The Sunspacers Trilogy (13 page)

“Oh.” I was surprised at how sure he was about me.

“You know where to find me,” he said as the car slowed to a stop near a dark exit. “Give me a minute here. All I have to do is plug in an automatic switching unit. There are spares right here on the shelf. Then I’ll shoot back with you to the student center.”

I wanted to see more. “Next time,” Bernie said, sensing my disappointment. It bothered me a little to think that anyone could figure me out, especially since I was having trouble doing it myself. Were people pretty simple when they were young, growing more complicated as they grew older?

Morey came back on the twenty-third. “You’re a day early,” I said almost accusingly.

“Got to get a good start. What did you do?”

“Walked around a lot. Kept to myself.”

“See Rosalie Allport?”

“Once or twice,” I said reluctantly.

“I’m glad to be back,” he said, sounding like his old self. “Mom kept asking if I still got the whoopsies in space. She kept saying the word. They dragged me around to their friends. At home I was the kid with the whoopsies, but in front of their pals I was the wonder brain from space. A few of their pals dislike Sunspacers. Never noticed it before. They see them as misfits who can’t hack it on Earth. There’s a lot of hate about the Sunspacers siding with the miners. You wouldn’t have liked it. I had to come back early.”

He was glad to see me. And I was happy to see him, I realized. Maybe we could get along after all.

“Did you get sick this time?” I asked, needling him.

“Funny about that, I didn’t.”

The second term began. We had the same teachers for the second halves of the first term’s courses. I worked very hard, trying to keep to my resolve.

There was a knock on my door one afternoon in the first week.

“Come in!” I shouted.

The door slid open as I turned around, and I saw Linda. “Will your roommate be back soon?” she asked, stepping inside. The door slid shut behind her.

“I don’t know.”

“What are you reading?” she asked, smiling nervously.

“
War and Peace
,” I said, puzzled. “Leo Tolstoy.”

“I’ve read it. It’s long.”

“I know.”

She looked at me uncertainly. “Joe, I want to explain why I disappeared that evening.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she insisted.

“I understand about you and Jake.”

“It’s not just that. When news came that my parents had been killed in the shuttle accident, it was a call from someone who sounded like your father. I thought you were going to hear something bad. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t listen when I know kids and parents are going to argue. It all got mixed together that night. I’m sorry. It’s been four years,” she continued, “but it seems like yesterday. Kik and I have only each other.”

“You must have loved them a lot,” I said, standing up.

She came up to me and kissed me. “Joe,” she whispered. “I wanted you that night. But that’s all it was.”

I stared at her. She smiled and put her arms around me, and we kissed again. Her lips softened, and a flush came into her cheeks. “It’s unfair,” she whispered, pressing against me.

“What is?” I managed to ask.

“You’re too yummy,” she mumbled. We stumbled and fell on the bed. I tried to keep from laughing, not wanting to spoil her mood. No one had ever called me yummy. I felt like a dessert.

The door buzzed, but we ignored it. Then it slid open and I heard Rosalie say, “I thought I’d surprise—”

She stopped short and moved backward, triggering the door before it could close. I tried to say something, but she turned and walked out. The door took forever to close.

“I’m sorry,” Linda said after a moment. I moved away from her and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, moving to sit next to me.

I took a deep breath. “It’s okay.”

She touched my arm.

“Go make up with Jake,” I said resentfully.

“Don’t be angry. It just happened, not because of Jake. I kept thinking about you …”

“Please go.”

She kissed my cheek and stood up. All I wanted to do was find Ro and change the hurt look on her face.

The phone rang. I waited for the door to close after Linda, then I rushed to the desk, hoping that it was Rosalie calling from the lounge.

I opened the line. Dad’s face stared at me.

“Hello, Joe,” he said after a moment.

“Oh, hi.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked after the delay.

I shook my head. “Just expecting another call.” One, two, three.

“I won’t keep you. Just wanted to tell you that I’ve got a new place here in New York and I’m back at work, so your coming home for Christmas won’t be any problem.”

“What about Mom?” One, two, three.

“It’s over, I’m afraid,” he said heavily, “but she’ll be here to clear up some business, so the three of us will be together.”

“I don’t know. Let me call in a day or two.”

“What’s to decide?”

“I’ts just that I have to see about a few things.” I waited.

“Sounds like you don’t want to come.”

“Well, I didn’t expect to!”

His expression caught up with my words. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly, looking hurt.

“Nothing. Look, I’ll call. There’s plenty of time.” One, two, three.

“I’ll have to know, son.”

“Yeah, I’ll call.”

He faded.

I called Rosalie. Her face appeared and disappeared. I touched in her number again.

“Ro, please!”

She stared. I had only a moment to get through to her.

“What is it?” she asked coldly.

“It’s all a mistake!”

I explained nervously; it all sounded like a lie.

“I just don’t know,” she said finally.

“It was just a stupid accident, Ro!” I should have told her that I loved her, but suddenly I was uncertain. Here was my chance to be alone again, to think only of myself and what I would do with my life. Besides, what kind of person was she to doubt me so easily? Maybe I didn’t know her at all.

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said, as if picking up my uncertainty. Maybe she was thinking the same thing—here was her chance to be rid of me. We hadn’t had all that much time together. Did you ever try thinking in two opposite directions at once, and believing that you could do it? I was trying to live in two directions at once, studying physics but wanting something else; the thing with Linda probably looked like more of the same to Rosalie.

“I’ll talk to you another time, Joe.” The skeptical tone of her voice dismayed me. Maybe she was right to doubt me. She’d found me out, even though the scene with Linda meant nothing by itself.

I felt naked and alone.

I tried to catch her in Astronomies, but she always managed to leave by another exit. I tapped notes into her terminal, with no reply. It made me sick to think that I would never be able to set things right. How could this be happening?

I couldn’t sleep, and began to miss more classes. It seemed that a stranger was doing the work when I studied. When I could sleep, it was an escape. Rosalie’s sudden rejection of me had struck deeply. I had balanced my doubts against each other and avoided taking a good look at myself, at what I was or could be. Rosalie, I felt, was punishing me for being dishonest with myself.

“You’ve got to snap out of it,” Morey said one Monday afternoon. He had come back from classes and found me sleeping. “You’ll fail some finals and they’ll kick your ass out.”

“I can make up a few weeks easily.”

“What’s happening to you?”

I sat up on the edge of the bed. “I need time to think. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here.”

He tried to be encouraging. “But you can do the work. They wouldn’t have let you in.”

“Mistakes happen. You were right, I just don’t care. It’s not just Rosalie. She was right too, I’m not going anywhere. The diploma won’t mean a thing, even if I get honors.”

“Come on! You’re not just any dodo.” But he couldn’t hide the contempt in his voice.

“Go away, Morey,” I said, standing up and adjusting my underwear. “I don’t have to listen to this crap.”

He laughed at me. “You should see yourself. So tough.”

I pushed him away. He staggered back.

“You think there are no other kinds of people in the world besides you,” I said.

“Of course there are. Muscleheads like you.”

“You—” I started to say, trying to keep up my steam against the sense of shame flooding into me. “You think there are heads and hands, and you’re a head. The rest of us are just unfortunates.”

He looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, you could be a head, but you won’t be.”

“Other things take heads too.”

He grimaced and left the room. I felt that he had given up on me completely, and that woke me up more than anything. I didn’t have to be like him; I could try to be myself.

I went over to Goddard Hall after dinner and threw a pebble at Ro’s third-floor window. She turned away when she saw me, making me feel abandoned and useless.

I tossed another pebble. Kea Tanaka opened the window. Her long black hair swung forward as she leaned out. “Go away, Joe, she won’t talk to you.”

“I’ve got to,” I shouted, hoping Ro would hear me. “Help me,” I half whispered.

She shook her head, and I hated her unreasonably.

“Try!” I urged.

“She doesn’t want to see you.” She waved a plump arm at me. “Go away.”

Rosalie appeared next to her and closed the window without looking at me. I turned and walked away. What had it been like for Mom and Dad, who had spent so many years together?

“Joe!”

I turned around. She was standing in front of the main entrance. I hurried over. She took my arm and led me to a nearby bench.

She looked at me carefully as we sat down.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?” I asked.

“I do, now, but you gave me a scare. I know Linda, even if we’re not close friends. I think she doesn’t break off with Jake because losing him scares her more than loving him. Don’t forget, she lost her parents. She’s the same way with Kik sometimes. They’d do anything for each other, but you’d never guess it from the way they act in public—very quiet or taking jabs at each other. Jake’s older, so he wants Linda to make her own decisions, to stay with him because she wants to. Unfortunately, this lack of pressure on his part sometimes gives her too much space to flap around in, and she thinks he doesn’t want her. Jake’s been Kik’s friend for a while, so he understands her and can see things coming. Linda’s afraid of losing anybody she loves too much. She goes out with others to test Jake, and to see if she loves him.”

“Well, I think she liked me a little.…”

She smiled. “But not enough.”

“I guess. Who knows? …”

“Look, Joe, there are more important things. What’s bothering you? Don’t you like school?”

“It’s hard when you have the feeling that it’s all not for you.”

“Are you homesick?”

“Not really. I do feel out of place sometimes. The reasons I’m here don’t seem to go through me—they don’t reach down deep, as they do with Morey. He’s having fun, even when the work is hard. I feel jealous. The work is interesting, but I take no pleasure in it.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Why don’t you do what I do, Joe? Get the grades and don’t worry so much what you’ll amount to. Don’t freeze it all up in advance. Give yourself a chance to grow.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” I insisted. “But Morey says that won’t make me a star physicist. He makes me feel like a phony.”

“You don’t have to be Morey, Joe.”

Marisa had told me the same thing once. “You’re right, but what am I going to be? Is this all there is?”

“Stop being anxious about it first.”

Rosalie still seemed to think that I wasn’t a complete waste of time, but I had shaken her confidence in me for a while. I had been too wrapped up in my own fears to notice that she had made no sweeping judgments about me.

“Was there a girl back home?” Rosalie asked.

I nodded. “She broke it off.”

“Why?”

I hesitated. “Said I was too wrapped up in myself, as if I were something special. I guess my going away to Bernal only convinced her more.”

She was smiling faintly. “What do you think about yourself now?”

“Same thing I did then,” I mumbled. “That I could do something special. I know it sounds stupid.”

She kissed me. “You’re special to me. The rest you’ll have to see about.”

We kissed again. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” I whispered, holding her close. “I love you very much.”

“Same here,” she whispered back.

We sat in silence for a while, and I decided to tell her. “I almost punched Morey today—I never hit anyone even in fun before, at least not since I was a little kid. Can’t believe I shoved him like that.” I looked at my hands as if they had betrayed me.

“But why?” she asked, not sounding too surprised.

“He was talking to me like a parent. I don’t know—maybe he’s right about everything, but I’m afraid to admit it. Guess I’m pretty screwed up.…”

White clouds drifted in the bright, starless evening of the hollow. I wasn’t going to solve anything right away, but with Ro next to me my fears didn’t seem quite so important.

“Come spend Christmas with me,” Ro said. “You won’t have to go home or stay at the dorm. We’ll put you up at the house.”

“Okay.”

“Dad’s a great cook,” she said.

I felt bad about Morey. We’d never even wrestled in fun. He’d probably never talk to me again, I realized. But I also felt a bit relieved; it was all out in the open now—I didn’t have to follow in his footsteps. I could try to make my own, even if I didn’t know where they would lead.

Morey was packing his stuff when I got back to our room the next morning.

“There’s a place for me on another floor,” he said. “Kid’s roommate dropped out.” He looked at me for a moment, clearly suggesting that I would flunk out also, then went on with his packing.

I felt anger and hurt at the same time. I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t, and it was too late to do any good.

“It’s just as well,” I said, trying to sound unconcerned, “I was planning to move out next term anyway.”