Finally, Josh says, “I was too drunk to drive home after a party last summer. So my girlfriend called Caleb. My parents would have flipped out since they’d given me an ultimatum. I’d partied through junior year, and this would have meant the end of my car. I was worried about my stupid car. What an asshole, huh?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can still hear the metal crushing in the driver’s side.”
I grimace. His eyes are hot when he catches my expression before dropping his gaze back down to his notebook covered in scribbles. I tell him, “If I can still hear my diagnosis, I can’t imagine a car accident.”
His words are barely discernible. “It’s my fault.”
It is, he said, not it was. As if the accident is happening real-time in his head. As if his guilt is a gathering storm. Our silence fills with the sharp angles of his grief, all the “what if’s” and “only if’s” that are crowding us out.
“You know, I almost killed my little sister once.” Then I tell him about the day Roz stepped on the nail, following me and Aminta and our ice cream, and I have to believe that he’s paying attention even if he’s not looking at me. Finally, I share what I’ve never told anyone, not even really remembering it until now. “That night, my dad came into my room and made sure I knew my job as the Big Sister is to protect Roz until death do us part. So it was my fault that she fell.”
“Your dad actually told you that?” Josh asks, indignant. His eyes finally raise to meet mine. “He blamed you?”
“Well, he didn’t say that it was my fault exactly, but—”
“Well, good! It wasn’t. You didn’t make her step on the nail.”
I want to take his hand in mine, but I don’t. Instead, I hold his gaze steadily. “You weren’t in control of that other driver.”
A waiter with a trimmed goatee chooses that precise, awkward silence when I wonder if I’ve said way, way, way too much to drop off a thick, gooey grilled cheese sandwich. How could I have compared Roz’s couple of stitches and cast-wrapped foot to his twin’s death? Correction, Ms. Kavoussi: I am an Entitled Unobservant Jerk.
Instead of grabbing his stuff and leaving me the way I thought he would, Josh slides the warm plate across the table. His tone is light when he says, “Public service, right?”
“No, personal gluttony.”
Josh busts out laughing, and I can’t help smirking back at him.
“Hey, so my letter,” I say apropos of nothing but nervous energy, and not the way I had rehearsed in my Subaru: all calm and cool and uncaffeinated. I place one of the wedges on the extra plate and nudge the other back to him. Even though he’s stopped laughing, the afterglow of his smile softens the guilty edge in his eyes. I’m relieved. “So I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what? That you made good points?” He rubs the side of his nose self-consciously and pushes his textbook to the edge of the table. “Math and science aren’t my strong suits, obviously. I didn’t think the second time around would be so hard, though.”
“You look like you’re studying your brains out now.”
“I better be. I’ve got four years of high school to make up in a year.”
“How come?”
He flushes. “I owe Caleb.”
That’s when I decide to share my research on light with Josh, after all. I pull out my Mac to airdrop the document to him. “Well, then this is your lucky day.”
“Because you’re here?”
See also: player.
“You say that to all the girls,” I chide him, yet I actually up the ante (see also: idiot) by telling him, “because it just so happens that I am a great researcher.”
“I could tell.”
“How?”
“Your article.”
“You actually read it?”
“I actually did.” After a moment, his phone pings. Josh immediately skims the research document, frowning in concentration. He finally looks at me, appraisingly, and asks, “So are you one of those girls who’s really good at math but pretends not to be?”
All thoughts of calm and cool go by the wayside of uncaffeinated. I narrow my eyes at him. “Do you have a problem with smart women?”
“No, smart and strong is a total turn-on. It’s why Persephone is a rocket scientist. Literally.”
“I must have missed that.”
“It’s going to be in the second issue.” Josh drops his eyes back to his screen before training his big sky blues on me again. “I really like the idea of her being bioluminescent. What would trigger it? I mean, what if she goes bright at the wrong time?”
“Because she can control it on her planet,” I theorize, then I clap my hands together. “But there’s sunlight here, and she’s not used to that. It’s like driving a new car for the first couple of times when you don’t know how much acceleration you have.”
“Or braking power.”
“Yeah, so think about her skin suddenly going all twinkly in the snow at the wrong time—”
“Like right before a battle. She betrays herself.”
“And the people she’s fighting with. They all die.”
We both look at each other, knowing we’ve struck a plotline of gold. Josh strums his fingers on his calculus book, while my mind charts its own constellation of possibilities: Ms. Kavoussi’s idea to write about a capstone experience, my crisis slaying of solar urticaria. Maybe I didn’t need to speak out for my condition. Maybe Persephone could.
Josh tilts his head to the side and studies me like he’s Caresse, designing a costume for me or Aminta, only he’s marking all my points, physical and personal.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
It makes me nervous, all this attention: the chai tea and grilled cheese, his stare, my corresponding one. Even when I lower my gaze and tuck my hair behind my ear, I can feel him searching me. Was my face getting red with a rash? I cup my cheeks. No, just an old-fashioned blush.
Josh finally takes a bite of his sandwich. I take a companionable bite of mine when he says, “So.”
“Yeah?” I ask as he sets down the crust on his plate.
“All the best stories begin with so.”
“So,” I say, pause, and smile at him.
He laughs, then says, “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“About what?”
“Whatever your doctor told you.”
So. I find myself telling him about the phototest, solar urticaria, the rarity of also possibly having PMLE, the symptoms, the treatments, the lack of a cure. It comes out all clinical and antiseptic like I’ve gone to medical school and I’m talking about someone else, someone I don’t know. That is, until Josh makes it about me: “That’s tough—the sun making you sick. It really sucks. Should you even be out now?”
“Well, yeah. I’m covered up.” I frame my hands around the hat and flutter my eyes. “See?”
“But what are you going to do if you can’t go outside anymore?”
My mouth opens, then closes, a fish trapped in a faulty aquarium. My brain is nothing but white space, devoid of words or ideas or answers. The fact is, I haven’t let myself consider being locked in the dark forever, which is weird because I’ve spent my entire life listening to my parents coach executives to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. How else can you protect your company unless you identify the very worst thing that can happen? How else do you build the best security system? The ultimate safety plan? I just hadn’t thought I would ever need to construct a worst-case contingency plan for myself at eighteen.
“I don’t know,” I finally confess, “but I think I miss trail running the most. I miss running in the woods. That’s a little treacherous in the dark.”
He nods. “I’m really sorry. That must be tough.” We’re both quiet for a long time until Josh says, “There are so many layers we didn’t put into Persephone.”
“So am I just research?” I ask. “I’m not going to read about me in an issue, am I?”
He doesn’t e
ven hesitate or lie. “Maybe. You muses inspire just by being.”
Muse? I’m his muse? Both of us flush, avert our gazes as if we’ve shared too much. Josh tilts his seat back, stares up at the funky light fixture above: a galaxy made of pages taken from technical manuals. Suddenly, the front legs of his chair crash onto the ground. People spin around to look at us, but he doesn’t notice them. All he notices appears to be me. His gaze is steady, unrelenting.
Did I have a stray nose hair? A bread crumb wedged between my front teeth? Were my cheeks blistering now? I gently wipe my face on my shoulder and, thankfully, don’t feel a single suggestion of soreness or bumps.
Josh says, “So.”
“Story time?”
“Ultraviolent Reyes.”
“Ultraviolet rays,” I correct him.
“Ultraviolent,” he intones like he’s an announcer at a Seahawks game. “Reyes!”
Everyone stares at us. Again. Not that he cares. Apparently, Josh does not do subtle. He says, “Could be the name of a superhero, right? Or Persephone’s best friend?”
“Or her archenemy.”
His eyes widen as he nods with increasing speed. “Yeah. Her enemy. Her superpower are her UV rays, right?”
“It doesn’t matter as long as she’s dressed in real clothes.”
Another loud bark of his laughter annoys the woman near the water station in the back of the coffee shop. I smile benignly.
“So.” Josh leans forward, hands clasped, Dad’s classic closing-the-deal position.
“This better be good.”
“Oh, it is. We should work together.”
Which was exactly what I had been thinking. No, what I was thinking: He is awfully cute when he gets all worked up. But what I was really thinking: I want to date him, not just work with him as if that ever stopped Mom and Dad.
Hang on.
How on earth did I promote someone I’ve known for all of a few hours—some of that when I was unconscious—to boyfriend potential? A guy who imagines a planet filled with scantily clad Persephones and (probably) equally clothing-challenged Ultraviolent Reyes. I can’t be associated with either comic or comic book creator.
His fingers play a nervous drumbeat on his notebook, open to a page of calculations mixed with doodles: the spaceship Serenity, a safari hat, the frozen icicles of Franklin Falls. Doodles like he had been possibly, maybe, hopefully thinking about me, too.
“What do you think?” he asks.
All of my yes-no-I-don’t-know answers get clogged in my throat when—seriously—Death Cab for Cutie starts playing “I’ll Follow You into the Dark” as if we’re on a movie set of a romantic comedy, but this can only end as a tragedy because what chance do I have of a boyfriend with my condition? Oh, never mind me, honey, while I explode into hives in front of you.
“It would never work,” I murmur.
“Why not?” he counters.
Wait—what? What did I say out loud? I take a hasty sip of my chai as I instant replay the last ten seconds. To buy myself even more time to think of a comeback, I spoon a dollop of cranberry sauce on the remains of my sandwich.
“Why wouldn’t we work together on this?” he persists. “We brainstorm great. You obviously can research. I know how to get it printed.”
A smear of bloodlike red is all that’s left of the mound of cranberry sauce. I feel nauseous and push the plate away from me.
“What?” Josh says. “I can feel an entire monologue going on in your head. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I breathe out, not realizing until that moment that I’d been holding my breath. Yeah, right, tell him. Not a chance of that when I don’t want to acknowledge my own (uncensored) thoughts: I want my old life back, all safe and sunshiney with boyfriend possibilities.
So I tell him, “I guess, maybe, if Persephone wore some clothes.”
He looks away from me and shakes his head. “Her uniform’s not changeable.”
“Everything is changeable.”
“Not this.”
In our silent impasse, it finally occurs to me that the V of my neckline tingles. Oh, no. No, no, no, not again. I duck my head, worst-case scenarios spinning in my mind. But I’m armored in UPF clothing, I’m not sitting in the sun, and even if there is a light bulb above my head, a hat shields me. Yet prickles spread up my neck, and I want to scratch my skin so badly. Instead, I stand and tell him, “I got to go.”
“Already?”
In my head, I answer, confidently, Text me later. In my head, I stride out to my car as he watches me, intrigued. In my head, I’m perfectly normal. As it turns out, my nerve endings have gone berserk. Unbalanced, I grasp the edge of the table, and Josh jumps up to steady me.
“Ultra,” he says. “I’ll drive you home.”
“You say that to all the girls. I’m fine.”
“It’s either me or call your parents.”
I narrow my eyes at him, but I’m not sure I can let go of the table or him. Who knew his negotiating skills were on par with Lee & Li? All I can do is nod. What the hell is going on with me? He slips one arm around my waist as he lifts my heavy messenger bag off the ground with enviable ease.
“My truck’s just a block away. Can you make it?” he asks, his breath warm on my cheek.
Speaking wastes energy. I nod. One step, then another, until we stop at a fiery red pickup truck. It’s too much effort to snark about his macho road machine when the step up is so high it could be a hurdle. Somehow, I hoist myself into the passenger seat without help. As soon as Josh is inside the cab, he glances at me, then gently rights the safari hat that’s slid off-kilter on my head. The sunroof is open, exposing us to the insistent sun through the clear glass.
“Sorry, the cover was busted when I got the truck.” Even after a cyclist passes us, Josh waits a beat, and then another before maneuvering into the street. “For the record, Ultra, you’re the first girl I’ve wanted in here.”
The real emergency this afternoon wasn’t my near faint at Ada’s, which I’ve since—thankfully—recovered from (more or less). The real emergency is unfolding right now on the dining room table, loaded down with large plastic mailers. No doubt, the rest of my sun-blocking wardrobe bought on extra-super-special-clearance has arrived. I can only imagine what these will look like. (Puce! Tan! Mustard!)
Let me pass out now.
My parents have a different plan, of course. As soon as the house alarm alerts that Josh and I have come home, they emerge from the kitchen, Dad clenching a (filched) Minecraft Creeper cookie, snagged from the batch I decorated last night for the bake sale. I’m too preoccupied by this imminent parental crisis to grill Dad on how much inventory he’s consumed.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks, eyes boring into every visible pore on my skin.
“Nothing,” I start to say, because it’s true (more or less). I feel eighty percent better now, but I know my pat answer will never satisfy my parents. To conserve energy, I sink onto the plush sofa in the living room and tell them, “What I mean is, I feel a lot better now. And I already talked to Dr. Anderson.” See? Crisis handled by yours truly, no parental intervention needed.
“About what?” Dad flicks off the light switch as if a single moment under the lights will kill me. Thirty minutes ago, it felt like the one above me at Ada’s just might. Even though I feel mostly better, I sag against the back of the couch and bask in the darkness, blessed darkness, that now floods the living room.
“You’re red.” Mom stands in front of me and asks, “Do we need to take you back to Children’s?”
“No!” I sigh, and straighten immediately. Of course my parents would choose this day to leave work at the exact same time. I make a note to tell Josh that pre-crisis cognition is the superpower Persephone ought to have—the ability to sniff out a crisis before it even happens.
“We were at Ada’s,” I tell my parents, “and I just had a … thing.”
“A thing? What kind of thing?” Mom asks, snatching her water glass
from the dining table and shoving it at me. “Drink.”
“Mom.”
Dad directs the question at Josh. “What kind of thing?”
Josh responds to my parents easily as if he’s known them his whole life, “Viola felt a little sick. So I drove her home while she called her doctor.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom says, sitting next to me.
“Then she started feeling a lot better,” Josh continues, “but her car’s still parked there. I can drive one of you back to pick it up?”
“That’d be great, later,” says Dad before dropping into the armchair across from me. “How are you feeling, kiddo?”
“Fine, now.” Except that Josh is standing by himself. So I scoot to make room for him and pat the empty spot on my other side.
“We should call Dr. Anderson,” Mom suggests, already pulling out her phone.
“Already done,” I repeat with, I admit, satisfaction that grows when my parents look stunned. “I read the information that Dr. Anderson gave us at the hospital”—(correction: finally read the information, after exiling the sheet to the crumble-covered bottom of my messenger bag)—“then I called him to fact-check, and he agreed that maybe driving could have triggered my … episode. So I’ll use all my birthday and Christmas money that I’ve saved up to tint the windows. He agreed that made sense, and he’d be happy to sign whatever medical form I need to turn in to the state. I’ll ask Auntie Ruth, who can do the work. Done.”
My parents exchange a look, half-impressed, but still mostly anxious. What more can I say to reassure them? Josh squeezes my hand. That unexpected touch so completely blindsides me, so completely distracts me, I literally have to catch my breath.
Despite my plan, Mom still embarks on her own fact-finding mission. “How much time did you spend outside?”
I sigh. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”