Between Us and the Moon (5 page)

The guy ties the arms of the shirt around the tree so it seems to be hugging the bark. It’s not that dark out with the street lamps, but I have to squint. He presses his palm onto the tree trunk and after a moment bows his head and brings his other hand to cover his eyes. His back shudders.

It clicks—he’s crying. I immediately put away my notebook. It’s
wrong
to be watching this. This is a very private moment and I should not be here. I step out from behind the Dumpster to hurry down Main Street, away from this guy, and leave him to his privacy. The damn flip-flops crunch on something and echo loudly in the little alley. I try to make a run for it, but my foot shoots out from under me and I grasp onto the side of the Dumpster so I don’t fall. I cry out, the back of my heel scrapes on the asphalt.

The guy at the tree looks in my direction. Great.

I brush off my heel and pretend I was just oh so casually coming from the back alley of the string of shops and restaurants.

“You okay?” he asks and walks down the hill toward me. Before he gets close enough he wipes his eyes on his shirt.

“Fine.” I groan.
I’m a stalker, but I’m fine
. “I think I contracted E. coli from the dirty ground,” I add.

Maybe I could explain my reason for being here? Maybe he would get it?

When he gets close to me, he steps into the light. His eyes aren’t too red, but they aren’t dry either. He wears a thin T-shirt that is ripped a little on the chest. His tan skin peeks through.

He looks down and grins sheepishly. “Oh. I just got out of work.”

Oops. Caught.

“That’s twice you’ve fallen today,” he says.

“I’m really much more stable than this,” I say. I need to get out of this alley. I head down to Main Street. He keeps pace with me down the hill. I try not to meet his eyes. He’s cute. His hair is a little long and he is much taller than me too, 6'3"? Maybe 6'4"?

“I didn’t fall,” I stress. “I had a gravitational issue.”

He laughs. My cheeks have to be redder than Gracie’s tomatoes, as Gran would say.

His shoulders are defined too. He probably plays football at his high school. He also doesn’t seem the type to say “gravitational” on the regular.

“Hey—” he says, stopping next to the Bird’s Nest Diner. “Thanks. I needed that.”

Needed what? I want to ask, but I don’t know how. It seems oddly personal and I know it’s connected to the jersey tied around a tree trunk. Maybe I should act disinterested and pull a Scarlett. I am about to do Scarlett’s hair-flipping routine when about five hundred yards down the block Scarlett and a gaggle of
people parade in my direction. I spin the other way and hurry to the lawn of the library nearby.

“Hey—wait!” the blond guy calls after me.

“I gotta go!” I cry.

“Andrew!” Curtis calls. “Andrew! You’re late!”

I run to the library. I don’t even look back. I can’t. I’m in the shadow of the side of the building when I stop and peek around the corner. Andrew has joined the group. He looks back once more in my direction, and under the streetlights, he is tanned, tall, and his structured features are proportionate. He’s hot.

“What are you looking for?” Scarlett asks Andrew.

“I was talking to this girl. But she’s gone,” he says. “She ran off.”

“Okay—weirdo,” Scarlett says with her same derisive laugh. They move as a group down the street and I don’t want to follow. Not anymore. I’m a weirdo who runs off when handsome guys talk to me because I have no idea how to interact with people. Tonight’s attempt at observation and conversation was a complete bust. I head for home to check the comet’s coordinates on Nancy’s beach. Where it’s safe. Where I know who to be.

Where I can be alone.

“LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION?” DAD SAYS TO
me a couple days later. He loves to do this when he hasn’t checked in on my application in a while. The marine biologist in him can’t help it.

“Completed two months ago.”

“Transcript?”

I lift the blue folder I have designated for the Waterman Scholarship.

“Application?”

“Just need to fill out the general info.”

“Registration forms?”

“Completed but not sent. They’re due on my birthday, Friday.”

“Essay?”

“Ugh,” I reply. “You know I’m not a creative writer.”

Dad gently holds his hands over mine so I can’t fidget.

“You’ll do it,” he says. Dad’s hands are warm and big. I think about Scarlett’s laugh on the beach and the girls running in a linked chain of hands out the door of the Seahorse. I can’t fake enthusiasm. I’m fine with that usually—but maybe there’s something wrong with me? A legitimate reason Tucker prefers Becky, and I haven’t bothered to make tons of friends here every year.

“Do you—do you think I’m merely logical and devoid of emotion? You know, a weirdo?” I ask.

Dad frowns at the table. As I verified with Tucker, avoidance of eye contact means guilt or omission of truth.

“No, Beanie,” he says, making sure to look me in the eye, which is assuring. “Who said you were devoid of emotion?”

“No one. Just curious.”

“Was it that idiot? Tucker?”

I meet Dad’s eyes and he has his “serious face” on, which I don’t see very often. I sit up straight in my chair.

“Maybe I am,” I say, not wanting to admit that yes, Tucker is absolutely the reason for this conversation. “Scientists need to be objective about their work and honest with themselves about the validity and success of their hypotheses. But maybe I need to be devoid of emotion to be good at what I do. Maybe to excel you need to be callused so your emotions don’t get confused with the results.”

Dad squeezes my hand. He doesn’t touch me that often or hug me too much so I don’t move away.

“I wish your gran was here.” He takes a deep breath. “Listen to me; you are loving and smart. And being smart tends to mean you stand on the outside, observing.”

“Like watching the world?”

“Maybe.”

I groan. This is not what I want to hear.

“You’re just different than most kids your age. You have more important things on your mind than boys and clothes.”

“Yeah . . . ,” I say, but the last part is untrue. I do care about boys and clothes. Just not to the same extent as my sister.

“Gerard!” Nancy calls.

“I don’t want science to be all of who I am,” I say quietly. “I want to be more like Scarlett sometimes,” I add, but I don’t think Dad hears because Nancy squawks again:

“Gerard!”

I want to be able to care about clothes and boys, but be good at science, too. I want to be both.

“You’ll find your essay,” Dad says, and his hand lifts from mine. He winks at me before getting up to cater to Nancy.

I grab my application checklist. Loneliness blows. Scarlett wasn’t alone last night.
You need a backbone or everyone is going to walk all over you.
Easy for her to say.

I head upstairs but stop at the second floor when Scarlett laughs from her bedroom. I stop outside the door and listen, making sure to hold on to the collection of application papers tightly so they don’t rustle and give me away. The door is cracked just a little. She is doing her morning stretches, which means she is going to practice soon. She is doing a wall stretch.
Her leg is lifted and flushed against the wall. She brings her head to her knees and leans into it. How she can do this and balance a cell phone at the same time is some kind of a rare talent.

“Curtis kissed me last night,” she says. “God! He is ridiculously hot.”

She laughs and changes legs so the left leg is now pressed against the wall.

“He has a scar on his collarbone.” She hesitates. “And I licked it.”

I can hear Trish’s cackle through the phone. Trish Jackson. Tucker’s sister. I don’t want to listen anymore. I head up to my room. I can stand outside Scarlett’s door watching and follow her around Main Street, but it’s not going to solve the problem. I’m a scientist. Tucker is right. Scarlett is right too. I watch the world so I can understand it.

Yes, it’s true that I don’t know how to just casually be in conversation with a guy without blowing it. It’s not like I can just wake up confident like Scarlett.

Wait . . . I hesitate on a stair.

Why can’t I use what I know about science and Scarlett to change my life?

Observation is reductive. I’ve had fifteen years to research my sister. If I pretend I am like Scarlett, dress like her, talk like her, and behave like her, I will live the life I’ve always wanted. I’ll have friends and a boyfriend who is nothing like Tucker. It’s a set of very specific parameters to follow. It’s genius!

I won’t ever be humiliated again.

I hesitate again in the middle of the stairwell.

First step before you conduct an experiment? Formulate a question.

Okay. Will I ever have fun, be comfortable, and look mildly normal, maybe even hot like Scarlett? Scarlett
never
has problems with guys or with what she wears.

I move up the stairs toward my room but stop again.

Step two? Do field research. Observe.

Okay fine. I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember.

Once I get to my room, I stand above my suitcase with my hands on my hips.

Step three: formulate a hypothesis
.
If I wear Scarlett’s clothes and behave like Scarlett I will:

1.    Attract attention that does not involve complete and total humiliation.

2.    Attract a hot guy who is different than Tucker in every way and who would never cheat on me.

3.    Make new friends who are exciting and think I’m special. If the experiment is a resounding success, I’ll be put-together, popular, and finally live the life I want.

Inside my suitcase are neat, folded shirts, pressed shorts, and accurately angled socks. I dig to the bottom and pull out the red one-piece from the beach the other day. I hold it up to the light. There are a few holes in the stomach. I groan. The translucent material could split right in two from eons in the ocean and pool. I wouldn’t even know what to buy if I went to the shops in town.

This suit is the reason. This papery, ruffled suit is why Tucker broke up with me. A big freakin’ metaphor for my whole life.

It is time for another experiment but this time, one that I can use for myself. This is a
life
experiment.

The Scarlett Experiment.

I want to start the Scarlett Experiment now. But I need to wait until Scarlett’s downstairs practicing. That takes at
least
four hours and gives me plenty of time to look through her things and prepare my experimental setup.

It takes her highness an hour to organize and get downstairs. Once classical music echoes up the stairwell, I know she’s practicing.

I make my way to the second floor and stand outside Scarlett’s bedroom. Nailed to the front of the door is a sign with Scarlett’s name scrawled in cursive over an image of a pair of ballet slippers. The sign has yellowed, but Scarlett leaves it on the door out of respect for Nancy. I place my palm on the brass knob and hold it tight so it won’t squeak. I learned that trick from Scarlett when she came home late one time. Nancy is taking a nap on the first floor on the opposite side of the house. Regardless, she has a tendency to scream my name at the top of her lungs for the smallest, most ridiculous reasons. Mom is job searching in the kitchen and Dad is at WHOI.

I hesitate at the door while it’s half open and half closed. Scarlett’s room is the one room that I am forbidden to go into unless she accompanies me. There are Scarlett’s things and Bean’s things,
my
things, items that for some reason, my sister never seems to want to borrow. Scarlett’s sweaters, perfumes, and makeup are so much more interesting than mine. I don’t need
science to figure this out—it’s fact: Scarlett’s stuff is better.

I dip a toe into her bedroom. I slide through and step into the room.

Tiny string bikinis, short shorts, T-shirts, and patterned dresses drape over the sides of the open suitcase. In a pile by the window are four or five pairs of pointe shoes along with some thread and a needle. Scarlett sews her ribbons into her shoes when she’s breaking them in. She wants the pointe shoe to mold to her feet
perfectly.
When the shoes are stiff, hard, and wrapped together, she hasn’t broken those in yet.

I squat down—careful not to touch the shoes or she’ll know I was in here—and start digging through. I push some socks out of the way, some tops, leotards, and tight pants. More lycra.

A white star stares at me from the bottom of the suitcase. I pull out one long string attached to two triangular tops. It’s an American flag print string bikini. I hold it up to the light filtering through the window onto Scarlett’s floor.

Bean . . . this is the right choice
.
Doooo it
, the tiny bikini whispers to me.

It’s very demanding.

My fingers graze the strings. The bikini cups have soft padding.

This bathing suit is what I should wear first.

There’s a full-length mirror on the back of the door. I hold the suit over my body. It might fit . . . I’ve got wider hips than Scarlett and she’s, like, two inches shorter than me, but maybe it will fit. I take off my T-shirt, letting it fall on the floor next to my feet, and cup the triangles over my breasts. I don’t think the
sides of my boobs are supposed to be coming out on both sides, but it covers my nipples and that’s all that matters anyway with these kinds of suits. I take off my shorts and underwear and slip the bikini bottom over me.

I have never worn anything like this in my life.

My smile in the reflection fades. In my mind, Tucker stands in the light of the street lamp. Becky Winthrop’s name flashes on the screen of his cell phone. “I need to do this experiment.” I say Tucker’s words to the mirror. “Or else
I’ll
stay the same.”

I put my hands on my hips. I guess Aunt Nancy is right; everything did kind of show up in a year. I raise my neck in the air and my brown hair trickles down my back. It isn’t me in the mirror, that girl with the wide hips and trim waist. My hair isn’t blonde or bone straight like Scarlett’s. My skin is powdery white from the year in the bio lab, but that can be fixed with some quality beach time. Who is this person in the reflection? I cock my head to the side. I look . . . well, I look
good
.

Scarlett’s bathing suit has made me beautiful. Just as I projected!

I turn to the side to check myself out and have to pull the tiny triangle tops over my breasts so they’re more covered. Eh, I shrug, it’s supposed to look like that.

All experiments have various factors. My first variable is this American flag string bikini.

The experiment is a go. The next step is to execute it. I take off the bikini and place it back in Scarlett’s suitcase. I bend over to pick up my clothes.

“Bean!”

I clutch my hands over my boobs. Nancy’s shriek—can’t miss it anywhere.

In the reflection, my knobby knees cross over each other, my arms bend at strange angles.

“Come help your mother and me! We need to start getting this party menu together and we need help with the computer!”

I fumble into my T-shirt and slide back through the door. Before I jump down the stairs two at a time, I sneak one glance back in Scarlett’s room. I leave the suitcase as I found it.

Open . . . and waiting.