Lost Stars (25 page)

He shook his head. “It's my goal in life to be able to participate in one of your astronomical rants.”

“Are they rants?”

“No,” he said, knocking my shoulder lightly. “They're—​they're lectures? No—​soliloquies.”

“Like from Shakespeare?”

“
Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt I
—​oh, well, you know,” he said. I guess I knew. I guess I knew how that soliloquy ended. He shrugged and smiled and looked at his feet. “Once an English major, always an English major, I guess. Not that I've declared a major or anything, but English was the only class I got an A in. I was pretty much drunk for the rest of them.”

“God, yeah, I never asked you what you were majoring in or what you want to be when you grow up.”

“I think I'd like to teach, but I'm not sure I'm even going to graduate,” he said. “I wasn't even sure if I was going to go back.”

He took my hand and pressed his thumb against each one of my nails, and my hand went limp, surrendering to him. He could keep my whole hand if he wanted.

Now the music started up. They were doing a disco cover of Billy Joel, which sounded like the worst idea in the entire world, but somehow they were pulling it off. Jimmie was whaling on the drums, his skinny body now transformed into something lithe and rhythmic, his mouth making crazy shapes that somehow matched the sounds of the drums. He seemed to be on fire with music making, his limbs shaking, his head shaking, everything moving so fast he was a blur of percussion.

“Holy crap,” Dean said.

“Right?”

Up near the front, Tonya was shaking and snaking and slithering like a
Solid Gold
dancer. After that first song, she went and got a drink, and then came over to us. She, too, wore a sweatband around her forehead.

“Hey,” she said, nodding at me. She had green glitter eye shadow on, though much of it had smudged off from excessive sweating. Her frilly skirt was all wrinkled, and those dark, wet stains had blossomed below her armpits again, and she just looked so happy.
Radiant
was probably the right word, a word that also meant the point in the sky from where the meteor showers begin. The bright light of origin. She seemed to be waiting for information about the young man holding my hand.

“This is Dean,” I said.

Tonya stuck out her hand.

“Dean, this is my friend Tonya.”

“Sort of,” she said. “We're sort of friends.”

“This is my sort-of friend Tonya. And that's her sort-of boyfriend, Jimmie, up there on the drums.” I said to Tonya, “Dean's a drummer too.”

She shook his hand and said, “No, that's my real boyfriend up there,” in the singsongy way that meant
You may not believe me because you're an idiot, but it's true.
Rosie came and sat down next to us and grabbed my Coke and started slurping it.

“He's a hell of a drummer,” Dean said.

“I know it.” She sounded so proud. “So you're Carrie's sort-of boyfriend?”

Oh my god. I was mortified. Was he my boyfriend? When did you get to say that? My shoes were all scuffed at the bottom and the floor was scuffed too, and I was never going to lift my eyes from all the scuffed items below me. I'd just back out toward the door without shifting the position of my head until I'd gotten safely out of the building.

“No,” Dean said. The sadness came so fast it almost knocked me off the bench. “I'm her real boyfriend.” I looked up. He didn't look at me, but his arm appeared around my shoulder, and that was enough. That was perfect.

“Carrie has a boyfriend!” Rosie cackled, dancing around us.

“I should have left you locked up at home,” I said, but she kept dancing and laughing, moving closer to the center of the dance floor and losing herself in the
thump thump
of the music, the music of my life when I was seven years old and everything was good.

Tonya sat next to me and Dean on the bench at the side of the club. I was gulping soda that had no alcohol in it, which I had to get used to—​man, it was kind of sickeningly sweet this way.

“You want a sip?” I asked her, offering her the Coke.

She crinkled her eyebrows. “Is it poisoned?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I read that if you dry jewelweed and add a little bit of cream of tartar to it, it becomes poisonous.”

“Really?”

“No.” It was very odd to be laughing with Tonya again after all this time. And also it was not that bad.

She went back to watch Jimmie, and all around us people were dancing. I was a good enough dancer to like it but not good enough to forget I existed while I was doing it, as I did when I buried my nose in an astronomy book or closed one eye to peer into a telescope. But Rosie—​she knew all the moves. She'd stayed up so many times watching
Saturday Night Fever
on
The Late, Late Movie
that it must have sunk in. Nobody really disco danced anymore, but Rosie could do it for real.

“The kid can dance,” I said, standing up, ready to head to the dance floor now that the band was covering “Stayin' Alive.”

“She can,” Dean said, but he didn't stand up to join me. I waited for a minute, tapping my feet, and then I grabbed him. “No, no, no,” he said, trying to pull away, but I dragged him out to the dance floor. “Okay,” he said. He bounced up and down on his feet. It was adorable in an I'm-so-embarrassed-for-you kind of way.

“I'm a terrible dancer.”

“I know,” I said. “I love it.”

“I also hate this music because there's no mosh pit.”

“You want to make a disco mosh pit?” I asked, bumping into him, pressing him away, and letting him roll back into me.

“That's it,” he said. “That's our band name: Disco Mosh Pit.”

“Really?”

“Trust me.”

“Come on,” I said. “It's bad. You know it's bad.”

“It's okay if we're bad,” he said. We both stopped dancing, stopped moving. We stood in the middle of the floor, our heads together but our bodies apart, two weaknesses which, leaning against each other, formed a strength.

“It's okay if we're bad,” Dean said again, and then he took my right hand in his left, he enmeshed his fingers with mine, and my whole body went slack. I just melted right into him, my head on his chest, the two of us swaying to “Funky Town,” which was so not the right song to be swaying to, but we didn't care.

At Soo's, all the music was melancholy.
Greta, who usually steered clear of the stereo, was playing “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” even though not a single Peter, Paul, and Mary fan was in the room and no one, as far as I knew, was going to a college outside of driving distance. I was two weeks from starting my junior year, and only Tommy—​repeating twelfth grade—​would still be here then. Everyone else would be gone. They were all as drunk and high as usual, clumsy and affectionate and reckless and sweet.

“Get away from that stereo!” Justin called out. “You are fired, Greta.” She stuck her tongue out at him and smiled, but did as he said, moving over to the Genesee beer ball and pouring herself a cup. Every drink she took now seemed to me full of meaning and backstory, every sip an echo of her father's sick body prostrate on the couch. I accepted her offer of a cigarette, but I just watched as someone else smoked pot and someone else drank and Justin blasted Bill Withers's “Ain't No Sunshine.” His house was no home anytime she went away. Great. Cheery. Made for a happy party.

Also: I'd never known that Justin had the least bit of good taste in music, but Nick Lowe came on. He was Soo's favorite. Apparently they had made up. “I think he just didn't want to live with me,” she told me. “He says he doesn't want to go out with anyone else, but he's not ready to commit to living together.”

“Seems totally reasonable for a seventeen-year-old,” I said. “I don't want to live with you either. Although I was sort of thinking about moving in with your mom after you go.”

“Not that she'd notice,” Soo said. “But sounds like you're not on the verge of getting kicked out right now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Weird.”

Then Soo and Justin were once again affixed to each other, as if the sides of their bodies were duct taped together. Dean chatted with Greta and Tiger and everyone else. I leaned against the strangely cold red pleather of the couch and looked up at the starry lights of the disco ball. This was the last time, and I knew it. I might be here again, but not with this crowd, under these circumstances. Chances were I'd be with Tonya and other members of the astronomy club, unstoned and earnestly reading
Black Holes and Other Mysteries of the Universe.

“Hi, kid,” Greta said, putting her arm around me and smiling.

I lit my cigarette from hers. “How's your dad?”

“Ah,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face as if it were nothing. Or maybe she was just blowing the smoke away. “As bad as always. I can't wait to go to college.” She put her arm around me again and then she must have seen my face. “Don't worry, kiddo, you'll come visit me. You'll spend the weekend. We'll hit the keggers running.”

I managed a wan smile, but I knew it wasn't true. Keggers no longer held much appeal for me, and beautiful Greta, while she had been kind and loving and inclusive and had welcomed me into her fold—​she wasn't my people. Not really. My people were the teetotalers and the nerds. And Dean, with his tainted past and his uncertain future, he was my people.

“Come with,” Greta said, pulling me over to where Tiger and Tommy and Dean were talking, depositing me next to Dean. “He's got a whole foot on you,” she whispered to me. “You guys are so cute.”

“Shhh,” I said, but I was disgustingly happy.

Tommy pretended to vomit.

It just felt so different to be there with Dean.
With Dean.
I had to get used to the thing that couples do, where they stand next to each other and talk to people as a single unit. Were we doing that? In public?

He didn't put his arm around me, but he did stand so close to me that his arm touched my arm, which was enough for my arm to feel like it was golden and shiny and special, the whole I'll-never-wash-my-arm-again thing. And then his finger touched my finger and then his finger wrapped around my finger, two index fingers interlocking and then it was our whole hands entwined. And I stood there and smiled-ish as he talked to Tommy and Justin about his Flying V, and it was very hard to stay planted next to Dean, but I did. Because he was mine. Or something like that. We were each other's. I was with Dean.

I tugged on his sleeve.

“What's up?” he asked, turning toward me and raising his eyebrows. “Is tonight the night?”

I was totally unprepared for the question. “Oh. I don't know. Is it?” But then I thought about it for a minute, and I raised my eyebrows and tucked my chin into my chest, taking a deep breath. “Um. I hope so? Okay, yes. Yes.”

“Okay,” he said. “You want to go now?”

“Now? Okay.” Oh. Okay. It was going a little fast, but on the other hand, I'd been waiting my whole life for him. And for it. “Well . . . where are we doing it? I think my dad's home.”

“The observatory, right? Isn't that where you're supposed to see it? It's the last night, isn't it?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course,” I said. “The comet.”

“What did you think I meant?” He narrowed his eyes and smiled. Then he seemed to get it, and he cleared his throat and sort of pretended that he didn't get it, and then he grabbed my hand again for real, for everyone to see. “Well, let's go. You've got me all bent out of shape about astrophysics, which I can honestly report is something I've never said before.”

“You've never been excited about astrophysics before?”

“Well, now I'm finally cool. Thank god for astrophysics.”

I smiled. “I always do.”

I led him again up the footbridge to the stone steps of the observatory. The pine planks were a little wobbly, making rickety sounds, and at one point, I almost slipped and Dean caught me by the elbow. I was just happy to be walking, to not have to look into his eyes.

I pushed the window open and started to hop up to get inside.

“Can I help you up?”

“I can do it,” I said.

“No, let me help,” he said, and he picked me up with those perfectly sized muscles beneath his soft T-shirt and set me down on the windowsill. Then I dropped into the building and unlocked the door, but he wasn't standing by it.

“Dean?” I called. “Dean?”

He was standing in the clearing, staring up at the blaze in the sky. “It's really amazing from up here,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. Once-in-a-lifetime event. Probably.”

“Yeah.” I didn't think I could take one more minute of staring up at the sky, even if it was, until this moment, my favorite activity in the entire world.

“Let's go inside.”

I led him into the room and turned on the one faint light that still worked, and he took it in exactly as I would have wanted him to: all the decaying beauty and the potential and the muss and the mist and the mess. We sat down on the floor, facing each other, and I forced myself to look up at him.

“Do you want to do this?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

I nodded, a lot harder and faster than I'd meant to. “I am so incredibly sure.”

“Here?”

“Yep. Oh, wait. Why? You don't want to?”

“Oh my god, yes, I want to.” He leaned over and kissed me hard, and I felt the fire all the way to my toes. I kissed him back, and I could have stayed like that for somewhere between seventeen and six thousand days, but also the rest of me wanted to be touching the rest of him, just all of my skin and all of his skin. I pulled my mouth away.