Between Us and the Moon - Rebecca Maizel Page 0,54

clouds, I think. We’re about to have some—

CRASH!

Thunder.

“You been having fun with Andrew?” Curtis asks.

“Yeah, he’s nice,” I say and shake my head again, sending droplets flying into the air. The white scar on Curtis’s collarbone crisscrosses up to his neck. I need to deflect the direction of this conversation and of my eyes. I don’t want him to know that I know about the accident.

“So . . . ,” I say, thinking about Andrew’s tattoo and that this is quite possibly the most expeditious thing I can do to change the subject. “Swim to the—”

Curtis leans a hand on the wall and crosses one ankle over the other.

“You’re a nice girl,” he says and draws out the word “nice” so it’s a hiss. “A good girl. Too good for me.”

I take a step out of the foyer and into the library.

A nice girl. Why does that sound dirty to me? Sexual?

The lights flicker again over the wooden tables and a sign on a desk reads REFERENCE LIBRARIAN. Curtis’s eyes linger on mine and his tongue sticks out the side of his mouth a little bit. But he’s smiling.

I inch backward toward the librarian’s desk and my flip-flops squeak against the floor.

“See ya, Nice Girl,” Curtis says and meanders down the aisle toward a computer table at the far end of the library. Great. The Orleans library has only two computers. That means I have to sit next to him at the computer if I want to access the card catalog.

Another huge crash of thunder outside makes the lights above the computers shake. There is a line three-deep for one reference librarian. It’s summer! What the hell does everyone need the library for? I need to look up the MLA reference books for my Waterman essay, aka the most boring thing I have ever had the misfortune of being assigned. Andrew’s tattoo floats through my mind too. I am not letting Curtis get in my way.

I sit down next to him and pull up the Orleans library database.

“Keeping me company?” he asks.

He can’t know I’m searching the phrase of Andrew’s tattoo. I start with the location of the writing reference books.

“If you must know I’m completing an essay, so I’m researching.”

He keeps his eyes on his screen and I sneak a peek. Meeting locations: Alcoholics Anonymous of Cape Cod.

Oh.

I type a few things but exhale through my nose. My shoulders hunch a little and the muscles in my back release.

“People are damaged sometimes,” Gran always says. “But you can’t let their damage walk all over you. You gotta be there for them. Help them pick themselves up and brush off the dirt but you’ve got to protect yourself, too.”

I keep my head pointed toward my own screen and decide that Curtis is disgusting, but he is trying. He seems like he’s brushing off the dirt. Maybe he’s just a guy who made a really bad choice.

“Andrew has an interesting tattoo on his arm,” I offer. I try to sound very casual. I write down the call number of the MLA books on a small piece of paper, which also allows me to turn my head even farther from Curtis’s computer screen.

“Oh, The Doors lyric? You a fan?”

“Of Andrew?” I ask. Curtis looks at me funny.

“Of The Doors,” he clarifies.

“Oh. Yeah. Completely. Thought you might be too.”

What the hell am I even saying?

“Nah. He’s the sensitive one.” Curtis clicks out of the browser and stands up. “See you later, Miss America.”

“See ya,” I say quietly, even though he is out of earshot. He leaves without explaining anything to me, not that he needs to or that it’s my place to know.

Still, as Curtis walks away, I have an overwhelming urge to call out to him. To tell him that Andrew misses Mike too and won’t have a drink because of what happened even though he wasn’t even in that car. I want to tell Curtis that he’s not alone in his grief. I want to tell him I’m sorry and that we all have to live with the ripple effects of our choices. Even me—a girl who lived in her sister’s shadow way too long.

I’m sorry for both Andrew and Curtis.

Sorry for their loss.

The Doors. I think I’ve heard of them or something. Within ten minutes, I’m sitting in the back of the library with three books in front of me and all of them are about the 1960s. One is open to a picture of a band. In the center