Between Us and the Moon

To Brooke Darcy Nordstrom, Aviva Fink Cantor, Zoe Houldsworth LoPresti, Leigh Ann Razza, and Katie Caramiciu, my childhood friends—now and always.

This is my love letter to you.

June 19th—Last Day of School. See ya later, losers! Here’s to being a junior.

June 20th—Leave for Cape Cod

June 26th—BIRTHDAY! 16!

July 3rd—Comet Jolie reaches perihelion

Organize for Waterman Scholarship: due date August 8th

       
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Application (16 pages, snail mailed in to scholarship board)

       
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Online registration—due June 26th (Birthday!)

       
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Comet data, compiled in duplicate

       
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Letter of recommendation from the East Greenwich Observatory

       
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Personal essay (ugh)

       
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Write thank-you note to Headmaster Winston. Make sure to
thank him
for the rousing yet embarrassing speech about being the top of the class.

“WHAT’S THE POINT OF DOING ALL THIS MATH JUST
to track a comet?” Scarlett says and squints through the lens of my telescope. “It’s a fuzzy white speck.”

“The whole point is to use pen and paper to predict the comet’s perihelion.”

“Perry-what?”

“It means the comet’s closest position to the sun.”

“But you have your school computer,” Scarlett says. She motions to the
SUMMERHILL ACADEMY
loaner laptop that’s open on a small collapsible table.

“I program the telescope with the computer. That’s it,” I explain.

“I would
definitely
cheat.”

It took ten minutes to get Scarlett out here, so now that she is, I want her to look through the telescope and see exactly what I see. I want her to know how hard it is to project its coordinates
every single night
. I’ve been working on this experiment since the Comet Jolie first streaked into our skies eleven months ago.

“The math is what makes it precise,” I explain. “Any old computer can be programmed to take a guess.”

“I suck at math,” Scarlett says. Her deep red lipstick is so pretty. If I wore that tonight, I’d get it all over Tucker and probably my clothes. I’m not graceful, not like my sister.

“When it finally reaches its perihelion and streaks into the Northern Hemisphere I will have tracked it over forty million miles.”

“Northern . . .”
Scarlett stands up and sounds out the word. “
Hemissssphere
. Doesn’t that sound epic?”

“Well, yes, technically speaking the Northern Hemisphere has the most land. Two-thirds of the Earth is actu—”

Scarlett laughs and laughs.

“You have zero perspective, Bean,” she says with a flip of her hair and turns back to the house.

“This comet is the brightest comet to pass by the sun in a hundred years,” I say, but I am talking to her back. The moon is waxing crescent tonight, so it’s a sliver, but still, Scarlett’s blonde hair glimmers down her back. I swear, every year Scarlett gets more and more beautiful, like a freak of nature or something.

“I want to do this old school,” I add. “You know, Galileo style. Okay, not quite as old as Galileo, but pen, calculator,
anti-vibration, internal GPS, hi-res optics style.”

She glances back at me before disappearing into the house.

“It’s definitely cool,” she says, though it’s clear she is just trying to be nice. I’m doing fine! Besides, it’s easy for her to say—all Scarlett cares about is ballet. “But you need to get your head out of the stars once in a while.”

“Bean!” Mom calls. “Tucker’s here!”

Took him long enough. The forecast predicted rain after eleven. No clouds yet, luckily. I run a hand over my Stargazer. In under one month the Comet Jolie streaks across the sky and we can see it without a telescope.

I lay my nightly coordinates sheet down on the ground on top of my favorite blanket. When Tucker gets here he can see how complicated it was to locate and identify the comet’s position in tonight’s sky. I know how intricate it is, but it’s nice to have my best friend, my
boyfriend
, who happened to score six points higher than me on the PSATs, see what I am capable of doing.

I wait for it—there’s a
squeaksqueak
,
squeaksqueak
as Tucker makes his way through the living room.

Our old Victorian has mismatched floorboards. Most are original which means they creak
loudly.

“If you ever sneak out,” Scarlett once told me, “avoid the red Oriental rug. All original floor.
It squeaks,
you know what I mean?” At the time, she stopped and shook her head. “What am I talking about.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Little Miss Stars and Planets? Sneak out?”

Scarlett passes by Tucker and says, “Tell Trish to call me when she gets home. No excuses.” Scarlett points at him and he nods.
Trish is Tucker’s sister and Scarlett’s best friend. Inseparable—well, until now.

Tucker has to dodge a tower of brown and red suitcases piled high next to the kitchen table. There are six: one for Mom, one for Dad, one for me, and three for Scarlett. On top of Scarlett’s sit two pairs of pointe ballet shoes. The thick satin laces lie across the suitcases and unfurl onto the floor. He walks past Dad, who, as usual, is reclining in his leather chair in front of the TV. He’s watching a show on the Discovery Channel. Gray wisps of his Einstein hair stick up and point in every direction.

“Every year you guys bring more and more stuff to the Cape,” Tucker says and comes off the patio to join me in the backyard. His voice clips in his usual singsong way. It makes everything he says sound like a joke he’s not quite finished telling.

“Tell that to Miss Ballerina,” I say. “Juilliard’s dance program will never see so many hair ties, perfume bottles, and pink tank tops ever again. The onslaught is coming.”

“You’d be surprised,” Tucker says, but there’s an edge to his tone that sticks to the air. He looks different tonight. I can’t place it. I lean forward and he kisses me on the lips. He pulls away before I can reach out to him, link my hand behind his head, and go in for a deeper kiss. Like the one we had last week. Out of nowhere, Tucker held his arms around my back, pulled me close, and kissed me so deeply that for a moment, we weren’t just Tucker and Bean, best friends for nine years, boyfriend and girlfriend for one year.

I wanted more than polite kissing.

Now, when he pulls away, Tucker digs his hands in his
sweatpants pockets. Hmm. Hands in pockets, curved back, and eyes to the ground. I’ve known Tucker too long—something is up. Neither one of us are excited about me going to the Cape, even though it’s unavoidable.

“You’re
driving
up in two weeks!” I say, trying to make him feel better. “It’s better than having to wait until August for Scarlett’s going-away party.”

I link my arms around his waist and he leans his body weight into mine. It is familiar now, his body and my body, close together.

“I don’t know if they’ll give me the car,” he says quietly.

“Trying to get out of coming? I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to be in the same house or even the same state as Aunt Nancy if I didn’t have to.”

He laughs but it’s soft, like a private joke between us.

“Your great-aunt isn’t that bad.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Okay, she’s the worst,” he admits.

His chest shudders when he laughs and I can feel it, he’s pressed so close to me.

“I don’t want to go almost two months without seeing you,” I say.

“We did it last year.”

“Yeah, but that was before you fell madly in love with me.”

I kiss his nose and pull back to ready my coordinates and show him all the varied equations and procedures I used to track the comet tonight.

“Either way, I’ll see you at Scarlett’s party,” I add. “It’s all Nancy has been talking about for
months.
”

He nods. Something about him
is
different. I can’t place it.

I’d better get down to business. He’ll cheer up eventually.
I need more time than you to express how I feel
, Tucker has said about a dozen times this year. I should remember that sometimes it takes some people longer to express themselves.

I throw my hair behind my shoulders and wave the coordinates sheet. This should raise his spirits. The sight of mathematics and equations usually gets a smile and a lift of his eyebrows over his dark eyeglass frames.

“Now,” I explain, “the perihelion isn’t projected to be until July 3rd, but it’s amazing, I’m telling you. Even with light pollution this comet is the brightest I’ve ever seen.”

I punch in the coordinates to my school computer.

I run a hand down the telescope like Vanna White. I’m careful not to move its position. “Look at this baby. Eight-inch mirror. Highest magnification possible.”

Tucker nods but doesn’t say anything.

“Ready?” I say.

“Steady,” he replies, but our usual call and answer tradition sounds hollow. I have kept this information a secret on purpose. He knows this. Way to be a buzzkill.

Whatever. I push on; his bad mood isn’t going to change mine. Tucker
wanted
to see this. He said so this morning as we cleaned out our lockers at school.

The computer beeps, starting to record the images from the Stargazer.

“This baby was worth 7,562 pizza orders,” I say about the telescope. “Good-bye Pizza Palace for almost two whole months.” I
sit down on the blanket, cross my ankles over each other, and pop a mint. I’m not opposed to making the first move.

He peers through the lens.

I make room for Tucker on the blanket.

“You did it,” he says with a small lift to his voice. His deep tone is gentle, like he doesn’t want to talk too loudly. “You’re gonna win that scholarship.” The slice of the moon above his head outlines him in a pearly glow.

“You look really good right now,” I say. “Standing next to my Stargazer. It’s sexy.”

I laugh, but Tucker’s cell phone vibrates. He reaches into his pocket and silences the buzzing.

“So what do you think? You’re being quiet.”

I know I’m being impatient, but this is bizarre.

“Come out to the front yard?” he asks, and the word “yard” kind of fades away. Crap.

His quiet voice is
not
a good sign. This is the same tone he took when Trish rode a motorized Barbie car over my rock polisher when we were twelve. The same tone he used to tell me his Nana Patrick died. He barely spoke for two weeks, except for Mathletes when he could recite equations. “Please,” he adds.

“Did you get a B on a final or something?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

Tucker should be asking me what coordinates I have, what constellations the comet’s trajectory passes through, and what phase of the moon is best to achieve optimal viewing conditions. What does he mean, follow him to the front of the house?

Tucker’s wearing his Summerhill Academy sweatpants and
a blue T-shirt. He nudges at the grass with his toe. Someone should document this. Mr. I Always Bring My Day Planner Everywhere left the house without Converse sneakers? He’s wearing flip-flops. Tucker pushes his glasses to the bridge of his nose.

He takes a step away from the Mason jars for our iced tea and the fuzzy blanket he kissed me on three days ago until my jaw was sore.

“I don’t want to talk about this here,” he says.

“This?”

He sighs.

Now that I focus, his sandals are familiar. They’re the same kind all the guys on the Summerhill Academy baseball team wear. The jock guys that Tucker makes fun of at lunch.

He walks around the house to the front yard with his shoulders hunched to his ears.

“Can you just tell me what’s going on?” I say and follow behind.

Tucker stands in the street at the front of the house. He still has his hands in his pockets.

“I’m—” Tucker mumbles.

“
What
is going on with you?”

“I—I want to break up,” he finally gets out.

My stomach swoops just like when we drive twenty miles an hour over the huge hill on Overlook Drive. Me and Tucker. We do that in his Volvo all the time.

“Break up. Bean.”

I shake my head. Shake. Shake. Shake.

“I want to,” Tucker says again. It sounds like he’s pleading with me.

“I’m sorry,” he says and slides his glasses up to the top of his nose. “But I want to.”

“No, you don’t,” I say, but my voice isn’t strong anymore. It breaks.

I focus on Mom’s oak tree, where Tucker and I used to climb when we were little kids. I don’t care about his knobby knees or the messy strands of his blond hair. “No, you
don’t
,” I say again. “We have green grass, a starry night—hell, I can see Rasalgethi, even with the lights from the house. This is a romantic moment, Tucker, not a breakup. You’re supposed to check my coordinates.” My voice is squeaky. I
hate
when I sound like this.

“Please don’t yell at me, Sarah,” he says.

Oh my God. His tone; it’s not begging or pleading—it’s pity.

I make a fist and dig my nails into my palm. I release and repeat the motion.

Tucker won’t look up from the ground.

“What about last week? When you—” My cheeks warm. “When you
touched
me?” I ask. I don’t need to remind him of the play-by-play.

One hand caressed the small of my back. Tucker pressed his chest to mine. His tongue met mine and he ran his fingers over my breasts.

Tucker keeps his chin close to his chest and his hands are still deep in his pockets. The phone vibrates a second time, but he gets to it quick.

“I remember touching you,” he says. “But I stopped us from going any further. I didn’t want to push it until I was sure.”

“You hooked up with me and you were
debating breaking up with me
?”

I can’t help yelling again.

He takes a step toward me and holds out his hands. “No, that’s not what I mean.” When I don’t take them, he brings the heels of his palms to his eyes and sighs. “I’m not good at this. I don’t want to hurt—” His phone buzzes yet again. He silences it for the third time, but it fumbles from his fingers to the grass.