“Okay, World War Z zombie would be alarming, but iZombie? I’m down with that.” Which makes me laugh again, especially when he continues, “Plus, the perks of photosensitivity. You can only go out at night, dark, impossible to see anything, no makeup ever, not that you need to wear any, anyway. So, hey, how’s Sunday night?”
Wait. Did he mean, “hey, how’s Sunday night” as in “hey, editorial consultant, we could research Sunday night.” Or did he mean, “hey, I want to kiss you Sunday night?” I rub my hands together, because the cold of the basement is now seeping through my pajamas.
“So Caleb and I used to run the staircases on Queen Anne, and I know that you miss trail running. So I thought, maybe, if you were interested, we could hit some of the staircases and run them by moonlight,” he says, rushing through this invitation.
It doesn’t matter if this is pure research, not romance. I am swamped with a big rush of yes. “I would love that.”
“Awesome.”
Then we become our own dark sky reserve of silence.
Finally, Josh says, briskly, all business, “Okay, Ultra, I should let you sleep. I’ll text you the details.”
“Yeah,” I say.
A moment later, I’m back in the warm kitchen, glad to defrost, but the abrupt ending to our conversation keeps playing in my head.
“Your phone,” hisses Roz from the nook, where she’s been sitting.
“Oh, right,” I whisper as I drop it back into the basket. She leaves the kitchen at the same time as I do.
At her door, she sniffs. “You’re welcome for being your watchdog.”
On Sunday night, at the official moment the sun sets in Seattle at 6:22 p.m., I escape. Everybody else—notably, my parents—is tethered to the game, watching the Seahawks pummel the Buffalo Bills. (That said, the Buffalo Chicken Soup is the clear winner on this Souper Bowl Sunday. Sometimes, all you need to turn adequate into awesome is one secret ingredient: sriracha sauce.) Perfect timing, the living room erupts in cheers as the Seahawks unexpectedly intercept the ball again in the middle of the first quarter.
I dash out of the back door to meet Josh in the driveway, just as I planned. According to my calculations, we have a good ninety minutes of sunset to get to Queen Anne, run a couple of the secret staircases in the fading light, and return home before the game ends.
“You don’t need to tell your parents?” Josh asks, his hand on the handle but making no moves to open the door.
“Nah, they’re busy.” Which is technically true. Just as it’s technically true that Josh picked me up. And that I’m not sneaking out so much as I’m not interrupting my parents, who are otherwise occupied, fist-bumping each other and everyone else in their matching jerseys and Seahawks logo painted on both their cheeks. As for my cheeks, while I look like a skin-shedding zombie, at least my blisters are gone. Just in case, my face is shaded in my spacecraft hat, and every spot of my body is slathered in SPF 100 sunscreen.
“Hmm.” Josh looks unconvinced, casting a look over his shoulder like he wants to head inside and confess our plans.
I tell him the truth as we approach his truck, “I’m so unbelievably excited to run.”
“Not what most normal people say,” he tells me, grinning.
“I’m not most normal people.”
“Thankfully.”
As soon as we reach Queen Anne, a neighborhood perched on the highest hill in Seattle, I hurry out of his truck, bouncing in my trail-running sneakers. Nothing tastes better than freedom. Josh is still opening his carefully folded Map of the (Oft) Pedestrian Public Stairs of Queen Anne Hill when I take off.
He catches up, refolding the map hastily. “The first staircase is back that way.”
“We’re taking the scenic way around,” I say, laughing.
“Definitely not normal.”
“Thankfully.”
I luxuriate at the feel of my legs stretching long and fast on this road, Josh loping at my side. I quicken the pace; he keeps up easily. When we finally hit the first set of steep stairs near Kerry Park, I feel at home. This may not be the wooded forest, meeting Darren on a dirt trail, but here on these manmade concrete steps, I’m still heading uphill. My muscles protest after days and days of being mostly sedentary, yet it feels good and right and real to be here, now, with Josh. Winded at the top of the stairs, my hands go to my waist and I suck in air.
“I’m out of shape,” I gasp.
“I’m afraid to run with you in shape,” he says.
“Really?” Without warning, I trot down the staircase, smiling as I hear his laughter.
“So which international dark sky park would you visit if you didn’t have to worry about money or parents?” he asks, catching up.
“Oh, the one in South Korea. Totally,” I tell him because, why yes, I did do my research, not just for Persephone, but for the next potential bake-sale beneficiary. Preserving pockets of land for their dark skies is a cause Geeks for Good could support, feeling even more convinced of that as we head one block over to hit a second set of stairs, even steeper than the first and surrounded on both sides with evergreens. We need spaces that are pristine and beautiful. “It’s their firefly conservation area. So you’d get both stars and fireflies.”
“In the meantime, we could grab some Bok A Bok chicken after dark—”
I interrupt him, stunned, “You know Korean fried chicken?”
“I’ve been doing some research.”
“On food?”
“That I thought you’d like.”
He has? My gasp is camouflaged by my panting as we run up a shorter set of stairs yet another block over.
“So maybe we could drive up to North Bend sometime and eat the Bok A Bok in the total dark,” he tells me, too casually to be casual. The boy has given this some distinctly non-work-zone thought. “It’s not exactly a dark sky park, but …”
“It’s a great Plan B. I love it,” I tell him truthfully. Work-zone, I tell myself. Work. Zone.
“So help me with a Plan B for another research expedition for Persephone. I thought Angkor Wat would be a great scene, but that’s a little too Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say, following him down the street as we draw toward a thick copse of trees in a cul-de-sac. In the middle of this urban greenbelt, a concrete staircase curves up the hill.
“I was worried about that.”
“But there are ruins in Laos that predate Angkor Wat.”
“Yeah? How do you know that?”
“Auntie Ruth.” Just saying her name makes me feel guilty because it’s been days since I’ve spoken to her, not since I left her auto repair shop without stopping inside. It’s so stupid, but I can’t help feeling angry at her for abandoning our travel plans so easily, like she was canceling a haircut, not cutting off one of my dreams.
Josh isn’t even breathless, halfway up these stairs. “Does she travel a lot?”
“She’s been ticking off the bucket list she and Uncle Amos made before he died. She takes each of us, her nieces and nephews, on a trip with her when we turn seventeen.”
“That’s so cool.” Josh is quiet for a moment so all we hear are our footfalls on the concrete steps. “All the places I had Persephone visiting were ones Caleb wanted to see.”
“So he’s still part of the story.”
“Yeah. You know what’s weird, though?”
“What?”
He sidles an uncertain look at me, one that I can read clearly in the moonlight. The planes of his face are sharpened in the shadows like he’s aged half a decade, chiseled whatever was left of childhood from his cheeks and jaw. “Caleb and I would have the same ideas at the same time, but us? You and me? We build on our ideas together.”
Us. We. Together. Even if he’s talking in purely professional terms, my smile grows. “I love that.”
“Me, too.”
“Hey, where are we?” I ask. “I mean, the map.” (I mean, us, we, together.)
“I’ll che
ck.” At the top landing, Josh unfolds his map, while I collect my breath. What he says next makes me lose my breath again. He taps the map as proof, while his voice drops an octave. “The Comstock Grande Dame. It says this is great for kissing.”
Grateful for the darkening sky because I blush, I’m not sure what propels me to say, “I wonder what empirical evidence they have for that?”
Josh steps closer to me, then closer. “Who was telling me that she believed in primary source research?”
“I’m a great researcher.” I match him step for step, drawing so near our bodies almost touch.
And then they do. With his arms around me, pressing me tight to him, he asks, “Yeah?”
“But it depends,” I whisper to him, lifting onto my toes while he bends down to me, “on the research subject.”
“Like this?” He kisses me hard and deep, a ferocious hunger, like this is what’s been keeping him up at night, what’s been haunting him by day.
Or maybe that’s me because my breath goes short, fast like I’ve been running all this time in one direction: to him.
Josh whispers, “Or this?” His kiss softens, gentles, as he cups my cheeks tenderly.
“Or this?” I trace his lower lip, tasting him, deepening the kiss, slow and sure. I lean into him, tilt my hips against his.
I lose sight of time and place and planetary rotation until an alarm goes off. Literally.
I groan. “What’s that?”
“Time for you to pumpkin,” Josh says, silencing his cell phone.
“Seriously? You set an alarm?”
Mr. Responsible shrugs. “Yeah.”
When we head back to his truck, the night is completely dark. He takes my hand, his fingers moving gently on mine like he wants to keep our contact. How weird is it that holding hands is even more intimate than a kiss? Empirical evidence of one girl, me, shows that I don’t want to let go when we get into his truck.
This is doable, I tell myself, buckling my seat belt. This, us, the dark. We can go on night runs, play night golf, take up night skiing in the winter. In the summer, we can dive off the dock into the lake at midnight. And then there are movie theaters, the perfect (safe) place to make out even during the light of day. The street where we’re parked may be deserted, but Josh checks, then triple-checks his blind spots. His hand squeezes mine, once, before he places both of his on the steering wheel.
Back at home, I kiss Josh in the driveway, breezily tell him that I’m an independent woman, I don’t need him to walk me up to the door. In the darkness, I wave to him, hearing the raucous cheers from inside the house.
I let myself in. No one has noticed that I’ve been gone.
This will be doable. It has to be.
“I really and truly didn’t believe that anyone our age could look like a soccer mom,” Caresse says, shuddering as soon as she sees me two days later.
Aminta says, “I wouldn’t show up to school either if I had to wear that.”
“Tragic,” agrees Caresse.
“Hence, my SOS,” I tell them, relieved that my friends have arrived at my home. Here’s the thing: If I don’t prove to my parents—and to myself—that I can make it out in the world, then I will never be allowed to go to college, let alone outside. So I figure, why not dress for my future success? My chances of being a foreign correspondent might be higher if I can find the right clothes. I’m betting on more layers since that seemed to have kept me safe from the streetlights on my night run with Josh. So multilayers it is, ones that fend off the sun without making me look like I’m on a perpetual safari or a soccer mom in resort wear.
Just in case I’m burning without realizing it in a millisecond of natural light, I take a cautious step deeper into my home, then another two.
“Project Wynnter to the rescue,” announces Aminta.
I choke up. They’ve named the mission after my middle name.
“I know, pretty great brand name, huh?” she says, beaming. “How long have you told us that we needed to design our own line of clothes? Now we are, and for a good cause.”
“The world needs you guys,” I tell them. “I need you.”
“That’s stating the obvious,” says Caresse, plucking distastefully at my forest-green button-down shirt. “Who designed this stuff?” She holds out her hand to Aminta, then snaps a one-word order, as if she’s already a practicing neurosurgeon with a clothing line on the side. “Keys.”
“Are your parents here?” Aminta asks, glancing swiftly toward the kitchen while Caresse sashays back to the car.
I shrug. “No, they’re in San Jose. Client meeting.”
“Good, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” She bends down to pick up a box that I hadn’t noticed outside the front door and maneuvers inside with it. “Well, good thing they aren’t home for this special delivery for UltraViola Li.”
“Huh,” I say, taking the box from Aminta. It has mysterious heft, but I don’t even care what’s inside because this box says that Josh is thinking of me.
They follow me to the living room, where the shades have been permanently lowered. Aminta asks, “Does Josh from Planet X know he’s been banished from your solar system?”
“More importantly,” says Caresse, sidetracking to the kitchen to set down the sewing machine, “does he know you’re not subservient? Does he know you don’t eat with chopsticks? Does he know—”
“Caresse!” I say, laughing. “He’s from Seattle.”
“So? The ignorance of some people could astonish you, and you definitely do not want to be with a creeper who has a weird mixed race fetish. They exist, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” I assure them, even as Aminta sings out, “For sure!”
“Anyway, why would he be banned?” Caresse helps herself to the scissors stuck in the butcher’s block to do surgery on the box.
I tell her, “My parents think he’s a bad influence.”
“Yeah, wait until they see how we’re going to sex up your clothes. Then we’ll talk about bad influence.” Caresse smirks, tapping on the sewing machine, before slicing through the last side of the box.
“Hang on,” says Aminta. “You aren’t expecting anything naughty in there, are you?”
Naughty? I blush. “Uhhh …”
“Definitely, hurry then.” Aminta waves both hands.
Once I’ve opened the box flaps, we all lean in, and Aminta sighs, a rhapsody of delight: “A mixtape!” She grabs the cassette tape and reads the label out loud before I can make out the handwritten word myself: “Nocturne.”
Caresse looks around the kitchen. “Do you even have a tape player?”
I reach into the box and pull out the device. “You mean this?”
“I do like his style,” Caresse says as she draws out three chocolate bars. “Dark chocolate. I really like his style.”
“You know, most guys wouldn’t think to do this. Can we time-share him?” Aminta asks.
Caresse wriggles her fingers impatiently for the tape player. “Gimme.”
“Seriously, I could see him every other weekend, kind of like my schedule with my dad,” Aminta says.
They’re both so pushy that I laugh, feeling more relaxed than I have felt in the days since my parents laid down the Tech-Free Decree along with gerrymandering a nice, big Josh No Fly Zone. Some boundaries, I decide, are meant to be redrawn.
Caresse presses a button. The tape player opens, and she feeds the cassette into its mouth. “Let’s see whether this boy knows you at all.”
“But does it matter?” I bite my lip. “What guy would date me if I have to stay in the dark? Forever?”
“Okay, that’s like saying, what woman would date my dad, who’s in remission from cancer?” says Aminta.
True, that wouldn’t deter my mom from setting him up with Auntie Ruth or any of her single friends, as long as he was kind, stable, and drank gallons of kale juice.
“Yeah, and trust me.” Caresse taps the cover of the tape recorder. “No one makes a mixt
ape unless he’s in serious wooing mode.”
“Wooing,” I say, and look at Aminta, both of us cracking up. “We’re just working together.”
“Yeah, right. The last time you got together, he held your hand,” Aminta divulges.
“In public?” Caresse asks, eyes narrowing.
I nod.
“That’s serious woo-age,” Caresse says stubbornly. “Major significant woo-age.”
“When was your last girlfriend?” I ask her.
Caresse answers, “A year ago.”
Aminta laughs. “And we should listen to you because …”
“Wisdom over experience,” Caresse says. “Okay, do the honors.”
I press the PLAY button. A familiar chord strums, and I could be sitting with Josh in Ada’s Technical Books as the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie croons the first words.
Aminta shuts off the music. “ ‘Love of mine?’ ” Her eyebrows arch up.
“Wooing,” pronounces Caresse. She presses REWIND. “Let’s just listen to that again, shall we? Okay, Project Runway time. You cannot possibly look like a homeschool kid when you come back.”
“And you better be coming back because we’ve been wearing these things and giving ourselves major hat head”—Aminta lifts off her hat to show her creased hair—“just to normalize hats for you.”
“You have?”
“Yeah!” they both shout.
“So, seriously, go get all your clothes,” says Caresse, “and I’m using that term loosely.”
When I return, Caresse has taken off her hoody. I point to her black T-shirt flecked with silver thread. “That’s what I want to wear.”
“Oh, this?” She looks down at herself. “The Geminids.”
“What are those?”
“The best meteor shower in this galaxy.” I must look blank because Caresse drops one of my UPF-shirts distastefully on the breakfast nook table. “You’ve never seen them? Or the Perseids in the summer? Whoa. The ones in a couple of weeks, the Draconids, are supposed to be awesome this year.”
Halfway through reconfiguring my wardrobe, we break into the chocolate to fortify ourselves against ugly. I don’t remember a single bite. As it turns out, the way to this girl’s heart is through her ears, because I melt, ever so slightly, with every delicious note of the nine songs Josh selected for me.