Between Us and the Moon

  “You’re just really logical, Bean.” This stops me and I freeze. I hear Scarlett in my head: you need to get your head out of the stars once in a while.

  I face Tucker again.

  “You watch the world. I’m not even sure you live in it,” he says.

  My gut stings. Tucker stands before me in a blue T-shirt and Summerhill sweatpants; he isn’t dressed in his usual Polo button-down and jeans. It’s not just the flip-flops—it’s so much more.

  Last week, we were drafting my Waterman Scholarship application checklist. He’s right, two days ago I wanted him to take my bra off, but he stopped me.

  “Haven’t you noticed I’ve been hanging out in the junior parking lot? Or that I’m not at every single Pi Nary meeting?”

  He keeps rambling, but nothing he says is what I want to hear.

  “I’m different. I am. And you haven’t even noticed.”

  My bottom lip keeps quivering so I bite at it to try to make it stop—doesn’t work. I ache right beneath my ribs. I place a hand over my stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. A sob catches in his throat; it makes his voice thick. He spins on his heel and heads down the street.

  His apology is his good-bye.

  The moon backlights him as he passes by the Zuckermans’ house and their idiotic oversized boulder.

  The light flickers from a room upstairs in our house. Scarlett’s angular features watch me from her bedroom window. Her face in the moonlight is porcelain. She drops out of the window frame, leaving behind a view of the blue comforter on her bed.

  You watch the world.

  I try counting elements, but nothing seems to work. I make it all the way to the middle of the alphabet twice, but my face is still wet and puffy.

  Neon. Neptunium. Nickel. Nobelium.

  A breeze moves the branches above my head. Somewhere on the street, a baseball game on TV echoes through an open window. Yet, still, my uneven breath is the loudest sound around me.

  The streetlight in front of our house spotlights the ground—a crack zigzags up and down right on the pavement where Tucker had been standing. In fact, its shape mimics Cassiopeia, a constellation that is supposed to look like a queen chained to her throne.

  The garage light flickers on, and I make sure to keep my back to the house. I wipe my cheeks and smooth my ponytail.

  “Bean? Is that you?” Mom rolls the recycling bin to the end of the driveway.

  “Yeah,” I say, and clear my throat so she can’t hear the thickness in my voice.

  “I didn’t know you were still out here. Tell Tucker good night and come inside. We’re leaving tomorrow right after graduation, and everything needs to be ready to go.”

  I listen for the sound of her flat sandals to head back to the house and eventually shut the door. I guess I’ve been out here for a while because Cassiopeia has moved westward across the sky.

  “Good night, Tucker,” I say to the empty street and go inside.

  TWO

  THE TEN O’CLOCK NEWS ECHOES FROM THE living room. I don’t want to be in my bedroom, where pictures of Tucker will be staring at me from various mirrors and frames. Sleep is clearly not an option so I have the Waterman Scholarship application out in front of me on the table. I tap my pen against the top of the page on the spot where it says the scholarship prize money: $34,000.

  I slip my backpack from the floor to my lap and unzip. Right at the top are a couple photographs from when I cleaned out my locker earlier this morning. I slide them out and they sit in my hand: Tucker and I at the Summerhill winter formal right after we got together; the time I got first place at the science fair. There’s a few more of Ettie and me, but of course, the bulk of the images are of Tucker and me doing anything and everything to do with science. In each of the photos he wears his ratty Converse with the numbers of Pi, written on every available white space.

  In my bag are brochures from lectures, planetarium tickets, and—

  I slide out the first notes he ever wrote me after we decided to make it exclusive a year ago.

  Thinking of you all day today.

  Can’t believe we’re doing this, Bean.

  I crumple the tiny pieces of paper into my hand as hard as I can. When I release, the muscles in my palm ache. The moon moves through the clouds, but still—the sun will rise and it will be a new life without Tucker, for the first time since kindergarten.

  I hate my books. I hate this dumb scholarship. I smack my pen to the floor and it skids across the kitchen tiles. I freeze, but Mom and Dad don’t seem to hear anything over the television in the other room. The last thing I need is for them to see my eyes, ask why I am crying, and push until I finally cave.

  I sigh—the truth is, I don’t hate my books or the scholarship. I hate that I love them both and it’s exactly what Tucker doesn’t want.

  “Oh my God,” Scarlett’s voice cuts through the air. She sits on the porch steps on her cell phone. “Summerhill graduation gowns are hideous. Mine is swimming on me,” Scarlett says to someone on her cell phone. Her blonde hair flows down her back in beachy waves. “Yeah, we have to leave for the Cape right after. Believe me, I bitched about the timing.”

  There’s a car horn from the front of the house.

  “Mom!” Scarlett yells. “Trish is here!”

  Ten thirty. Good, now that Scarlett’s gone I can call Gran and have her all to myself. In San Diego it’s seven thirty.

  I get up and hold the note from Tucker in the palm of my hand. I hesitate over the trash can and turn my hand over ever so slowly.

  “I don’t want to just be friends anymore. Don’t you think it’s pointless?” Tucker’s got me cornered in the bio lab. One hand rests on the wall near my head, the other in his pocket.

  “What do you mean?” My heart thuds so hard I’m surprised he can’t hear it.

  “I’ve been in love with you since we were nine. Since you tripped over my stupid dog and fell flat on your face in the front yard.”

  Tucker brings his face to mine, his lips hover so close I can feel his breath. I want to kiss him; I’ve never seen him so close, never felt his body heat.

  “I’ve known you since kindergarten,” I say.

  “That makes it better.”

  I shake my head from the memory and inhale lingering aromas of pasta and sauce from dinner. The crunched pieces of paper cling to my skin, but gravity always wins out. My hand hovers for less than a second and Tucker’s notes fall into the can joining chicken carcasses, old eggshells, and orange peels.

  Gran will make sense of this.

  Mom and Dad sit in the living room, but now they’re watching a special on global warming.

  I want to make this call without having to explain why. I tiptoe behind their loungers, trying not to make too much noise.

  Everything’s cool, no one’s moved. I’m almost to the back porch. I take another step over the red Oriental runner and a floorboard squeaks.

  “Beanie?” Mom says.

  Damn.

  I stop short, hip checking a coffee table, and send the car keys to the floor.

  “Just being graceful over here,” I say and pick them up.

  “Make sure you make a copy of the Waterman Scholarship application in case something happens to the original at Aunt Nancy’s.”

  Waterman Scholarship. It’s all Mom can talk about since she was laid off from East Bay High, a school in the city. They fired everyone because kids weren’t passing the public school standardized tests. I’m not sure how all of the teachers, even ones like Mom, who went to conferences and ran after school programs, deserved to be fired.

  “Make an extra copy of the work you’ve done so far. Just in case,” she adds.

  “My research?” I ask.

  “Back that up too,” she says.

  “I already have backups,” I say.

  “Back up your backups.”

  “Right,” I say with a slouch of my shoulders. “I’m gonna call Gran first.”

  With
out this scholarship, Mom and Dad will have to ask Nancy for money not just for Scarlett’s college but for my last two years of Summerhill, too. I pass by six cardboard boxes of Dad’s research on my way to the porch. They are stamped with the initials: WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They’re piled high next to our suitcases. I usually go with Dad to work every summer and help him catalog or research specimens. I hope I have as much time with all the work I have to do for the Waterman Scholarship.

  “Tell Gran to have fun on her retreat,” Dad calls. “What is it again?”

  “Silent meditation,” Mom replies.

  I close the door to the screened-in patio and plop on our ancient blue couch. I pull the curly coil wire so the kinks are almost straight, and dial Gran.

  Someone picks up in the middle of the second ring.

  “Coriander, Gracie. Coriander. It’s tikka masala not brisket, for Pete’s sake.”

  In the background Gracie says, “I would put coriander in a brisket; I bet it’s good.”

  “If you want to vomit,” Gran counters.

  “Gran!” I say.

  “Bean!” her voice sings at me. “Sweetheart, would you put coriander in a brisket?”

  “Coriander is an Indian spice,” I reply.

  “Right, you’re not crazy. Get the red wine, Gracie,” Gran says. Gran and Gracie have been together forty years, since they were twenty—two years after Dad was born. Gran says Dad is the best and only decision she ever made with a man. Even still, Grandpa Henry died four years ago and Gran led his memorial service.

  “Tucker dumped me,” I say.

  Silence.

  “Gracie, finish the tikka. Gotta put out a fire,” Gran says.

  “Oh no,” I hear in the background. This makes my eyes burn from tears. Again. I take a few deep breaths. I look up to the ceiling because somehow this makes it easier not to cry. My eyes burn anyway and my nostrils flare. I’m gonna need a tissue any minute.

  “What happened?” Gran says and she exhales. I can see her on her porch too with the blue-and-white-checkered cushions and the wicker furniture. She’s probably settling into her favorite chair next to her famous ferns. I bet she brushes the leaves with the tips of her fingers as she talks. Gran and Gracie are wild for ferns.

  “He told me that I watch the world. I guess he wants someone more exciting.”

  “What’s more exciting than someone who knows how to track a comet? Hogwash. How the hell does he know what he wants? He’s sixteen!”

  “I’ll be sixteen in a week.”

  “Honey, Tucker Jackson has been chasing you around since you were a little kid with your chemistry set.”

  “That’s just it,” I say, gesturing to the empty porch as though Gran were standing here with me. “It’s not like him. We’re serious and logical. It’s the best part about our relationship. It’s like he got a new personality.” I pick at the familiar frayed fabric of the seat cushion.

  “Aren’t you going to the Cape tomorrow?” Gran asks, but her words are stern.

  “Yeah,” I croak.

  “Aren’t you going to be tracking that comet of yours and winning some fancy scholarship and winning the Nobel Prize for astronomy?”

  “Physics,” I say.

  “Well, hell, Gracie that’s some naan!” With a mouthful of Indian bread Gran says, “Beanie, I love you more than my luggage. Tucker’s going through some alien boy phase and while he’s E.T. Tucker you remember what you love and what you have to do.”

  She’s already making me feel better. Gran’s right. Right. I don’t care about Tucker. I don’t.

  I sigh.

  Because I do.

  “Go to the beach, go to Woods Hole with your dad and hang out with the Albert.”

  “Alvin.”

  “Exactly,” she says, referring to a deep-sea submersible. It’s a submarine that’s been as deep as the Titanic. “Go see that hunk of metal, kiss on it, and you’ll be good as new.”

  “You know why I love the Alvin, Gran.”

  Gran recites as though she’s a robot reading from a textbook, “The Alvin has the capacity to see life-forms at the bottom of the ocean that would be analogous to life-forms on other planets.”

  I laugh though tears still linger on my cheek. I hate crying.

  “I love you, Gran.”

  “Aw, kid. I love you. Don’t let Tucker get you down. Do what you love. And don’t let my sister make you wear anything ridiculous or force you to go to any Daughters of the American Revolution parties.”

  Her sister is Aunt Nancy.

  “You know she will,” I say. “Or else she’ll threaten to stop paying my tuition.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Gran explains the purpose of the silent meditation retreat that she and Gracie are going to at the end of the week. The retreat is to remind her to stay true to herself as long as she can “cut away all the excess noise of culture.”

  “Enjoy the tikka and your silence. Tell Gracie I love her,” I say.

  Gran offers me some extra money for the summer, though I say no. She doesn’t have enough to send to both Scarlett and me. I know she’ll send me more than she has for my birthday. I always tell her to spend her money on a plane ticket instead. By the time we hang up, I exhale and sit back into the seat. I do feel better. Even if it’s only for a little while, even I know Gran’s spell is only temporary.

  Because I am clearly a sick person, I step out to the front of the house and sit on the edge where the lawn and street meet. Sometimes, after Tucker goes out with some of the Pi Naries to the Pizza Palace, he comes over. I do work out here on the curb until I see his lanky frame at the end of the street. He sits down, and we talk. It’s that easy.

  In the fantasy version of my life, he comes to meet me for our tradition. He walks down the street in his familiar Converse and jeans. He has his hands in his pockets and takes those long familiar strides toward me.

  He sits down and looks over my coordinates.

  “They’ve been consistent for eleven months,” I say out loud to the fictional Tucker. “The optics on the Stargazer are hi-res, antiglare,” I add.

  “I knew you could do it, Sarah,” Fantasy Tucker tells me. “Did I mention I’m falling in love with you?”

  I blink away the fantasy to the empty street.

  Little moths flicker in circles in and out of the streetlight. He is not coming. He is never coming. He won’t buy the chips and I won’t hear the debate team gossip.

  A car zooms down the street and stops before the house. My head snaps up—Trish’s blue Fiat. Scarlett gets out and her ballet flats walk up the grass to me. Her pink jeans crop at the ankles and she wears a tiny gold anklet. She stops and sits down next to me. I stare out across the street to the Zuckermans’ front lawn.

  “Trish told me what happened. I called your cell, like, nine times.”

  “How long?” I ask, and my cheeks warm. I will not cry anymore. “How long did you know?” The strain from not crying sends a throb through my neck. I finally meet my sister’s blue eyes. Periwinkle, Gran always says.

  Her voice drops when she speaks and she picks at the grass, “I didn’t know. I wish I did.”

  I am not sure if I believe Scarlett. Trish had to know, and she tells Scarlett everything. Trish also knows everything about everyone in school, so why wouldn’t she know that her own brother was going to break up with me?

  “You need to brush it off,” Scarlett says.

  “Brush off my best friend and boyfriend breaking up with me?”

  “Yeah. You’ve gotta get a stronger backbone or people will walk all over you.”

  I stand, leaving my sister on the lawn. I am a few steps from the house but stop.

  “Don’t say anything,” I say without looking back at my sister. “Please.”

  THREE

  OUT THE BACK WINDOW OF OUR STATION WAGON, the trees change from the maples and oaks on my street to twisting pitch pines. We’re getting closer to Cape Cod. The bar
k is so bleached it’s as though all the salt in the ocean has crept into the trunk and up to the leaves. In the way back are the suitcases as well as my state-of-the-art Stargazer 5020.

  I face front again.

  Scarlett would never notice the different types of trees. She is too busy staring at me. Her eyes are blue slits and her mouth purses—staring. The bun on top of her head is in a tighter coil than usual, making her neck seem extra long. Mom always says Scarlett has rose petals for lips. No one ever says this about me.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing,” she says but keeps her gaze fixed. I’m sure Scarlett is counting the moments until she leaves for Juilliard’s dance orientation. She’s never been gone so long before. When she comes back from New York the first week in August we’ll say good-bye with the famous going-away party.

  Scarlett raises her legs toward the air so the tips of her toes graze the top of the car ceiling. Her toes are gnarly bunions, blisters, and oozing pus. Her toenails are bubble gum pink. I don’t know, maybe it’s because she points her toes, but they look like bruised works of art. I lift my knees so they rest on the back of the passenger seat. I’ve never painted my toes.

  “Sarah, you’re digging your knees into my back,” Mom says. She only calls me Sarah when she needs to tell me something important, usually to do with school or the money we don’t have. This means I must be annoying Mom so I drop my legs.

  “Ettie also called you last night,” Scarlett says and stretches her hands to her toes. “I wonder what she wanted to talk to you about?” She raises her eyebrows in a knowing way.

  “Shut up,” I whisper so no one can hear but Scarlett.

  Scarlett stretches her legs up to the car ceiling again while wearing that stupid smug smile. I rub the hem of the Pi Nary T-shirt.

  “Tell Mom. She’s going to find out from Carly eventually and then she’ll want to know why you didn’t tell her,” she whispers.

  I ignore Scarlett and lean forward so my face is between Mom’s and Dad’s seats.