The Brightest Star in a Constellati... - Chapter 29: Chapter 29

☆ Evan ☆
Eleven at night is the worst of times. Eleven at night is my curfew. It's one hour before the day resets. One hour can stretch into a million years or last ten seconds. Forfeiting and falling asleep would allow me to breeze through time and I'd find myself on the other side of the morning, but I'd rather push my bedtime away like a form of revenge on myself.
I keep my eyes on the hotel carpet as I walk. In an automatic motion, my eyes try to find a piece of peeling paint, or a section of frayed carpet next to the baseboard—a flaw. But while my apartment building has the air thick with the permanent scent of cooking from across the hall, the hotel is spotless. I wouldn't know what to fit inside of its spacious rooms.
The reflection of the distant lights is visible on the screen of Peter's phone as he changes the song. His music reminds me of Elaine's. It's the same kind of light rock and a synth beat, but the lyrics are in French and virtually incomprehensible to me.
And the silence is so heavy that I could scream, and it wouldn't fill it. This isn't like waiting for Claire to call me. It isn't like being in the next town over for hockey. I keep lobbing my foot at nearby rocks, pretending it's a way to affect my surroundings, a rushing river that eventually erodes sedimentary rock and changes it. And suppressing the urge to talk like Claire would do to fill a lull. But my throat burns with a bubble trapped inside of it, and maybe it's not so bad that I'm not standing outside on my own. Maybe it's not as fucking stupid as it feels.
"We should talk," I say. I don't know why it comes out sounding like a suggestion.
Peter checks his phone again, like he's done eight times already. Three times he's pulled up his texts to check them. Twice he's scrolled between the weather and his home screen. Three times to skip a song. "Please don't say that, you'll make me worry that you're going to get me in trouble, or perhaps even worse—that you've done something heinous."
"No, it's not that." I want to say, It's not that bad, but it is. I doubt there's a word in the dictionary for it—for what Carolyn does to me. I feel like I owe him an explanation, and I started to touch on it, but I can't summon the words. There's nowhere to start. It's not a story that begins when I was born and ends right now. And now it overlaps with Elaine. I was four when Adrian packed up ship, and I didn't have the wherewithal to beg him to take me too. There was no place reserved for me in his luggage. As if Adrian McKenna could give me back the world that I lost. "The most heinous thing I've ever done is ditch school and maybe, if you count it, illegally burning some CDs with Frostwire."
The parking lot is sparse, holding a few trucks in the spots closest to the hotel door. The asphalt is cold under my hands as I drape my legs on the curb stop.
"What's it about, then... unless you want me to guess," he says.
God, I wish it could be that easy. "I'll tell you something, and then we can move on. Okay?" The cord of his headphones rustles between us. A softer song with a keyboard in the background, but it's the sole sound I can pick out. Peter nods. "Here's a painted picture for you: I'm eleven years old. It's January—Elaine's birthday, and we're meant to go bowling. My father is supposed to come. I feel normal for exactly five seconds before my mother starts yelling at my dad for abandoning her. Not me. Her. We don't even have food yet, and definitely no bowling shoes. Elaine's wearing a white dress that glows in the black light, but I can tell she's disappointed. We're not the only family there, so creating a scene gets us kicked out.
"There's no apology. Nobody tries to fix it. Mom blames me for ruining the party. I told my dad he could be there. She grounds me for a week," I finish. "What a happy fucking family."
It takes me one full song to get to the end of the memory. Peter has taken his headphone out and the look on his face makes me wish I hadn't brought it up. He fixes his sleeve and moves a breath away from me. Pitying me, probably. That's worse than a slew of emotions—I would take fear over that. It's a confession letter tucked into a locket. It's a secret I shouldn't bear. A paper cut that stings all of the time. And a part of me that I couldn't share with Claire.
I guess by now I know Peter's pretty good at filling the gap. He searches for a way to divert the topic, to make the space feel a bit less empty; it doesn't matter what random fact he comes up with. "Did you know that," he starts, carefully, (warily), "that in space, microgravity makes you grow up to three percent taller"—he pauses—"okay, what's with that expression on your face?"
"What is your thing with height and space?" I say, smiling. "Three percent taller! Please tell me that you get to keep it, at least."
He shakes his head, chuckling to himself. "No. Gravity brings it back to normal after a while. And it's not a thing, I just had an interest for such a long time that the facts occupy a lot of surface area in my head."
"It's a thing." Setting my hands on the ground leaves stones embedded between my fingers, leaving red marks in their wake. I pick at them to dislodge the pebbles. It doesn't sting like I imagined it would.
I wonder how Elaine is doing. I would have taken her with me if I could. But I can hide behind practice. She doesn't have the same liberty.
"When we come back, I'm sure everyone will be asleep," I say, "especially Nicole. She seemed angry earlier."
"That's her natural state," he comments in reply. For two completely separate personalities, Nicole and Peter seem to read each other's minds a lot. I wouldn't be shocked if he was psychic, with the drawback that the ability is limited to one person. "The whole... romantic thing set her off. I guess she's never had the best taste in partners. Maybe that's what we all have in common."
"Screw you. I have great taste." I purse my lips and my cheeks flare. What am I doing? Defending Claire is not my problem anymore. "You have the worst taste in guys."
He sighs a bit, then admits, "Clearly. Maybe I should stop searching in this town. Twice now it has not served me well."
The stars look like a thousand spiderwebs layered on top of each other, weaving through the dark clouds wrapped in shades of white light. The trees are soldiers observing from afar, poised and ready for a fight. I wait for the branches to reach out and grapple my ankles, pulling me into the night. At least it would be swift. "Twice?" I can't help but ask.
Peter nods. "It was years ago, though. Not nearly as dramatic as it sounds. I go camping every year, and there are families all around my parents' cabin. I told this kid, who was probably around my age, that I liked him. But I said it like... how do I explain this?" He pauses and presses a hand to his temple. "Aime in French has multiple meanings. In the context I used it, I was basically saying I liked him romantically. But the response that I got was, 'Je t'aime bien,' or, 'I love you like a friend.'"
"Ouch," I say with a laugh.
I try to cover my yawn, though I don't feel tired. My eyes are a bit heavy, and I tug the earphone out. Laying out on the pavement, I tilt my chin towards the sky.
As I'm not an Astronomy Club person, I don't understand much about space. The light travels over eons, but in the blink of an eye, it reaches the end. What happens in the interval—I'm not sure. It makes it seem like I'm blocking it. Like a shadow leaves me on my own. Light is lazier after dark.
Peter falls onto the pavement on the other side, so our heads are pointing in opposite directions. We lie there without speaking for a while, as the gravel digs into my body and the waning starlight flickers like a flashlight on a low battery.
"Are you going to fall asleep?" he asks.
I laugh. "I'll have you know I'm not very good at losing."
☆ ☽ ☆
The next morning, I startle awake on the carpeted floor of the hotel. The girls and Lexa elected to take the beds, leaving the rest of us sprawled across the room. I grab the thin, silky sheets between my fingers. They flutter away from me and slide over my clothes. I slept in jeans, and while it wasn't the pinnacle of comfort, it also isn't the worst sleep I've had.
The banana-shaped position of my body has left my elbows and hands with pink imprints.
Peter wakes at the same time that I do. Neither of us can determine who fell asleep first and calling it a tie seemed to be the only fair result.
Later in the morning, Nicole and the others join the group. We wind up ordering breakfast from the restaurant menu sitting on the end table. Once finished, Jay, Lexa, and Dina decide to head home.
"Okay," Nicole starts as she tosses her sheets back onto the bed, "time to see who is the ultimate try-hard. Do you have your technically, definitely winter boots?"
Peter reaches over her to flatten his hands against the sheets, glaring at her for rustling them. Triangular light sheds from the gaps in the curtains. It casts across half of Nicole's chin, making her eyes glow two different shades of blue. "You can guarantee that I do," he says.
She grins and rushes down to the lobby, fetching the heels we purchased together. Peter follows her, disappearing into the back room. When he returns, he's wearing steel-toed boots that give him height to rivals Nicole's.
"You're going to want a ruler," Nicole quips at me, standing side-to-side with him. At first glance, both of them are equally matched. But Nicole stands on her tiptoes to make herself taller than him for a millisecond.
Millisecond. What time is it? I circle the front desk and peek at the monitor. The time flashes a steady few minutes after ten in the morning, meaning that I have two hundred and twenty-eight days left. Approximately seven months and fifteen days.
I lift an eyebrow at her. "Seriously?"
Aiming her finger guns at me, she says, "Yeah, in this scenario, a few extra inches count."
This continues for five minutes that seems like a flash of lightning. It fades away to a blur as I stand in the centre, smiling at Nicole when she asks me my opinion, and then once more when she realizes what time it is.
"It's eleven?" She speaks it incredulously, like nobody else is aware of it. Like I don't already know the time by heart. As if I'm meant to exclaim in surprise and pretend I've lost track of the factor that controls my life. "Wow, I have to go. See you, losers!"
On her way out, she flips the hotel sign over, so the side reading 'Open' faces the outside window. I can see the other side—the curly crimson font with a backdrop shadow and a C in closed shaped like the moon of the hotel's logo.
"I have a shift at work later," I say by way of exit. My voice sounds as closed off as the rest of me feels. As cold as ice, Claire's voice reminds me. Really, I don't need Claire haunting me right now. I don't have time for the ghost of an angry girlfriend.
"You know"—Peter takes his seat behind the desk and shuffles around in the cabinet—"I've been thinking."
"What a shock."
He tosses a file folder at me like a frisbee. "You need a portfolio for NSCC. Have you started on that yet?"
I stall. My body is curled towards the door, but my head whips back to look at him. Of course, he would remember that. I lift my thumb to gesture at the door, like I have a place to be. Why the hell would he forget?
"Haven't really gotten the time," I say. "And it doesn't matter, anyway. I looked into it, and NSCC sometimes accepts students for two years from now. So, I probably won't even get in, and I don't need my parents finding college rejection letters."
I lean over to scoop the file folder off the ground. The yellowish paper flaps back and forth in my hands.
"Then you can give it back," he says, "if you really don't need it."
My eyes flicker between the folder and the floor. I curl my fingers around the paper. "Too bad. I'm taking it. I need a folder for job stuff."
"Suit yourself," he replies.