Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,28
is filled with stars and lines, and he’s right, this hardly looks like a person, let alone a god. Someone had a very vivid imagination back in the day. I turn my eyes back to the sky and keep searching.
“Anything?” he says.
I don’t say anything, just shake my head. But as I’m staring up into the sky, wondering if my brain just isn’t wired to see constellations, I see the tiniest little spray of light. “There!” I thrust my finger at the sky and Asher laughs. “I saw one!”
“Is it your first?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there should probably be eight or ten an hour right now. Not that we’ll catch them all, but…” His voice trails off into silence.
We lie on our backs and stare up at the sky until I’m woken up by Asher patting my hand with his. “Sid, it’s really late. I didn’t know you fell asleep.”
We make our way back to our houses, but the next night we’re in the same spot. “How do you know so much about constellations?”
I can feel Asher’s shoulders shrug next to me, ruffling the grass. “We learned about them in fourth grade, and I just always thought they were cool. I guess I was kind of a nerd about it afterward.”
I nod. “Can you show me Cancer?”
“Is that your sign?”
“Yeah.”
“So you have a birthday soon.” It’s not a question, just a statement.
“You know all of the zodiacs, too?”
“I know generally when they are.” Asher points a finger at the sky. “Cancer is one of the faintest.” He traces his finger along the sky like he always does when he’s trying to find something. Then he taps at the night sky, like it’s a framed map overhead. “Okay, there.”
I stare and stare as Asher traces a shape across the sky, but honestly, I don’t see anything but a mass of tiny lights.
“I’m a lost cause for constellations,” I say.
Asher laughs, and we go back to looking for meteors, counting twenty that night. We lie on our backs every night that week watching for meteors, tallying them up like stones dropped in our beach buckets. Even after the shower ends, we spend most nights on the grass, staring up at the sky, our fingertips so close we could touch.
And the next month, when it’s my birthday, I find a surprise on my bedroom ceiling. A constellation of my very own, mapped out with glow-in-the-dark stars. Cancer—my very own crab—one I love enough to keep as a pet all summer long.
DAY 7
Asher
I don’t remember getting into bed, but that’s where I wake up the next morning. In a cold puddle.
Holy crap, did I actually pee the freaking bed?
I’m still in the fog of sleep as I let my brain work through how I’m going to break it to my mother that her eighteen-year-old wet his bed. What a proud mom moment that will be. Could I get everything bagged up and thrown away, without being caught? I don’t even know where someone would buy new sheets around here. There’s one little strip of stores that includes the grocery store, a dollar store, a hobby shop, and a salon. It’s a forty-five-minute drive to an actual mall.
I am never drinking again.
The clock says 9:20. I hear voices in the kitchen and spring out of bed, feeling my head revolt against my body being upright. My stomach lurches and I give myself to the count of five before walking, to make sure I don’t puke. Two long strides from the bed and my door is locked with a click. I’m about ten minutes away from my mom barging in, insisting I get up and enjoy the day. I strip my clothes off and throw them on my bed, rolling my sheets into a pile and wrapping them in the crinkly plastic mattress pad underneath. How much would it cost to replace all of this? These aren’t even my sheets, they’re Nadine’s, so can I really just toss them?
I dig clothes out of my drawer and pull on a pair of basketball shorts. I haven’t figured out what to do with everything yet—how I can get it all to a Laundromat undetected—but making an appearance will buy me time. When I get into the kitchen my parents are sitting at the table. There’s a plate of cinnamon rolls in the center, and Sidney is in the chair to the right of my mom, wide-eyed and smiling.
“Good morning.” Her tone is so chipper it almost hurts.