He doesn’t get it.
“Maybe you should change your major to philosophy,” I snap.
“Not nearly enough homework. I couldn’t take myself seriously.”
“This is serious. What’s happening with Hannah. You saw her that night in the kitchen. And there are…” I lower my voice. “It’s not just my parents she’s upset about. There are other things, things you don’t know about. That she doesn’t even know about. Yet. I have to do something, Ben. She could die. She will die.”
The longer I keep the Micah secret from her, the more our radius of separation increases. I can feel it, the force field between us getting bigger and bigger. It’s the size of an airplane hangar now. One big enough to fit a rocket.
He gives me an inscrutable look. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes,” he repeats. He reaches out, tucks a strand from my bob back behind my ear, where I like it.
I am about to attack him for lacking proper conversational technique when I realize what he’s saying:
Yes, she will die. Because we all will. Someday. But I don’t think Nah has until someday.
Hannah will die.
Possibly soon.
This was a terrible idea. I’d rather be home with earplugs in, teaching myself Russian so I can keep up in Star City if I launch with a Russian team.
“I think I prefer the drunk Italians,” I say.
“Close your eyes,” Ben says.
“What?”
“Just do it. Please.”
I do. I don’t know why I let him boss me around.
“Now,” he says, so close I can feel the heat of his breath. “Just breathe. And listen. Don’t think, Mae. I know that’s impossible for you, but try. Just listen. Be here. Really be here. With me, with all of us.”
I open one eye and he smiles. “Mae…” I close my eye.
The train’s wheels clack on the rails. A baby is cooing and gurgling. Someone laughs, high and long. A newspaper rustles. A person behind me cracks their knuckles. Ben sighs. Low and soft. I lean into him, my eyes still closed, and he wraps an arm around me.
The train lurches, the brakes squeal, and my eyes snap open.
“Our stop,” Ben says.
He takes my hand and pulls me out. Everyone on the car wearing MIT sweatshirts spills out behind us. The university’s just a block away. I follow Ben, dazed.
“What was that?” I say.
He glances at me. “It was.”
This takes me a minute.
“Is that some weird Zen shit?”
I sound like Hannah. He brings out the Hannah in me. I’m all over the place.
“It is, indeed, some weird Zen shit.”
I told myself I was going to keep some distance with Ben, but that was only two days ago, and here I am. I used to be so certain about what I wanted. Maybe Mom and Dad were part of that process. Maybe I got more advice from them than I realized.
We are part of the school of fish, the bodies flowing out of Kendall station and up into the cold October night air.
“You didn’t have to come get me, you know,” I say as we reach the sidewalk. I have been possessed by a grouchy old lady. “I could have just met you here.”
“I was in your area.”
“No, you weren’t. It took you an hour to come to my house, pick me up, and bring me all the way back here.” I stare him down. “This isn’t a date.”
“Okay.” But he smiles.
I hate how all the particles in me rearrange themselves when he does that. I pull my hand out of his and slide on my gloves and shove a hat on and stomp ahead until Ben calls, “You’re going the wrong way.”
Right. I am in entirely new territory. His territory.
Ben keeps smiling as we pass Lafayette Square. He gestures toward a nightclub and restaurant on the left.
“We usually get dinner at the Middle East after. You’ll like it. We could go to a show there sometime, if you want.”
“A show?”
“Like, a concert.”
“Oh.” I’ve never been to a concert before. That’s Hannah’s thing. I glance at the marquee. “Who are the Dresden Dolls?”
“Only my favorite band. And I might just have an extra ticket.” He glances at me. “Nate’s coming. I promise I’ll only try to kiss you three times. Four if I’m feeling especially bold.”
“You are—” I throw up my hands. “I actually have no words.”
“Just yes will suffice.” He stops. “We’re here, by the way.”
Ben steps inside the doors of the yoga studio his group uses on Friday nights, and I don’t have a choice but to follow him in. It’s cold outside. And, despite the fact that Ben talks about death like it’s the weather, I want to sit beside him and breathe his air.
But the last yoga studio I was in was my mom’s.
I stand on the sidewalk for a minute, lost in a spacetime bubble.
“Mom, I can’t twist like that!”
She laughs. “Mae, honey, just put your head—no, put it under your arm. Yes, like that.”
I glare at her. “This is harder than advanced calculus.”
“How are you going to get around a space station without bending, hm?”
“I’m going to float through it. Obviously.”
I give up on the pose and lie on my back. Corpse pose. I point to myself.
“You’re killing me.”
Mom laughs, then lies next to me, the tips of our fingers touching. We stare at the ceiling, which I helped her paint a long time ago to look like the night sky.
I stargaze with both of my parents, just in different ways.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Did Riley give up on me because I’m so … inflexible?”
An astronaut needs to be disciplined, but not everyone understands that.
My mother reaches out and brushes back my bangs. The sunlight streams through the window behind her and turns her hair into melted chocolate.
“Someday, Mae, you will find your person. Or they will find you. And they will love you for the driven, intelligent, shoot-for-the-moon girl you are. You hold out for them. They’re out there. I know it.”
I smile. “Like you and Dad?”
She leans forward. Presses her lips to my forehead. “Riley’s not your person. But I bet you’ll always be the one that got away.”
It’s not until now, standing outside this Boston yoga studio, that I realize: She didn’t answer my question about her and Dad.
* * *
Ben sits next to me, and the weight of my body on the meditation cushion and the weight of his body on the cushion next to mine and the distance between us, which isn’t very much, gets me thinking about Newton and how, maybe, attraction is an expression of the universal law of gravitation.
Everyone who has ever felt something for another person is really just playing out
F = Gm1m2/r2
The force (F) due to gravity between two masses (m1(me) and m2(Ben)) which are a distance apart (r)—in this case, I’d say about six inches. G is the gravitational constant, which is 6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2.
So the reason I can’t move away when he’s around is simply because of gravity. Just the force of masses.