The Brightest Star in a Constellati... - Chapter 57: Chapter 57

☽ Peter ☽
The windshield wipers glide back and forth, parting the raindrops that flow onto the car. The sky is white like the sheet of a sailboat; like the colour of the assessment papers in my lap.
Evan parks the car in a field behind the psychology practice, where we're enclosed by dense trees and park benches collecting puddles on their surface.
I forfeit the papers to him. I've already read them myself while waiting for him to pick me up. "Here."
He flips through the damp pages, counting them aloud. There is thirteen pages worth of information that the psychologist explained in detail, including a list of helpful strategies and coping mechanisms.
"Fucking hell. Now I understand why this took four hours."
I recline in my seat. My sunglasses slip down my nose slightly. Evan was the one who suggested I put them on, even though it wasn't that bright out. But I've gotten used to it. It makes the world dimmer—less overwhelming.
"This is a good thing," I say as he hands me the results back. "Really."
Officially: Autism. Unofficially: Suzanna was right. I guess I'm not as neurotypical as I once thought.
I feel free, in actuality.
"You told Suzanna?" Evan asks, to which I nod.
She was the reason I got an appointment so quickly, and I texted her number as soon as I got the results. "She hasn't responded, but she's probably busy."
Evan presses a hand to Europa's heating system. Warm air blows against my cheeks.
I ask, "What's in that envelope, anyway?"
"This?" Evan reaches into his pocket and shows me the inside; it contains a stack of bills held together by an elastic band. "It's just an early birthday gift. I guess he feels bad about the college fund."
He puts it back into place and extends his hand to mine. I take it, and he squeezes my palm.
"Sorry that I made you wait for so long."
"Not like I had anything else to do today," he answers, his fingers flicking across my wrist. He moves closer to me, reaching over the clutch. "No dates to get to."
"What are you implying?" I say, turning away from the window.
He smiles when he meets my eyes. It's coy, and he pulls me down so that our lips are dangerously close. "That this should count as our first date."
"Really?" I gesture at the rain pelting the car windows. "You want this to be..."
The smile spreads across his face, and he rests his face against my chest. I hold the back of his neck.
"It fits," he says, and leans in to kiss me. Like the first time, it starts out slowly, and Evan quickly deepens the intensity. There's considerable space between us, and he keeps a hand against me to bring it closer.
My breathing increases as his tongue runs across my lips, breaking the kiss and resting his nose against mine. "Unless," he continues, "we aren't..."
"Dating?" I finish, and he pulls back to look at me.
"Yeah, that." He twists the bracelet around his wrist. "I know, I know—I should have brought it up before. This whole communication thing... I'm getting there."
"I get it, really. We're both getting there. I wouldn't mind if you needed time."
A sigh wrangles out of him, and he pulls me into the backseat of the car. As we lay side by side, he stares at the droplets of rain.
"Pierre," he says, soft and intoxicating, "I don't need time to decide that. And that's probably the only time I've ever said that to someone."
He doesn't need time—he's leaving soon.
"What are you thinking about?" Evan's hand takes hold of my shirt and pulls me towards him. My knee rests between his legs, and he blinks at me, seemingly in slow motion.
"You." I push my ankle against the backseat to accommodate both of our bodies.
He responds by asking to kiss me again, and pressing his lips eagerly against me. He searches for a place to hold me—and settling on the arch of my back. His breaths intensify, and it's electric between us.
Evan shivers as my palms touch his arms. He gasps, panting, when I back him against the side of the car. He wraps his legs around me, bringing me as close to him as possible. It's making my head spin with every breathless kiss.
"Do you... are you going to prom?"
"Yeah, most likely." I think on it for a moment before adding, "Nicole would die if I didn't come with her. She dragged me to middle school graduation, so I doubt I have much choice."
Evan says, "Middle school graduation? I didn't even know we had that."
"Ah, I have the photos on my phone." I reach for the console in the front seat, unlocking my phone. "It was on the waterfront. We went out on a boat for a few hours."
I locate the album of pictures and scroll to one of the few pictures taken of me and Nicole from that day. We had hidden away on the main deck aft, laying side-by-side on the seats. The ringlet curls of her long hair splayed out around us, and we were matching; her white blouse and my dress shirt.
"I didn't know about that," Evan says, and the pause is heavy. "You look cute."
"Shut up."
He licks his lips and chuckles, curling into me. "Come to prom with me," he whispers in my ear. The warmth of his breath fans my neck. I twirl a strand of his hair around my fingers, getting lost in the sensation of it. "I want us to go together. If I ended up regretting it, I would hate myself for being so fucking annoying."
"You already asked me over text."
"Forget about that. It was stupid." His cheeks flare and his eyelashes flutter as they close. "I can't believe I did that."
I touch my lips against the bridge of his nose. The rain pours onto the window behind us. Mist rises like glass flames.
Evan says to me, "Do you want to help me look at apartments? I need to decide."
My throat is stuck. If only I could stop myself from thinking about what happens after he leaves, but I've always known what he's planning.
"Yeah, just to see what they're like."
He stays against my side as he scrolls through the different listings. He reads out the description of one-bedroom apartments and compares the prices and pictures, taking my opinion like I have a say in the matter.
"When are you..." I start, and my voice is brittle, overpowered by the wind shaking the car. A blanket from the hotel sticks out from the backseat console, covering old CD cases and a metal water bottle left behind by Nicole. The dim reflection in the cap is flipped, as if looking into a spoon. "When are you planning to move?"
"At the end of June. I can start packing as soon as graduation is over, and—"
He falls silent and tilts his phone screen upward. The white light bounces off the windows.
"You can say it, you know. You're going to leave at the end of the year. I've always known that," I say. Even though my heart is thudding and my eyes stray to the floor when he looks at me.
A selfish part of me wants to beg him to stay, but I can't ask him to do that for me. I can't ask him to sacrifice what he's been looking forward to for all this time.
"It's happening in forty-seven days. That's not even two months. It's, like, practically six weeks away, and it's everything I've been waiting to do. Why do I always want to leave, but then when I get it, I'm so fucking afraid of actually doing it? I want freedom, but I'm afraid of being free. What the hell is wrong with me?" He groans and reaches for the water bottle, uncapping it.
"There's nothing wrong with you." I squeeze his shoulder. "You have to do this. I know that."
He swivels towards the driver's seat. "Do you want to just, um... do you want to just drive? For a while. I'm not really ready to go back yet."
I nod, climbing back into the passenger seat. He connects his phone to my stereo and turns on the music to drown out the world.
He takes me to a museum. It's a tiny building shaped like an isosceles triangle. The inside carries the faint scent of dust and salt water. Its only employee lets us wander around the exhibits. Evan starts out with the ancient stone tablets and books kept behind glass, and slides through the years.
We reach the corner of the room, decked out with old paintings. A few of them are preserved, statues through time, while the others have faded, rough edges and canvases bearing holes.
Evan's shoulders relax as he forces himself to breathe. "I used to try not to be forgotten, Peter. Like, when my parents were gone, I'd leave notes in the fogged-up bathroom mirror and my fingerprints on the countertop, thinking maybe it was better that way. It didn't matter. Everything I said and did got twisted until it wasn't me anymore. Maybe it's suffocating me. And perfection dies when it settles on being nothing."
I grasp his hand. "There are so many possibilities of us."
"I hate it," he says, tilting his chin to the ceiling. "I hate that nobody can truly know another person."
We continue on to the next exhibit; carvings of miniature canoes and tables formed from driftwood. "You should be a poet. Or a philosopher."
"Yeah, yeah." His eyes skim over the sparse gift shop and a job posting for this summer. "And you should be an archivist."
"That doesn't sound so bad."
☆ ☽ ☆
The Astronomy Club meetings have settled into a peaceful normalcy.
Lexa is already in the clubroom when I show up. They smile as I enter. Jay arrives soon after Dina does, and he collapses into the seat across from Lexa.
I turn to Jay and say, "I thought you were going to miss this week's meeting?"
Jay nods, kicking a nearby chair forward to rest his feet on the back. He balances on the chair's hind legs. "Yeah, I was thinking about it. My brother is back in town, though, trying to find a job at a law firm that's closer to home. I was planning on hanging out with him, but he's too busy working to skateboard with me."
"Or maybe he just knows you're better than him," Lexa says.
Smiling smugly, Jay replies, "I've always been better than him."
I shift in my seat. "That's Zach, right? Your older brother."
"That's him. He spent a few years in Korea, visiting my grandparents. He's all serious now. I never thought I'd see Zach like that."
Lexa nods in agreement. "He's different."
Soon enough, the remaining club members enter the room. Nicole has kept the secret of Evan and me to herself, and smiles at me as she approaches.
Evan hangs off the side of my chair, draping his arms around me. He places his chin against my head. To Nicole, he says, "What's up?"
Nicole accepts the evident challenge and says, "The sky."
"So original!" Evan's hands are against my back, and his touch is innocent as he travels across my shoulders. "I've never heard that joke before in my life. You are a genius, Miss Duford. I bow down to you."
She sticks her tongue out at him. "Thank you for calling me a genius. Nobody else notices, besides maybe Pierre, and he doesn't count because we're practically married."
"When did that happen?" Dina asks.
Evan pitches in by saying, "Why didn't I get an invitation? Totally not fair. I've never been to a wedding."
I roll my eyes as Nicole giggles. She reaches over to smack Evan with her spiral notebook. His hand flicks over my wrist before he pounces, wrestling her.
Jay folds his arms onto the tables. "You've never done a lot of things, McKenna."
Wrapping Nicole's hands behind her back, Evan replies, "Yeah, I would win at any party games. Make fun of me all you want, okay?"
Nicole kicks him, trying to get the words out. Evan tries to hold her back, but it's useless. She wriggles free of his grip and takes refuge behind Lexa.
"Are you giving her permission to make fun of you? Really?" I tease. "Are you sure you want to let that happen?"
Nicole pokes out from Lexa's back, pointing her finger at Evan. "If anyone is acting like they're going to get married, it's you and my husband. How dare you steal him from me."
Lexa shares a glance with Dina. "Good one," Dina offers softly. "Like we didn't already figure it out."
Crestfallen, Nicole tumbles onto the desks. She sulks over it as I slip into the chair next to her. She barrels over the tables to hug me, bouncing on her tiptoes when she hits the ground.
"I love you," she whispers, and I smile in return.
☆ ☽ ☆
When I get home, I turn on my laptop and log on to play Currently Untitled. I start from the beginning and find my way back to Neva's character, at the same scene where he turns towards the trees.
This town has always been lost, he says.
I have the option of telling him that it deserves to be. There are two others, with the first being, Do you really think so?
I click on it. I've tried this option before, and like every time before it, it makes Neva frown. The screen scrolls down to show the moss-coated rocks.
You're trying to save it, the text reads. You're trying to make this town into a home. For you. For me. For all of us.
Another set of options appears, and this continues for a while. Eventually, I've gotten through convincing Neva that the unnamed town is not lost. For as long as we fill the space, it is not empty.
The two characters scrawl their initials onto a rock at the base of the roots, which are growing neon red, like a living thing.
The rest of the interactions pass as expected. I build new houses. I keep going until the credits scroll over the orange background as an animation plays, showing the main characters driving past fallen branches and overgrown brush, heading into the sunset.