The Accidentals(38)

“You are sure this is the right place?” Aurora puffs as we climb a second set of stone stairs.

“Think so.” Though my confidence is faltering by the second. If I were going to film a horror movie on the Claiborne campus, this would make a great setting.

When we reach the top, a boy’s voice can be heard. “Who’s seen the movie The Martian?”

We round the corner to spot a black telescope, shiny in the dim light, and a boy with a blond buzz cut gesturing to a small crowd of students and parents.

“Yeah?” he asks the show of hands. “Who’s seen it way more than once?” He raises his own hand, and the adults chuckle politely.

“Wow,” Aurora breathes beside me. “Is this your friend? So cute.”

He really is. Although I’m not sure it’s Jake. The voice seems right. But my pen pal described himself as a super nerd. This boy is sportier looking than that. Even in the dim light it’s possible to ogle the muscles bulging in his arms.

He’s wearing glasses. And my gaze snags on one detail. His T-shirt reads, Talk Nerdy to Me.

“If you’re just joining us,” the boy says, glancing from me to Aurora, “we’re about to look at Mars, which is that red body visible just above the horizon. Mars is visible in the early evenings…” He keeps up his sermon while pulling his phone from his pocket and tapping the screen without looking. “…thirty-four million miles away…”

My phone vibrates in my pocket.

The hair stands up on the back of my neck as I pull it out and check the lock screen. There’s a one-word text from Jake. Hi.

“Okay!” he says to the crowd. “Let me just check our focus, here.” He leans over the eyepiece and adjusts something. “Step up and take a look, but try not to jostle the scope. If it’s your turn, and you don’t see Mars, let me know and I’ll adjust the scope.”

One at a time, members of the small crowd begin to take turns at the eyepiece.

“Come on,” Aurora says, nudging me. “Don’t you want to say hello?”

I do, but I’m not ready. Aurora steps forward, though, and suddenly hanging back is no longer an option. We move closer to Jake and the scope.

My heart booms in my chest as we arrive in front of him. “So I take it that you’re Jake?” Please?

A smile tugs at his lips. “Aw, Rachel!” He surprises me by pulling me into a tight hug. For one lovely second I’m squeezed against a hard chest. He smells like clean Tshirts and summertime. Not fried clams.

The hug ends almost before it began.

“I guess you didn’t look me up on Instagram like I did you! Welcome to Claiborne, Rachel Kress. And you must be Aurora?” He hugs her too, and the two of them begin to chat. But I lose a minute or two of the conversation, jetlagged by that hug, and by the mismatch between the Jake of my imagination and the real-life Jake.

And he looked me up on Instagram. I file that away to think about later.

“Let’s look at the moon next,” Jake says to the crowd. “Most of the time she just gets in my way, but tonight I’ll forgive her for that…”





Fifteen minutes later—after I’d learned what a nebula is and peered at lunar craters through the telescope—the talk ends. But Jake is waylaid by a lingering parent’s questions.

“We can wait for him,” Aurora whispers. “He can go with us to the ice cream social, maybe.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling pretty awkward about the whole thing. I hadn’t expected him to be so…attractive. And therefore hard to talk to.

When he’s finally free, he turns to us with a smile. “Ice cream?”

“Of course,” Aurora says easily.

So, with a pounding heart and weirdly clammy hands, I follow my two new friends back down the path toward campus.

It’s so pretty here. And I don’t mean the boy walking beside me. Claiborne in three dimensions is even more charming than on the map, with brick and clapboard everywhere, and endless green shutters on the buildings. The flagstone paths are lit with old-fashioned iron lamps. I could almost convince myself we’ve gone back in time a hundred years.

Until we reach the crowd on the lawn.

The number of students queued up for ice cream is startling. We add ourselves to a long, chatty line. At the front, cooks in white hats are scooping ice cream into paper bowls.

“So you’re from Spain?” Jake asks Aurora.

“Madrid,” she says. “My father has warned me about the winters here, but I like to ski.”

“Did your father go to Claiborne Prep?” Jake asks.

“Oh yes. He talks about it all the time. He is a fanatic.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jake says. “My family bleeds green. My brother is the football quarterback. He’s a PG this year.”

“Oh,” says Aurora.

“What’s a PG?” I have to ask.

Jake snickers. “Post-grad. He was a senior last year, but he didn’t get into the colleges he expected to get into. So he’s having a do-over. I can’t even gloat because I’m stuck with him another year.”

“Your brother is not likable?” Aurora asks, accepting a bowl of chocolate ice cream from one of the servers. “Gracias,” she says, moving on to the toppings.