All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

She put her arms around my neck and I gave her my hands for stirrups. Like I was her horse, and she was a cowgirl trying to make a quick escape from some hostile Indians. Except that I was the Indian and we were both trying to escape from hostile saloon girls. It made better sense if I didn’t think about it too hard, but it made me giggle.

Out in the meadow, the hay was up past my waist, ready for cutting. Bugs chattered, went quiet as I walked by, and started up again once I was past. The air was less heavy out in the open, not hot and sticky the way it was around the trailers. It felt good to be out, getting further from the lights in the yard, so that I could see the stars overhead.

I kept walking until Wavy pulled up on the reins, tugging on my T-shirt and pushing the heels of her boots into my hands. I got down on one knee to let her hop off, and when I stood back up, she took my hand. She led me past a stand of cottonwoods that made a windbreak for an old five-hundred-gallon galvanized stock tank. There was just enough breeze to make the windmill blades creak, and make the pipe dribble water. The tank looked black and bottomless at night. I wouldn’t be brave enough to swim in it, but she was.

Up above the cottonwoods, there was a bluff cut into the hill. In between, there was an open patch of hay. The grass was tamped down in a circle just about her size.

It was what I wanted before: someone to lie out under the stars with me. I could see how it never woulda worked with Snake Girl. She was only interested in bikes, getting high, and Liam. Wavy, though, she smiled at me like she was inviting me into her house. I flattened a bigger section of the hay, enough room for both of us. When I spread my arms out, she laid down next to me and rested her head on my arm. I felt so weird inside my skin, like the stars were pressing me down into the earth, pressing Wavy’s head down on me. Part of that was the weed, I knew, but it was the stars, too. All that light traveling from so far away.

I held my breath, kind of waiting. Usually we looked at the stars after dinner, out in front of the farmhouse, playing with Donal. Wavy would start by pointing out a few constellations, and then I’d pick out some I knew. Or thought I knew.

“Ursa Major,” I said, trying to get her to start. I could always pick that one out. Big Dipper. Except I couldn’t find it.

She cleared her throat, like she was scolding me, but it was just to tease.

“Cassiopeia.” She lifted her hand up, drew it out for me. Five stars zigzagging.

“Cepheus.” Four stars that made a triangle, plus a fifth that dropped down like a kite tail.

I couldn’t keep track, but after she finished, I was pretty sure that wasn’t all them.

“What about Orion? Which one’s Orion?”

She turned on her side, laid her hand on my belly, and slid it down to my belt buckle. I had to grit my teeth not to squirm. She had a way of making me feel ticklish.

“Right. Orion’s the one with the belt, with the three stars, but I don’t see it.”

“October.”

“Really? It’s not out ’til October? We’ll have to come back in October then.”

Then I saw a shooting star. I was trying to remember how that was supposed to go, to wish on it, when I saw another one and then another.

Thinking I must be imagining it, I said, “Did you see that falling star?” Right as I did another one flew across the sky.

“Perseid,” Wavy said.

“Persay-what?”

“Perseid meteor shower.” Another one shot past Cassiopeia like an arrow.

“Wow.”

She nodded against my arm and after that, we were quiet. We didn’t need to talk. We just laid there watching falling stars go streaking white through all that darkness.

PART TWO

1

KELLEN

December 1979

In high school in Oklahoma, there was this girl I liked, and one night after I went out drinking, I climbed up to her bedroom window. In bed, she let me kiss her and grope her a little, but then she told me to get lost. She really only liked my bike. Not me so much. Climbing up to her window, though, that was fun. What Old Man Cutcheon called “shenanigans.”

Climbing the trellis under Wavy’s window felt like shenanigans, but as soon as I knocked on the sash, I realized I was too drunk and being stupid. I shouldn’t have been riding, let alone climbing up to her window.

I woulda gone back down, but Wavy opened the window before I could. I guess she’d heard the bike coming up the road. I crawled over the sill and managed to scramble into her room without busting my ass. She closed the window and stood there like a ghost in her nightgown. Waiting for me to say something. Well, yeah, since I just crawled in her bedroom window in the middle of the night.

“I brought you a present,” I said.

“Not Christmas yet.”

“No, not Christmas. It’s a—a birthday present.”

“July.”

“I know your birthday’s in July. I just—I don’t—I’m a little drunk. It’s actually my birthday. I brought you a present for my birthday.”

“Today?”

“Yeah, today’s my birthday. Well, yesterday. I think it’s past midnight already.”

Her teeth flashed in the dark and she took hold of my hand, pulled me toward the bed. It was the only place for me to sit down, but that spooked me. Made me think about climbing through that other girl’s window to get in bed with her.

“No, sweetheart. I just came to bring you a present.”

I’d carried it tucked flat into the back of my waistband, but when I pulled it out, I dropped it on the floor. Before I could pick it up, she pulled me another step toward the bed.