Lovely, Dark, and Deep

  “I can’t protect you much when you’re that far. Accidents happen.”

  “I know.”

  “Buses careen off cliffs.”

  “Mick. I know.” After a long silence that was loud with unspoken history, Auntie Ruth finally reached out to my Dad’s other hand and said, “You have to trust me.”

  “I trust you. It’s life I don’t trust.”

  Auntie Ruth promised, “I’ll have everything under control.”

  Dad finally nodded, staring intently at Auntie Ruth as if holding her to a long-ago vow: We will stay safe no matter what.

  …

  As it turns out, some things—sun, skin, your heart, the future—simply cannot and will not be controlled.

  Case in point: Auntie Ruth has now ditched our entire secret travel list, specifically curated to get me ready to be a foreign correspondent who’s comfortable in any condition. She is actually joining the side of the homebodies, who consider risk-taking to be riding California Screamin’ at Disneyland. She actually sounds like my parents when she interrupts my memories now and delivers the deathblow to the white-water rafting trip: “Traveling could be dangerous for you now. There’s really no harm in waiting.”

  Case in point: The football game kicks off and draws everyone into our living room, where they are all scrunched on our sofa, perched on the arms, cross-legged on the ground. The Seahawks must be off to a rough start because I hear groans. The soundtrack of my life right now.

  Case in point: Josh saunters into the kitchen, where I’m tidying up. Thor is here? The guy actually showed up? He might be wearing an “I love Pluto” T-shirt today, but he looks even more dangerously Nordic than I remembered: blond hair, windswept like he’s been standing at the prow of a warship. Like any good Viking exploring new territories to conquer, he spies me at once at the stove top.

  Steal me away, Viking Boy.

  “You look great,” he says, then flushes, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I mean, better.”

  “I’ll take great.” Especially when I’m wearing a monstrosity of a hat.

  He blushes even more. Well, what do you know? There’s a certain appeal to a red-flushed face.

  “So what’s good?” Josh asks, aiming his attention to the stockpots like he’s mesmerized by so much soup. He gives one of the pots a stir, which flexes his (well-defined) biceps. “I mean, great?”

  You. Me. Everything. Hello. I ladle him a jar of chowder and say, “Come with me.”

  Today is the perfect rule-breaking day for a rule-abiding girl.

  “Entrez vous,” I tell Josh, opening the door to my bedroom and saying au revoir to my parents’ No Boys Allowed dictum.

  What I hadn’t counted on was for Josh to hang back uneasily outside my bedroom like this is a hotbed of danger. Hot bed, the precise reason why my parents instituted the no-boy rule. I blush, immobilized with a double dose of awkwardness and uncertainty.

  Josh asks, “You sure this is okay?”

  “Pretty much.” (Yeah, I can pretty much hear my parents’ lecture.)

  Two days before my thirteenth birthday, Mom’s best friend, Jannie, a pediatrician, called, weeping and probably breaking all kinds of confidentiality laws, but she was having a crisis and Mom was the one to SOS. As it turned out, Jannie had treated a ten-year-old girl who was six months pregnant. I can’t even imagine. Apparently, neither could my parents. A couple of hours later, both of them pale, had issued yet another Travel Advisory: this time barring male visitors to my bedroom.

  Josh shrugs, still staying on his side of the doorway. “Your parents don’t seem like the boys-welcome type.”

  “And you would know from your vast experience?”

  “Pretty much.”

  At that, I should throw him out because a) that was confirmation that he was a guy who had girls on a strict and steady rotation, and b) I was done with being a magnet for those types of guys. Instead, I widen the door.

  Josh takes one step inside, and my bedroom suddenly shrinks. My palms sweat. Ridiculous, I know. Even more ridiculous, I’m too self-conscious to wipe them on my jeans. It’s not hard to imagine Mom barging in here with her finely tuned maternal radar able to detect the smallest hint of teen boy testosterone. Or more accurately, a surge of teen girl estrogen as I picture him kissing me, me winding around him.

  Retreat to the living room is prudent.

  All thoughts of safety in numbers vanish, though, when I notice my bedroom is dark. Suspiciously, preternaturally, parentally dark. I frown at the blinds, which have been lowered all the way down. The blinds I had opened partway after cooking this morning to allow the suggestion of natural light into my room because some of us actually love the sun. So while Josh spoons chowder into his mouth, I yank the blinds up. The late-afternoon sun saturates my room in yellow-gold. Nope, my life isn’t going to change. Not one iota, not when my skin is back to normal. For good measure, I toss my hat onto my bed and feel both light-headed and lighthearted.

  “You made this?” Josh asks, his words muddied with soup. Talking with your mouth full of my cooking is something I interpret as a compliment.

  “Thank you,” I say. “But wait until you try my Mongolian sheepshead soup.”

  “Sheeps? Head?” He lowers his spoon cautiously, then laughs. “LA Rams. Got it. That’s good. But this …”

  “Chowder. You’re safe.”

  Josh looks visibly relieved and declares, “Even better than your baos.”

  “You ate one?”

  “Maybe more than one.”

  “Three?” When he says nothing, I find myself laughing, too, before guessing, “Four? Five? No, not five. Five? Really?”

  “I’m going to have to swim extra laps tomorrow.” He digs into his back pocket and holds out a wad of cash. “Should be seventy-five bucks. Sorry, it’s not what you would have made.”

  “Are you kidding? I didn’t think you’d sell any of them, and this is way more than those Firefly guys would have spent,” I tell him, and set the cash on my desk. “Really. Thanks! Aminta’s going to be so happy. Come on, have a seat.”

  Josh drops to the floor with his back against my bed, which makes me feel like a self-conscious Goldilocks, not knowing where to place myself: across from him (too patty cake, patty cake). My desk chair (too aloof). Next to him (just right).

  “How do you know Aminta?” he asks.

  “Best friends since second grade,” I tell him. Horrific, but when I lower myself, I misjudge, our hips graze, way, way too close for comfort. I scoot away while he stretches his (long) legs out and crosses them at the ankles, lounging back like he’s at some sunny, exotic beach locale, used to girls pressing themselves up against him.

  “We were in the same comic class,” he says while scraping the jar for the last bit of chowder.

  “I know. She loved that class,” I tell him. I wriggle a little farther from him, now putting too much distance between us, but I can’t possibly adjust again.

  “I did, too. My parents forced my brother and me to take it one summer,” Josh says as he places the empty jar by his hip. “And we got so into it that we signed up for another class …”

  I want to ask him about his twin, but know I’d be prying. He clears his throat. “Hey, your foot’s in the sun.”

  “I’m wearing socks. And Converse. My toes are safe.”

  “Maybe you should move over.” Which he does to make more room for me, then angles me a look that is a little uncertain before it vanishes. “So I take it you didn’t read Persephone?”

  “Uhhh …” Guiltily, I remember tossing the comic in the trash bin under my desk because I honestly didn’t think I’d see him again. Now I panic that he’ll spot it in there, but he’d need Superman’s X-ray vision to do that.

  “It’s okay. It’s just weird that she’s photosensitive, too.”

  “What are the chances?”

  “Yeah, weird, right? She escapes from Planet X to Earth. Her skin’s not used to being this close to the sun.?
??

  “So she’s a refugee?”

  Josh looks at me, surprised. “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  “In a bikini? What happened to make her need to escape wearing only that?”

  “I never thought about that …”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  Josh lifts his hands into the air and says, “Neanderthal. Guilty as charged.”

  “Noted,” I say. “So what could have happened to her planet?”

  “Geopolitical turmoil. None of the other planets want to take her people.”

  “Because a faction is extremist and has been doing all these terrorist acts. So the rest of the universe thinks that all of her people are dangerous, even the babies in refugee camps.”

  He looks at me, impressed. “That’s really good.”

  I shrug. “I wrote about the Syrian refugee crisis for one of our bake sales.”

  “So maybe she’s on a recon mission to Earth to see if it’s a friendly environment for her people. And then the sun happens.”

  “Like, what?”

  Josh drums his fingers on the floor. “I haven’t nailed down the science yet. But I do know that the sun changes her life.”

  “Well, this isn’t going to change mine,” I tell him, myself, my parents’ voices in my head, and most of all, my body. The prickling on my arm now is just my hyperactive imagination, right? I tilt my arm subtly: normal. The triangle of light from the window is a good foot away from me. “I’m not going to let it.”

  “But life happens,” he argues. “We think we have control over everything, only we don’t. At all.”

  “But we do. Like, I’m still going to travel, no matter what.”

  “To Disney?” A smile plays on his lips.

  How did he know? Then I remember all the photos of just me, then Roz and me after she was born, hanging up in the hall. Where some other kids have their childhood marked out year after year with their ceremonial photo with Santa, ours are with Mickey and Minnie. Not every year, but practically, because Mom’s cousin happens to get free passes since he works at Disney.

  “Left to my parents, all our vacations would be in the Happiest Place on Earth,” I tell him now.

  “I love Disneyland.”

  “Yeah, me, too, but it’s a big world after all, and I want to see it all.”

  “And report it all?”

  I nod, surprised that he understands.

  “Could you,” he asks, “if you’re photosensitive, though?”

  “Yes, for sure. Have hat, will travel.” To convince myself, I slide my daily planner off the nightstand and flip to the adventure list that Auntie Ruth and I started on our flight home from Arusha. “I mean, how could I not go to—oh, I don’t know”—I pick the most outlandish adventure on the list—“Naadam, the Mongolian Horse Festival?”

  “Do you ride horses?”

  “No.” I blush, wishing now that I’d left the blinds down.

  “Then …”

  “Why? Well, we’re part Mongolian. Definitely don’t ever get my dad started on the whole descended from Genghis Khan thing.”

  “Genghis Khan, ruthless conqueror?”

  “Yup, him.” We trade knowing smiles, smiles that say, I get what you’re talking about and Parents! Smiles that say, We’re on the same side. “Anyway, my aunt thought it would be cool to see our ancestral competitions. Up to a thousand riders. Jockeys who are all kids. And journalists have to be able to fit in anywhere, even yurts, drinking yak milk.”

  “Yak milk.”

  I flush. “Yeah. I want to blend in wherever I go.”

  “And your parents would let you go?”

  “My parents would lock me up if they knew I wanted to go.”

  “What else is on your list?” Josh asks, but he doesn’t reach for my planner or even crane his neck to read what I wrote, which I appreciate.

  “What’s on yours?” I counter.

  “Chile.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Without thinking, I place my hand on his biceps—his muscular, buff, defined biceps that could be a body double for the Incredible Hulk. What the heck am I doing? I yank my hand back and run my fingers through my hair as if that was what I meant to do all along. How muscles could possibly get that big (and cut) would demand supernatural, otherworldly, and freakish comic book conditions, like a spider bite or accidental radiation poisoning.

  “No. Why? Is it on yours?”

  No one aside from Auntie Ruth knows about this list. Aminta is so obsessed with college applications that adventure and anything that remotely hints of senior spring are foreign objects that her body is rejecting to survive.

  But now, I set my planner on the floor, a bridge in the space between us.

  …

  ADVENTURE LIST

  Snake River: White-water rafting.

  Chile: Trail running in Patagonia.

  Mongolia: Naadam and Sunrise to Sunset 42-km run.

  Paris: Catacombs.

  Jordan: Bedouin Trail to Petra.

  Finland: Cross-country ski border-to-border.

  Botswana: Everything.

  …

  “Chile!” says Josh, looking at me, astonished. “You know, there’s supposed to be epic stargazing there.”

  “And trail running.”

  “And a dark sky reserve.”

  The term alone intrigues me. “Dark sky reserve?”

  “Yeah, Atacama Desert. There are a couple of dark sky parks around the world, including Utah. Protected land without light pollution. So the stargazing is incredible. I thought that’d be a cool setting for Persephone.”

  “Maybe where she looks up and literally gets lost in the stars, homesick.”

  “Yeah.” Again with the admiring look. I wonder how many girls have fallen for that very expression. He says, “That’s good.”

  Oh, honey, I haven’t even gotten started. Neither, apparently, has he. “Or,” he says, tapping the adventure list, “maybe that’s where she can read the stars like a map.”

  “Or a message! Like, turning the horoscope readings into real news from her world.”

  “So when are you going?” he asks.

  “Oh, that.” My tone goes flat, and I tuck my knees up to my chest.

  “Canceled?”

  “My parents thought it would be ‘imprudent’ to go anywhere until we know more. But, come on, the Idaho rafting trip is nine whole months away and it’s supposed to get me ready for the hardest conditions. I sometimes feel like everything for them is a potential forest fire. Stamp out every little spark of fun.”

  “Sometimes parents are right,” he says softly.

  That is the last admission I’d expect to hear. I smile at him like he’s joking. “Seriously?”

  But what’s serious is Josh’s expression. “Sometimes, yeah.”

  “But sometimes not …” Then I tell him about how once—just once—I had told my parents I actually wanted to be a reporter. That mistake happened right after my high school had brought in Lisa Ling and Lara Setrakian, both journalists who got started not all that much older than us, to talk about facts and the media during my frosh year. That was the confession that launched a thousand lectures just like the one I received in fifth grade: Do you know how dangerous it is to be a journalist these days? Did you know that eight hundred—eight hundred!—journalists have been killed in the line of duty over this last decade alone? Did you know that only eight percent of the cases have ever been solved? Did you not hear what the terrorists did to Daniel Pearl? Heavens no, let others do that dangerous job of being the world’s truth-tellers in conflict zones. “So, no, parents don’t always get it right. Some things are worth the risk.”

  “Maybe they have a point. I never thought about it, but journalism does sound dangerous.”

  “Truth is dangerous.”

  With a teasing half grin, one that must have been practiced on hordes of girls before me, he taps adventure number six. “Then why cross-country skiing?”

  “Why not??
??

  “River Tam would totally bomb downhill.”

  “Heli-ski,” I correct him.

  “True.”

  “But in the world according to my parents, downhill is too dangerous,” I say, then admit, “plus, it really is a little scary. I went once when I was about four, and they thought my lower center of gravity would make it safer. For once, they were wrong.”

  “Powder pigs?”

  “Powder pigs! You were in the class, too?”

  “A rite of passage.”

  “If a rite of passage includes a full face-plant.” I mime with my hand, holding it upright and then—timber!—crashing down. “When I got up, my goggles were totally covered in snow, and I thought I was blind. Literally. I started screaming, ‘I can’t see! I can’t see!’ ”

  Instead of mocking me or my parents for playing it safe, Josh says, “That’s so cute.”

  I blush and wish that the blinds concealed the evidence that he and his words affected me. “So, you ski?”

  “We used to,” he says, then quickly asks me, “so you cross-country instead now?”

  “We go up to the Nordic Center once or twice a month in the winter. Just for a couple of hours. Nothing serious. Hot chocolate is always involved. But I love it! Cross-country skiing is pretty much winter training for trail running.”

  “But Finland sounds serious. Border-to-border.”

  “It is serious.” The skin on my arms breaks into a suspicious prickle. I spot-check them again: nothing. So I continue, “We were on a flight home from Los Angeles, I forget when, and I sat next to a guy who used to be on the US national cross-country team who told me about this event every March and how it’s the old ladies who pass everyone on the trails by day, then drink them under the table all night.”

  He laughs, just as I hoped he would. The patch of sunlight has snuck up on us while we were talking. So I have to move closer to Josh. Oh, too bad.

  “But for me, there’s nothing”—I gesture widely—“like hiking in the winter with all the massive evergreen trees and the rivers and creeks frosted with snow. The best parts are the frozen waterfalls. You think they’re iced all the way through, except you can see and hear the water still running underneath.”