“Hello, Salem!” Nah shouts. “My name’s Winnifred. What’s yours?”
Mom does a snazzy—
Coffee.
Bitter and sweet.
And boy.
And wind.
I leap back through the spacetime continuum. To now. To a boy who watches me, concerned and curious.
“You’re here,” I say.
“I am. Got off an hour early for good behavior.” Ben is studying my face very intently. “Is your olfactory bulb messing with your hippocampus and amygdala?”
I blink.
Sense memory. He’s talking about sense memory.
“Yes.”
“I hate when that happens.”
My cheek itches, and he reaches out and brushes it with the pads of his fingers. They come away glistening.
“Oh.” I stare at his skin. Tears. Actual tears.
That’s eight times.
“Lacrimal ducts are a bitch,” he says. “I’m taking an anatomy elective right now, so I know words like lacrimal ducts. You impressed?”
“With you?” I say. “Always.”
I’ve been his girlfriend less than a week, but it’s very strange because I keep thinking, haven’t we always been together? For years and years?
“That’s my girl.” He holds up a to-go cup of coffee. “A Castaways restorative. Dirty chai latte, heavy on the dirty. Made it myself. Might not be too hot since it took me ten years to get here after my shift.”
I reach out, my hand unsteady and a bit slimy with pumpkin. “Thanks.” I take a sip. Spicy and bitter and sweet. “Chai and coffee?”
He nods. “Good, right?”
“Yeah.”
He smiles down at me, very messy and sleepy-looking from an opening shift. Coffee stains on his sweatshirt.
He leans close and tucks back a strand of hair that has slipped from behind my ear. My olfactory bulb is taking notes. “I had a dream about you last night.”
“You did?”
“You were on the space station, and we were video chatting—can we do that?”
“Yes,” I say. “The satellites are pretty good.”
“Okay, well, you were doing somersaults for me. It was awesome.”
“Really?” Just the thought—the thought of that reality. I can hardly breathe.
It feels so far away now. Six more days until my Annapolis interview. I haven’t cancelled it, but I haven’t decided not to cancel it, either.
Ben nods. “Really. You looked totally at home in zero gravity.” He leans in and presses his lips against mine. “More where that came from,” he murmurs as footsteps in the kitchen get closer.
“Ah, Ben, you’re here,” Nate says, trooping in. He dumps a new set of knives on the table. “Where’s my coffee?”
“In Cambridge,” Ben says. “Go get it.”
“Bastard.” Nate glances at the cup in my hand, eyes narrowed. “So. This. You two. I refused to believe it until I saw it. It’s go for launch, then?”
“Oh, it’s launched,” Ben says.
I roll my eyes. “Last Friday, Ben here used quantum mechanics to tell me he was lost without me.” I take a sip of my chai. “What could I do?”
Nate barks out a laugh. “Heisenberg?” Ben nods. “Nice.”
My cousin hands me a large metal spoon and gestures to the five-pounder. “Get in there, Mae. I’ve got some serious nerd ass to kick. First prize gets honor, glory, and—most important—two tickets to the first home game between the Sox and the Yankees.”
My mother’s scent hits the room, so strong I can hardly breathe. A summer rose garden. For just a second I hear her singing along to Joni Mitchell.
“I thought you science guys were above stupid things like sports,” Hannah drawls.
My sister floats in, already a ghost. Moondust pale. She doesn’t even need a costume to hand out candy to kids tonight. I try to catch her eye, but it’s like studying the night sky in LA: It’s impossible to get a clear picture when there’s so much stuff between you. Ever since she became a supernova on the kitchen floor, single-handedly smashed the ISS to smithereens, and told me our family was done, she’s been avoiding me even more. Holes up in her room like she’s in quarantine. But her pupils are normal, so she’s sober. This afternoon, anyway.
“Hey, we may be atheists, but baseball is religion here.” Nate digs into another pumpkin with a knife that would have made Mom nervous.
There is less breath in me when I hear Mom say, It’s sharp—be careful! My mind is a time capsule. A golden record that reminds me what we were, what was.
“You know what we call Fenway Park, where the Sox play?” Nate’s saying.
“A good waste of a Saturday afternoon?” she says.
Nate stares. “I cannot believe we are related.”
“The cathedral.” Ben spreads his hands like Gram’s priest standing under the crucifix, but his are slimy with pumpkin bits. “Holiest place on the Eastern Seaboard.”
Nah groans. “That is ten kinds of wrong.”
“You, too, huh?” I say.
He nods. “My family is deeply ashamed that a Brooklyn boy loves the Red Sox. I have your cousin to blame for that.”
“You’re welcome,” Nate sings, in full Moana mode.
Ben rolls his eyes and pulls the guts out of the gourd, his fingers tangling with mine. Deliberately.
I stare at him. He stares back. The force field here is so strong I’m sure we could suck in entire star systems.
The doorbell rings, and Hannah drifts toward the front of the house. “That’s for me.”
As soon as Nah’s out of range, Nate leans close, his voice low. “I’m gonna put this in Mae-speak, okay?”
I nod.
“She’s out of orbit. Understand?”
I nod. He’s right. I know.
When satellites and other objects in space orbit Earth, they’re able to maintain their path through a perfect balance between the object’s inertia and its forward momentum, and the pull of gravity on it. If any of these things is changed, the satellite will either crash down onto what it’s orbiting or spin off into space. The change usually happens if the object collides with something in space—a meteorite, something like that.
A tsunami.
Mom, Dad, Micah—they all kept her in orbit. Now she’s spinning.
“She won’t talk to me.” I throw my hands up, and pumpkin guts fly everywhere. “Flushing her pills only made her hate me more. I need to do something more drastic.”
Ben’s eyebrows go sky-high. “Pills? Not just booze?”
I nod. “I didn’t say because—”
“I understand,” Ben says.
Nate brushes goo off his hands. “We gotta tell my parents. Have an intervention—”
His face suddenly turns bland and cheery as he looks over my shoulder, toward the front room.
Nah’s with the only person I’ve ever seen her talk to at school in the month we’ve been there. The cute guy from her math class who looks like that vampire on TV.
“This is Drew,” Hannah says.
Nate, despite wearing a pink top that says Rosé All Day, still somehow manages to present as a very intimidating older brother.