Between Us and the Moon

  But I know. I immediately know because this is too much like a movie. No, it’s not a movie, it’s Murphy’s Law. My gut clenches.

  Andrew is frowning but flinches, shaking himself out of the moment.

  I hop down from the stone wall onto Main Street.

  “Andrew,” I say, because more complex sentences seem hard right now. “This is Claudia, Chelsea, Will, and Gabe.” I’m all breathy and high-pitched.

  Andrew simply nods and gives a polite smile.

  “We’re going to watch the fireworks on Nauset Light,” I squeak. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Claudia.”

  Claudia and her group say good-bye and stifle their own laughter. Andrew and I walk together, but he’s silent. I want to say I’m sorry immediately. Actually, I want to curl in on myself, into a little ball. I could be daring and take his hand, but he keeps his in his pockets.

  Under the light of the street lamps, his expression is dark, brooding.

  “Where are we walking?” I dare to ask.

  He stops and runs one hand over his hair. “I don’t know. Do you want to go anywhere with me?”

  “You know I do,” I say, and the frown is still set on Andrew’s face.

  “No,” he says and shoves his hand in his pocket again. “I don’t.”

  “Can we please talk? I want to explain,” I say. “I know it sounded horrible.”

  We walk in silence away from Main Street. Just as I turn my back, the brass band warms up. With a glance down the long suburban street, the glitter of the red, white, and blue tinsel that circles the gazebo winks under the streetlight. I want to run backward, erasing everything that just happened, but I know, the universe knows, that time travel is not possible.

  Andrew keeps walking and the conductor starts the festivities. In their red uniforms and blue caps, they are dots at the end of the street now. I am dying for the music to start so it fills the silence.

  “Hip hip!” the band announcer cries.

  “Hidey-ho!” the crowd returns. They do this three times and as I turn the corner, Lighthouse Beach comes into view. The band begins, but the brass is muffled by the waves and wind.

  Andrew keeps his distance. Good. It’ll be easier to take when he breaks up with me. I got through Tucker, and I can get through this.

  Except, this is my fault and I need Andrew in a way I didn’t need Tucker. We share something deeper, real.

  Once we get to the beach parking lot, he leans his hands on a wall that separates the asphalt from the dunes. About fifty or sixty feet below, the waves crash again and again. Andrew looks out at the ocean. The sunset is behind us because this beach faces east. The sky is a twilight blue, almost lavender, like on our first date.

  I want to spit or slap myself. Either one will do.

  The waves swell and crash and the moon is low on the horizon. It’s been almost three weeks since Tucker broke up with me so the moon is nearly waxing crescent again. It’s amazing how much and how fast things change. I would do anything to make the boy next to me even look in my direction.

  “I didn’t mean what I said,” I explain, but my voice is very quiet.

  “It didn’t even sound like you,” Andrew says. We both don’t dare to raise our voices to a normal speaking level. Even though the band is a half mile back, the music swells through the opening ragtime number. “Is that you? I mean, the real you?” he asks.

  “The real me?”

  “A girl who would say that about me behind my back.”

  “I like you so much,” I say. I clear my throat because I can hear the panic and desperation in my voice. “I wish I could express how much. And it’s surprising me because I’m not usually in this situation.”

  He finally looks at me and the furrow between his eyebrows makes shame flare in my stomach. I’ve never hurt anyone. I can only imagine how Tucker felt when he came to break up with me. It took me ages to understand what he was trying to say.

  “What do you mean? You’re not usually in this situation?” he asks.

  All of my excuses sound so ridiculous and childish. I want to kick something.

  A couple of cars pull up to the line of spaces overlooking Lighthouse Beach. There are some couples far off at the other end, but when I see a family and two kids getting out of the car, I walk down the stairs to the sand.

  “Sarah?”

  I don’t look back, but Andrew’s familiar footsteps follow me onto the sand. I slip off my sandals and hold them in my hands. My toes crunch on seaweed when I finally make it to the shore.

  The moon shines over the water even though the stars are just beginning to peek through the cobalt blue sky. Soon that blue will be gray, then black and all of the constellations will come out.

  “It’s easy for you,” I say, dropping my gaze from the world above.

  “What is?”

  I cross my arms over my chest. Andrew’s frown is gone and instead, there’s interest in his eyes. This is the Andrew I know.

  “Being you,” I say. “Being who you are. You know what you want to be. I don’t mean for a job, but on the inside. You know who you are. I don’t. I see pieces of myself now and then.”

  “I find that hard to—”

  “Believe it,” I interrupt. “I know who to be when I track comets. When I talk about science. I guess . . .” I have to stop and gather my breath. My cheeks warm and I bring my fingertips to my face. I didn’t think I would be so emotional. Not about Andrew being hurt, that makes sense, but because I am confessing something so deeply true and I’ve never said it out loud before. Maybe I didn’t really know how to say it before today.

  Scarlett, Tucker, and Dad were right about me.

  “I just assume no one likes me,” I say but can’t bring myself to meet Andrew’s eyes. “I just automatically assume it. It’s easier than putting myself in a situation where someone . . .”

  “Could reject you?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Who are those girls? Who cares what they think?” Andrew says. He sounds like Scarlett.

  Andrew reaches out for my hand and the warmth and tender grip of his skin nearly makes my knees buckle I’m so relieved.

  “They’re really nice, actually. Those girls? That was all me. They were coupled up and I felt stupid.”

  “You never did that with me, did you? Show off because you were nervous?”

  I make another split-second decision. I tell another lie, simply adding and adding to the countless number I have told.

  “No,” I say. “I’ve never pretended to be someone else with you.”

  A wave of nausea flows over me. These words are sour so I have to couple it with something true.

  “You always remind me how much I matter. The me on the inside. The one I’m piecing together,” I say.

  Andrew turns me toward him and bends his knees so our eyes meet.

  “Can I just add that I have never felt so stupid in my entire life?” I say.

  Andrew doesn’t let go of my hand. He gestures to the sand and we sit down just as the first firework explodes in the sky. The blast vibrates deep in the center of my belly. The tiny glittering arcs fall slowly back to the Earth.

  “I told you this already,” he says with a shake of his head. “You are so different than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “My strangeness is interesting. Great.”

  The second firework explodes above his head in a red burst and now tiny glitters of crimson lights rain down from the sky.

  “Anyone who goes to a library to research my tattoo is a girl I want around.”

  I gasp. “What? I . . .”

  “Curtis told me.” Andrew is smiling now.

  I bring my palm to my forehead with a smack. Andrew’s laugh echoes in the street and the fireworks pop, pop, pop in a silver and gold finale and the whole beach lights up.

  “I wanted to be able to talk to you about it,” I say and rub at my forehead. “About something other than science.”

  A succession of gold and yellow fir
eworks explode above our heads.

  Andrew reaches his arms around my waist. I let him. It’s familiar here with his warm hands around my body.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say.

  He nuzzles his mouth into the nape of my neck. I turn to face him completely and we kiss so deeply that I wonder why people don’t kiss like this every chance they get. Andrew lays me down on the sand next to him.

  “Andrew,” I whisper, and he pulls away. He looks in my eyes and brings his palm to my cheek. “I can’t catch my breath.”

  Andrew’s warm breath tickles my ear. “Let’s swim to the moon, uh-huh,” he sings, but it’s soft. “Let’s climb through the tide . . .”

  I giggle. “Okay so now that the secret’s out, why that tattoo?”

  “Mike loved Morrison’s poetry,” he replies, and he twists his arm so the tattoo faces me. “It just stuck with me once I started reading it.”

  “Swimming to the moon is scientifically impossible.”

  “But isn’t that what makes life great? Something unexpected?” Andrew asks.

  I search for an answer in his eyes.

  “I don’t know,” I reply, and it’s the truth. “Everything in my life has been perfectly planned. Meticulously organized.” Until you, I want to say but don’t. “You know Jim Morrison has been dead since 1971. That’s over forty years,” I say.

  “Yep,” he says and squeezes me. “He’d be in his seventies by now. Maybe I love their music so much because I can never see Jim live or read new poems. That’s what makes someone so untouchable, you know? When you know you can’t really have them.”

  I squeeze Andrew because I know he’s talking about Mike, too.

  It just comes through me; I don’t even know why I say it. Maybe I say it because it’s true and right now saying anything true roots me to the ground.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you,” I say. “All the time.”

  He kisses me again and we only pull apart when a group of women laugh up near the stairs. Their voices echo over the beach.

  I feel alone with Andrew even though there are people around. We decide not to bother with the bonfire party tonight with all of his friends. Who needs a beer keg and a drum circle when there’s Andrew and me under the stars?

  As the last of the Technicolor sparks rain back to Earth, we spend hours on the beach. I don’t even know what time it is when the beach starts to empty out. All I know, all I need to know is this: Andrew, the constellations, and me.

  TWENTY

  “BEAN!” MOM SAYS THE NEXT MORNING AND OPENS the door my bedroom. “Phone!”

  I’m still in bed with one eye squinted open at my cell phone; I missed a text from Claudia at 11 p.m.

  CLAUDIA: Details on that guy? Beach soon?

  She doesn’t seem weirded out by last night’s fiasco. I am about to text her back when Mom calls me again, “Beanie! It’s Gran!”

  Gran! Thank God! I’m out of bed, down the stairs, and when I hit the bottom all the glass chandeliers shake. Nancy’s face scrunches when she looks up from flipping through an address book. On the table in front of her are RSVP cards. I bring the phone outside to the patio and shut the door behind me. I sit down on my favorite Adirondack farthest from the door.

  “Finally! Someone with some sanity!” I cry.

  “Break on through to the other side!” she sings through the phone.

  And on cue, the truth serum is in effect.

  “Gran. I think,” I whisper, “I think I’m in love.”

  “It’s a little too late, dear. Jim Morrison is dead,” she whispers back.

  “Har. Har. No, with a boy. He loves The Doors.” I’m back to speaking at a normal decibel.

  “And I just thought you missed your granny.”

  Nancy opens the patio door; I am sure she’s trying to eavesdrop, but I don’t think she can when I’m all the way down here. Even though she’s Gran’s sister, she doesn’t understand our relationship.

  “And now you do too?” Gran asks. “Love The Doors?”

  “It’s more than that. I want to talk to this guy, connect with him, you know what I mean?”

  “Sure do.”

  Gran talks to me about the ’60s, the Vietnam War, and space travel. She tells me about The Doors and other bands she liked during that time. I tell her all about the Comet Jolie. I don’t tell her about Andrew and me on the beach. But I do ask this.

  “Do you think . . .”

  I have no one to ask. And let’s face it, what we did on the beach has been on my mind since it happened and I want it to happen again. But I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do or when you do it or how you ask for it again.

  “Do you think . . . ,” I try again.

  “This is a sex question isn’t it?” Gran asks. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. “You took too long to respond, dear,” she says. I can imagine her at her house in San Diego, overlooking the water. “I guess we have come to that magical age. Spit it out,” she says, and I wish I was there sitting with her and Gracie.

  “Well, are you supposed to want to touch a boy? I mean, when you love him?”

  “Hell, honey, you can want to touch him even if you think he’s a complete ass!”

  I laugh at this. It echoes out to the trees and bay in the distance. I haven’t laughed in this house in a long time.

  I take a breath of salty air to ask something else but can’t find the courage to admit I would lie to someone about my age. I want Gran to tell me it’s natural, that people lie all the time. I want her to invent some way that I can be with Andrew and continue to let him think I am going to MIT in the fall. I never thought the lie with Andrew would go this far. I never thought he would want to be with me.

  “Have you ever—” I start.

  “Oh, just ask,” Gran says, laughter still on the edge of her tone.

  “Have you ever told a lie?”

  “Depends,” she says. “What kind of lie?”

  “One you couldn’t get out of without admitting that you’ve lied?”

  She’s quiet. She and Gracie are probably sharing some kind of “knowing look” and Gracie has sat down from whatever task she is doing to hear the whole thing recounted when Gran gets off the phone.

  “Yes,” she says. “But I was a little younger than you.”

  “What happened?”

  She sighs deeply before she talks again and it’s the exasperated sigh I love. She’s probably at the kitchen table with her hand resting on top of Gracie’s. I scoot into the chair even more and the breeze slips by, bringing with it the aroma of another dinner that Nancy’s chefs made for us.

  “I wanted a classmate to like me,” Gran says. “She was the most popular girl in school. What was her name?”

  “Missy Thomson!” Gracie says in the background.

  “Right! Missy Thompson. So I told her I was getting a dog, which of course, I wasn’t.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted her to come to my house so the other kids would know just how fun it was to hang out with me. Anyway, one day during class, I bragged about getting this wonder dachshund named Mustard. I had a whole story. Where Mustard was from, his size, and what we would do with him when he got here.”

  “But there was no dog.”

  “Nope. No dog.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She came over and nothing I could come up with made any sense. I thought I could say the dog was getting delivered in a couple weeks, but we had nothing to prepare for the dog’s arrival. No crate. No food or toys.”

  “Wow. Did you feel terrible?”

  “Within five minutes, Nancy told Missy I had lied. So I had to tell the truth. No one talked to me at school for a long time. It took people months to trust me again.”

  Gran’s quiet and there’s a clank of something in the background, which means Gracie’s up from the table and probably fixing something to eat.

  “Telling a lie is tricky business,” Gran says.


  I knew she would listen. Gran talks to me like I’m an adult and not like a kid who has her head stuck in every science experiment she’s ever conducted.

  “Want to tell me about it?” she asks. Her mouth must be close to the phone because it makes the speaker on my ear vibrate a little.

  “Not yet,” I whisper.

  “Maybe some other time?” she says.

  “Definitely. Some other time,” I repeat.

  “I’m really good at giving sage advice. Can I give you some super sage advice?”

  “Sage me up.”

  “You should only give someone what you think they deserve,” Gran says.

  “What they deserve?” I ask.

  “You are on the inside. Deep in your muscles. That’s you. The body is the extension of you. Only give someone your fingers, your skin, and toes if they deserve to touch your soul.”

  “Wow, Gran,” I reply. “You should be silent for a week all the time.”

  She laughs and it’s so familiar, something I can completely count on no matter what is happening in my life.

  “And one more thing?” she says. “If you’re lying to someone you love, well then they aren’t getting the real you. They’re getting a fraction of you.”

  A fraction of me. It feels exactly the opposite with Andrew. Because of the lie, he’s seeing the real me in a way no one ever has before.

  “I can’t wait to come see you,” I say.

  I tell Gran I love her and when we hang up, I sit on that lounger looking out at the water for a long time.

  Andrew isn’t getting a fraction of me. The lie about MIT is just circumstantial. It was just a dumb thing I said to get him to keep talking to me on the beach to test the Scarlett Experiment.

  I shuffle the peas on my dinner plate a couple of days later.

  Who am I kidding? The lie about my age and MIT wasn’t a big deal before, but now, it’s bothering me. It’s becoming a wedge that I have to make fit into so many of our conversations.

  “Tomorrow’s the best beach day of the season so far!” the newscaster’s voice echoes from the TV.

  “Coming to work with me tomorrow?” Dad asks. “You can finish your essay in my office. We’ve got about a month until it’s due, right?”