Lost Stars (24 page)

“Really?”

Lynn smiled. “No,” he said, “but there will be coffee and donuts.”

I rode my bike the long way home, through the park and past the creek and by the racetrack and down along Mansion Row and then out to the wrong side of town, where the houses were far more run-down than mine and closer together, little bungalows squatting next to trailer parks. I hadn't been to Tonya's for a couple of years, but it looked the same: somehow sad and proud at the same time. I peered into the screen door and knocked. She was vacuuming—​apparently that was the first thing she did when she got home—​and didn't hear me at first, so I had to open the door and call out. “Hey. Can I come in?”

“Enter at your own risk,” she said, turning off the vacuum. “My grandmother does not smell any better than when you used to come over.”

“Oh, I—”

“It's okay. I heard you saying that to Soo one time. You're right. The smells of pee, perfume, and booze do not mix. But she's in the back with her nurse, so it's actually not bad.”

“So, I just came to give this to you,” I said, handing back her hammer.

“Right,” she said, taking it from me and putting it on top of the TV, the old-fashioned kind with a giant screen in some hideous block of wood.

The screen was filled with animations of the planets. “What's that?”

“Duh, you dipshit. It's
Cosmos.
”

“You didn't used to talk like that, Tonya,” I said quietly. I didn't know why
dipshit
made me feel worse than all the other adorable insults she'd uttered over the last two months. But it did.

“Neither did you.” She turned the TV off and then it was just me and her and her dank living room, which she started tidying in an aggressive way.

“Yeah, well, I've been through a few things since then,” I said.

“Yeah, well, me too.”

I sat down, even though she hadn't invited me to. Aging copies of
Reader's Digest
were spread across the coffee table—​all the furniture looked like it had been there since 1963.

“Let's see. There was the alien abduction—​that whole anal probe thing. A close second in the Miss America contest, which was truly devastating. Oh, wait—​that was the Junior Husky Miss America contest, but it still stung. And, um, what else? Still getting over the fact that I missed the episode of
General Hospital
where Luke and Laura got married, which is so devastating that even though it was six years ago I'm still not over it. So, yeah—​try to top that.”

Even though I hadn't laughed, I said, “I forgot how funny you are.”

“Right.” She was sorting the mail, not making eye contact with me.

“Really, I did. I love my friends, but none of them are funny.”

“I guess it's not cool to be funny.” She put the mail in one neat pile on top of the TV.

“Maybe it's not. I don't know. It seems like it would be, right?”

“Yeah. If you were actually cool, you would be into people who were funny. Otherwise you're just a dipshit.”

“You don't have to call me that.”

“This is a hypothetical dipshit we're talking about. Wait—​is that one of your band names?”

“‘Hypothetical dipshit?'”

“Yeah.”

“No, Tonya. That is not eligible for entry into the contest for great band names.”

“Thought I'd try.” She collapsed next to me on the couch, leaning over to straighten the magazines on the coffee table but still not really looking at me. “Beats Piece of Toast.”

“Everything beats Piece of Toast. They're as good as their name.”

“Finally. You are coming to your senses, dipshit.” I rolled my eyes at her, but we were managing to almost smile. “You know what the worst part of this whole year of suck was?” she asked.

“Besides your dad's thing and having to take care of your grandmother?”

“Yeah, besides that,” she said.

“What?”

“I didn't have anyone to talk to when that Mars rover disappeared. You know? That was something you and I would have talked about forever.”

“Yeah, that sucked. That really sucked. I felt like we were going to learn so much about the mysteries of the universe with that guy—​really. The real mysteries of the universe.”

“Yeah, it was just a giant bummer of a day for astrophysics nerds everywhere,” she said.

“Are they everywhere?”

“Yes,” Tonya said, with such certainty that I believed her. “They're everywhere. We're everywhere. We just have to find each other.”

As I made my way to the door, Tonya said, “So, yeah, looks like we're in the homestretch.”

“Yeah, the end of the chain gang,” I said. “Three days left.”

“No, I meant the comet—​it's going to leave the Northern Hemisphere soon.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “It'll be back to the humdrum story of the solar system, while it hides behind Neptune for a few decades again. We could totally be alive the next time it comes back,” I said. “We'll be a hundred and thirteen. We'll still be digging ditches in the park for minimum wage.”

“That is not my vision of my vocational future,” she said. “But enjoy that ambitious side of yours. Anyway, Jimmie's dad has one of those Celestron telescopes, if you want to come see it tonight.”

“I can't,” I said. “Next time.”

“You mean in ninety-five years?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ninety-seven.”

“Okay, see you then.”

I pressed the screen door open but then I stopped and turned around. “What about tomorrow?”

“What about it?”

“You want to do something tomorrow? Something wholesome, involving disco?”

She narrowed her eyes at me, circumspect but curious, I thought. “You know what band is good?”

“I'm looking forward to hearing,” I said.

“Jimmie's band. The Disco Balls.”

I resisted saying the name was only a marginal improvement over Piece of Toast. “Oh, I thought you were going to say Duran Duran.”

“I'm not totally ready to concede that point yet. Jimmie's band is really good. And he's a great drummer.”

“This is surprising news, I must say.”

“So you want to go see them tomorrow night, or what?”

“Well, I was supposed to go to Soo's.” It was not true, but it was what came out of my mouth.

“Yeah, okay,” Tonya said, waving her hand at me, a combination of
Goodbye
and
Go screw yourself.

“But, no—​wait. Yes. I want to go. I can totally go. I'm going. Yes.” For some reason I was kind of hopping in the doorway, as if she had looked away and I wanted her to see me once again.

“Okay, nimrod, I get it. You're coming. Fine.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I said.

When I got home that night, still slightly fumey from the polyurethane, Rosie was sitting in the kitchen, organizing her school supplies. She was the only person I knew who was psyched for school to start. She'd be starting junior high in a week. She held a rainbow pencil between her teeth.

“This came for you,” she said, shoving an envelope my way.

I took it but didn't open it. “Did you get one too?”

“Of course.”

“What is it? It doesn't smell like caraway.”

“Star flowers,” Rosie said, not looking up. “They're supposed to bloom well in shade, so says her little card.”

“Are we throwing these out, as usual?” I asked. What went on in that twelve-year-old head? I wondered. She hadn't lived with her mom for months, and here she was acting like it was normal to keep getting these seeds from her, but pretty much nothing else, save for—​maybe—​the chaperoning of a future field trip.

“No,” she said. “Don't throw it out.”

“No?”

“No. Just grow it. See what blooms. She says they'll come up even in fall. When she'll be back.”

“Huh.” I opened the barely stocked fridge to see what was inside. Very old peanut butter, very old jelly, and some not-that-old bread. “You hungry?” I asked. “You want me to fix you something?”

Rosie lifted the left side of her mouth in skepticism. “Did you learn how to cook since last time I saw you? Because I don't think you've ever made me anything to eat in my entire life.”

“Well . . .” I sat down next to her with the peanut butter, jelly, and bread. “This is true.”

It was Ginny who used to make our afternoon snacks, because she was the first one old enough to use the stove, and my mom showed her how to toast these nuts with brown sugar and cook these little grilled cheese sandwiches with basil and tomato, and then she'd sit down with us and look at our homework with us until our parents got home.

But then, by the time she died, she'd stopped all that. She wouldn't be home after school, and Rosie and I either wouldn't eat or we'd shove some crackers in our faces. And then, in my post-Ginny life, I never came home after school either. Rosie—​she was all alone.

“Listen,” I said. “I have to talk to you about something.”

Her face got all cloudy. “You and Dean are moving to Paris.”

“We are?”

“Is that what you're going to tell me? You and Dean are eloping.”

“As awesome as that sounds, no, that's not what I'm going to tell you.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, cheerful again. How could two sisters turn out so differently? “Then what?”

I took a deep breath, my hands shaking. “Look—​I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry I did that to you. That was the worst thing I ever did.”

Rosie's eyes widened. “I think you have a lot of competition for the title of worst thing.”

“It was worse than the drugs and the stealing and all this shit with Dad. I'm trying to apologize, okay? Could you please forgive me? Please?”

Rosie shook her head. “It's basically a folktale: ‘How Carrie Tried to Kill Me'—​but not really. I pretty much just blocked it out.” She paused. “Just stop screwing everything up, okay? Just stop it. Okay?” She reached out and sort of patted me on the chin in some sort of awkward attempt at intimacy. “Okay?”

I nodded, but no words came until I could puff out a whisper. “Okay.”

Dean was surprisingly unfazed the next night
when I told him what I wanted to do. He did that thing where he puffed out his bottom lip and nodded in consideration, then he scratched the dark stubble on his chin.

“Hmm, a disco band,” he said. “What is this genre you're speaking of? I've never heard of it.”

“Come on,” I said, tugging at his hand. We were sitting on my front porch, with its sloping, splintery front steps, which he had volunteered to sand if we wanted him to, though we were all pretty used to living this way. “It'll be good,” I assured him, though of course I didn't really know if it would.

He smiled at me. God, he had one of those smiles: his lips bloomed, and it seemed like everything would be all right. Forever.

“Oh, and we're taking Rosie,” I said.

He nodded again, like he could handle anything I threw his way.

The gig was somewhat poorly attended: about eighteen high school kids were swaying awkwardly to “Love Train” by the O'Jays and “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, which to me was a band so bad I wouldn't call their offerings music. There were red, white, and blue buntings across the stage again where Jimmie's band was setting up. Jimmie was wearing white sweatbands across his forehead and on his wrists, so he looked more like Björn Borg than Andy Gibb.

“It'll be good, huh?” Dean asked, then he leaned in like he was going to kiss me, right there on the dance floor with Rosie flopping around behind us, but all he did was keep his head close to mine and smile, and I felt like we were in some kind of protective bubble.

“Let's get something to drink,” I said, tugging him toward the bar. We outfitted ourselves with Cokes and then sat down on a bench while Rosie went right up to the stage to watch the sound check. She'd hardly ever been to see a band before; maybe she thought that was part of the show.

We sat there on the bench, our shoulders touching, our fingers atop the cans of cold, sweating Coke almost interlocking. I could have stayed like that forever, but then Dean said, “Is it as good as you thought it would be?”

“I don't know,” I said. Was he talking about the dance? “I mean, yes?”

“I haven't really seen it yet—​it just looks like a giant star.”

“Oh, the comet,” I said. “Well, I'll show you through the telescope. I wish Alexandrov could have lived to see that he was right.”

“Why? People didn't believe him that it was a comet?”

“They didn't believe him that it was the same comet—​that it was perpetually strapped to the sun. Actually, he was treated so horribly—​he was thrown out of Oxford and he had to pay to publish his work himself because nobody believed him or cared, and there was all this infighting with Newton—” I stopped. Was Dean listening? “Sometimes I can't stop talking about this stuff once I start,” I said. “Which is why I don't talk about it.” Jesus, would he stop smiling at me? I turned around, just to make sure he wasn't smiling at somebody else farther down on the bench. Blue Swede's “Hooked on a Feeling” was now blaring from the speakers, as Jimmie rapped on his cymbals to test them.

“I have very little idea of what you're talking about,” Dean said. “But I totally want you to keep talking.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, and then I told him the whole story of Dmitri Alexandrov and his miraculous, world-changing discoveries and his unfair fade into the background of scientific history and how all that was left of him in the public's mind was this comet, which came around to remind us of its existence every three-quarters of a century. “But then everybody thinks the person who discovered it is named Vira, so then he's forgotten even when he's remembered. I should shut up now, right?”