For a long moment, her foot taps the stiff carpeting. Then she makes her decision, slowly walking over and ducking inside. The flashlight app on my cell phone illuminates the space as the door clicks shut. Crossing her legs, she plops down on a pillow in front of me.
It’s cave-like in here. Hanging clothes instead of stalactites. And a much, much smaller space. Although I did technically ask her to enter, nothing has prepared me for being this close to her. I try backing up, but there’s nowhere to go except deeper into the collection of fabrics and throw pillows. Too deep, and I’ll look like I’m forming a chrysalis.
Silence.
Opening my mouth seems risky. When was the last time I had a breath mint? (Three months ago. Good enough? No way.) But since Linny’s not speaking, I take the plunge. “Have you ever heard of Schrödinger’s cat?”
Not my best opener. Even in the near darkness, I can see her eyes squinting into slits as she studies me. “No,” she says, half smiling.
“It’s a thought experiment. A famous one. So, imagine a cat in a box with a vial of poison.”
Her smile vanishes. “Why would I want to do that? That’s horrible.”
Sinking back into the pillow—“It might sound kind of twisted, but—er—no real cats are in danger, here.” Grasping at the strings of where I was going, I continue, “Anyway, until you open the box, you don’t know if the cat is dead or alive. It exists in both states simultaneously. It’s an unknown.” Linny is still squinting. I’m losing her. Cut to the chase! “And I just think you should just open the box, with your parents, I mean. Just get the whole not-a-doctor thing out in the open, and then you can see—”
“If any of us are still breathing?” She cracks a smile.
“Exactly.”
She inhales all the air in the tiny space and pushes it out again. For a moment, she seems far away. “What if I open it and the cat’s dead?”
“But what if you open it and it’s all cute and cuddly and jumps up and wants to lick your face?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
“Álvaro. Telling him.”
“That’s different,” I say.
“It’s actually exactly the same.”
That’s when I see it. A black journal, open at the middle, by her right knee. The name Álvaro Herrera written all across the page. I pick it up. “What’s this?
“It’s my, um . . . Okay, remember when I said that I was a tad bit obsessed with people who disappeared and came back?”
“Yeah?”
“Voilà.”
“Wow, this is so detailed. Did you—”
Pressing a fingertip to my lips—“Shhh.”
Beneath the crack in the door, I hear muffled footsteps. Not from downstairs. From right outside.
Oh no.
Both of us hold our breath as my pulse enters stroke range. I prepare for the real possibility of the door swinging open. Of Linny’s six-foot-four Viking of a dad wrenching me from the closet. Disemboweling me. Entrails all over the white carpeting.
Step, step, step outside.
Maybe it’s not Linny’s dad? Maybe they have a morbidly obese cat?
Thirty horrifying seconds pass before she removes her finger from my lips. The footsteps have stopped. Whispering—“I think it’s okay now, but we should really go back downstairs.”
I nod and resist the impulse to mention that I’d like to stay here forever with her.
That’s when the door whips open. The lights are solar-flare bright.
If ever I wanted to solve the mysteries of the universe, it would be now. Can matter instantaneously disappear? Oh effing please let that be possible.
Because it’s her dad.
“Oh.” He almost jumps. “I—uh—well.”
This is the end of me. Good-bye, cruel world.
Neither Linny nor I speak. It’s a three-person staring contest, and there are no winners.
But then, get this! He closes the door.
ESTOY VIVO. I AM ALIVE.
A PERSONAL OBSERVATION ON PARALLEL WORLDS:
In most of them, I’m probably dead.
Linny plummets her head into her hands. Muffled panic—“Did that just happen?”
Whispering—“Why didn’t he kill me?” Had he been Paul, he would have.
“I actually have no idea.” Cracking the door back open, she peeks outside before instructing me to crawl out. “Quickly, quickly,” she says, panic still in her voice. She darts into the light, stands up, and begins to race out of her room. I dart out, too. As she’s shutting her bedroom door, I hear her dad’s voice carrying from the kitchen: “Didn’t find her, unfortunately.”
Linny’s mom: “And this is her party. I don’t know why she would embarrass us like this.”
Linny’s dad: “I don’t think that’s her goal, dear.”
“And that boy! You saw that boy.”
“Well—yes, yes, I did.”
“She’s just so young. She has plenty of time for those things after Princeton, but right now she needs to focus.”
Linny and I exchange worried, embarrassed glances. She surges to the back stairs while I barrel down the front with a burst of adrenaline.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I swear that later, as Linny’s cutting a cake shaped like a pair of surgical scissors, her mom’s putting a curse on me from across the room. I don’t believe in curses. But I believe that other people believe in curses. Her tight lips smack together and apart. I’m too afraid to look at her dad.
I am the undisputed king of lousy first impressions.
23.
Linny
WHO: Astronaut Jeremy Higgs
WHEN: Early 2000s, seven months after his journey to the International Space Station
WHY: He shocked his wife and two children by taking off at 3:00 a.m. in the family truck. After two days with no communication, Higgs called his best friend and fellow astronaut, Wilson Jones, to come join him in the middle of the Mojave Desert. When Jones arrived, Higgs was sprawled out on the truck bed, gazing at the sky. “Just look at them,” he said when he heard footsteps. “See, you’re the only other person I know who understands—from here on out, it’ll never be as good as those stars.”
NOTES: If I could, I would fill the sky with them for you—just please come home.
Deep in the night, I can’t switch off my brain. The pipes are whooshing and the floorboards are settling and a whispered hush is cutting through the backyard. Somewhere, a sprinkler turns on. The streetlamp flickers. My cotton sheets net me like a flounder, no matter how many times I kick them down the bed. Usually I like staying awake after midnight—mostly because MomandDad are asleep, and I can hear myself think without crashing into anyone else’s thoughts. But right now, I can’t swat away what happened at the Future Doctors of America lunch. My dad just closed the door. I think he might’ve shocked me as much as I shocked him. This is the man who showed Grace and me pictures of STDs when she turned fifteen, almost permanently putting us off the opposite sex. And now he’s okay with a boy in my closet? Excuse my French, but what the hell?
I’m starting to think that contradictions run in the family. It makes sense that Grace came from this sort of father. After all, she is the Contradiction Queen. She wants to free wild things, yet she has a pet box turtle in captivity. She professes the sanctity of sisterhood yet runs away without her sister. Why couldn’t she have taken me with her?
Why am I not strong enough to fly away, too?
What Álvaro said at the July 4th party swirls around with thoughts of Grace. How we love and how much we love. Rolling onto my stomach, I dig my chin into the pillows. How we love and how much we love. He’s a hypocrite, too—spouting these words about love, yet he left Sebastian’s mom in the dust.
Why?
Okay, definitely can’t sleep.
I slip out of bed, add all this to my Journal of Lost and Found, and start cross-referencing all the Seahorse and Seashore Drives in the state
of Florida and then expand nationally. There are a couple in Georgia and Louisiana and tons throughout the rest of the country. We could spend our entire lives searching for that chapter of his manuscript and come up with squat.
As I’m rolling this around in my mind, my cell phone buzzes with a text from Sebastian: knock knock.
It’s two o’clock in the morning, and he’s telling me a knock knock joke? I text obligingly: Who’s there?
Less than ten seconds later, he responds: Me, in your backyard.
Oh God. Is he serious?
A faint plink, plink rattles my window. I scramble over and (as quietly as possible) jimmy it open, peering along the roofline. There’s Sebastian, standing under the porch light, a pebble balanced in his right hand. His hair’s adorably bed headed, but he’s dressed in day clothes: jeans and a bright-green T-shirt that claims I EDIT WIKIPEDIA.
He’s totally serious. And I’m totally freaking out.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper. Yes, I’m happy to see him. Okay, I’m thrilled to see him, but Mom has bionic ears. Given my luck, she’ll hear our conversation, peek through the blinds, and ground me for a century. Well, I might already be; after the party, she told me to go to my room and didn’t even call me down for dinner.
In Sebastian’s left hand is a plastic pack of something yellow and glittery. He whispers, “I come bearing gifts.”
“At two o’clock in the morning?”
He shrugs and stares up at me with his intensely metallic eyes. Waiting. Waiting for me to let him in. Besides the MomandDad issue, the foremost problem is my reindeer-printed pajamas. Quickly throwing on a hoodie is the only option, because I can’t leave him standing in the backyard while I change. I curse Prancer, Dancer, and Vixen under my breath and let my words fall down the roofline. “Don’t move.”
Downstairs is pitch-black except for the blue light from the clock on the stove. I brace myself for the creaking sound of the back door opening—screeeee. Stop. Listen. No sounds from MomandDad’s bedroom, thank goodness.
With two rapid flicks of my wrist, I motion him inside, and he tucks the yellow packet underneath his arm.
“I know it’s really late,” he whispers. “Really, really late, and I don’t want to get you in trouble or anything, but I got you something and I’ve been wondering whether I should give it to you, and I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d just take a chance and drop by.”
I close the door with a quiet screeeee, and then everything is dark.
Except for his armpit. It’s glowing.
“What are those?” I say.
“I kind of need to be in your room to show you properly,” he says sheepishly. “Otherwise it’s stupid.”
I have no knowledge of Boy in Your House at Two A.M. etiquette, but saying “No, get out of here” feels rude. Especially when he comes gift in hand (or gift in armpit). Weighing my options, I swivel around and whisper over my shoulder, “Okay, but you have to be gone in literally two minutes.”
We manage to ascend the stairs and enter my room without bumping into anything. Once there, Sebastian pauses by my desk. “Now close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Just—please?”
He is the weirdest boy I know.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I take several deep breaths and piano my fingers against my pajama bottoms. Somehow I get the sense that Rudolph’s mocking me from near my kneecaps (because really, this must look strange).
Vibrations ripple across the carpet. What’s he doing? Did he just pull out my desk chair? I hear the package ripping open, the sound of peeling plastic.
“Keep them closed. One more minute. Almost done.”
My brain’s hopscotching all over the place—listening for any noises outside the room, wondering what awaits me when I open my eyes.
“Okay,” he says after an eternity. “Now.”
Oh my.
Above my head is a glow-in-the-dark constellation—twenty or so plastic stars arranged in a swirl on my ceiling. Sebastian’s still standing on my desk chair, reaching up to press the last star into the pattern. Before I can say a word, he jumps in: “If it’s too much, I can take them down, but I just thought that your room needed a bit more—er, I don’t know, just something—soooo are they okay?”
“They’re perfect,” I say, a little louder than I should.
He steps down from the chair and shoves it back under the desk. “Good . . . so . . . enjoy them, and I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“No!” I whisper, snatching his hand as he walks toward the door.
No? Why no? What the hell are you doing, Linny? “You should stay for a few more minutes, so we can—um—enjoy them together. Just for a little bit. I’m not tired anyway.” Before I lose my nerve, I plop down on my carpet and, releasing my grip on his hand, softly pat the spot next to me.
His grin extends from ear to ear. “Okay. For a little bit.”
We lie next to each other on our backs, our fingertips touching but nothing else. A little bit turns into three, four, five minutes. A peaceful silence falls over the room. Who else could I do this with? No one. Not even Grace. I know there’s no one else who’d tap on my window in the dead of night just to plant stars on my ceiling.
“You called me hot,” I say.
“Huh?”
“At the bookstore. You called me hot.”
I hear him shrugging, shoulders rubbing against the carpet. “You are hot.”
“Cass is hot. My sister is hot.”
“Linny-I’m-a-boy-just-trust-me-okay?” he says ultraquickly, as if to bypass the subject. “So what’s your wish?”
“Does it count if the stars are plastic?”
“Of course.”
I take a deep breath and hold it. “You first.”
Instead of answering, he rolls over to face me and, with one finger, traces a slow line up and down my arm. Maybe he is answering.
Oh my goodness, is this happening?
I roll over on my side, too, and suddenly he’s the only thing in frame. His face snaps into ultradefinition—all the puzzle pieces falling into place. I can see each one of his eyelashes. As he leans in closer, his nose touches mine, and we match each other blink for blink.
He speaks slowly, directly into my mouth. “You terrify me, Linny.”
I terrify him? I’m only 60 percent sure I’m breathing.
“You weren’t supposed to be part of the equation,” he says. “But I’m really, really glad you are.”
Please, please, please let this actually be happening. “Um, thank you,” I say.
He smiles nervously. “I guess this is the point where I give you a one-liner to sweep you off your feet.”
I smirk. “I’m already lying down.”
“Point taken. In that case, I should . . . I should kiss you.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Good.”
“It’s settled then. I’m going to kiss you.”
“Sebastian.”
He draws his mouth the final inch toward me and— Whoa. Just, whoa. Every ounce of sexual tension stored throughout the summer lurches into my lips. His hand finds my face and pulls me even closer, then it’s not just the stars but me glowing from the inside out.
To be clear: I’ve made out with guys before, but it always felt like sword fighting and sounded slippery, like fish flopping in a shallow pool. Not this. This is fingers-tangled-in-hair, can’t-catch-your-breath, moan-inducing, end-of-the-world-type kissing. Movies don’t do this justice. Words don’t do this justice.
Lips still touching mine, he says, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that for real.”
“Eons,” I say.
“Centuries,” he says, kissing me again and again and again. Then he looks up. “Although, I do think your turtle is judging us.”
“He’s a very judgmental turtle.”
By the time we say good night, the moon has swung off to the side and the (nonpla
stic) stars are losing their full glow. From the front yard, I watch him bike into the milky blackness. When he’s a neon dot at the end of the road, I mouth Bye even though he can’t see or hear it and then stand with my arms open, palms open, heart open, until I rush back inside, up the stairs, to Grace’s bedroom door; and it’s only when I’m about to twist her doorknob that I remember. Her absence hurricanes through me, nearly blows me away.
But I still twist her doorknob. I still step into her room, stupidly hoping against all impossibility that she’s plunked on the floor, records spread around her, telling me, “Oh hey, Linny. I’ve been waiting for you.”
THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 12)
GRACE’S BEDROOM—DEAD OF NIGHT
After deliberating for a moment, LINNY seizes the cup and string.
LINNY
(serious)
How’d you do it?
GRACE
(drowsy, like she’s just woken up)
Do what?
LINNY
Grow your wings.
GRACE
Oh. I—I don’t really know. I just wanted them, I guess.
LINNY
What if I want them, too?
GRACE
(lovingly)
Then you’ll get them, my Linzer Torte.
24.
Sebastian
“Just think: in the scope of the human universe, not so long ago, Newton’s third law of motion was still a new phenomenon. Who’s to say that—twenty years from now—we won’t say the same thing about all the possibilities mentioned here?” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 399
A THEORY ON KISSING, FEATURING NEWTON’S THIRD LAW:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. But you will never fully understand this until there is a girl pressing her lips against yours in the same way that you are pressing your lips against hers.
Micah calls five days after the kiss. Although I’m still stoked about it—and even more stoked that there has been additional kissing—I gloss over the details of showing up in Linny’s backyard with a packet of plastic stars. Micah would probably call me whipped. After a series of bow chica wow wows (him) and shut ups (me), he asks, “So hey, did you decide on a costume yet?”
If Birds Fly Back Page 17