by Meghan Diane
“Go on.” She chuckled.
“I have a Nikon that I use for everyday photography. It’s digital and I can edit the photos on the computer like most people do nowadays. But then I have two film-based cameras. One that’s meant for up-close photos, kind of like portraits, that’s my Leica M6. And then I have another Nikon, a Nikon F2 that I also use for everyday photos. But these two cameras are a little bit more work. Not only are they more likely to need repairing, but they require me to work in a darkroom.”
Phoenix stared at me, eyes wide. “You know how to use a darkroom?”
I blushed under her amazement. “Yeah. Our high school had one. After I learned how to use it I spent a lot of time in there. When I wasn’t hanging out with Halley you could pretty much guarantee that that’s where I was. Even now our local community center has a darkroom and I’m in there so much that they had a key made for me. It was really cute.”
When I looked up, I found her eyes on me. She was giving me that look. The look that told me maybe I’d said too much.
Her eyes were soft, and what I saw scared me. I looked down at the coin in my hands, moving it between my fingers again. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I needed to shift the attention away from me, and fast.
“What about you?” I asked. “I know you’re in school for psychology, but do you have something you’re really passionate about? A hobby maybe?”
“Ah, so you know what my major is. Very interesting.” She wiggled her eyebrows, teasing me.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re in the same classes as Halley, silly. Of course I know. I’m not dense.”
Her eyes sparkled with delight. “Well I am really passionate about psychology. I like trying to figure out what makes people do things, what scares them, what motivates them. You know, all of those kinds of questions. I don’t know. I’ve always been a curious person.”
I laughed out loud. “Oh yeah?”
She nudged me playfully in the arm. “Ha, that’s one thing I wasn’t that curious about, I just knew.”
“Is that so?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows back at her this time.
“Oh yeahhhh. Emily Monroe had me wrapped around her finger for years.” She looked out at the water. “God she was hot.”
A small pang of jealousy hit me before I could stop it. “What happened there?”
“Oh, well you know, the usual. I was into her. She wasn’t into me. She was straight. I wasn’t. It crashed and burned. Hard. Eleven-year-old Phoenix was devastated.”
“Eleven!”
Phoenix turned toward me, her brown eyes shining. “Yeah, I wasn’t the smoothest back in the day. But now if I got a chance with her, she wouldn’t be able to resist the charm.”
She was teasing me, and I was falling like putty into her hands.
“Okay,” I said. “So besides winning over straight girls, what else are you passionate about?”
“Dang, that hobby takes up most of my time. I don’t know that I have enough energy for another.” She was grinning at me, waiting to see how I’d react.
“Okay, so, Phoenix is a major player in her free time. I’ve got it,” I joked back.
Her face fell. “Well no, that’s not the truth. I just talk a big game. My real hobby though, if I had to choose something, would be music. I have an acoustic guitar at home that I like to play around with in my free time. I’m not great at it, but it gives me something to do.”
“You would play guitar.” I squeezed the coin a little tighter.
“Anything to impress the ladies.”
I tilted my head back to laugh when I noticed that Halley and Spencer were standing in front of us. Funny, I hadn’t heard them get up.
“Hi.” I smiled up at them.
They were holding hands, which made me feel a little better.
“We’re gonna go back and go to bed,” Halley said. When I gave her a quizzical look, she cocked her head to the side. “It’s two a.m.”
I looked at Spencer. He looked sufficiently drunk. I wondered if he would even make it back to the room.
“Oh okay.” I turned to Phoenix to see if she wanted to head back too. Only I couldn’t read her face at all. “Umm…” I paused trying to think fast. Trying to decide my fate. “I think we will stay for a little bit longer and then head back.”
All three of them raised their eyebrows at me and then smiled.
Halley grabbed Spencer’s other hand and smiled at him. “Come, let’s go.” She turned to look at us one more time. “You two be good.”
I rolled my eyes. She knew me too well.
It was quiet for a few seconds as we watched them walk away.
“Interesting,” Phoenix laughed. “I thought for sure you’d want to go back with them.”
I looked down at the coin again and shrugged. “I don’t get to sit out by the ocean where I’m from. And it’s nice out.” I looked up at the sky. “And the stars are out.”
The air fizzled again, and my stomach lurched. What have I done now?
We sat in silence for another minute. I had a lot of questions for Phoenix, I just wasn’t sure that I was ready for the answers.
“Where would you rather be right now?” she asked, innocently enough.
I stared off into the water, watching the waves crash, one on top of the other. Over and over again. It was predictable, reassuring even.
“Honestly, right here.” Almost instantly I regretted it. She was going to read into that. She was going to assume that I meant because of her. Her company was nice, that wasn’t a lie, but I wasn’t ready for everything that came with it. I desperately tried to explain. “What I mean is…” I looked down at the coin again, searching for answers. “What I mean is, I’ve spent a lot of the past eight years getting myself into trouble. Not the bad kind, but relationship trouble. And I’m not saying it’s always their fault. It’s mine too.”
I looked up again to see if she was listening once more. And just like the last time my heart skipped a beat when our eyes met. I shook my head, trying to clear the thoughts that began to cloud my judgment. Before I could get myself into trouble, I continued.
“Anyway, I get this nagging feeling inside of me, like deep down, that I just need to get away. So Halley and our other friend Madison, we have this running joke that we just want to run away to an island. Granted this dream involves only the three of us.” I peeked at Phoenix before continuing. “But the principle is the same. We just want to be away from everything and everyone we know. Start fresh with just our thoughts. Without the pressure of everyone else’s expectations.” I looked over again, this time locking eyes with Phoenix. “And just breathe, you know?”
“Wow,” was all she managed to say.
“This is kind of like that. I can breathe here. And it’s pretty.” I looked up at the sky. “I mean I wouldn’t complain if the stars were shining a little brighter. But this will do I guess.”
I leaned back so I could fully take in the night sky. The stars were something I could always count on, even when everything else was going wrong.
She looked up at the sky too and leaned back on her arms. I couldn’t see her fingers but I knew they were just inches from mine.
“You really have a thing for stars, don’t you?” she asked.
I smiled, more to myself than to her. “Do I ever. But you know, it’s kind of funny. For my love of stars I really don’t know anything about them. I don’t know any constellations except for the Big Dipper. And I don’t really even know how we have shooting stars.”
There was a laugh beside me. “I can point out some constellations if you’d like. And I can tell you about shooting stars if you’re really interested.”
She snuck a look at me. I felt my heart skip a beat again.
“Yes please,” was all that I could manage.
“Well,” she began, pointing at the sky. “You already know the Big Dipper is right there. It tends to be the easiest to find because it shines so bright.” She looked at me and smiled. “H
owever, the Dippers aren’t actually constellations. They are asterisms, which are parts of constellations. The Big Dipper belongs to Ursa Major and the Little Dipper belongs to Ursa Minor.”
“Bears.” I smiled.
“Yes.” She smiled back at me. “Bears.” Then she looked back up at the sky, and raised her hand again. “Once you find the Big Dipper, it’s easier to find the Little Dipper. All you have to do is start at the outside of the bowl. Now imagine that those two stars are part of a line. Follow that line, and you can find the handle of the Little Dipper.”
I stared up at the sky, trying to not let my mouth hang open.
I heard a small laugh beside me. “The Little Dipper is usually harder to find because some of the stars don’t shine as bright.”
I nodded my head, unable to look away.
And I’ll show you one more, my favorite. Over there,”—she was pointing again—“is Cassiopeia.”
“Cassiopeia?” I asked.
“Yeah. She’s kind of shaped like an M.” She outlined the letter in the sky with her finger. “Story goes she was really pretty and she wasn’t afraid to tell everyone. Very conceited, you know? Things only got worse when she had a daughter, Andromeda. She would boast without end about the young girl’s beauty. Finally one of the gods came in and banished her to the night sky. It’s really more of a zigzag pattern than an M, to signify that she is holding on for dear life to not fall out of the sky.”
“Woah,” I breathed. “How do you know these things?”
“I keep them on reserve for when I get pretty girls outside under the night sky. The ladies, they eat it right up.”
I could feel her smirk without having to look over. “And the shooting stars?” I asked.
Phoenix stared before speaking. “Are you sure you want to know? I can talk forever. Like literally go on and on.”
“And I could listen to you forever,” I breathed rather than spoke. Then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Is your voice always this sultry? Like damn.”
“Excuse me?” Her eyes crinkled up on the sides and I could tell she was fighting back a smile.
“Nothing. Continue.” My face was bright red, I was sure of it.
“Okay,” she began, a hint of laughter still ebbing at the sides. “Well shooting stars are actually kind of cool. They’re little meteoroids hitting the earth’s atmosphere. They’re like dust and dirt.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Well why are shooting stars more common during different times of the year?”
“Good question,” she mused, and I finally thought I found something she didn’t know. I’d come to realize later that there weren’t many questions that I could ask her that she didn’t know the answer to.
“Well,” she continued, “as you know, the earth rotates, and at certain times it passes through the debris of comets that orbit the sun. The name of the meteor shower depends on where it looks like it is coming from. For example, if it’s coming from close to Perseus, it’s called the Perseids.”
“You really do know everything.”
“I don’t, but this is one thing I do know.”
I felt her slide closer to me. I knew that she wanted more. This was the perfect moment, the moment that they write about in books. I could feel it in the air, but I just rolled the coin over in my fingers. Not yet.
Chapter Five
On our walk back to the house I started to get a little nervous. Is she going to be expecting something when we get back? Will there be beds? I started to feel a little sick to my stomach.
“Want to hear one more story while we walk?”
“Of course I do.”
“Okay,” Phoenix began, her hands already waving in the air. “So this one is actually one of my favorites. It’s not exactly Greek mythology, but it’s a classic Japanese tale. It’s about two kids, Orihime and Hikoboshi.”
I nodded my head. “I’m listening.” God she’s cute.
“Orihime was a weaver princess and Hikoboshi was a cow herder prince. They lived in the heavens among the stars. When they met they instantly connected. They spent as much time as they could together playing ball.”
“Sounds like a typical lesbian relationship,” I joked.
“So you’re starting to see why I like it.”
She smiled at me and my heart melted.
“Well they spent so much time together that they started to forget about their work. The king didn’t like this one bit. So he did what all adults tend to do to teenagers. He split them up. He separated them with the Amanogawa River. He allowed them to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month.”
“That’s brutal.”
“Even worse is that it’s believed that Orihime and Hikoboshi can’t see each other if it’s raining that day. So people all over the world pray for good weather on this day.”
“That’s tragically romantic.”
“I know,” said Phoenix. “And that’s why I love it.”
I shook my head. “You’re nuts.” But I knew it would become of one my favorite tales too.
We walked in silence for the rest of the way back. The panic started to set in again and I was becoming more and more nervous.
Luckily when we opened the bedroom door the room with the bunk beds had two spare beds. There was one free on the top left and one on the bottom right. “Which would you like?” I asked her.
She gave me a quizzical look. “I’ll take the bottom bunk.” She started to grin. “But you know you’re more than welcome to join me. You don’t have to sleep alone.” She gestured to my top bunk.
My safety net shot up before I even had a chance to think things through. “No that’s okay, I like the top bunk anyway,” I said as quickly as I could. I began climbing the ladder to the top, trying not to wake the sleeping boy on the bottom. I peered over at the sleeper on the other top bunk. He was also completely passed out. They must have had a lot of fun while we were gone.
I stretched out on the tiny twin-size mattress and it rustled underneath me. They must have plastic under the sheet, which is kind of smart, but it was annoying right now. When I finally laid my head down and closed my eyes, I didn’t care though. I was in a bed. I’d had a pretty good night, minus the Spencer thing. And I’d met a new girl; a cute new girl. I smiled to myself.
That’s when I heard it. At first I thought it was maybe just a hiccup in someone’s breathing. Then it happened again. My body tensed. One of the guys was snoring. I clenched my teeth. I was a very light sleeper. If this was going to continue, I’d never get to sleep tonight. I waited. It had to end. It was going to stop, right?
Three minutes later I was still clenching my teeth. Annoyed, I started to crawl out of bed. When I got to the bottom rung it dawned on me. The noise wasn’t coming from the top bunk, it was coming from Phoenix on the bottom bunk.
“Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t help but say out loud. How could this horrid sound possibly be coming from someone like her? I stood there for a second and just stared. Her features were more relaxed in her sleep. It was always nice watching people sleep. I think mainly it’s because they have no control. They’re just who they are.
I peeled the blanket from off my bunk and walked out into the living room. Five people who I barely recognized took every inch of couch. “Fine.” I shrugged. I remembered the pool chairs being quite awesome earlier and so I walked outside. It was still pretty warm out. And from where the chairs were I had a feeling I could see the stars. This made me feel a little better.
When I finally got comfortable, I looked up at the sky and let out the breath I was holding. Yeah, this is way better. The stars still weren’t as bright as I would like, but I could make do. I let out another breath. What have I gotten myself into this time? Here I am, barely single, and I’ve found another girl. Well, I guess to be accurate; she was kind of thrown at me by Halley. But is this what I want? Am I ready to jump again? Maybe what everyone hints at is true. Maybe I’m not good at this whole
alone thing.
I reached for my coin and frowned. Madison would have a good laugh if she knew. But I’m not already in the whole shebang with Phoenix. I could get out at anytime, right?
I closed my eyes again to sleep. I didn’t want to overthink this night, and I was about to. That’s when I heard it.
Is someone peeing behind me? There’s no way. Everyone was inside when I came out here. And I would have heard them come out the door.
That’s when I felt it too. Water. There was a sprinkler system. And I was in its direct path.
“Are you freaking kidding me!” I exclaimed as I jumped up. This night was starting to take a nosedive. I was never going to get any sleep.
I trudged back into the house and looked around again. Some of the couch sleepers had moved around, but there was still no space for me. “Fine,” I said to no one but myself, and I laid my blanket down right there on the floor. I made sure that I was far enough away from the door of the snoring machine. I glanced at the clock before closing my eyes one last time, 4:08 a.m. Damn.
* * *
When I opened my eyes again I saw light. How is it morning already? I glanced at the time, 7:58 a.m. Well that’s almost four hours of sleep I guess. Looking around, I realized I was the only one awake. Great, last to fall asleep and first to get up. This day is going to be fantastic.
Once I woke up in the mornings, I was up. Sure I could lie there and roll around a little, but it wouldn’t do me any good. So I stood up, quietly picked up my blanket, and laid it back on the bed. The room was quiet this time. I guess the snoozefest doesn’t last all night.
After I changed my clothes and threw on my favorite black zip-up hoodie, I walked out the door. The sun was already shining and it felt good on my face. Yeah I didn’t get much sleep, but it felt nice to be outside this early when no one was awake yet. It was peaceful and I was loving it.
Now if I could just find some coffee.
I started walking in the direction that we’d come from last night. Surely there had to be some coffee nearby. There always was. I popped in my headphones and let the music surround me as I walked. Twelve minutes and four songs later I found what I had been searching for. The “Coffee” sign beckoned me forward. I walked up to the door knowing that I had just hit the jackpot. The interior of the coffee shop was just my style. Its tables were all wood and it had a homey feeling. In the back I saw leather couches, and I smiled. The morning was looking better and better.