The Half-Life of Planets (7 page)

She shakes her head and glances at the couple one more time. “No. Not really. Look, I'll explain another time.”

She all but runs out of the coffee shop, and I think I should probably explain later, too.

After lab work the next day,
I open the side door of the house and drop my bag and shoes in the hallway before going in so I don't get any sand or summer dirt on the floors. Dust and grime are my mother's enemies, and I don't want her wrath on me. Especially because it's not a wrath as in yelling, pestering, demanding. She's intricate that way. Even though I want to leave my sweatshirt on the floor, I hang it up on the brass hook by the bench. The same bench I sat on every morning when I learned how to tie my shoes. The same bench on which my father will sling his briefcase and laptop when he eventually comes home from Wherever, USA, and the same bench from which my mother will collect said items and put them neatly into the shared study down the hall.

I let my hair down from its coil and flip through the mail on the tray. No letters from Cat in Italy. Nothing but bills and credit card offers. I look around the living room and head for the kitchen. The house is over a century old, so it's got lots of smaller rooms. Not an open plan like the modern houses around here. At Cat's house you can yell from the kitchen into the living room, and crane your neck forward in the den and see practically the whole downstairs. Our house is like a series of rabbit warrens.

The best part of coming home is the same thing as the worst part: the house is always the same. The kitchen has a properly stocked fridge—enough greens for a hearty salad but not enough that they wind up wilted and soggy if they're unused—the laundry is folded and left in baskets outside my parents' room and my room, the wood floors are shiny, and the air smells like whatever my mother is baking.

“Chocolate chip banana bread,” she says when I enter the kitchen. Her face is round, full moon–like, but she's a tiny woman, so she's always seems like she could topple over. She's wearing maroon linen pants that dwarf her. “It'll be ready in a bit. It's whole wheat.”

“God forbid we have white flour anymore,” I joke, and open the fridge door, onto which all of my report cards are taped. We have to use tape because the fridge is stainless steel and shiny but doesn't accept magnets. The letters are universally vowels—that is, all A's, save for my independent study in chemistry, which is an A-minus. I joked with my parents that the minus was for variety, but they didn't see the humor.

I look around the shelves for something to eat, but I don't want anything. I'm just biding time until I can go to my room without Mom thinking I'm angry at her. In truth, I'm not, even though her incessant baking drives me crazy. She's either baking or in her study. This week alone has brought a wave of carrot muffins, lavender tea biscuits, and bite-size caramel swirl brownies I gave to Hank to take to work. We can't eat or keep all of the things she makes, or they just go stale. The freezer is filled with things already. She bakes as though she's preparing food for a much larger family.

“Something wrong?” she asks while she slops the dough into a bread pan. She's always been a baker. I suspect she finds the predictability comforting, the scientific aspects of it—how eggs are a binding agent, how sodium bicarbonate makes dough rise.

“Remember when I used to help you stir?” I mime the action and she smiles.

She nods for a minute, and then a certain look comes over her, and she gets back to business.

“Nothing's wrong,” I tell her, even though it's not true.

She brightens. “How's the lab work?”

I tilt my head forward, seeing her through my bangs. “Cool.” She waits for more. “I'm predicting twinkling.” She nods, encouraging me, every bit the high school guidance counselor. “So I have to do a star census. At night, obviously. And I have to do it at different times—like when there's a full moon or a partial.”

“So you'll do that tonight, then?” She wipes her spotless hands on her hips.

I nod. I wasn't exactly planning on it, but maybe Hank will be game for it. I watch my mother check on the banana bread, holding the pan, as though she's cradling a baby, to tap the bottom the way she always checks bread to see if it's done. I feel guilty for leaving. “Save a piece for me for later, okay?”

“Of course. And I'll freeze a loaf for Dad. He had to switch flights. Now he's not due back until the weekend.” She keeps stirring while I head for the stairs.

I take the steps slowly, wishing I hadn't bolted from Espresso Love. Wishing I hadn't seen Fiona Clark and Pren Stevens. Not that I like him anymore or anything. But seeing their hands in each other's pockets. Knowing he was going to kiss her. It was too much. All that longing that pushes a kiss to the surface. All the pent-up lust or love or just wanting to not be alone.

But if my experiment is going to work—not the one I'm doing in the lab, but the one I'm performing on my own self—I have to forget kissing. For the whole summer. How else can I determine the whys, and how best to proceed in the fall when I'm back at my locker waiting for another note?

I'm halfway up the stairs when Mom calls to me. “Liana!”

“What?” I poke my head over the side of the railing.

“You dropped this.” My mother's apron is spotless. Probably she doesn't need to wear one at all, but does it just because that's what you're supposed to do. She hands me my wallet case. My slut note is clearly visible through the outside. I take it from her, and as our hands meet, we lock eyes.

If she asks me about it, I decide right then, I will tell her. I will confess to my kisses and ask her what it means, or what she thinks it means. I wait. “I'd better get that other loaf in if we want to eat some later!” She takes a deep breath and turns away.

“I'm going out in, like, ten minutes,” I tell her. “Just so you know.”

She nods but doesn't face me. “Will you be out late?”

Define late, I think, but all I say is, “It depends on Hank.”

Exactly what depends on Hank I have no idea. I'll meet him by the beach tonight and let him complete his sentence from yesterday. I know he had more to say and that I cut him off and that if Cat were here she'd say that this was my subconscious trying to play hard to get. Trying to make Hank feel something for me by being out of reach. But if she were here I'd counter that thought with this: Neither my conscious self nor my unconscious self should be trying to lure anyone. In my experience, luring leads to liking, and liking leads to kissing, and then suddenly you're opening your locker and finding out people think you're a slut.

“I got you something,” Hank says as soon as I'm within shouting distance of Sam & Nate's, the beach store that bumps into the shore. They sell your usual sandy fare: every number of SPF, poor-quality flip-flops, salty chips, and bags of ice for bonfire parties. During Beachfest, the annual summer concert and all-day party, the store is crammed with T-shirts and hats, each one advertising something.

“Oh yeah?” I look at him and then up at the night sky. Waxing crescent. I swing my bag and say, “I brought my notebook. For a star census. ”

“You're doing homework?” Hank walks toward me, his hands wrapped around a bottle in a brown bag. Just what I don't need. Drinking, beach, summer, and a boy are not going to help me in my experiment, so I start to shake my head.

“No.”

“Not homework?” Hank's closer now, close enough to offer me the drink in the paper bag.

“I can't drink tonight, Hank.” Plus, I'm not the biggest drinker anyway. I squint up at the sky, checking to see if it's even worth documenting what's up there tonight.

Hank stands close to me. Very close. I can see his light eyes, nearly phosphorescent. “I thought you'd like it.” He sounds deeply saddened. “I just thought…”

I take the bag from him and peer inside. “Oh!” I remove the bottle and cap and swig hard. “Root beer in a glass bottle. You remembered!”

Hank gives me the sweetest small smile. “I remembered.” It's as though he can't believe it himself.

Where the road ends and the path through the dunes to the beach begins, right next to the signs warning us not to dig deep holes, is the first flyer of the summer for Beachfest. I point at it. “Check it out,” I say. “Alligator Teeth on the main stage. Great party band.”

“Mmm,” Hank says. He's not really looking. Maybe he's contemplating the stars. Or me. Or not.

“Not a funk fan?” I ask. The wind whips my hair into my face, and I have to keep swatting at it so I don't wind up chewing on it.

“Oh, no. I, you know,
Mothership Connection
,
One Nation Under a Groove
, I dig it.” Hank shoves his hands in his pockets, and I wonder if he's chording still, but I can't see the motion. I like knowing what his hands are doing, though. He stares at the Beachfest poster, the big microphone, the two stages drawn in ragged red and black, bonfires burning in the background. It's the biggest deal of the summer around here; one big night o'fun before the reality of fall hits.

“You're gonna play the second stage this year?” I ask, because I assume he is. He's studying the poster still but suddenly turns to me.

“Am I…wait. What?” Hank looks as though he just tuned in.

“Well, I mean you play music, right?” I sip my soda.

“Yeah, but—”

“I just figured you already were…” I lick the drip of root beer from where it splashed on my hand. “So why not? The second stage would be a great way for you to get your music out there, you know, spread the word.” Then I wonder if maybe I'll regret this; unleashing Hank onto the world for everyone to hear, to want, to want to take away from me.

“I…that's…”

“A great idea?” Because it is, even if it feels risky. Who am I to keep him as my own personal best secret? Besides, I'm sure he's already known all over his school as some musician or closeted musician, so why not burst out?

“Yes.” Hank is very sure. His voice is loud. “That's exactly what it is. I'll send them a demo.”

“Cool,” I say. “And I'll be there to listen.” I say it and wonder if it's true. A lot could happen between now and then. Many days left of my experiment. Many kiss-free zones, many nights and songs to sit through without ever touching anyone's lips to mine. I shrug to myself. However, as the equation of my experiment would show, kissing = potential slutdom = more kissing = inevitably bolting. So no kissing, no bolting, right?

We walk a little ways down the path toward the beach, and when we're right in front of the changing rooms—which are really just wooden slatted structures with portable potties built in—Hank suddenly stops.

“I have to—” He looks pained to admit it.

“Go to the…” I gesture to the sign that reads men. The stick figure on it has one leg raised in the running position as if it is in dire need of the facilities.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

He leaves and I stand there in the warm air, holding my seemingly illicit bottle of something in a brown bag, laughing to myself that Hank is sweet enough to apologize that he needs to do something as basic as pee. I find myself swaying slightly as the wind blows against my lower legs.

“Liana, hey!” I turn, starting to walk away because I think it's Hank, but it's not. It's Jett Alterman—otherwise known as Musician #4 in the movie version of my life—and he's not alone. My heart turns on itself. I grip the bottle harder as though it's Hank's hand. A few other guys and a herd of girls walk in a big group past where I am, heading for the far end of the beach, away from the pier. I wave hello. “It's bonfire time,” Jett says, his eyes half closed as usual, some girl's hand on his sleeve. “You in?”

Am I in? No. “I can't,” I say. Jett looks around as if to suggest that if I have other plans, they can't be great. “I have a…My friend.” I sound silly, all alone here, and realize I look lame. I start a few sentences and then Hank's out of the bathroom, his hair in his eyes, his shirt rumpled like he just woke up, all very adorable and innocent. Hank doesn't even seem to care that Jett or his buddies are milling around not introducing themselves. A few of the girls laugh, and I wonder if they're laughing at me. One of them was in APS with me, but dropped out. Not many survive the planetary sciences at Melville. Senior year it'll just be me and three other kids total.

Jett chucks a Frisbee up the path.

“Why don't you bring your—ah—whatever he is, to the pits?” He points to them as his group starts to thin out, each one hauling a cooler, a bag of charcoal, striped towels—your typical beach fun.

Hank looks confused, and I open my mouth to ask him if he wants to go, but nothing comes out. I want to explain exactly who Hank is to Jett, and what I'm doing, and why I have no desire go to some lame bonfire where the point is to waste the next five hours so that someone can hook up with someone else.

“If you want to go, you can,” Hank says. He looks at the sandy path and then tries to focus on me.