Ben—if that’s even his name—flips off Nate before he takes my hand in his and this causes a medical emergency. I feel all melty and … weird.
“Mae,” I say, but it’s more a croak, so I have to clear my throat and say it again. “Mae. Is my name.”
CODE RED, NASA, CODE RED. I grasp at the first thing that comes to mind—Dad always said, First thought, best thought.
“Nate brought you in on his project because your geophysics can help him determine the relative impact his plane would have if crashing on different topographies, right?”
Ben laughs, and it’s a very nice sound, and something about it makes him real and not Ichigo. It’s not the kind of laugh you give before you use a katana to banish a ghost monster from the world of the living.
“I think your cousin’s just desperate,” Ben says. “Besides, at the speed he’s going, that plane’s a goner whether it hits low-elevation desert or sedimentary rock.”
And just like that, my flat spin is over.
At space camp one year, an air force test pilot came to speak and he said that when your plane’s in a flat spin, the best way to know whether it’s recoverable or not is if the nose is pitching down to Earth. And what’s more down-to-earth than a geophysicist?
“The plane is not crashing!” Nate says. “Now both of you sit down and tell me everything you know about aerodynamics so I don’t fail my midterm.”
As we start toward the couch, Ben gives my vintage overalls a once-over. “Are those pineapples?” He leans in a little to study the pattern, and I catch a faint whiff of coffee.
“Yes. Pineapples make me happy.” I glance at Nate. “Hannah says they’re too much.”
“Nothing can ever be too much.” Nate gestures to the sequined headband he’s wearing. “Case in point.”
It is one of the strangest nights of my life. I’m both in my body and entirely out of it. Maybe it’s like going through the atmosphere—you’re not on Earth anymore, but you’re not totally in space, either. I see me and Ben and Nate on the couch, working on equations, and then I feel every centimeter of Ben’s thigh touching mine. And then I’m hovering above us all again, watching.
When we finally make sure the hypothetical plane my cousin is building isn’t going to crash, Ben turns to me. “I thought Nate was exaggerating about the genius part. You’re intimidating as hell, Mae.”
My cousin grins. “Believe the hype. We got a future Nobel winner here.”
The words make me feel suddenly, utterly hopeless. How many times had I heard Dad say them? It’s not like I forgot he died, but all this work hit the PAUSE button on my memory. Now it’s on PLAY again.
“I still haven’t done my Annapolis interview, so…” I wave my hand, like everything else—my entire life—is beside the point.
Nate stands. “Gravity’s a bitch, Mae.”
I should never have told him I cancelled my interview in LA. Or that I haven’t rescheduled here in Boston. I should never have said, I can’t do this without him. It was out of character for me. The thought of sitting in that interview and then not being able to talk about it afterward with Dad … No one but Nate knows. And I will reschedule. Of course I will. For him—Dad. And me. I didn’t mean I can’t ever do this without him. I just can’t do it without him right now. I’m interviewing for a naval military academy. If something they say triggers my emotions, I could risk losing my place there. I need more time. I need more chances to practice telling people they’re gone in a voice that can also say things like, The nukes on our submarine are ready for launch, sir.
I sigh. “I’m not an inert object. I told you, I just need time.”
Ben leans his head back on the couch. “Okay, you two have just teleported into the spacetime continuum and I’m stuck on this rock. I’m a simple man of the land. Translation, please?”
I glare at Nate before turning to Ben. “My cousin is making a rookie mistake, conflating a Newtonian description of gravity with general relativity, attempting to use physics as a psychoanalytic tool to suggest I’m struggling with inertia—which I’m not, by the way. Gravity is not a force, it’s a consequence of the curvature of space and time. Everyone confuses that, but I would have thought an MIT student wouldn’t.” I give Nate a look, he gives me a look.
Ben doesn’t give me a look, he just looks at me. Which is a little disconcerting, but also nice.
“So Nate’s suggesting gravity is going to catch up to you and force you into forward motion.”
“Correct,” Nate says. “Basic physics.”
“Basic obnoxiousness,” I snap.
Nate reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “Make the call, Buzz.”
My cousin shuffles off to the kitchen to grab us some chips, and Ben glances at me, his lips turning up in a smile.
“If it makes you feel any better, he micromanages my life, too.”
“A little.”
Ben rubs his eyes. “He’s usually right, though. Bastard. A word of advice: If you ever become a barista and your best friend tells you not to agree to the opening shift, listen to him.”
“So that’s why you smell like coffee.”
“One of the perks. Ha. No pun intended.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and then he turns to me and I can’t help but think how good he would look fighting crime with that bleached hair and those dark eyes.
Observations like this are evidence that I’m running on fumes. I must maintain my focus. It’s the only way I know I have a chance at Annapolis, at NASA. It’s inconvenient, to meet the first person I’ve been genuinely attracted to since Riley at this particular stage of my life. It would have been nice to meet him in college or much, much later.
His eyes touch mine, then he looks away, throws his calculator into his backpack. “You should come by sometime. I’ll give you free coffee and regale you with fascinating tales about my customers and, if I’m feeling particularly loquacious, mineralogy.”
“Typical geophysicist.”
“Please. I prefer rock detective. We’re living on a mystery, you know.”
I huff out a tiny laugh, and it feels good. “Please expand.”
He rubs his hands. “Okay. We don’t know what Earth’s core is made up of—which means every minute of every day, we’re, well, living on a mystery.” He grips his hair a little, and I don’t think he knows he’s doing it, or how cute it is. “And we may never know! Like, we figure it’s maybe eighty percent iron—debatable number, but we’ll just go with it—but because of its lightness, that’s not the whole story. But it’s a third of our planet’s mass! So is there a shit-ton of xenon in there, or silicate … Who knows? Then when you consider the periodic reversals in Earth’s magnetic field, plate tectonics…” He throws up his hands. “It’s a mystery.”
“Plate tectonics.” I never knew that term could become so personal. “So. You study earthquakes. Sometimes.”
He hesitates before nodding, and in that moment, I know that he knows. Of course he does. Nate’s his best friend.