Starry Eyes(77)

“And your mouth just happened to land on mine?”

“Andromeda was pulling against the leash, trying to chase a squirrel!”

“Keep lying to yourself. Meanwhile, I’ve made my peace with my part in it, which is that I was completely innocent.”

“If it wasn’t an accident, then it was both our faults.”

“Not according to evangelicals.” He switches to a street preacher voice. “And yea, though I was seduced by the sinful demon female in the garden—”

“Hey! You’re the one with the dildo garden in the shop window.”

“Dildo forest, Zorie. Get it right. I helped put that up, by the way. I took a photo of Ryuk walking around inside the display.”

“I’m going to need to see that,” I say, but my words are drowned under the hymn-a-thon at the tent across the path. “Ugh, all these people,” I complain. “I wish we were camping in the backcountry. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the shower is great, and it’s much easier to get drinkable water out of a faucet than to scoop it out of a river and wait for it to filter. But jeez, civilization is noisy.”

“Well, well, well. Look who’s been bitten by the bug,” Lennon says, pointing at me.

“What bug?” I frantically glance across my clothes and legs.

“No, the backpacking bug,” he says, laughing. “You prefer the peace and quiet. That’s how it started for me. I just wanted to get away from people and think.”

“Well, I’m not ready to do this on a regular basis, but I’m starting to see the appeal.”

He gestures toward the back of the camp. “You know what? When I was gathering firewood, I walked down that big hill there. It’s just grassland and meadow, but I bet it has a decent view of the stars. At least it’s away from the lights of the camp. Want to take your telescope there before they start singing ‘Kumbaya’?”

Yes. Yes, I do. After we clean and put away everything, and Lennon puts out the fire, we gather the rainfly from my tent and my telescope. After strapping on headlamps—and dumping Reagan’s expensive broken headlamp in the trash—we haul all of our supplies out of camp and head toward the hill.

It doesn’t take long to find a good spot where the lights from the camp are at our backs. We can still hear people, but it’s not as loud. Lennon spreads out the rainfly, and we sit on it picnic-style. I flick off the light on my headlamp. The stars are amazing out here. I don’t think I’ll ever be used to seeing them this way, without light pollution from the city. Thousands upon thousands of them, glittering points of light. It’s as if I’m looking at an entirely different sky.

“Look,” I say, pointing up at a wispy white trail. “The Milky Way. You can’t see that at home without a telescope. Not even at the observatory.”

Lennon takes off his headlamp and leans back on his palms. “It looks unreal. I know it’s not, but my mind doesn’t want to accept that this isn’t some fake, projected light show.”

No projection could look like this. We both stare up at the sky for a long moment. “I don’t even think I want to use the telescope,” I say. “I think I just want to look at them. Is that weird?”

“Not at all. It’s not every day you get to see all this.”

My phone still has a little charge on it, and I quickly turn on the screen to use it as a flashlight in order to see where to move my telescope. That’s when I notice something.

“We have service!”

“Well, what do you know?” Lennon says, taking out his phone. “Oh, look. I’ve got texts from the Brettster.”

“You do?” My only texts are from Mom and Avani.

“He’s apologizing for leaving us. Well, it’s sort of a nonapology. Oh, wait. He’s taking it back. No . . . He’s apologizing again. Aren’t Reagan’s parents in Switzerland, or something?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because he’s not making any sense. Now he’s blaming Reagan for ditching us. I think? He’s an atrocious speller, by the way.”

“How many texts did he send?” I say, glancing at his screen.

“One, two, three, four . . . eight. And the last one is asking if I can get him weed again.”

“Again?”

“He’s already asked once. He’s laboring under the false presumption that because my dad was in a band, I somehow have unlimited access to drugs. I swear, Brett is the absolute worst. I’m not even responding.”

Avani’s message is just confirming that she’s leaving for the star party tomorrow and will see me there. I quickly decide to tell her that I’m with Lennon, backpacking through the park—super casual, no details—and asking if it’s okay that he rides home with us. After she confirms, and I tell her when we’ll be arriving, I read my mom’s message: I’m glad you called today. Please stay safe and text me when you get to Condor Peak. If you ever want to talk about anything, you know I’m here, right?

Why does she keep saying this? I replay our phone conversation in my head and something starts to bother me. “I left that photo book in my desk at home.”

“What?” Lennon says, switching his phone off.

“I’m worried that my mom might have found it. She keeps asking me if there’s anything I want to tell her, like she’s trying to get me to confess to something. And it’s either that photo book, or she knows I’m here with you.”