The Brightest Star in a Constellati... - Chapter 28: Chapter 28

☽ Peter ☽
After she stands, Nicole shuffles past me. "Let's go somewhere. I'm bored."
Jay scoffs. "Infallible plan. Because it's totally not freezing or anything."
Taking the initiative, Nicole leads the group down the stairway and out the door. She bounds forward like a speeding bullet—dashing across the parking lot and heading for the middle of the road without looking behind her. Her hair cascades behind a sweater that billows out in the wind.
The group follows close behind her; Jay is typing away on his phone, and Lexa keeps trying to peek at it. A few steps in front of me are Evan and Dina.
"Where are we going?" Evan calls out.
Nicole cackles like she's plotting her next attack, and when she gets in that mood, nobody can argue with her. "You'll see!"
I speed up to fall into step with Evan as my hands sink into my pockets. The road diverts to a gravel pathway that tilts downhill. "She's going to kill us," he mutters.
Craning their head to look at Jay's phone, Lexa asks, "Seriously, though, who are you texting?"
"Evan's girlfriend," Nicole chips in.
She dodges out of my way before I have the chance to kick her. And though Evan laughs, he tells her to drop it a bit too sharply.
"As if she'd text you back," Lexa says to Jay. "We can test it. I guarantee you Claire would come back to Evan before that." They turn expectantly to him, watching him; at which point, it occurs to me that I haven't seen him use his phone. I've been texting my parents nonstop, promising them I would remember to take my medication before bed. Plus, he hasn't talked in the group chat since our quibble. "Don't you have your phone?"
"I—" Evan's mouth opens, but he instantly clamps it shut. He shakes it off like it was a reflex, then corrects himself by saying, "I don't have it. It's complicated, but I got it taken away."
"As a punishment?" I ask.
Evan nods. The path opens up to a small clearing that holds a playground that has been here for as long as I can recall. Protected by a chain-link fence, on a stretch of sprawling wet grass enclosed by trees, it creates a wind tunnel. Leaves whip around in miniature hurricanes, carrying the scent of pine and dew. Nicole races off through the fence gate to get to the slide while the rest of us stand in front of it.
Lexa says, "So, you're not planning to grovel to Claire?"
"It's far too late for that." Evan scrapes his shoe against the rocks, sending them scattering away from him. The pebbles bounce down the hillside, clattering like he's skipping stones on a lake. "It's done and buried, like six feet under level bad."
Lexa grimaces, so Evan continues, "It was essentially a routine. Cee—Claire—liked something about being the first person I'd ever dated, and the same for her. I don't really get it."
"She's a hopeless romantic," Dina says.
He shrugs. "Maybe." He drifts over to the swings, hopping on next to Nicole. She kicks off the ground, getting her body tangled in the linked chain. Evan stays in place as if sitting in a chair, pulling his feet in a semicircle through the gravel, and leaving a chalk-like residue behind on his shoes. The sound grates on me; it's like the way stepping on wooden planks irks me for fear of getting a splinter. Eventually, he pauses. "What does it matter that it was our first kiss?"
Lexa elbows Jay. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Jay's face turns scarlet. He coughs. "What?"
"Who?" Lexa moves to invade his space, getting in Jay's face and snapping their fingers repeatedly. "Who was it?"
"None of your damned business who it was!" he shouts, avoiding the question. Nicole flits to his side, armed with a coy smile and ready to attack. Jay doesn't let her prod him any further, and simply continues, "What, Duford, now you're going to tell me you've kissed someone?"
Lexa interrupts with an almost clinical authority: "Everyone's kissed their mother."
"Not what I meant. I'm vetoing mothers. It only counts if it was romantic," says Jay, looking at each person in turn. Arranged in a rectangular shape, our shadows meet at the centre, a stretched vortex of darkness with rounded edges. It reaches as far as the playground, sliced into sections by the fence boundary. Cast by the shifting colours of the sky, the slide and jungle gym take on a vibrant shade of sunflower yellow and beady, gemstone red. It matches the craggy rocks upon which the structure is built.
"I am not telling you who it was," Nicole says, and heads back to the slide. Lexa tails her soon afterward, flashing a glare at Jay.
I sigh; Evan walks over to the monkey bars, reaching up so that his fingers graze the paint-flecked crimson metal. "I'm too tall for these now," he says.
"Barely," I reply.
He laughs, securing his hands around the bars, lifting himself a few feet off the ground. Sighing with effort, he catapults himself between the bars until he reaches the end. His shoes scrape the ground as he turns to face me. "I used to be so good at these." He manoeuvres his body higher, and I expect him to start doing pull-ups, but instead, he reaches for the beam to pull himself upward. And brings his legs around so that he's sitting atop the structure. "I can finally see the top of your head."
I smile. "I was always kind of too tall for this."
"Here." He extends his hand out to me. "Come on."
I wave my hand dismissively, shaking my head. Although I'm not planning on taking any risks tonight, somehow I feel a bit braver now that the remnants of sunlight have faded, making way for the small glow of the stars in the distance. My brain takes a hiatus and tries to convince me into giving my usual response. What I should say is, If I do that, I am going to die. "All right, fine," is what I end up blurting out instead.
He watches me struggle to make sense of the handlebars for a moment, one eyebrow lifted. "Give me your hand."
"You seriously think you can lift me?" I question, and while Evan doesn't seem worried, his hesitation is the only permission my nerves need to skyrocket. It only takes a millisecond to envision myself face-first on the concrete.
"So maybe," he starts, leaning his stomach against the handlebars, "I'm a little worried—"
"Please don't say that—"
He interrupts, "But I promise I won't drop you."
I look at him; meeting another person's eye directly is invariably difficult. I find myself looking elsewhere—the nose, the head, the cheeks—just to avoid the feeling of being stared at. I don't understand that saying about eyes being the window to the soul, and frankly I never have. Eyes tell all. It isn't a window—it's a connection. "Pinky promise?"
"God, just take my hand, won't you?"
I do as he tells me. "Now what?"
"No, I meant like—you're so—you have to pull yourself up first."
The realization hits me, and I pull back, biting my lip to keep myself from responding stupidly. "Yeah. I got that."
"You didn't think this through," Evan says.
"Of course I didn't—if I had, common sense would have told me that I'm crazy."
"That this is crazy?"
I place my hand against the handlebars and attempt to pull myself off the ground. The tip of my shoe stabs into the gravel and twists lower into the hole I've created. "No, just me."
Evan instructs me to try the other side, which makes more sense, but it still doesn't work. He examines me, as though he's catching on to how this process is going to work, which is to say that it won't. "Have you honestly never climbed playground objects before?" he asks.
"Who do you think I am, exactly?"
"No, don't give me any of your Peter sarcasm." He grins. "Answer it honestly."
"Answer what honestly?" I hang off the side of the pole for a second before my legs give up on me, and I drop back to the ground. My hands are raw with the effort that it took; I flatten my palms against my stomach.
"The question that I asked."
"Did you ask a question?"
He backs up, almost like he's going to pull away from me, but he doesn't. He merely looks down at me and commands, "Push up."
I've decided he's already judging me, so I play dumb. "With what?"
"Your legs."
"I don't think you understand how impossible that is for me."
"I don't think you're actually trying."
"I am trying," I mumble. It sounds more like a whine than a whisper. "Come on, I'm not as good at this as you are."
"Okay, new plan." Evan points at the slide leading to the monkey bars where Nicole and the others are. "Go around the long way and find the platform. Then you can climb up."
I double back to the set of stairs where Lexa previously stood. I pass them as they're going down the slide, sharing a small smile and ignoring Nicole's shouting from below.
My steps echo as I walk; Dina dive-bombs me with a hug and subtly tries to veer my course in the right direction towards the monkey bars. When I get there, Evan is sitting with his face angled towards the sky. The stars shine from the distance among a few satellites waning in the low light. Dusk settles over the greenery like a coating of ash.
I step up onto the platform, wobbling on my feet. The rocks are melting in my tumbling vision. I press a finger to my face, making sure that I'm still wearing my glasses.
I climb my way over to Evan, precariously sitting on the metal bars next to him. He grabs my arm, steadying me. "You made it," he says.
"Did you think I wouldn't?" I reply.
"I had my doubts," he admits, smiling. "I've always wanted to do this."
I turn to face him. "What? Climb the playground?"
"No," he whispers, timidly quiet. Like he's waiting for the bomb to detonate—as if he's carrying a firework sizzling in his hands, ready to explode, and no matter how fast he runs, it's bound to wind up burning him. "I wanted to stay up all night, with everyone. With all my friends, and just fucking forget about going home for once. That's the worst part about leaving my sister, leaving... in general. I know that I have to come back."
Without waiting for me to comment on it—although I want to ask—he continues, "Why does everything always seem so much easier in the dark?"
I can only shrug. "It's this hormone, cortisol," I explain. "It's a stress hormone, and it diminishes throughout the day. So, when it gets later at night, you feel like conquering the world."
From below, Nicole's voice screams my name, and I whirl to glance back and ask her what she wants. Nicole's dirty blonde hair is swept by the wind from above, tousled away from her eyes. "Come down, I need someone to push me down the slide!" she yells.
I shoot Evan a look. He shrugs and helps me climb back down, so I can aid Nicole in her pointless conquest. She tugs on my sleeve, taking me to the other end of the playground.
"I'm so tired," she whines. "Would I get arrested if I fell asleep here?"
I lift an eyebrow. "Not unless your name is Nicole," I reply, grinning. "Special clause. Ask Lexa if you don't believe me."
She stares at me, as though she doesn't want to question my methods. After a brief, nonverbal staring contest, I finally watch her go down the slide. The instant she arrives at the grass below us, she goes right back to yelling.
"You're being so lame. At least live a little," she says. Beneath the overflow of sarcasm, I can tell she's planning something. And whenever Nicole gets an idea, she executes it. One of these days, she's going to get me arrested for being an accessory after the fact. Hopefully, that day isn't today, but it's impossible to know for sure.
Nicole climbs onto the slide and disappears through the plastic tunnel. I crouch down to follow her. Wrapping my arms around my legs, I push myself onto the slide and let gravity grab hold. A calm breeze brushes across my face, and for a second, my sight blurs completely, and there is nothing.
Nicole stumbles when I crash into her, capsizing into the grass, cussing me out the whole way. After exhausting all the dirty words she knows in English, she veers off course to the only French she's ever bothered to learn (sacré bleu!) and then proceeds to rub salt into the wound by using the other swear I shouldn't have taught her, this one in Creole (fout tonè!), just to make sure I get the point.
"Nobody," I start, narrowing my eyes at her, "nobody, not even the snobbiest Parisian in humanity, has ever said sacré bleu seriously."
She kicks me. "You"—she snorts—"are the worst nerd that has ever existed. Do you say this stuff on purpose, or are you really this pretentious? I can't tell."
By this point, I am certain she does not know what the word means and vehemently refuses to pick up a dictionary. That's what autocorrect is for, she tells me. I don't need a thesaurus. (Side note: in Nicole's world, this is pronounced like tree-saw-rus, and I wish I could say I know she's kidding, but I can't, and it kills me a little more every day.)
"Are you listening to me?" Nicole asks, getting to her feet. She places a hand to her hip expectantly. When I don't respond, she shrugs. "Okay, great. I should let you know I buried a body in your backyard. When the police come, if your fingerprints are on the knife, it's not my fault. Wow, you really aren't listening? Maybe I should come forward. This guilt is killing me." She snaps her fingers in front of my face. "Peter, for fuck's sake. I just made the best pun ever, and you weren't even listening. Fuck you. Okay, I can fix this... so, what's up with you and Evan?"
I crash back into reality. "What?"
Nicole stares at me, her eyebrows arched. "Of course, that's what you hear. Seriously, what is going on with you two?"
My jaw clicks and my legs are stuck to the slide. "What do you mean? Nothing is happening."
She tucks her legs into her chin and sits cross-legged on the rocks below me. "You need to stop hating him. This isn't a game of pick and choose."
"And the same for you," I say.
Her nose scrunches with distaste, but she pats me on the head supportively. "This week started all wrong. I know you fought about something, but it doesn't matter anymore. We're part of this club together. Whatever happens... it's like when my laptop broke, and I needed to fix it. It was the worst. I was stuck in a stuffy library writing my essays with Windows XP, and it loaded internet explorer about as fast as it would take you to complete a marathon."
"And who would be Google Chrome in this metaphor, exactly?" I question.
"Evan," Nicole tells me, almost immediately. "Dina would be Bing... and Jay is Microsoft Edge because he sucks." She stops. "Wait, wasn't I going somewhere with this?"
In front of us, Jay and Evan are making their way towards the seesaw. Lexa and Dina are close behind, looking like concerned parents who are rightfully afraid their children are going to murder each other if left alone for longer than two seconds.
"Probably," I say.
She snaps her fingers. "Oh! I used the school computer even though it took a lot longer. When the odds are stacked against you... you tend to let it slip away from you like you can't make yourself work any longer if you're only getting halfway there. And honestly, it might be the best way to do it."
I shift, resting my back against the hard plastic of the slide. The lights from the stars have travelled millions of years to get to this location. "I don't think it's that easy."
Nicole rushes off to the others without saying another word. I guess her prophetic five minutes have gone, and she's back to her usual self. This thought is confirmed when she greets Dina by saying, "What's up, losers?"
Evan and Jay are standing on opposite ends of the seesaw, trying to balance the scales. The wooden planks plateau at the middle, almost perfectly distributed.
Evan smiles at Nicole and me. "Are you seeing this?"
I shake my head. "Good luck getting down."
He stares at me vacantly, and his neck whips back to Jay, who peers at the ground a few feet below. Neither of them moves an inch. A moment of understanding passes between them.
"Well, this sucks," Jay proclaims. His feet wobble, and the seesaw moves along with it.
"This was your idea," Evan reminds him gently. "On the count of three?"
Jay nods. He looks utterly serious while he starts to count down. When he gets to three, they both jump off. Evan sticks the landing, stumbling towards us.
"You're fools," Lexa berates the boys, shaking their head. "We need to get out of here before somebody dies."
"Or Nicole murders someone," I pitch in. She shoves me.
"You weren't supposed to tell anyone!" she protests, waving her fingers in my face. "I confided in you, and you betray me?"
Lexa grabs Nicole's hand to wrangle her off me. When they do, Nicole looks like a kid caught in detention. "No more stupid jokes."
☆ ☽ ☆
We reach the hotel as the clock eyes ten at night. The lights have gone out, like a ghost town, leaving me with my thoughts. And I usually hate that feeling—being alone in the middle of the night, trying to sleep—or worse, unable to rest. But my hands aren't shaking, and my heartbeat isn't so erratic that it makes it seem like I'm about to faint. The night is peaceful tonight.
Since I have to take my medicine, Nicole decides to tag-team it with me in the hotel bathroom. Through the years, she's tried multiple forms of hormone therapy, starting with gels and patches, but ending with the shot.
"Doing drugs together," she teases, bumping me with her shoulder. After I wash the medicine down with water, she says, "Do you think it's working?"
I keep convincing myself this dose is a placebo—I even searched for sertraline just to check—and moreover, it's not like I know what a working medication is supposed to feel like. It's barely been a month, so I shrug. "I don't know. Maybe?"
"Don't give me that." She taps me on the nose and shuffles out of the way.
Draped over the bedside, Dina climbs onto the mattress. Her eyes are drooped, and she sits next to Lexa, who appears to be napping. I lean over to shut off the light to give them a reprieve. Meanwhile, Evan hangs by the doorway, watching them like a bodyguard. He nods in the direction of the door; he slips into the hallway, fixed with his back to the flowers on the sea-green wallpaper. The cacti dancing across the wall look like smiling faces if I squint, a feature that my mother picked out.
Evan grits his teeth. Silently, I untangle my headphones and offer him one of them. He takes it—we have to stand with his shoulder against mine for the cord to reach.
"I'm going on a run," he says. It sounds like an invitation, not that I can tell if he wants me to take it. His hand taps to the beat of my music. "You can come," he continues.
"I can't stand you and your morning runs and... afternoon runs."
He stifles a laugh. "Okay, maybe I can change it to an afternoon stroll... afternoon very low-key movement?"
"That sounds much better."