NITEOWL: To someone. I hope they would reply, “And all the stars between.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I meet LD all next week at the diner. Billie still doesn’t show. LD tells me he went to Iowa for some preseason football stuff. I try not to panic, but it doesn’t help. Is he going to come back before the start of college? Is he going to see me one last time? I keep thinking back to the festival, and to how close we danced, cheek to cheek, and I hope that isn’t the last time I’ll ever see him.
“I’ll see him at reunions, right? And when he comes home for Christmas . . .” I mutter to myself, waiting at the counter to pay for lunch. LD and I flipped a coin, so I’m paying today while she steps into the bathroom to reapply her eyeliner.
Miss Maude, the waitress, asks me to give her a few minutes while she attends to Mike and all of Heather’s friends in the corner booth. The waitress looks harried—when ten people order different versions of egg whites with a side of turkey bacon, it gets a little hairy. I’m surprised they’re not waiting on Heather, who can’t come meet them until I return to the shop.
A weird twist of irony, really. I don’t mind waiting.
The diner door opens and Mike looks up. He nudges his chin behind me, and waves. Confused, I turn to the door.
It’s Micah with a bouquet of flowers. Orchids. The tips of their petals are a rosy, bright pink against his dark fur-lined coat. He hesitates at the door, looking at me, before looking down at the bouquet.
Orchids are my favorite.
“Hi,” he starts awkwardly.
“Hi,” I reply, just as awkwardly.
Oil stains his fingers, and he reeks of grease and exhaust, but really it just smells like home. Why did I have to fall in love with him? Why couldn’t I just be happy? He extends the bouquet to me. “I’m . . . sorry I was a dick.”
My eyebrows shoot up into my hairline. “You’re not mad at me?” I whisper, unable to stop myself. “You don’t hate me?”
His eyes widen. “Hate you? I—I’m an ass, Ingrid. I should’ve stopped Mike from picking on you. I should’ve stepped in. I should’ve done a lot of things. But I was so mad. When I saw you dancing with Bleaker . . .”
“Were you jealous?” I ask, oddly curious.
A small smile begins to touch the edges of his lips. I haven’t seen it in ages. It makes my belly ache. I wish things could go back to the way they were before. I wonder if some part of him wishes that, too. Maybe just a piece of him. A smidge.
He runs his first finger along an orchid. “Do you really like me? Do you?”
My mouth falls open.
“I mean, Mike could’ve just been pulling this out of his ass but . . .” He hesitates with a look up to me from underneath his long, dark eyelashes.
I’m paralyzed with what to say. “I . . . I don’t . . .”
“I mean, it’s okay if you do. I just, you know. I don’t think I can . . .” He huffs, trying to make his words come out the exact way he feels. But it’s hard—if I know one thing, I know how hard it is. “We’re best friends, Igs. You and me, it’s always been. You’re like my sister, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry you feel this way and I don’t, and I’m sorry I can’t. I just . . .”
I’m not sure what should hurt—the thought that I’m not enough or the realization that I never will be? But neither of them do, I’m realizing. I’m trying to dig down and find those flames of anger I had, those cracks of pain, but I can’t find them in me anymore.
I start shaking my head. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay, though, is it? You had these feelings and then I made you hook me up with—I’m an asshole, aren’t I? I’m . . .”
“I’m not mad. I’m not angry—Micah, you’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend. And I miss you. We miss you. That’s what hurts the most.”
His eyebrows jerk up. That, he was not expecting.
We miss you isn’t a sentence, it’s a declaration of how much of him is mixed into the foundations of our collective souls. We miss you means Come back, we’re crumbling. It means Please, just stay awhile. But We miss you, isn’t a plea to come back; it isn’t a request. It’s just three simple words stating more than the sentence can hold; it’s three simple words saying I know you won’t come back, not now, but we’ll be here when you do.
And that’s really what Grams was trying to tell me all along. What you love is the North Star that leads you home. I’m just not his home.
I never will be.
I hear Heather before I see her. The door above the diner dings and she floods in, perfume and dark silky hair and a bright smile. She wraps her arms around Micah’s middle and kisses his cheek. “Baby!” she calls. “I thought we were going to meet at the shop today!”
“I got out on lunch break late,” he replies, not quite a lie, and kisses her back. “You’re beautiful.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me that. I feel fat today—” When she tosses back her hair, she sees the orchids and gasps. “Oh, baby!” She takes them out of his hands and smells them. “You remembered!”
Micah’s face pinches. “Remembered?”
“Don’t play dumb.” She hits his chest with the orchids. My orchids. “Our one month! It’s today.”
“Uh, actually, they’re . . .”
“I really thought you were going to forget, but then I remembered how great you are. You are great, you know that?” She kisses him again, and steals away whatever he was going to say. “I have a surprise for you, too,” she adds coyly.
“A—a surprise?” he asks.
“A surprise,” she repeats, nodding, “later. Come on, let’s eat, I’m starving—oh Ingrid. There you are.”
“Here I am,” I echo.
“I didn’t know if you were coming back so I left.”
“I can see that.”
“I didn’t tell the boss.”
That . . . is a first. “Thank you?”
“Mmm.” Then she marches toward their booth at the other end of the diner, expecting him to follow.
He hesitates for a moment, glancing back at me with an apology in his eyes. “There’s a meteor shower tonight,” he says. “Do you want to . . .”
A truce. He’s calling a truce. I put on a smile. “Meet on your lawn or mine?”
“How about the middle?” he asks before Heather calls him from their booth, and he leaves for her. He doesn’t look back. I don’t expect him to.
A petal stays behind, pastel pink and darkened tip. I pick it up as LD returns, patting her victory curls. She glances at the piece of flower.
“What’s that for?”
“Nothing—c’mon.” I pocket the petals and leave. “Gotta get back to hell before Satan notices no one’s manning the counter.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The one good thing about living in the middle of nowhere is that you can see the stars. They stretch out across the heavens like specks of diamonds scattered over a blanket of dark blue. The constellations seem to swirl together in a trapeze of wires. Or, it could be all swell and pretty if every star didn’t look exactly the same. It really bites the big one when you can't figure the big dipper from Orion’s belt. I don't even know if they’re in the same constellation.
I raise a star chart up toward the sky and turn the pinwheel around so that the stars align. Or at least I think they align. I never really paid attention when Micah used it.
It used to be that the stars foretold your fate. I’m not sure how much of that I believe, that the stars can predict who and what you will become, but I imagine it’d be . . . peaceful . . . to know where you were heading before you got there. Like a road map. You will graduate college here, and you will marry here, and if you look a little farther down you’ll see your kids, and your job, and how happy or sad or indifferent you will be about them.
Mine would probably be pretty boring, stagnant like millions of those stars.
“Damn stupid . . . ,” I curse at the star chart as I try to find the rig
ht constellations.
“I think we’re in the northern hemisphere, Igs.”
Startled, I sit up and glance over my shoulder toward the voice. Micah, a dark-blue beanie pulled low over his head, comes to meet me in the middle of our yards.
“Hi,” I greet.
“Hi,” he echoes. “Nice middle ground you have here. Mind if I join?”
“Only if you’ve brought the meteor showers.” I pat the ground beside me. He shuffles over to sit down beside me on the grass.
“We haven’t done this in a while,” he says after a moment.
“No, we haven’t.” I turn the star chart the other way. He leans in close to me, shoulder brushing against mine. I remember when he used to lean so close to me my skin felt ignited with a million little fireflies underneath. Like there was no one but me and him, and the universe was ours. But now . . . now all I can think about is Billie dancing with me at the Sunflower Festival, and the whine of LD’s teal violin as it plays “Whatsername,” and the possibility of Dark and Brooding.
Now all I can think about is how much of the universe I’ve missed all this time, thinking that he was it.
“So, have you seen any tonight?” He tilts his head back to gaze at the stars. I like the way the shadows accent his pronounced jaw, and the way the planes of his face darken and stretch, like he’s something else entirely. I can see why Heather likes him. He really is gorgeous.
“Nah—but you’re supposed to see Mars really well tonight, too. All I see is the moon and a bunch of tiny stars.”
He laughs and gently plucks the star chart out of my hands. “Here, lemme show you.” Turning the spinner so it reflects the night sky, he holds it up, one eye closed, and points to a red-looking star above us. “That’s it right there. If we leave right now, we’ll get there in eight months.”
“Ick, I haven’t even packed. What do you wear on Mars?”
“They’re very fashion forward; you know how those Martians are.”
“I wouldn’t fit in there, then.” I fall back against the grass. The blades prickle against the back of my neck. He lies down beside me and puts his head on my shoulder like old times. I wish it felt like old times, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel new, either. It just feels . . . sad.
“And if we want to go to Venus,” he goes on as if I hadn’t said a word, “it would take one hundred and ten days.”
“But you’ll never leave,” I reply. “You’ll stay here forever.”
“Steadfast is as good a place as any. I heard about Grams. You’re putting her in a home.”
“Yeah.”
“Because you want to leave?” His voice is oddly detached. “Because you’ve got better places to go?”
“What?” I sit up with a jerk. “No! I just—I can’t do this anymore.”
He sits up, too. “You barely even tried.”
“You don’t live with her every day! And who are you to judge me?”
“I’m not judging you. I’m your friend, Ingrid!”
“Friend?” I scoff. “You haven’t talked to me in a month!”
He throws his hands up. “What do you call those orchids?”
“Oh? You mean the orchids for your girlfriend?”
“You know they were for you!”
“But no one else did!” I snap back.
His eyes grow wide with anger. “I’m doing my best, Ingrid! It’s kind of hard to be a good boyfriend when my best friend won’t even try to play nice! You don’t even care about me being happy! And I’m happy, Ingrid. I’m so damn happy and you don’t even care.”
His words feel like a sucker punch in the stomach. I fist my hands. “And your girlfriend is just an innocent bystander in all this? Forgive me if I don’t believe that horse crap!”
“No, the problem is you.”
“Me!” I echo.
What feels like anger begins to well up in my chest like a heartburn after too many cheesy fries, but the longer it sits on my chest, the more it begins to sour. No, it isn’t anger. It’s disappointment. I don’t point out all of the years we “trespassed” on Heather’s parties in the past. I don’t mention the times we busted up a barn party or filled her pool with Jell-O or wrapped all of her guests’ cars in plastic wrap. I don’t mention the years that hang over us like stars, because he isn’t looking at the stars anymore. He hasn’t been stargazing since he met her.
“Keep out of my life, Ingrid.” Turning on his heels, he stalks across the grass, over the footprints he laid just minutes before.
A knot grows in my throat. “Wait!” I blurt, but he doesn’t stop—like he doesn’t even hear me. Or he ignores me. He’s never done that before, and I never thought he would. He stomps up the steps onto his front porch and slams the front door behind him. “My . . . star chart,” I mutter weakly.
“Hon, who are you talking to?” Grams calls out from the front door.
Sighing, I stomp up the steps and knock the dirt off my boots. “No one, Grams.”
She holds up a hand before I get inside. “You got a dirty behind.”
I mock hurt. “Why Grams, you’d deny a warm and loving home to your only granddaughter?”
“If she messes up my furniture, quite right.” She watches as I wipe the dirt off my butt, and cocks her head. The rollers in her snow-white hair clink together. “Was that an argument?”
“Maybe.”
She gives me a hard look, and I cave.
“Yeah, we’re having an elongated argument.”
“It’s about the mayor’s daughter, isn’t it?”
“Sorta.” I turn around so she can inspect my now dirt-less butt, and it must be acceptable enough because she lets me in again. I put my shoes on the rubber mat by the door as she totters off to the dining room table, where she’s been putting together the same flower puzzle since April. If Grams is anything, she’s persistent—even when she doesn’t remember it.
But today is good. Today is a good day.
I hope she has a lot of those before she leaves.
She picks up one of the last pieces and begins fitting it in one of the holes in Santa’s beard. It’s nowhere near Christmas. “It doesn’t surprise me. Love makes you do crazy things. Both the right and wrong kind.”
“Do you think Heather’s wrong for him?”
She shakes her head. “I’m glad he isn’t dating you. I have been worried about that for a while.”
“Gee, thanks,” I reply glumly, sitting down at the table to watch her fit the last pieces in.
“Oh, don’t give me that.” She throws her hand out and slaps me on the arm. But then she pauses, and really looks at me. The crow’s feet around her eyes scrunch together. “Do you love him?”
“I thought I did,” I reply, and realize just how earnest it is, “but now I don’t think I do. Micah says he loves Heather. He’ll do anything for her. He’ll take her side, believe her over me, practically ruin our friendship because I’m not pretty enough or not smart enough—”
“Sweetie, it’s never your fault. You are never not enough. You are never too much. You are smart, and you shine brighter every day.” She pats my hands and smiles. “And that’s why I don’t want to be a burden to you anymore.”
A knot forms in my throat. I’ve been putting off talking to her about the retirement home. I don’t want to ask the questions that I have to ask—why she arranged it all without me, why she didn’t let me have a say.
I hug her tightly. “You’re never a burden to me.”
“Oh, but I am, sweetie,” she says into my hair. “Love’s a heavy burden.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In school they teach you a lot of things, but they don’t teach you how to apologize. I need to find the courage to call Billie, but I don't know what to say. I go through the motions the rest of the week, stealing cardboard boxes from work to take home and help Grams pack for Omaha. She keeps saying that I should sell some things, but none of it’s mine to sell.
“Nonsense, it’s all yours. Or
it’ll be the banks,” she adds, folding an afghan to pad between her fine china plates.
“I don’t want to sell anything.”
“But you won’t be here, either—this house’ll be empty!”
I purse my lips. I don’t argue, because she’ll just persist until she wins. That I don’t think will ever change, even when she loses what my face looks like and the sound of my name on her tongue.
When my radio show rolls around again on Saturday, I don’t know what to do for the topic. The latest celebrity gossip is the “surprising” divorce of some golden couple, and it’s not something my listeners want to engage in. It isn’t something I want to talk about, either.
It’s either that or the upcoming vigil for Roman Holiday’s Holly Hudson. And I don’t want to talk about that either.
“What do you want to talk about?” I ask them. “What do you want me to?”
“You sound off, Niteowl,” Dark replies. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” I reply lamely. “We’re not here to talk about me—”
“Actually, we are. We can talk about whatever we want to.”
“And a whole lot of people are listening in,” I say, then laugh to try and bat him away. “And I’ve talked about myself for two weeks now and it’s midnight and—”
“You’re right. It’s midnight, and almost everyone we know is asleep. Why do you think we’re still awake? Listening to you? We’re the same kind of people—the ones who tell secrets, and kiss the people we aren’t supposed to, and make the art no one’ll see, and cry into our pillows after all is said and done. The daylight is for all those other normal people. For all the blunt, round edges in life. But the night? We own the night.”
His voice is soft and warm like a blanket I want to snuggle into and stay. I want to get lost in who he is, whoever that might be, because I’m tired of all these airwaves and all these walls and secrets and silence.
So I talk. About Grams, how I’m afraid to lose her in more ways than one. About Micah, who has already left me all alone. About LD, who is braver and stronger than she gives herself credit for and who will go on to do better things than she’s ever done before. And when I get to Billie—the Boy Wonder, so high up on his pedestal I’m afraid I’m too small for him to see anymore—I talk with Dark and Brooding about how much I don’t want him to go, and how I miss how he smiles and miss how he calls me “North” and how with him I feel validated and special.
We Own the Night Page 15