We All Looked Up (6 page)

“And I don't forgive her.”

“Well, that's another thing. I'm just asking you to talk to her.”

Eliza rolled her eyes. “Jesus. Fine. I'll think about it.”

“Good.” He patted her hand. “So what's for dinner?”

“I was thinking I'd make something.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Like, make a call to Pagliacci's for delivery.”

Her dad smiled, one of those wistful smiles, like he was already missing something that wasn't gone yet. The kind that made her want to cry.

“Works for me,” he said.

A
nita

ANITA HAD PREPARED HERSELF FOR
the interrogation. She had prepared herself for the lecture. She had prepared herself for the threats, the grounding, the silent treatment, the wagging finger, the shaking head, and all the general parental bullshit that was bound to result from her unprecedented escape from Casa Graves the previous week. What she had not prepared herself for, however, was the loss of her car key. With it went the very soul of adulthood—the freedom to be alone. She was under constant surveillance now. Every morning her father drove her to Hamilton on his way to work, and every afternoon her mother would arrive promptly at three forty-five to take her home. Even inside the house, Anita wasn't left to herself. Every twenty minutes or so, someone would knock on her bedroom door to ensure she hadn't pulled some kind of Rapunzel or Juliet and shimmied out the window.

An only slightly lesser evil was the talk radio her father listened to in the car.

“A trickle of news about our friend Ardor from the eggheads over at NASA today,” said some loudmouth host that you could practically hear getting fatter and dumber as he spoke. “You'd think they'd have something better than this, given that all they do these days is spend our tax dollars and complain about how they don't get enough of our tax dollars, but hey, what do I know? Anyhoo, initial estimates placed the asteroid about two million miles away from Earth as it passed through our solar system. But now they're saying it'll be more like half a million miles, which in terms of deep space is a pretty close shave. And it's funny, you know, those NASA guys have been drowning us,
literally
drowning us in all this talk about man-made climate change and holes in the ozone layer and all these problems that we know aren't really an issue, and now we've got this asteroid that we're gonna be dodging like one of those bullets in
The Matrix
, and the eggheads just say, ‘Oh well, we didn't quite see it, sorry about that.' So maybe these guys need to adjust their priorities a little bit, is what I'm saying. Back in five after this.”

“Are your science teachers talking to you about global warming?” Anita's father asked, turning the radio down.

“A little.”

He shook his head. “Of course they are. I'll give you some books to read when you get home. And you'll read them.”

“Okay.”

The only good news was that today was a Wednesday, which meant there was a student council meeting after school. These meetings could last anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours, and Anita's mother could hardly be expected to just sit around the parking lot waiting. That meant Luisa would be coming, and Luisa could always be counted on to help Anita out. The goal was to get the meeting over with as quickly as possible. If Anita were lucky, she might end up with enough time to get a burger at Dick's on Capitol Hill. Though it had only been a week, she yearned for a taste of the outside world like a prisoner ten years into a life sentence.

Hamilton bylaws required that student council be made up of one boy and one girl from each class. Anita represented the seniors along with Peter Roeslin, the basketball player. The juniors were Damien Durkee and Krista Asahara. Krista was one of those hyper-earnest overachievers who couldn't understand why anyone would ever disagree with her about anything ever. Also, she was pretty obviously in love with Peter. The sophomore class was represented by Charlie Howard and Julia Whyel, and the freshmen by Ajay Vasher and Nickie Hill. All the underclassmen pretty much deferred to Krista on everything.

Anita called the meeting to order, ran over the minutes from the previous session (on the plausibility of once-a-month vegan lunches and fielding a Hamilton foosball team), and laid out the agenda. The only pressing issue was Olot, the schoolwide formal dance where the girls invited the boys, which was in need of a theme. As usual, Krista was the first one with a Statue-of-Liberty raised hand and the idea to go with it.

“So the newspapers are saying that Ardor—you know, the asteroid?—is going to pass by us around the same week as the dance. So what if we went with some kind of space thing? Not science fiction-y, but more, like, astronomy, all planets and stars and stuff.”

“Sounds great to me,” Anita said, already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

“We can cover all the pillars and the walls in black felt,” Nickie said, picking up on Krista's theme. “And we can use Christmas lights to make stars. It'll be super pretty but also cheap.”

Ajay always chimed in when budgeting was at issue. “We could ask people to bring lights in from home. Everyone has a box in their basement, and usually even if they're dead, it's just a bad bulb.”

Krista was bright as a new bulb herself at these promising signs that her concept was a hit.

“Shall we vote on it?” Anita asked, glancing around the room. “All in favor of the theme of Olot being something space-related, say aye.” There was a chorus of ayes. “Perfect. Let's brainstorm ideas on our own, and then we can decide on the best ones at our next meeting.”

Krista gave a couple of weak, thudding high fives to Nickie and Ajay.

“Well, that's everything on the agenda. Is there anything else anyone wants to discuss?”

Anita was afraid Charlie would bring up his favorite subject: the impossible, irreverent, and yet strangely divisive issue of allowing marijuana use on school grounds, now that it was legal in the state at large. But he seemed just as eager to get out of there as she was.

“Then it looks like we're done,” Anita said. “Thanks, everyone, for coming—”

“What we're doing here is a joke.”

Heads turned. Peter sat slouched in his chair, looking uncharacteristically morose. He didn't tend to say much in student council meetings, unless the conversation turned to something involving athletics or nutrition.

“What are you talking about, Peter?”

“I mean, aren't we supposed to care about stuff other than just dances and foosball? Could we maybe try to do one thing that actually matters in the real world?”

“Like what?” Anita said, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. The truth was, she actually agreed with him. Sometimes it seemed like all they did in here was pad out their résumés while enjoying some pizza on Hamilton's dime. But did he have to choose today of all days to develop a conscience about it?

“I don't know,” Peter said. “It's just that the world's so messed up. Even here at school, we've got all these kids who are probably gonna drop out at some point, or at least not go to college. Can't we do something about that?”

A long silence. Then, from the deep well of her crush, Krista hoisted up a fresh bucket of enthusiasm: “Totally, Peter.”

Anita took a deep breath. The meeting wasn't over anymore. Not by a long shot.

“Ideas?” she asked.

Peter was exactly the kind of guy that Anita's parents wished she would date. Or maybe “wished” was a little strong—her parents probably would have been pleased as punch if their daughter never even spoke to a boy until after she'd graduated from college. But if she
were
to get involved in the dating scene, Peter would have been their first-draft pick. He was an athlete, which wasn't great, but an athlete who was going to Stanford, which meant he'd have a career no matter what. He looked the part too—tall, attractive, and as white as the day was long (not that her parents were self-hating or anything, just that they associated white values with material success, while they seemed to suspect most black kids of being, at worst, drug dealers and, at best, freeloading bohemians). Anita could almost see herself with a guy like that. She would have bet good money that Peter was stellar at the whole “impressing the folks” thing, and probably looked damn good with his shirt off. The only problem, and it wasn't a small one, was that he was just a little bit stupid. Not direly stupid. Not pushing-on-the-pull-door or 2 + 2 = 5 stupid. Just not quick to get the joke. Not sharp. And without that spark, for all his Abercrombie & Fitch looks, he did less than nothing for her.

The student council meeting lasted for two hours and fifteen minutes, in which time they discussed everything from a soup kitchen in the refectory, to weekly after-school lectures on subjects like world hunger and climate change, to an old-fashioned bake sale. Peter was uniformly psyched about each new idea, along with Krista and the underclassmen, which left Anita to be the voice of reason.

“We won't get an okay from the administration on bringing homeless people on campus.”

“You can schedule all the lectures you want, but you can't make people go.”

“Bake sales don't make money.”

By the end of the session, the only thing they'd managed to agree on was drafting a group of volunteer tutors to help struggling kids with their homework. It wasn't exactly saving the planet or inspiring world peace, but it was something. Krista was so excited by their collective progress that she hugged everyone good-bye after the meeting.

Anita practically sprinted out of the building. There wasn't time for burgers anymore, but she could at least get a snack and a few minutes to herself.

Luisa, waiting patiently in the roundabout, rolled down the window of the Audi.

“Hey, Luisa, you mind if I run to Jamba Juice?”

“You don't want me to drive?”

“I'd rather get the excercise, if that's okay.”

“Of course. And your friend will go too?”

Anita turned around to find Peter standing right behind her.

“That's a great idea,” he said. “I could totally go for a Berry Razz­matazz.”

“Oh. Uh, sure. See you in a bit.”

Luisa smiled so broadly at Peter that Anita was actually embarrassed.

They began to walk. It was raining, but the kind of rain where the droplets are so light that they float around like snowflakes in a blizzard, without any discernible slant. Anita knew there couldn't be anything romantic behind Peter's desire to hang out with her. He had a girlfriend, a paragon of the kind of bland and curveless beauty advertised on the cover of just about every magazine in the country. And though there'd been a rumor going around that he'd cheated on her somewhere along the line, Anita didn't put much stock in gossip. People were always trying to bring down the folks on top. Still, it was weird to be alone with him, given that they'd hardly ever spoken outside of student council.

“That was so energizing, wasn't it?” he said.

“What was?”

“You know, trying to make a difference.”

Anita couldn't help but laugh. “Peter, what is going on with you today? You've basically slept through student council all year, and now you're giving speeches about social responsibility? What's your deal?”

Peter smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess I must seem sorta nuts, huh? I'm just . . . working out some stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“It's hard to explain.” He paused, then: “Anita, do you ever worry that you're wasting your life?”

Out of the mouth of babes, it was said, though that was probably meant to refer to babies, rather than attractive teenage boys. But of course Anita worried about whether she was wasting her life. She worried about it all the time. Maybe it was blasphemy, but she felt like God had intended for her to be a singer. Otherwise, why had she been born with both the talent and the passion for music? And if she allowed her dream to die on the vine, wouldn't it be the same as disobeying a direct order from God? Was that really so much better than disobeying her father?

“I think everybody does,” Anita said. “But we're only eighteen. You can't have wasted your life at eighteen. We haven't even
lived
our lives yet.”

“But you have to decide, you know? It's like that poem with the road in the woods. You don't want to end up running down the wrong road, because you'll probably never get back to that place again. The place where the road splits, I mean.”

“Actually, the point of that poem is that it doesn't really matter which road you pick.”

Peter looked confused. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. But hey, poets don't know everything. If they did, they wouldn't always be dying of syphilis in garrets in Paris.”

“Right.”

Jamba Juice was mostly empty, but Anita's attention was immediately drawn to the girl making drinks behind the bar. She moved smoothly between the tubs of frozen fruit and the industrial-strength blenders, all the while bouncing along to a different beat than the Top 40 crap blaring from the overhead speakers. She was black, slightly overweight, but with an easy arrogance that Anita felt pretty sure slightly overweight white girls weren't capable of. A pair of in-ear headphones snaked up from her jeans pocket and disappeared into her dreads.

“What are you listening to?” Anita asked.