuesday nights.” Kat huffs, leaning onto the counter. “No one is ever here.”
“There’s a football game. Home.” I remind her. “That’s where everyone is.”
The theater is empty, not even the typical elderly couples with annual passes who come in the nursing home van are here. It didn’t even drive by today, which I was oddly offended by.
“The ninety-nine-year-olds aren’t sitting in the bleachers for a seven-hour long football game,” Kat says knowingly.
“Football games are five hours long.” I correct jokingly.
“Basically.” She tears open a bag of M&Ms.
“How do you get people to come to a planetarium?” I ask her, racking my brain for ideas.
“Pay them.”
“That kind of defeats the purpose.” I reach over the counter and grab a bag of fruit snacks.
“So does getting robbed by bratty teenagers.” She jabs.
“You sound like you’re ninety.”
“Spending all of this time with you ages me. I had to switch moisturizers.” She pauses, leaning into me. “You’re giving me wrinkles.” She whisper-shouts.
“Good. I hope the grey hair comes soon.” I pop an orange fruit snack into my mouth, sorting them out in my hand and eating them worst to best, saving grape for last, obviously.
We wait nearly the entire night for someone to come in.
I eventually abandon Kat and head into the theater.
I mess with the computer in the back for a while, zooming in and out in familiar patterns Jerry had taught me.
I stop on Cygnus for a while, studying the familiar formation. Ptolemy knew what he was doing when he named this one. Even I can admit that some of the constellations don’t make any sense. Hello, Aquarius? The water bearer? Literally just a bunch of random lines.
Cygnus does a decent job, though. It kind of manages to look like a swan.
There’s no way to pinpoint exactly what swan in Greek mythology Cygnus refers to. Still, Cycnus and his chariot crash hit a little too close to home, and Zeus disguising himself in another attempt to be a man-whore with Leda is flat out weird, so my favorite is Orpheus. It’s also messed up, but it’s the nicest notion. He was the son of a fate and a musician for the gods. When he died, he was placed in the stars next to his lyre.
Cygnus was one of Ptolemy’s first forty-eight constellations, the great forty-eight if you consult the constellations for kids book my grandfather gave me, one of the constellations from the Almagest or one of the eighty-eight constellations recognized by the IAU if you ask literally anyone else.
Cygnus also contains an asterism called the Northern Cross, which is my mom’s favorite. She refers to it as a constellation, but that’s just to annoy me. That’s probably why it’s my favorite, but I’ll never confess to it.
Deneb is the brightest star and the head of the cross, but Albireo is the most interesting. There are other binary multi-colored star systems, but Eta Cassiopeia doesn’t do it for me the way Albireo does. It might be that it’s harder to see the smaller star, but I think the fact that Albireo is in my mom’s favorite asterism makes it mine too.
I open Snapchat and tap mindlessly through stories. Videos of the boys scream-singing ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ on the bus to their game are interrupted by football game selfies and the sea of green screams making up the student section.
I stop my tapping when I see Gabby’s story, a selfie with Graham.
Her face is dotted with green and white paint, and both of them are grinning ear-to-ear. Genuine smiles, not ‘I’m-being-forced-to-take-a-selfie’ smiles.
And they look really good together.
“Hey, kiddo, we’re going to close up early.” Jerry’s voice snaps me out of my daze. “Bingo night and a football game at the same time mean we’re not getting out usual patrons.”
Bingo night, that’s what it is.
“I’ll shut down here. Get home safe, all right?”
“Thanks, Jerry.” I give him a smile before grabbing my coat, ditching my name tag in the little blue plastic pencil box, and following Kat into the parking lot.
Fornax
The Furnace
I make it home at the same time as Camila and Mia, who jumps out of the car and runs toward me.
“Phoebe!” She shouts, jumping into my open arms.
“How was the game, Mimi?” I ask her, walking toward Camila’s car.
“Good. Maxie scored three goals.” She beams.
“Three? That’s crazy!”
“Yeah, well, Daddy says that team is pretty shitty anyway.”
“Mia Luciana Sanchez!” Camila gasps.
“Is shitty a bad word?” She asks me in her version of a whisper, which is pretty much just a breathy version of her normal speaking voice.
“It’s a pretty bad word.” I use the same tone.
“I’m going to be in so much trouble.” She sighs as she hops out of my arms, dragging her feet as she walks back to Camila.
“We’ll see you for dinner?” Camila asks me.
“I can come over and help as soon as I put this stuff inside.” I turn slightly to show her my backpack.
“That would be great. It’s too cold to grill, so Bill flipped our dinner plans upside down.”
“I’ll see you in a few,” I tell her, unlocking the side door and closing it behind me.
I throw my stuff down on the kitchen table, pulling my water bottle out of the side pocket of my backpack and shoving my lanyard back into my pocket.
I scroll through the notifications I’d missed while at work, but all of them are either celebrity news I don’t remember signing up for or Instagram messages from Violet.
No Graham.
I lock the door to the house and walk through the side door toward the Sanchez’s patio. I knock before entering through the sliding glass door into the kitchen, where Camila is already rummaging through the stainless-steel fridge, placing vegetables on the island behind her.
“What can I help with?” I ask as I wash my hands.
“I don’t know yet,” she says. “What are we feeling tonight, Mimi?”
“Pizza,” she says from her chair at the island, resting her elbows on the counter and her chin in her hands.
“We can do flatbreads if you want,” Camila says, closing the fridge and walking toward the pantry.
“From Fired Up?” She refers to the pizza shop in the town next to ours.
“When was the last time we ordered food on a Tuesday night?” Camila asks her.
“Never,” Mia huffs.
“Exactly. Flatbreads it is, I bought naan on Sunday,” she says from the pantry.
Camila, Mia, and I quickly get to work. The process would be a lot easier if Camila believed in pre-made sauces, but she doesn’t.
Camila gets to work on the barbecue sauce for Mia’s odd combination, and Mia and I make the actual p
izza sauce.
“Mimi, can you go and get me some basil, oregano, and thyme?” I refer to the herb garden on the windowsill on the other side of the kitchen. She scrambles away and climbs onto her step-stool, carefully plucking the herbs from their stems.
“So, how’s school going for you this year?” Camila asks me as she grinds pepper into the bubbling saucepan in front of her.
“Good,” I tell her honestly. “Easier than last year.”
“Did you get your early action in for Princeton on time?”
“Of course.” I give her a smile as Mia sets the herbs down on my cutting board. “All washed?”
“Yep.” She beams.
I chop the herbs and throw them into the sauce, earning a nod of approval from Camilla.
We assemble the flatbreads on the toasted naan and pop them into the upper of Camila’s two ovens.
“Home!” I hear Max shout from the front hall, followed by the slamming of the huge front door.
“We’re in the kitchen!” Camila responds.
“Como estas, Mama?” Max runs into the room, wrapping his arms around his mom.
“Apestas. Go shower.” She wriggles out of his arms.
“I don’t stink!” He defends himself. “Do I, Mimi?” He runs toward his sister, causing her to squeal and run out of the kitchen in an attempt to escape, but he quickly scoops her up and runs back in the kitchen. She’s a mess of shrieks and giggles as he runs around with her flung over his shoulder.
“Aren’t you tired?” Camila yells to him.
“Never too tired for this!” I can hear the smile in his voice from the other room.
“Go shower!” Camila shouts.
“Fine,” he groans. I can hear his footsteps pound up the stairs as Mia comes running back into the room, taking a seat at the white marble island.
“Grab me an onion?” Camila asks me.
I walk to the pantry, scanning for onions.
Camila keeps a freakishly neat pantry for someone who works so often. Everything is in little metal baskets or perfectly stacked in clear glass jars.
I finally find the onions. “Yellow or red?” I ask Camila.
