“Wow. I don’t think I’ve met anyone that wants to be an astronaut who’s over the age of, like, ten.”
“Right?” We veer toward the Public Garden, past rows of red and orange trees. The fall colors are so bright—straight out of Dr. Seuss. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask. “Pharmaceutical industry bigwig?”
“Nah. A respectable citizen,” he says, with that half smile again. “I like to draw. Maybe something with that.” He looks away. “Though who am I kidding? I’ll probably just end up joining the union like my dad, working construction.”
“That would be a waste of your entrepreneurial talents.”
He laughs. “What about you?”
“No idea.”
I’d planned to live with my parents until Micah and I saved enough money to move out on our own. I thought I’d just figure life out as I went along. Now that I don’t have them, it suddenly seems really important that I have a Plan. I can’t mooch off of my aunt and uncle forever. I can’t work part-time at Mom’s yoga studio, like we were talking about.
“I just want…” I glance at him. “Never mind.”
“Nu-uh. You just want what?”
“My sister has all these huge, planet-sized goals. I think it’d be nice to be like my mom. She taught yoga, had us, made soup, kicked around in her garden. Just had a life.”
“Sounds good to me,” he says.
“It was all about the Something Else for her. Finding … the source, or whatever, every day. Connecting to it. To us. Like we were this big spirit soup she was making.” I frown. “But for that to work, you need other people. People you can depend on.”
A husband who doesn’t fucking leave you for his hot young research assistant, for one.
“Your sister?”
“Hard to depend on someone when they’re in outer space.”
I stumble a little—it’s hard to walk and float at the same time—and he reaches out to steady me.
“Thanks.”
I lean into Drew, just a little. He smells like tea tree. I take a deep breath and he laughs softly.
“Are you … smelling me?”
I nod. “I love tea tree.”
“Yeah, my ex got me this bougie soap and I’m kind of hooked on it.”
“It’s nice.” I take a deep breath of cold, fresh air. It clears my head more than I want it to.
“Do you have a girlfriend, Drew? Or just an ex with good taste in soap?”
“Nope. Just the ex. Why?”
“You’re cute and nice and have wonderful little pills. What’s not to like?”
“What, indeed?”
“I’m not hitting on you,” I say.
“I know. College boyfriend—got it.”
We pass under an enormous tree that’s beginning to turn, bright red and orange creeping onto the leaves, like spilled paint.
“We don’t get this in Cali,” I say. One of the leaves floats down and Drew reaches out and grabs it, then holds it out to me. Bright red.
“A genuine Boston souvenir,” he says.
I smile, take it. Some things are pretty when they die.
“I love it,” I say. “Thank you.”
“It’s just a leaf,” he says, laughing.
“Don’t be mean to my leaf. She’s beautiful.”
He runs a finger over one of my leaf’s dark veins. “She is.”
We start walking again. “You miss LA?” he asks.
I nod. “I mostly hate it here. No offense.”
“Hey, if I had to leave paradise, I’d be pretty pissed, too.” He frowns a little. “So you’re going back? After graduation?”
“My boyfriend and I … We had this plan. I’m supposed to move in with him. Next summer.”
Drew raises his eyebrows, two dark slashes. Very dramatic, those eyebrows. I like them.
“Supposed to?”
I shrug. “We’ll see.”
It’s all mixed up now. He wasn’t at the clinic, but he was there, almost every second, after the wave. And I miss him. But I also don’t. It’s nice not to have someone look at you with a question in their eyes all the time.
“What about your sister?”
“She’ll be in school. Annapolis. MIT if she has bad luck. Harvard. Whatever.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. We aren’t as close as we used to be. The older we got, the more—she’s like this intergalactic being, you know? And she’s always on my ass. Watching me. I don’t know. I love her. She’s just—if you ever meet her, you’ll know what I’m talking about. And then our parents … It’s all fucked. Just fucked.”
“I bet it’s a lot to process.”
“A lot. Yeah.” I shake my head. “I can’t talk about this anymore. It’s killing my buzz.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” He steers me toward the side of the path. “Come meet my friends.”
And I get nervous until my eyes catch a line of little bronze statues on the ground at my feet—ducks.
I crouch down to pet one of them.
“Hi,” I say to them. I look up at Drew. “They’re so cute.”
“These guys are famous.” Drew squats down beside me. “Ever read the kids’ book Make Way for Ducklings?”
I can almost hear Mom as she turns the page, making the quack sounds of the ducks. Mae and I are in matching nightgowns, our toenails painted pink. I nod, feeling teary all of a sudden. I stand, blinking hard so they don’t fall.
Drew slips his hand into mine. “Jesus, your hands are freezing.”
I shrug. “We don’t need gloves in LA.”
I can tell he knows I’m about to cry, and it’s nice that he doesn’t get weird about that.
He tugs on my hand. “Come on, let’s warm you up.”
I should take my hand out of his, but I don’t. It’s so warm. We hurry through the gardens across from the Common, but I stop as we reach a bronze angel statue tucked into a corner at the far end of the gardens. She’s in the middle of a fountain, on a pedestal, holding a basket. Her wings cut into the bright blue of the sky.
“Oh,” I breathe.
Something about her fills me up. Her face is so calm. Serene. For a minute, that peace washes over me, too, smoothing over the anger and sadness. The Judgment card in the tarot. Waking the dead.
Drew’s hand tightens around mine, and when I look over, he’s watching me with the strangest expression.
“What?” I say.
He clears his throat. “Nothing.”
His eyes are gray with little flecks of gold, which somehow the charcoal beanie he’s wearing brings out. I suddenly have an almost overwhelming urge to kiss him, to have his arms around me, to be held, and I know it’s only because I’m needy, but it freaks me out, how close I am to rushing through the space between us.
I let go of his hand. “Coffee?”
“Er. Right.” He puts that hand to the back of his neck and looks down for a minute. “Yeah. There’s a Dunkies on Newbury.”
“What is the obsession with Dunkin’ Donuts in this place?”