It’s been forever since I’ve set this thing up, since my dad and I were side by side, each of us capturing a quadrant of the sky in our sights. Even so, my fingers know exactly where to go. Without a glance down, I unscrew the tripod legs and level it in a heartbeat, no second-guessing.
My Celestron has an equatorial mount, which means it’s easy to track objects across the sky but more complex to use because there are two gears to unlock and adjust, the right ascension and the declination. You unlock the gears, swivel it close to your target, then use the fine-tuning knobs to center it in your finderscope.
“Libra?” I ask Priya. “Is that what we’re looking for?”
“Yes,” she says with a tilt of her head. I can feel her impatience. Ever since we came back from Brian’s, she’s been bugging me to set up the telescope. Finally it’s dark enough.
“You’re sure it’s Libra, huh? It’s not Cassiopeia or something else?” I tease her, although maybe, just maybe, it’s a test. How committed to this is she, really?
“Matthew, my planet is not in another constellation. It is in what you call Libra.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m just joking.”
I glance up at the sky to orient myself and find the Big and Little Dippers with my naked eye. Then I look through the scope, sighting the same thing. Libra is a summer constellation for stargazers in the northern hemisphere; a triangle of stars forms the scales. To find it, first you face south and locate the bright red star Antares in Scorpius. If you follow the line of stars that forms the scorpion’s body to the right, the next-brightest stars are Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgenubi in Libra.
Stardust swirls in front of my eye and I feel my breath inhale sharply. It’s as if I’ve been instantly transported back in time, back to the very first time my dad showed me how to find things in our vast Universe.
“Check it out, Junior. Those dots of light are all stars, billions and billions of stars,” he said, his voice hushed as if anything louder than a whisper would blow them all away.
“But where’s the moon?” I remember asking. “Is it gone?”
He laughed. “It’s there but we can’t see it now.” He added, “And if it were there, we wouldn’t be able to see much at all. The light would block out everything else.” He was so happy to teach me what he knew. And when I was five, he knew everything.
I find Antares but it’s too far away, so I swap out the eyepiece and refocus, and the sky explodes with stars. My breath catches in my throat; it feels like I’ve just dived into a pool of starlight.
I feel Priya and Ginger behind me, both within arm’s reach.
“Libra is an okay constellation but kind of boring.”
“Boring?” Priya asks. “Stars do not have a personality.”
“Sure they do. I think there are lots more interesting constellations,” I say. “Like Cassiopeia.”
I feel Priya’s hands wave the air impatiently. “Your preference for constellations is unimportant.”
“You know the story of Cassiopeia, don’t you . . . Ginger?” I say, turning to my dog. “Cassiopeia was an Ethiopian queen who thought she was more beautiful than any of the Nereids, the sea nymphs. The god of the sea, Poseidon, got angry at her arrogance and demanded she sacrifice her daughter, Andromeda. Cassiopeia’s husband, the king, chained Andromeda to a rock and then Poseidon sent a sea monster to eat her.”
Priya gasps, which makes me smile. I do some further fine-tuning and fill the scope with more and more of the star field.
“Andromeda was very beautiful. Perseus offered to rescue her if he could marry her. Her parents agreed and she was saved.” I look at the dog again. “That’s a good ending, don’t you think, Ginger?”
I hear Priya mumble something behind me.
“Excuse me?”
“That is not the ending of the story,” Priya says, coming closer to the telescope. “Poseidon wanted to humiliate Cassiopeia one final time for her hubris, so he placed her among the stars with her throne upside down. Half of every night, she hangs her head in shame.”
I glance over my shoulder to Priya, who is now within a foot of me. I step back and allow her to look through the eyepiece, to find the planet she has been so eager and so desperate to see. “You know the story?”
“I gathered that data earlier in my visit,” she tells me while she is bent down, both hands behind her back. Her stance tells me she’s done this before. The true amateur astronomer knows to avoid touching the scope once it’s in place; you don’t want to bump it and have to reset. “But of course we have no such myth ourselves. We don’t anthropomorphize the Universe.”
She steps back from the telescope. “Will you increase the magnification for me, please?”
She also knows you never change the settings on a scope that isn’t yours. Someone, somewhere, taught her manners about stargazing.
I make the adjustment and let her return to the scope. But I don’t give her much room, so she has to squeeze her tiny frame between me and the telescope. Her body fits so perfectly. . . .
“May I adjust this?”
At first I think she’s talking about something else but then I realize she means the telescope. “Yeah sure.”
“Thank you.” She makes the adjustments with one hand, like a pro. A moment later, I see her smile.
“There it is,” she says breathlessly. “My planet.”
I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but finding “her” planet was not one of them. I guess I was anticipating a frowny face and Priya’s defensive insistence that my telescope was not powerful enough or that it was too far to see from here or some other bullshit, but actually finding something? “No . . . really?”
“Yes, really. I don’t understand your incredulity.”
“I believe you.”
“No, you don’t. You remain skeptical. Look.”
I lean over her—she doesn’t give me much room either, I notice—and peer through the eyepiece. She has focused the crosshairs on a speck that looks a shade brighter perhaps than the other stars in the sky. It’s got a slight reddish-orange tint to it, which could be the star’s distance from Earth or its temperature or even how our eyes see things at night. It’s impossible to know if that is a star or a dot of stardust, a planet with life or a dead rock hurtling through space.
“I live there,” she says in my ear. Her voice trembles with excitement.
“Priya—”
“You don’t know if that’s really a planet, right? Is that what you’re thinking?”
Sigh. “Yes.”
“You want to tell me that it’s impossible to get from there to here.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m telling you it isn’t.”
“But—”
“Why is your truth more accurate than mine? Why are you quick to dismiss my words as false?” Her tone is subtle, not accusatory, but I can tell she feels more confident than before. Finding the telescope, the constellation, the planet—have boosted her spirits.
“Your father would believe me.”
I keep my eye on the orange spot, as if squinting hard enough might make me see a thousand tiny hands waving at me across the galaxy. “And how would you know that?”
“The star charts are your father’s,” she says quietly. “In the workshop. He believes there is more to the Universe than this planet. He believes this field is special.”
Special. Startled, I back away from the telescope and bump into Priya. Turning, I find her face gazing up at me. The blanket of stars lights up her eyes and her lips and the ends of her hair. “He believes, yeah. But he changed. He . . .” I scowl and look away. “He’s an idiot.”
“Why? Because he believes something you don’t?”
I start to move away from Priya, but her long fingers grip my forearm and hold me fast. “Believes what? That a spaceship landed in this field? That he knows more than other people because something might have crashed at the moment he was born?” I lean into her. “Does that even make sense to you?”
Instead of answering me, she asks, “Are you sure you didn’t believe it once too?”
“I . . . no. I . . . no, I never did.” I shake my head from side to side. How could I have believed that crap? Galaxies and meteors and comets—I could see those. I knew they were real. But the other stuff? The alien autopsy shit and the crazy conspiracies? No, I never believed those. And I don’t think he ever did either. They just suited his needs.
“You will never have proof. You have to have faith,” says Priya.
Words my dad spoke years ago pop into my head: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” When I was seven, nine, twelve, I trusted in those words. I didn’t truly know what they meant, but if my dad said them, well, that was enough.
But words are not enough. Not anymore.
He lied to me, lied to my mom. He betrayed us both in big ways and small. He was selfish and wanted to be special, but he was just an ordinary man who had ordinary desires. After I discovered my dad’s blog had become a forum for the conspiracy nuts, I asked him about it. I wanted to know why he hadn’t told me or Mom.
We were in his workshop at the time, snow softly piling up outside, the wood-burning stove keeping us toasty. He stopped typing on his computer and his face reddened. “Oh well, your mom doesn’t like it much. She thinks it’s kind of out there,” he said. “But you know what? A lot of people love it. Like, a ton.” He shook his head with a look of wonder on his face. “They’re, like, my followers.”
“You mean they follow your blog?” When he nodded, I asked, “Does Mom know?”
He shrugged and went back to his computer. “She doesn’t have time for that. Work and farm, remember? That’s all she has time for these days. Work and farm.”
“But what about me?” I asked him. “You could have told me.”
I saw his back heave with a sigh. “You don’t have time for me either.” He turned his head toward me. “It’s okay, Junior. You’ve got other things to do now.”
I left feeling bad, feeling like I’d lost something, and I thought maybe I could get back to the astronomy with Dad. Maybe it would help him be a normal guy again.
But then this thing happened six months later. This thing where I walked into my parents’ bathroom looking for Q-tips I could use to clean the lens of my telescope and the water was running in the shower.
I knew Dad was home because I’d seen his truck.
I opened the door, calling to my dad, “Just me, looking for—”
And the woman in the shower who was not my mom poked her head around the curtain at that moment and said, “DJ, would you hand me—”
Her eyes were hazel and she was a blonde, her curly hair slick against her neck and shoulders. Her pink lips formed a little O when she saw me and she quickly ducked back into the shower without another word.
I grabbed the box of Q-tips and left, closing the door behind me, trying to get my pounding heart under control. What the fuck? I met my dad in the hallway. I took one look at him and all that confusion was replaced with disappointment.
How could he?
I pivoted and aimed myself down the hall. I needed to be anywhere but outside that bathroom at that moment.
“Junior, now wait,” he said, grabbing me and holding me in place. “It’s not what you think.”
I stared at him. We were eye to eye for the first time ever. I guess I’d finished that last bit of growth spurt right about then.
“She’s a follower,” he said. “One of my followers.” He was proud of this. He sounded like he was the leader of a cult or something.
“Your blog followers?”
“Yes.”
“What about Mom?”
“This has nothing to do with your mother.”
“I think it kind of does.”
He held me firmly. “It doesn’t. And it won’t be any good for her to know.”
My mind reeled when I thought of my mom.
“You have to keep this to yourself,” he said to me. “It’s better that way.”
“You can’t do this again,” I told him. “You can’t have this woman over again.”
He looked like he was considering it. Then he shook his head. “No, not again.”
“Dad, I mean ever. Any of your damn followers. You can’t . . . have sex with them.”
My dad’s gaze narrowed at me, as if I were being so naive. “Junior, you can’t—”
“No! You can’t do this to Mom.” My voice rose higher and higher, nearly to a squeak. “If you do, I swear I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her everything!”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes! I will tell her. And I don’t care if it hurts her. I want her to know the truth.”
Mention of the truth always struck a chord with my father. He was a truth seeker himself. After what seemed like an eternity, he nodded calmly, as if to himself, and said, “All right.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” No hesitation, no furtive glance. He promised and I left him, relieved.
I never told my mother about it. Until three days ago when he left with Carol, I thought that was the end of his cheating.
I wanted to believe.
Priya squeezes my hand, calling me back to the present. Her gaze holds mine. “I’m real.”
“True.”
“You believe in me.”
“I believe you are . . .” Intelligent and charming. “A nice human girl who might be . . .” Nutty. “A little misguided.”
“Is that what you believe?” Her lips twitch provocatively, and suddenly I believe she really can read my mind. I know she can. The truth isn’t out there; it’s in here. It’s in my face and in my voice and in the skin that she’s touching.
I bend my face to hers, curve my shoulders around her, enveloping her, consuming her. I feel a wave of heat roll toward me from her very core, from her heart and her lungs. One hand slides along my arm and up to my shoulder, the other wraps around my waist. Her fingers twist my shirt into knots at my back.
We melt into each other, magnetized from waist to hips to thighs.
My eyes squeeze shut as our lips meet, and it would be crazy to say I see stars, wouldn’t it?
So I won’t say it.
But I feel it.
This is real. Her tongue against mine is real. Her back beneath my hands is real. Her legs entwined with mine . . .
Breathless, she pulls back and a breeze cools us down as we separate. But she doesn’t let go. Her fingers cling to my shirt, damp from the humid air, from us. She looks up at me in surprise, bewildered. But how can that be? This can’t be her first rodeo. She obviously knows what she’s doing. That kiss, that passion? Oh-so-human.
“Priya?”
She blinks a few times and she looks around her, at the field, at me, as if she were finding something in her scope. When she gets me between her crosshairs, she grins. “Yes. That was . . .”
Awesome. “Nice.”
“Yes. You call it . . . ?” Her head tilts and her white-black hair hangs to one side.
“Um . . . kissing?” All those times I wanted to touch her hair but stopped myself. I don’t stop this time. My fingers caress the ends of her wig; the impossibly silky hairs don’t clump together like normal hair. I feel like I’m touching a ghost’s hair, smoothly ethereal.
“Kissing,” she murmurs. “Kiss. Again.”
I crush her to me. She responds with equal pressure, hugging me to her chest, squeezing her arms around my neck. I let my lips wander to her ear and trail down to her shoulder.
A shiver runs up my spine when she does the same. It’s as if she’s echoing me. I kiss; she kisses. I touch; she touches. I taste; she tastes. . . .
Is this real? Like, really real? We’re standing in a field, clutching each other as if there is no tomorrow, and maybe there won’t be, not if she leaves—not by spaceship, not through a wormhole, but in a car or a bus or on foot.
No. I won’t let her go. I’m not ready.
I pull her with me to the ground and lower her head gently against her bag. I line my body up with hers and let our legs tangle. Her tutu tickles my arm when I run my hand up the back of her leg and along the curve of her hips.
She’s not like Emily. She doesn’t have the muscular back and thighs that Em has. I can feel each vertebra in her spine as if it were a bulb on a string of Christmas lights.
I touch here, squeeze there, lick this, nibble that.
And she does the exact same to me.
I think she’s going to stop me, that she’s going to do what other girls have done and whisper, “No, not that,” or “That’s far enough.”
She doesn’t.
But we have to stop. We can’t. Not here. Not in a field. Not with my dog watching. Well, maybe Ginger isn’t watching, but she’s here and that’s just weird.
I hold back and take a deep breath so Priya will too. Gradually the pulse of my heart slows to the speed of a freight train.
Priya grins and brushes her hair away from her temples. “Thank you.”
“Thank . . . me? Why?”
She taps the side of her head. “Data collection.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Right, yeah, okay. You’re welcome.”
“You taught me well.”
“And now you’ll teach others?”
She shakes her head. “I won’t have to. They will know it because I know it.”
“And what do you know?”
She answers me with the longest, deepest kiss I have ever experienced.
You have to stop. Now.
“Why do I have to stop?” she asks, in complete innocence. She has absolutely no idea what she’s doing to me.
But it’s my own fault. I started it.
Thank you, Matty.
You’re very welcome, Matty.
I roll onto my back and look up at the stars. Beside me I feel Priya do the same. She stretches her legs straight in front of her like she always does and rests her arms on top of her thighs.
“I’ll probably be leaving tonight,” she says.
My heart knocks against my ribs. “What?”
“It’s been three days since I anticipated my ship’s arrival. My calculations aren’t that wrong. They will be here very soon.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, as if she and I didn’t just make out like rabbits.
“Are you . . . are you sure?”
She reaches behind her and takes her notebook out of her bag. Holding it above her face, she tilts it so it catches the starlight. Flipping page after page, she makes little hmmm noises. Try as I might, I can’t see what’s on those pages. They could be grocery lists, for all I know. A celestial to-do that only she understands. Finally, she closes the book and places it back in her bag.
“I believe so,” she says.
“Can I . . . stay here with you? Until you leave, I mean?”
She nods. “You can’t come with me.”
“I know,” I say abruptly, and maybe a little too sharply. “I just want to see the ship and you know, wave good-bye.”
“Wave?”
I hold my hand up and wave it in the air. Priya holds hers up too, matching it; we wave together, fingers pressed like bodies.
I have to stop thinking about her, about this. She’s right. She’s leaving. I have to accept that.
I lower our hands to the ground, let her fingers rest in my palm.
Don’t go.