The Infinite Moment of Us (11 page)

Wren bit her lip. She was startled, Charlie could tell,

and he mentally kicked himself for being so unsmooth.
I

know a park nearby.
Why would Wren want to go to a park with him?

She looked over her shoulder at P.G.’s mansion. Voices

and boisterous laughter spilled out, competing with the

dead-animal debate the stoners were vehemently engaged

in.

Charlie opened his mouth to say, “Never mind, crazy

idea,” but Wren spoke first.

“Sure,” she said. She tilted her head and gave him a beau-

tiful smile. “That sounds nice.”

c h a p t e r s e v e n

The park, when they arrived, was inhabited by

drunk college kids—Wren assumed they were college kids

because of their Georgia Tech T-shirts, and because they

looked old in a way that even Tessa and P.G. couldn’t yet

pull off—and they were as loud as the bat killers back at

the graduation party had been, if not louder.

There could be no talking here. No nice boy to un-

sadden her. Her heart felt heavy, and after a Frisbee flew at

her out of the darkness, making her duck, she exhaled and

said, “We should go.”

“Already?” Charlie said. “We just got here.”

“Yeah, but . . .” She gestured at the partiers by the swing set.

One of them cupped his hands over his mouth and

called, “Yo! Frisbee! Sorry ’bout that!”

Charlie knelt, grabbed the Frisbee, and threw it deftly

back at the group. To Wren, he said, “One second.” He

started for his car, then stopped. Came back for Wren and

took her hand. “Actually, come with me.”

Wren’s tummy turned over. Charlie was . . . why was

Charlie holding her hand? She’d held his arm earlier, but

that was to get him away from Tessa, and she hadn’t thought

about it first. She’d just done it. But unless she was mis-

taken, he was holding her hand on purpose.

She looked at their linked hands as if the answer lay

there. She noticed the stitches on his thumb from his visit

to Grady Hospital two days ago. She took in, again, how

strong and capable his fingers were. With his hand curled

protectively around hers, she felt safe—only, as soon as she

recognized the feeling, she tugged her hand free. Or tried

to. He tightened his grip, striding across the grass.

“What about Starrla?” she said.

Charlie stopped. She bumped into him.

“Ow,” she said, rubbing her nose with her free hand.

“Why are you asking about Starrla?” he said. He held

her hand tightly.

“Uh, because you two are going out?” Wren said. A guy

wasn’t supposed to hold another girl’s hand when he had

a girlfriend. Even if he was handsome. Even if he smelled

like pine needles. Even if he looked dismayed at the very

thought of . . . well, whatever he was thinking of.

“I’m not going out with Starrla,” he said. “I thought . . .

well, no, I guess he couldn’t have.”

“Huh?”

Charlie’s shoulders relaxed. “Nothing.”

“Well, good,” Wren said. “I mean—”

Hush, she told herself. She was glad, very, that Charlie

wasn’t claiming Starrla, even if she was fairly certain Starrla still claimed Charlie. This morning, before the graduation

ceremony, Starrla had caught Wren looking at Charlie and

narrowed her eyes.
Back off
, Starrla’s expression had said.

Her lips, curving into a smile, had added,
Don’t even. You are
weak, and I am strong.

But Charlie was with her, holding her hand, and Wren

had her own brand of strength, brought to the surface by

the dim glow of the streetlight and the whisper of night air

on her skin. It was new to her. Her heart beat with a low,

thrumming exhilaration.

“Starrla and I did . . . date,” Charlie said. “Once. A long

time ago. But now we’re just friends.”

“Oh,” Wren said. “Um, thanks. For explaining.”

The moon was full, lighting up Charlie’s face. He looked

as if he wanted to say something more, perhaps to make

sure she truly knew they weren’t together anymore. Then

he furrowed his brow adorably—he
was
adorable—and

squashed the thought, whatever it might have been. He

fished in his pocket for his car keys and popped the trunk,

all the while not letting go of Wren’s hand.

What am I doing? she wondered. What is happening?

Go with it, she told herself. For heaven’s sake, stop

thinking
for once.

With a coarse army blanket tucked under his arm, Char-

lie shut and locked the trunk. “This way,” he said, and Wren

allowed herself to be led across the far corner of the park

and into the bordering grove of trees. Cautions from her

mother burbled through her—never, ever go to an isolated

spot with a stranger, you don’t do that, Wren—but Charlie

wasn’t a stranger. Also, Wren wasn’t her mother.

“You carry a blanket with you everywhere?” she asked.

She was trying to tease him, as in, Just how many girls do

you take into the woods once the sun sets?

He looked puzzled, and Wren felt dumb. She wasn’t

her mother, but she wasn’t Tessa or some other flirty girl,

either. She needed to just be Wren.

“One of my . . . um, at one of the houses I was in, the

dad was a scoutmaster,” he explained. “‘Always be pre-

pared.’ That was his motto.”

“Oh. That’s cool.” To try to normalize things, she added,

“Was he a nice guy? That dad?”

“No,” Charlie said.

“Why not?”

He was quiet, and she wished she hadn’t asked.

They were thick in the woods behind the park now,

and she had to watch her footing. Then the ground sloped

down, and the trees thinned out. They reached a small

ditch—maybe a ravine that had been eroded by running

water? Behind them were trees, and on the other side of

them were trees, but the ditch itself was clear and dry.

There were leaves and a few sticks and a mat of prickly

grass, but once Charlie let go of Wren’s hand and spread

out the blanket, none of that was a problem.

He had climbed to the bottom of the hollow on his own,

and now he held out his hand. Wren accepted it, grasping

him as she slid-hopped down. Following Charlie’s lead, she

sat on the blanket. Gingerly, she leaned all the way back,

her body at an incline on the ditch’s banked slope.

“Oh,” she said, enthralled. Through the gap in the trees

she could see the sky. The moon, luminous and huge,

peeked through the leafy branches. “Beautiful.”

They lay next to each other, not speaking. Wren could

feel the heat radiating from Charlie’s body. Tiny hairs on

her neck and on her forearms seemed to prickle awake

and stand alert. Wren felt very strongly that, since he had

brought her here, to this secret place, it was her job to keep the conversation going. Just not by talking about foster

families. At first she thought, Guatemala, but she realized

she didn’t want to talk about Guatemala, either.

Guatemala would work itself out. She’d bought her

plane ticket the very day she got her Project Unity accep-

tance letter—and yes, she probably should have used her

savings to pay back the money her parents had spent on

college fees, but she didn’t—and either her parents would

get used to the idea of her leaving or they wouldn’t. She

hoped they would.

But she didn’t want to think about Guatemala, or leav-

ing for Guatemala, right now. Right now, amazingly, she

was exactly where she wanted to be.

“Your thumb seems better,” she said.

Charlie held out his hand, examining it in the pale

moonlight. His fingers, splayed against the stars, seemed

. . . more than. More than fingers. More than a part, or

parts, of a whole. Just as one plus one is more than two, she

thought, not knowing where the idea sprang from, or why.

“Good as ever,” he said. He turned his head toward hers

just enough so that she could make out his grin. “Better.”

She smiled back. She felt her pulse in the hollow of her

throat, and she felt the night air on her throat as well. She

didn’t think she’d ever noticed that sensation in that spe-

cific location.

“Bodies are funny, aren’t they?” she said.

“How so?” Charlie asked.

She stared at the sky. She was nervous. She didn’t want

him to laugh. “Just . . . are they us? Are we them?”

Charlie was silent long enough for Wren to regret her

words. Then he said, “Do we have souls, you mean?”

Relief pressed her deeper into the scratchy wool blan-

ket. “Yeah. I guess. Or are we just, you know, chemicals?

Brain cells talking to brain cells, talking to lung cells and

spine cells and thumb cells?”

“Like when Ms. Atkinson compared us to computers

with organic hard drives?” Charlie said. “A blow to the head

can create a system failure? A disease, like Alzheimer’s, is

a computer virus?”

Wren nodded. She didn’t like that concept, because if

it were true—if a human was a highly specialized com-

puter, but a computer nonetheless—where did that leave

the “human” part?

“My dad’s an atheist,” she said. He wanted Wren to share

his beliefs, but she didn’t.

“My foster mom teaches Sunday school,” Charlie

replied. “And during the church service, when it’s time

for ‘A Moment with the Kids,’ she plays ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”

“‘A Moment with the Kids’?”

“When the youth minister calls up all the kids and tells

them a story that has to do with the day’s Scripture.”

“Didn’t know,” Wren said. She rolled onto her side to

face him. “So, you go to church?”

She bent her knees slightly to get more comfortable, and her thigh touched Charlie’s. She inhaled sharply. Char-

lie didn’t move his leg. Neither did she.

What passed between them, even through the fabric of

their jeans—it felt like way more than computer circuitry.

“Sometimes,” Charlie said. “Pamela likes it when we

do, me and my brother. But Chris usually stays home and

works. When I can, I like to stay and help out.”

“In the wood shop?”

“The cabinet shop, yeah.” He raised his arms and clasped

his hands beneath his head, and she saw the hard slope of

his biceps. The expanse of skin stretching from his bicep to

his shoulder, paler than his forearm and more vulnerable,

disappearing into the shadow of his sleeve. Not an entirely

private place, but not a part of this boy—
Charlie
—that everyone had seen, either.

And, again, not just a part. More than.

“I think souls are real,” Wren said in a burst. “Maybe

they’re not things you can measure or hold or feel—”

“You can feel them,” Charlie said in a low voice. He

turned his head, and she saw his cheek meet his upper arm.

I would like to feel that arm, Wren thought. I would like

to touch that cheek.

She swallowed. “What about trees?”

His lips quirked. “Trees?”

“Do they have souls?” she asked, because at that moment

they seemed to. Leaves rustled, saying
shushhhh, shushhh
.

Branches formed a canopy high over their heads. Add in

the matted grass below them, and Wren and Charlie were

nestled in . . . a set of parentheses. They were in a moment

outside of time. Just the two of them. Their eyes locked.

Their bodies, as Charlie rolled onto his side, forming

parentheses within the parentheses, and within the paren-

theses, their souls reached out. Like roots. Like fingers.

Like wisps of clouds and slivers of radiant moonlight.

Wren shivered.

“They probably don’t,” she said. “That’s just in fairy tales,

right? Druids and dryads and alternate worlds?” She was

babbling, but her heart was fluttering, and she was helpless

to stop her string of words from issuing forth. “Anyway,

I’m a scientist. Or will be, probably, since doctors are sci-

entists. I know that’s silly—trees with souls—but I just . . .

I guess I just . . .”

She waited for Charlie to jump in and rescue her from

her stupidity. He didn’t, and when Wren checked his

expression, when she let herself truly see his expression

instead of hiding from it, she realized he was waiting for

her to finish. Not because he was enjoying watching her

make a fool out of herself, but because he cared about her

thoughts and was interested in hearing them.

His auburn eyes weren’t auburn in the dark ditch. They

were dark and liquid. A well to fall into. The ocean.

“I guess I think the world is more connected than people realize,” she said, choosing her words carefully. You’re

allowed to have thoughts, she reminded herself. Just

because others might scoff, that doesn’t mean Charlie will.

She tried to steady her breath. “I think . . . sometimes

. . . that scientists . . .
some
scientists . . . want to package things up into neat little boxes. Explain, explain, explain,

until there aren’t any mysteries left.”

“I think you’re probably right,” Charlie said.

“Well . . . I like the mysteries,” she said. Her skin tin-

gled. Those little hairs stood up again, all over her. It wasn’t as if she were undressing in front of him, and yet that’s how