Meet Me at Midnight

by Jessica Pennington

  Last summer I helped Dad make fires every night, but this summer Asher has unofficially claimed the job. I grab a stack of newspapers from the little screened-in porch, take a deep breath, and head toward my demise. I mean, the fire pit. Hopefully the only thing to crash and burn tonight will be some logs. Fingers crossed. Asher is throwing logs into a haphazard pile within the metal ring when I set the papers down on one of the three wooden benches.

  “Hey.” Asher smiles at me, and I smile back without thinking, because lips … teeth … blue eyes.

  “Hey,” I finally squeak out. “Do you want some help?”

  Asher puts his hands on his hips and looks from the sandy circle to me. “Yeah. I suck at this.” I laugh and he looks at me. “What?”

  I don’t say anything, because the fact that he admitted that means we are so different. I’m afraid to talk to him, and he’s confident enough to admit he sucks at something; he doesn’t care if I know.

  “I’m actually awesome at this,” I say, picking the papers up and handing them to Asher. “I’ll fix the wood. You start twisting these.” I take a piece of paper in my hands and twist it.

  Asher sits on the bench across from me and works on the paper, making a little pile on the ground in front of him while I pull all of the wood out of the circle.

  “You don’t like my stack?”

  “It’s more like a pile.” I find a thick, straight log and stand it on its end in the middle of the ashy circle. “Fires need air, you can’t just dump the wood in there.” That’s what my dad always said. I stack another piece of wood at an angle against my first. “I mean, unless you want to douse it with lighter fluid, but I consider that cheating.”

  “I didn’t realize there were rules.” He’s smiling at me like he thinks I’m funny.

  I shrug. “There aren’t, sometimes I just make them up.”

  Asher watches me as I stack pieces against my first, creating a cone. Before I put on the last piece, I wave at Asher. “Stick a handful of paper here.” I use my log to point to the gap and Asher squats down, shoving paper into the open space there. “Do the same thing on the other side,” I say, and he does, carefully removing a log before shoving in more paper.

  Asher is standing next to the fire pit, hands on his hips, looking pleased. “Nice.”

  “We’re not done yet.” I pick up another handful of twisted papers and start sticking them into the cracks between the logs, leaving short pieces exposed. Asher grabs paper and does the same on the other side. “These are like a bunch of tiny fuses.”

  Asher nods but doesn’t say anything. I pick up the long lighter on the bench next to me and hold it out to him. He shakes his head. “You should probably do the honors.”

  I circle around our creation, lighting all of the little paper tails on fire. The center begins to glow, growing brighter and brighter, until the flames break through the cone of wood. I sit down on the bench behind me, right next to Asher. I didn’t even think about it, but now that I’m here, it would be weird to move.

  “Where’d you learn that?” he asks.

  “Lots of trial and error last year. But mostly my dad taught me.”

  “That’s cool.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes before Asher finally breaks it. “My mom said you swim a four-hundred-yard IM. That’s one of my favorites.”

  “Yeah?” I love individual medleys because unlike the team events, you don’t have to worry about whether you’re screwing something up for someone else. It’s just you, good or bad. IMs are a love-them-or-hate-them kind of thing, and something about knowing Asher and I are in the same camp relaxes something inside of me. It’s a very tiny, very specific thing we have in common.

  Our parents join us at the fire, and while they talk, Asher and I roast marshmallows, make double-decker s’mores (his idea) and throw the tiny little apples into the fire to see if they’ll explode (also his idea). Eventually the adults announce that they’re going back to the Marins’ cabin to play cards, and tell us to douse the embers when we leave.

  Once we’re alone, we get quiet. We sit for a few minutes, staring at the fire and poking at glowing logs with our metal roasting sticks, before Asher breaks the silence. “There’s a meteor shower this week. It doesn’t peak for a few days, but we can probably see some tonight.” Asher stands up and walks behind his bench, sitting down on the grass. He lies back on the ground, and I stay on my bench, watching him. Asher looks prettier in the dark somehow. Maybe it’s the last of the fire, casting his skin in a soft warm glow. Maybe it’s the way he smiles while he’s talking to me, and light glistens off of his white teeth. Everything in my chest tightens as I look at the empty space next to him on the grass and force myself to stand up and walk over.

  Only a few inches separate us. We’re wedged between the bench and the cement walkway that leads down to the dock. Maybe I should have moved the bench over so we weren’t so close, but now I’m here, and it would be weird to get up and move it just so I don’t have to be so close to him. Don’t be a nervous jerk, Sidney.

  I’m prepared for how awkward it’s going to be to lie in the silence together, but Asher doesn’t let it last more than a few seconds. As soon as my head hits the grass he’s pointing toward the sky. “Meteor showers usually originate around a certain constellation, so if we find it, then it’ll be easier to see the meteors. Especially this early in the shower. And into the night.”

  “It’s close to midnight.”

  “Most meteor showers actually peak closer to four or five a.m.” He points up into the sky. “We’re looking for Perseus.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “He’s a god.” Asher’s fingers trace across the sky like he’s mapping it out with his fingertip. “But honestly, he looks more like a one-legged stick figure. Like something my three-year-old cousin would draw.”

  I laugh. “They all look weird to me.”

  Asher taps at the sky. “There.” He traces his finger in a pattern I can’t follow. “Do you see it?”

  “Mhm.” I stare in the general direction of Asher’s hand, hoping it will magically come into focus for me.

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  Asher pulls his phone out of his pocket and his fingers fly across the screen. He holds it out to me. “They’re pretty hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.” The screen is filled with stars and lines, and he’s right, this hardly looks like a person, let alone a god. Someone had a very vivid imagination back in the day. I turn my eyes back to the sky and keep searching.

  “Anything?” he says.

  I don’t say anything, just shake my head. But as I’m staring up into the sky, wondering if my brain just isn’t wired to see constellations, I see the tiniest little spray of light. “There!” I thrust my finger at the sky and Asher laughs. “I saw one!”

  “Is it your first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there should probably be eight or ten an hour right now. Not that we’ll catch them all, but…” His voice trails off into silence.

  We lie on our backs and stare up at the sky until I’m woken up by Asher patting my hand with his. “Sid, it’s really late. I didn’t know you fell asleep.”

  We make our way back to our houses, but the next night we’re in the same spot. “How do you know so much about constellations?”

  I can feel Asher’s shoulders shrug next to me, ruffling the grass. “We learned about them in fourth grade, and I just always thought they were cool. I guess I was kind of a nerd about it afterward.”

  I nod. “Can you show me Cancer?”

  “Is that your sign?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you have a birthday soon.” It’s not a question, just a statement.

  “You know all of the zodiacs, too?”

  “I know generally when they are.” Asher points a finger at the sky. “Cancer is one of the faintest.” He traces his finger along the sky like he always does when he’s trying t
o find something. Then he taps at the night sky, like it’s a framed map overhead. “Okay, there.”

  I stare and stare as Asher traces a shape across the sky, but honestly, I don’t see anything but a mass of tiny lights.

  “I’m a lost cause for constellations,” I say.

  Asher laughs, and we go back to looking for meteors, counting twenty that night. We lie on our backs every night that week watching for meteors, tallying them up like stones dropped in our beach buckets. Even after the shower ends, we spend most nights on the grass, staring up at the sky, our fingertips so close we could touch.

  And the next month, when it’s my birthday, I find a surprise on my bedroom ceiling. A constellation of my very own, mapped out with glow-in-the-dark stars. Cancer—my very own crab—one I love enough to keep as a pet all summer long.

  DAY 7

  Asher

  I don’t remember getting into bed, but that’s where I wake up the next morning. In a cold puddle.

  Holy crap, did I actually pee the freaking bed?

  I’m still in the fog of sleep as I let my brain work through how I’m going to break it to my mother that her eighteen-year-old wet his bed. What a proud mom moment that will be. Could I get everything bagged up and thrown away, without being caught? I don’t even know where someone would buy new sheets around here. There’s one little strip of stores that includes the grocery store, a dollar store, a hobby shop, and a salon. It’s a forty-five-minute drive to an actual mall.

  I am never drinking again.

  The clock says 9:20. I hear voices in the kitchen and spring out of bed, feeling my head revolt against my body being upright. My stomach lurches and I give myself to the count of five before walking, to make sure I don’t puke. Two long strides from the bed and my door is locked with a click. I’m about ten minutes away from my mom barging in, insisting I get up and enjoy the day. I strip my clothes off and throw them on my bed, rolling my sheets into a pile and wrapping them in the crinkly plastic mattress pad underneath. How much would it cost to replace all of this? These aren’t even my sheets, they’re Nadine’s, so can I really just toss them?

  I dig clothes out of my drawer and pull on a pair of basketball shorts. I haven’t figured out what to do with everything yet—how I can get it all to a Laundromat undetected—but making an appearance will buy me time. When I get into the kitchen my parents are sitting at the table. There’s a plate of cinnamon rolls in the center, and Sidney is in the chair to the right of my mom, wide-eyed and smiling.

  “Good morning.” Her tone is so chipper it almost hurts.

  “Morning,” I mutter. “My alarm didn’t go off.”

  “I hate when that happens,” Sidney says. Her voice drips with mock sympathy.

  “Sidney brought us extra cinnamon rolls,” Mom says, just before biting into one.

  “I love them, but Dad doesn’t,” Sidney says. “We had way too many.” Sidney bites into one of the gooey circles. “Plus I wanted to see if you wanted to take a run with me. I was going to drive down to the trails that run by the river.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Mom says. “You two will be teammates soon.”

  Sidney’s eyes dart from my mom to me, but if she’s surprised that the two of us will both be swimming at our parents’ alma mater in a few months she doesn’t show it. I suppose even without talking we have our moms to keep us both flush with intel. I’m about to tell my future teammate there’s no way I’m running this morning, when I realize that this is my chance. My ticket out of the house for a few hours, no questions asked.

  “Awesome.” I sound unintentionally ecstatic. Sidney’s surprised face makes the sharp pang my own voice just shot into my head almost worth it. She never expected me to say yes. “Give me a few minutes.”

  Sidney turns back to my mother, who is peppering her with questions. Glancing at everyone at the table with their attention focused on gooey rolls—and Sidney—I make my way to the sink. I’ve never been so glad to have her in my house. Quietly, I open the cabinet underneath and pull out a black trash bag. I don’t look back at the table. I clench it in my fist, close to my side, and walk as fast as I can toward the hallway without running. When I’m back in my room I stuff my pile of bedding into the black bag, pull on socks, shoes, and a T-shirt, and shove my bag of shame out the window. It lands on the gravel driveway that runs behind the house, wedged between it and Dad’s car. From the corner of the yard I see a flash of movement. Nadine is standing in the yard, looking between my head hanging out of the window and the giant bag now lying on the ground. I give her a tentative wave, trying to look casual—nothing to see here!—and retreat back into my bedroom.

  “You ready?” I say as I walk back into the kitchen, grabbing a napkin and a cinnamon roll before bolting toward the door.

  Sidney follows after me, keys in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. “Feeling good this morning?” she says, her voice more annoyed than sympathetic.

  “Fantastic,” I say.

  “You look fantastic.”

  I haven’t looked at myself at all this morning. I didn’t even stop in the bathroom. For all I know she covered my face in Sharpie last night.

  “Do I have a dick on my face or something?”

  “What?” She looks legitimately shocked. “No.” She shakes her head, her face twisted in disgust. “What am I, a ten-year-old boy? Give me some freaking credit.”

  Sidney turns toward the car and I jog to the right. I pick up the garbage bag and haul it toward her car on the other side of the driveway.

  “What are you doing?” Sidney says.

  “Pop the trunk.”

  She leans her hip against the car and crosses her arms. “Not until you tell me what’s in the bag.”

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” I say, and hear the trunk click and pop.

  “Well?” We’re a mile down the road when Sidney finally presses me on the contraband in her trunk. “Am I helping you hide a body or something?”

  “Why, do you have experience in that? Have a checklist you need to go back for?”

  She gives a little grunt of annoyance. “Please, as if I’d keep any evidence of that,” she says softly.

  “I need you to drop me off at the Laundromat.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hear they have the best breakfast in town.” I roll my eyes. “What do people usually do at Laundromats?”

  “Doesn’t your dad do laundry on Tuesdays?”

  “Just drop me off, Sidney.”

  She drums her fingers softly against the steering wheel. “Did you … have an accident or something?” Sidney is barely controlling herself. She sounds like she’s about to break into laughter at any moment. Her shoulders are shaking gently.

  “What did you do? Put my hand in warm water or something? Jesus, Sidney.”

  “Settle down.” She sounds defensive. “You seriously thought you peed the bed?”

  “What the hell was I supposed to think when I woke up in a wet bed?”

  Sidney shakes her head and rolls her eyes. I think she mutters boys. “You obviously never babysat. Pee has a … very distinct smell.”

  “Well excuse me for not sniffing the sheets I thought I peed on. I was a little distracted by the fact that I thought I peed the bed!”

  “Wow, you are a drama llama this morning,” Sidney mutters.

  I had fully expected drama today, but this isn’t what I had in mind at all. We drive the rest of the way in silence. When we pull into the parking lot in front of the Laundromat, Sidney unlocks the doors.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Dropping you off,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “Sounds like I don’t need to be here,” I say, annoyed. Not that I want to run with her, but at least I could just sit somewhere for an hour.

  “You still need to wash them,” she says. “They’re going to be sticky.”

  “From?” I practically growl it at her. I am so not in the mood this morning.


  “Lemonade,” she says, trying her best to contain the smile working at the corners of her mouth. “Your favorite, if I remember correctly.”

  I slam the door and yank my bag out of the trunk. Apparently I’m spending my hour at the Laundromat.

  “How much do you hate me right now?” she yells out the open window as she pulls away.

  Sidney

  Asher probably kisses anyone when he’s drunk. Maybe everyone. I bet his standards are super low under regular circumstances, so what can I expect from him when he’s trashed? Obviously I can’t expect him not to kiss his arch enemy. Though that seems like the least you could expect of any guy who isn’t currently starring in a Bond movie. So what’s my excuse? Shock? Retaliation for that stunt he pulled in the lake? I had just woken up. Maybe I thought it was a dream.

  I’m looking out the kitchen window, thinking about our drunken kiss and obvious mutual lack of standards, when my date—a guy who actually seems to like me—pulls into the driveway.

  “Mom, I’m going out, I’ll be back in a few hours.” The door is half-open when I shout it behind me. Mom is sitting on our little screened-in porch, at her table covered in glass.

  “With Asher?” The question shouldn’t sound like an accusation, but it does, so I practically screech no as I let the door slam behind me.

  And then, as if my mother just chanted his name into a mirror three times in the dark, Asher appears. Standing in the yard, halfway between our houses. He looks from me to the old black car sitting in the driveway, and as I pivot right toward Caleb, he pivots left, and heads toward the lake.

  * * *

  Caleb must catch the look on my face as we step out of his car five minutes later, because he looks apologetic when he meets me at my door. As I stare at the stone-covered restaurant that looks like a hobbit house built into the side of a hill, Caleb stares at me.

  “You were so dressed up at the party.” He shoves his hands into his khaki shorts. “I just sort of figured that was your norm.”

  He’s not wrong, my first instinct would have been to wear the white skirt from the party. But it’s still in a pile on my floor, light grass stains up one side from last night. That kiss. Instead, I’m wearing a cute blue tank top that hangs loose but is far from dressy. It could be, if I had paired it with a skirt, but I’m not wearing one. I’m wearing cut-off shorts. Because I was determined to show Caleb that I wasn’t some stuck-up tourist who doesn’t know how to relax. I didn’t expect that he’d bring me to the one fancy restaurant in all of Riverton.