At First Sight (4 page)

I climbed over Britt, then the blond girl sitting next to her. Blondie shot me an annoyed look as I stepped on her foot.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled. I kept my gaze focused on the girl in the next seat, hoping to get past without maiming her, too. “I just need to—”

At that moment the lights cut out. The place was pitch-black. Hoots and hollers and giggles rose from all around the planetarium. I could only imagine the groping and pinching and related mischief that had to be going on under the cover of the sudden darkness.

I froze as an announcement came on that the show was about to start. Something about the Big Bang and the birth of the universe. Now what was I supposed to do?

It was tempting to take this as a sign to give up. But when the girl I was standing over gave me a shove and muttered something impatient under her breath, I shook off the feeling. It was too late to turn back now.

I kept going, pushing past the second girl's legs. How many more seats were left in the row? One? Two? I couldn't quite remember. Being in the dark that way was
totally disorienting, sort of like swimming with your eyes closed.

“Excuse me,” I whispered, feeling around for the next seat back. Instead I felt my hand close over an arm. A thick, hairy arm.

“Hey, honey,” a male voice said. “Looking for a seat? There's one right here on my lap.”

Ew! I shook off his pawing hands, shoving my way past him as quickly as I could manage. Grabbing for the next seat, I almost did a nosedive as I hit only empty air. Whew! I was out of the row.

Now all I had to do was find my way around the front to that guy. There were tiny running lights marking the aisles, but they weren't much help with anything more than an inch off the floor. So I just turned and walked blindly in the direction I'd last seen Mr. T-shirt. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do when I got there. Maybe just cling to the wall and wait for the end of the show to approach him.

I walked on as carefully as I could in what I hoped was the right direction. One foot in front of the other …

A sudden explosion of sound and light caught me by surprise. It was as if the entire
roof of the planetarium had just blown off in some huge explosion. I gasped and leaped forward in a panic. My foot caught an uneven spot on the floor and I tripped, flying forward.

“Oof!”

I felt myself hit something. Or rather some
one
. A pair of strong arms caught me just in time to stop me from hurtling us both right into the wall.

“Sorry!” I gasped, looking up just as another burst of light went off overhead.

My eyes widened. Standing there, his face only inches from mine, was The Guy!

The lights dimmed again. I was sure my face was bright red, and for a second I was afraid I might faint or hurl or something equally embarrassing, just like one of my sick little worst-case-scenario fantasies.

Instead I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head: “We should really stop meeting like this.”

The guy laughed. “I don't know about that,” he said. “Have we met before? Because somehow I feel really, um,
close
to you right now.”

I giggled self-consciously, doing my best to disentangle myself from him. He helped me as best as he could in the near dark, steadying me by holding on to my
arms as I struggled to find my balance.

Up on the planetarium's huge, rounded ceiling screen, the Big Bang seemed to be over. The only light came from a sprinkling of stars up there and those little running lights along the floor, making it hard to see much of anything in between. Pretty much all I could make out of the guy was his outline. But he wasn't letting up on his grip on my arms, and I could tell he was peering at me, trying to get a better look at my face.

Feeling strangely bold in the dark, I tried to channel Britt by tossing my hair around a little. I figured that should look pretty sexy even in silhouette. Everyone always said my hair was my best feature, right?

It wasn't until I felt nothing but the soft thump-thump of my bun on the back of my head that I remembered. I still had my hair pulled back from the earlier cockpit thing. Oh well.

But hair or no hair, I could tell that this was definitely what Britt would call a Moment. The guy's grip tightened on my arms, and he leaned a little closer. I could smell coffee and soap and some faint, spicy scent that I guessed was his aftershave.

We were way beyond pinging by now; I
could feel the sparks flying between me and this guy I'd never met before, so strong that for one crazy moment I thought I might grab him by the face and kiss him. It was such an intense urge that I suddenly felt weirded out and was afraid I might start laughing or hyperventilating or something.

“The Beast,” I said abruptly, pushing back a little until he let me go. “Um, I mean, your T-shirt. I noticed it before. You like the Beast?”

“The Beast is the best!” His voice was enthusiastic. “So you're into them too? That's cool! I don't know many girls who like that kind of music.”

“Oh, totally,” I replied. “Have you downloaded their new song yet? It rocks.”

“I know, right? Probably their best since ‘Squid for Breakfast.'”

“‘Squid for Breakfast'? That's only my favorite song of theirs ever!” I exclaimed.

“Mine too.” I still couldn't see his face. But I was pretty sure from his voice that he was smiling.

I was smiling too. Maybe all it took for me to pick up a guy was a little pitch darkness. Or maybe all I was waiting for was this particular guy. Either way, I had the
feeling that for once, maybe I was getting this right.

The guy leaned a little closer again. “So are you going to tell me your name, or—”

A small but intense beam of light suddenly blinked on out of nowhere, shining directly into his face. He squinted, raising one hand to block it. By squinting a little myself, I could make out the stern face of a middle-aged scientist lady in a lab coat and a name tag. The beam was coming from the tiny flashlight she was pointing at us.

“Do you mind?” she snapped, her voice librarian-quiet but just as stern as her face. “This is a planetarium, not Makeout Point. Please take your seats before I have to report you to your chaperones.”

“S-sorry,” I stammered.

“Wait,” the guy said.

“Now!” Stern Scientist Lady barked. She grabbed me by the arm, dragging me off in the direction of the seats.

“So you never got his name?” Britt asked.

“Or where he goes to school, or anything?”

“I already told you a million times. No.” I slumped in my seat on the bus, playing with the fraying duct tape someone had used
to repair the back of the seat ahead of mine. We were on our way back to Potomac Point. In the back of the bus Johnny Munson and his slacker buddies were singing their own creative version of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” I guess Mr. Feldman and the other teachers were pretty tired after the long day in D.C., because they weren't objecting or even paying attention.

The planetarium show had seemed to go on forever. I'd spent it hunched in the front-row seat where Stern Scientist Lady had stuck me. True to form, Britt had leaped immediately to the best-case scenario when I hadn't returned, and had happily distracted herself throughout the birth and toddler years of the universe or whatever by imagining that Mr. Hottie McHot and I were tucked away somewhere making out or swearing our eternal love or at least getting to know each other better. So when I'd caught up with her during the mass exit looking bored and grumpy, she hadn't been willing to believe it at first. Hence her asking me umpty-bajillion times what had happened.

“Now I wish the trip had lasted longer,” she said, idly scrolling through her messages
on BBB. “Maybe we could've tracked him down again. Or maybe he would've tracked
you
down. It sounds like he was kind of digging you until Doctor Killjoy came along.”

“Yeah. Except he doesn't know my name either. Or even what I look like. Anyway, I tried to look for him afterward, but I'm lucky I even found
you
in that crowd.” I sighed, thinking back to my brief but incredible encounter with Mr. Amazing. “You know, I think I finally figured out what you meant by sparks, too. I still don't really
get
it, especially since he couldn't even go by looks since he couldn't really, you know,
see
me—”

“Love at first sight isn't that literal. It's not just about looks. It's, like, pheromones and stuff, too.” She beamed at me. “Anyway, don't worry, babe. We may not know who he is, but we know he goes to school somewhere in the county. We can track him down if we put our minds to it.”

I couldn't help feeling dubious. “There were nine schools on this trip,” I reminded her. “How are we going to find one random guy out of eight other schools? Keep transferring until we run into him?”

“Not necessary.” She waved BBB at
me. “I know guys at almost all those other schools. I can ask around.”

“And say what? That your spastic loser friend can't even pick up a guy without screwing it up?”

Okay. So I wasn't in the best mood. A day of staring at spaceships topped off by getting accused of groping a guy by the Hall Monitor from Hell can do that to a girl. Or at least to me.

Britt threw her arm around me and gave me a sympathetic squeeze. “I know how you feel, babe.”

“Doubtful,” I muttered. “When's the last time you actually cared what some guy thought of you?”

That's one of the great things about Britt. She knows when I'm venting and never takes it personally.

“Just leave it to me, okay?” she said. “I'll track this guy down if it's the last thing I do.”

That was sweet. But maybe a little ominous, knowing Britt. I shot her a suspicious look.

“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” I said. “We don't really have much to go on. What if you end up ‘finding' the wrong guy? That could be even more embarrassing than my
little falling-into-his-arms trick.” I shuddered anew at the memory, though I had to admit it hadn't turned out too badly.

“Do you think I'm an amateur?” Britt grinned. “Besides, how many guys would admit to liking that beastly band?”

“Hey! The Beast rules,” I retorted automatically. But my mind was turning all this over. Maybe all hope wasn't lost after all. “Do you really think you can figure out who he is?”

“I know I can.” Britt is nothing if not confident in all things. “Just give me time and I'll deliver Mr. Sparks.”

Sparks. Was that really what that had been? Sparks, pheromones, love at first sight? Was all this angst worth it, or was I deluding myself?

I glanced out the window at the scenery rushing by. We were almost out of the city by now, and the buildings were thinning, the landscape getting greener and more suburban. With Britt sounding so confident, it was hard to argue with her. Still, my worst-case-scenario tendencies were running full strength, inventing all the ways her plans could backfire.

“You won't embarrass me, will you?” I
asked. “If you do find him, you're not going to, like, tell him you think we're soul mates or whatever, are you? Or that I'm madly in love with him or something?”

She looked vaguely guilty, leading me to believe that was exactly what she'd planned to do. “If you don't want me to contact him, I won't,” she said. “I'll just find him and leave the rest to you. Pinky swear.”

Britt never breaks a pinky swear. So I lifted my pinky and we made it official.

“But that doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with wussing out on me,” she warned. “If I find him for you, you have to promise to do something about it.”

“Look, I'll promise to do something,” I said. “But I can't promise it'll be what
you
would do. I'm not you, okay?”

She didn't look completely satisfied with that. But she nodded. “Good enough, I guess.”

We pinky-swore again on that. Then I took a deep breath, feeling a nervous little flutter run through me like a stampede of ants skittering through my guts.

“Okay,” I said. “Go find him. And then we'll just have to see what happens after that.”

A couple of days later I sat at the kitchen table stirring my cereal and thinking about the guy in the Beast T-shirt. Britt hadn't found him yet, which was almost a relief. It was still sort of freaking me out, the way I'd reacted to him. As if I knew him already. Or at least as if I knew I
wanted
to know him. Really, really wanted to.

What would make me feel that way? Sure, the guy was cute. No question. But there were lots of good-looking guys in the world, and I'd never reacted to any of them with the instant crazies. So what was it? That T-shirt? Doubtful. Otherwise I'd have been throwing myself, Britt-style, at every guy at the last MTIAB concert I'd
attended. No, it just didn't make sense. And that bugged me.

“Mroh-ah-rohwww!”

I blinked as the family cat jumped onto the table in one graceful movement. Deceptively graceful. One paw almost landed in my bowl. It actually did land on my spoon, flipping it off the table.

Meow Tse Tung is a blue-point Siamese. He looks sleek and elegant with his velvety gray-and-cream coat and vibrant sapphire-blue eyes. But in truth he's a nut.

“Morning, Chairman,” I said, reaching over to pat him. He bumped his head up into my hand, then started sniffing at the milk in my bowl.

“Get that monster off the table,” my mother ordered as she hurried into the room. She was dressed in what she calls her Capitol Hill uniform: a navy blue suit with a conservative straight skirt and a beige blouse, finished off with panty hose, sensible short-heeled navy pumps, and discreet gold jewelry. Every time I try to liven up her look with a little color, more modern shapes and fabrics, or maybe just some more interesting jewelry, she shoots me down. Apparently, people at the Library of Congress, where she
works as a research librarian, have no appreciation for fashion.