Starry Eyes(99)

Lennon briefly considers taking the BART train across the Oakland Bay Bridge to meet up with me. But we decide it’s best to wait until he comes back on Thursday, when we can have an actual real, live date. Funny that we’ve never had one.

Meanwhile, he has tickets for a concert in San Francisco—some band that’s dark and despairing—and I’m insanely busy. Grandma Esther is staying with us for a couple of days to help with something she’s dubbed the Purge. It’s not the horror movie by that name, but it might as well be, because it’s endless hours of work that involves getting rid of everything that doesn’t help us move forward.

It’s as bad as it sounds. And as much as I love Grandma Esther, she’s starting to drive me nuts. Apparently, my mom feels the same way.

“I’m going to kill her,” she tells me privately.

“Please don’t,” I say. “Her body would be just one more thing we’d have to carry to the porch. She looks lightweight, but so did that box of shoes I just took downstairs.”

“Right. Good thinking. We’ll wait until she’s outside. You trip her, and I’ll push her into oncoming traffic.”

“Who will cook for us?”

“Dammit, Zorie. I’m trying to plan a murder!”

“I don’t think you can kill her. She has too much energy. It’s unnatural.”

“Imagine growing up with her,” she says. “It’s a wonder I’m not in jail.”

By the time we’re finished with the Purge, we’re pretty sure Melita Hills is going to charge us extra for excess garbage pickup, because the curb outside the apartment is overflowing with black plastic bags—and that’s not counting the stuff we gave away to a local charity. I never knew we had so much literal baggage. I even take down the old glow-in-the-dark stars from my ceiling, and Mom helps me paint my room a new color, a sunny yellow that contrasts nicely with all my night-sky photos.

All my homemade wall calendars? I threw them in the trash. But I’m not ready to give up on blueprints altogether. Instead of obsessively bulleting every detail of my schedule for every day of the year on multiple calendars, I use star-patterned washi tape to map out a single grid on a corkboard, and pin fun paper cutouts on major holidays and planetary events.

Baby steps.

Avani comes by on Wednesday with her mother. They bring hummus, homemade banana bread, and a tray filled with sandwiches. It feels like someone died, and when I point this out, my mom jokes that she should get divorced more often.

In her defense, it’s really good banana bread.

While our moms chat, Avani tells me in detail what happened after we left Condor Peak—and everything that happened the two days before we arrived. Apparently, I missed both everything and not that much, all that the same time. It’s only when she shows me some of her photos of the meteor shower that I feel a little envious. But there will be other meteor showers, other star parties. For the first time, it really hits me that if Lennon and I hadn’t stayed in the sequoia grove that second night, no one would have worried that we were missing, and we may not have set off the chain of events that led to all of this.

The important thing is, I don’t have any regrets.

When Thursday arrives, Grandma Esther leaves after buying massive amounts of toilet paper and laundry detergent as a housewarming gift “for good luck”—a Korean tradition, she says. I’m sad to see her go, because of all the home cooking, but also glad, because the murder fantasies were starting to get out of control. And I have better things to think about than bumping off nice old ladies.

Like Lennon.

I’m so eager about him coming back into town that I’m shifting into anxiety mode. It’s been a week since we’ve seen each other—the longest, weirdest week of my life—and so much has changed. What if all of that alters the way we feel about each other? What if that week we spent in isolation was an anomaly? Sure, we reconnected in the wilderness, but what if we can’t make it work in the real world? I worry that the delicate balance of our friendship and our more-than-friendship can’t withstand the weight of everyday life.

My parents couldn’t make it, and they were married.

How can the two of us fare any better?

The longer I’m away from him, the more a particular thought niggles: What if we were just seduced by nature? The magic of twinkling stars. The scent of redwood. Majestic mountains.

What if this is what influenced Lennon to kiss me that first time at the top of the granite staircase? If we were here at home without the alluring rush of waterfalls in the background, would he have still made that first move?

Would I have been as receptive to it?

Is there a nature-related equivalent to beer googles?

Making out on a blanket under starry skies certainly is more romantic than groping each other on a park bench while Andromeda watches.

The thing is, we had a chance to make this relationship work last year, but neither of us wanted it hard enough to try. I allowed my dad to talk me into shunning Lennon. Instead of wallowing in pain, I could have gotten off my ass and forced Lennon to tell me what happened at homecoming. And Lennon could have come told me what happened. If he was brave enough to confess stealing Mac’s credit card for the hotel room to both his moms, he could have faced me.

But he wasn’t.

And I wasn’t.