CONTENTS OF MY VERY FIRST CARE PACKAGE FROM A BOY WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE WOOING ME
(I HOPE HE IS.)
1. Nocturne :: Mixtape
I Will Follow You into the Dark—Death Cab for Cutie
The Stars Blink Just for Us—Say Hi
Even the Darkness Has Arms—The Barr Brothers
Night Time—The xx
Night Swimming—Cumulus
Night Vision—Tennis
Out of the Dark—Nada Surf
Black Treacle—Arctic Monkeys
The Sound of Silence—Disturbed
2. Tape cassette player.
3. Three chocolate bars, all dark: Coconut. Maple and Bacon. Potato Chip.
Composing a thank-you text to Josh takes longer than researching the number of elementary-age kids who go hungry every weekend. Thirteen million in America alone, according to some experts. Thirteen million is way too many according to me. There’s got to be a better solution than sending fifty kids home with backpacks full of weekend meals, but my tech time is coming to a close. So after procrastinating on it all day, in my last two minutes, I quickly write Josh.
Everything feels fake—too chipper. (“Hey! Thanks for the care package!”) Too somber. (“Hey. Thanks for the care package.”) Too flirty (“Hey … Thanks for the care package …”) Which leads me to three epiphanies. First, punctuation marks are way more important than I ever knew or imagined. Second, I’m glad there’s not an app that divulges how many times a text gets rewritten before it’s sent. And third, I don’t want to work-zone Josh anymore.
Frustrated at myself, I check the time: six thirty. The kid I need to feed is about to come home from crew, hangry from her workout. Mom and Dad now text to say they missed their flight and will be back home closer to nine. Can you say de facto private chef? After I’ve fixed some chicken ravioli with pesto for Roz, I head to my bedroom, where I sit on my bed next to the pile of my newly tailored clothes.
“Still pathetic, but at least now you can tell you’ve got some curves” was Caresse’s final verdict.
As I’m texting my friends another round of thanks, so much easier to write than Josh’s, Roz finally deigns to inform me she’s got a team dinner tonight.
Excuse me? Now she tells me that she’s eating out?
Everyone else is moving on with their (normal) lives, my parents jet-setting on another last-second business trip, Roz hanging out with her team. Honestly, I should have asked Josh to go to Bok A Bok with me tonight. Everyone else made their plans without any regard to me. I need to make mine. I head outside to the patio, where the darkening evening awaits.
Me: Persephone Research Trip #1—Draconids
Me: In two weeks.
Me: Dress code: Warm.
Exactly five minutes after I message Josh, post-text reality sets in along with the cool night air, which smells and feels like fall. I draw my legs up on the garden chair as I stare at my phone. What the hell have I done?
Hell, no is the Lee & Li Way since disaster can happen anytime, anywhere. So just say hell, no to risk of any kind that might harm you, heart or limb.
Risk like: Josh is not into me. (Never mind the care package.)
Risk like: He may or may not even want to first date, let alone date-date. (Never mind the care package.)
Risk like: He could be a confirmed, irredeemable player. (See: care package.)
My hands cover my face as a cold wind skims my skin, making me shiver. Innocent goose bumps may pimple my arms, but they worry me: Are they an early warning sign of impending hives? Proof that moonburns are possible? Evidence of girl stupidity for thinking she can lead a perfectly normal life that includes a boy?
And I repeat, what the hell have I done?
The moment I leave the patio for my bedroom, my phone pings. I jerk, startled, and almost drop my phone on the concrete pavers.
Josh: “I am the leaf in the wind—watch how I soar.”
I push the kitchen door open and pause at the fridge to grab a glass of cold water and collect myself. I won’t—I can’t—Firefly flirt with Josh until I get answers. I need answers, concrete and undeniable, real and truthful.
Me: Is that a yes to the Draconids?
Josh: Depends.
Josh: Is that just a research trip?
Josh: Or is that you asking me out?
Me: What if I was?
Josh: “Zoë, we’re runnin’ …”
Wanting clarification about Friday night himself? Quoting Firefly? Curating the most awesome songs about the dark for me? Giving me three dark chocolate bars? Those are words and gifts that unlock my heart: I don’t just want to work with Josh. I want him.
But where can we possibly go with this?
No matter what my hell, no Lee & Li training tells me, I say: Hell, yes, yes, yes.
There is a time for everything. I believe that. “A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.” A time to stay safe inside and a time to dare the cosmic light show outside (with a cute guy in the complete dark). Tonight, I choose to laugh, dance, and flirt like any normal (healthy) girl. (Never mind that I’m casting anxious glances back at my slumbering house while shivering out on the curb, waiting for my clandestine ride with my clandestine guy to arrive: Hurry, hurry, hurry.)
I’ve waited for this night for what feels like forever, not chancing my skin for a single moment. Josh and I restricted ourselves to texting in short spurts throughout the day and talking every single night by speakerphone. The house behind me is dark, everyone tucked safe and sound in their bedrooms. Still, my parents and their keen sense of crisis means I should be rehearsing my excuse: We’re conducting research for a project that’s going to impact people with photosensitivity, not to mention catch the eye of Georgetown’s dean of admissions. Plus, I have a backup scarf to wrap around myself, not to mention a hat and mittens, water bottle, and chocolate for stargazing outside of the truck. See? My life can change, but it’s not ending. It will be even better than before.
My fists are freezing into half-moons, so I cup my hands in front of my mouth, breathing into them, while I crane my neck to scan the empty street. Maybe Josh isn’t coming. Maybe Aminta is wrong about tonight. Maybe I should head back inside, where it is safe as a tomb.
But then a pickup truck rounds the corner and stops next to me, despite my being dressed in black (coat) on black (hat) on black (extra-warm power leggings). The better to hide from security cameras with, my dear. So fast, I could be Ultra, speedier than UV rays, I’m inside the truck with Josh.
Texting may keep us connected in small, bantering snippets, but being with him in person—when I don’t have the luxury of editing and rewriting my comebacks, when he is so touchable, when he can see me up close—is nerve-racking.
I tell him, “Let’s go for hard burn!” just as he asks me, “Your parents know about this, right?”
Perhaps standing out on the curb was a dead giveaway, but nothing is derailing my plan tonight. I tell him, “It’s dark and it’s research.”
“Purely research?”
“Well, no.” Why isn’t he unbuckling his seat belt and kissing me?
Instead, Josh asks, “What time do you need to be back?”
I answer truthfully, “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Souper Bowl?”
“Already made both soups, thank you very much.”
“So not too early.” He angles a quick look at me before he focuses on the road. Wait, why isn’t he kissing me? Did he change his mind about the way he feels about me? Is this another Darren moment where he’s just pretending to be interested in me? Josh tells me, “Okay, River, we’re off.”
“Zoë.” My correction goes quiet—and my fretting silences—when he wraps his hand around mine. I imagine those hands on me, skimming my shoulders, smoothing down my bare back. I am, for once since my diagnosis, dressed to kill under my parka: a daringly low-cut (UPF!) T-shirt, care of Caresse, who pointed out, the dark is made for sexy.
; Josh fact-checks me. “Didn’t you shut down that jerk at school by threatening him with the FBI?”
“Maybe …”
“Maybe that’s not Zoë or River. Maybe it’s Persephone.”
“Oh. I like that.”
“She can’t help but get involved. Kind of like you.” He squeezes my hand. “So I’ve been thinking about what you said about me co-opting Caleb’s plans.”
“I didn’t say co-opt.”
“But that’s what I was doing.” Now he sounds nervous. “I’ve been thinking that I might want to study psychology. Maybe be a counselor.”
“I can see that,” I tell him, squeezing his hand back. “You’re a good listener and insightful. Yeah, I can totally picture that.”
“Me, too, especially if I study art therapy.”
“That is brilliant.”
“Yeah, you are. So, editorial consultant, any new brainstorms?”
“I’m so glad you asked.” I tell him about how Persephone could arrive on Earth on a shower of Draconids. “I mean, just imagine a superhero who’s able to surf the stars.”
“Or stardust.”
“Especially from the constellation of a dragon.”
“So that would answer why Persephone gets stranded on Earth.”
“Yeah, because it’s not like our planet sheds meteors for her to surf back home to Planet X,” I tell him triumphantly.
“That’s so cool,” he says with a grin before he lifts my hand to kiss it. Then he places both of his safely back on the steering wheel. “But I really liked your idea of the Necromanteion. Maybe there’s a way to work them together?”
“Yeah,” I say, but plotting is hard to do when my mind is fantasizing about his lips on mine.
“You warm enough?” Josh asks.
Actually, I’m sweating, but I don’t think it has much to do with the cranking heater or the seat warmer set on high. It has everything to do with me wrapped like a surprise present.
“Boiling!” I move the seat belt out of the way without unclipping it.
“I can pull over.”
“No need.” I lean forward to strip off my heavy winter parka, which admittedly is a struggle since contortionist I’m not.
“I’m pulling over.”
“Don’t worry.” I’m not sure who is more relieved when I toss my coat into the back and finally rest against my seat. “Now it’s perfect.”
“It really is.” Josh blinks because it’s probably the first time that he realizes that I do, in fact, have a chest under the protective covering of all my usual layers. He returns his gaze to the nearly empty highway before us as we leave the suburbs of Issaquah behind. Flanked on either side by dark woods, the night grows even darker with a low fog that shrouds the road ahead.
I ask, “Do you think we’ll see anything tonight?”
“The weather said there should be a small clearing around midnight.”
“What if there isn’t?”
“What if there is?” A huge semitruck lumbers ahead of us, chugging up the incline. Josh signals us into the fast lane. We fly into the night.
The night seems a thousand times darker atop Snoqualmie Pass, more substantial somehow. Two other cars have already staked out spots around the parking lot. When Josh stops right in the middle, ignoring the parking lines, I know what tonight’s about: to live my own life.
“I didn’t know this existed. So,” I tease him, but really I’m fact-finding, “do you bring all your girls here?”
“Just one,” he says. “You.”
My heart stops at those unexpected words, words that can pierce the scar tissue of a broken heart.
“I came here a lot after the car accident …” Josh says, and his voice trails off.
I fill in the blank. “It’s a good place to be alone.”
“And to look at the stars and think that maybe he’s up there somewhere.” Josh shrugs. “It was the first place I drove to after the accident. I knew if I didn’t, I might never drive again.” Josh keeps his eyes directly on the night ahead like he can will himself into the stars. His hands slide off the steering wheel as though he’s lost all control of the direction. “I just miss him,” he says, “and part of me worries that I’m going to do something that hurts you, too.”
“Hardly,” I say, and flex my biceps. “Do you have any idea how strong I am?”
“I do.”
As we gaze at each other, I hear my own words and hope he hears them, too.
“Hey, look,” he says, pointing to the clearing in the sky. “You brought the stars. Persephone would be happy.”
“She would be …” (In clothes.)
“I hear the ‘but,’ ” he says. “But …”
“But she’d be happier wearing real clothes.”
His fingers drum the steering wheel. “I just don’t feel good about changing any part of her.”
“I get it. Caleb drew her.” (But …)
“I literally heard the but.”
“Okay, fine. But she can’t fight vampires in that uniform. Not to be too graphic, but logistically, the way she’s drawn and everything, there’s going to be a lot of bounce going on. A. Lot. Of. Bounce.” I stop because Josh is frowning, and after years of watching Mom and Dad work with skittish clients who balk at their recommendations, I know I’m pushing him hard. So I shrug and back off. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“Don’t apologize,” Josh says quietly. “I’d rather hear the truth. So bounce. Okay, then what should she be wearing instead?”
“To fight vampires?” I turn to face him, tucking one leg under myself as I warm to this topic. “Layers.”
“Layers.”
“If you have to keep the bikini, then toss on some layers. And channel Zoë. Revolutionary badass.”
“But River Tam. She fought in a dress.”
“Yeah, and combat boots. But River’s in another category of badassery completely.”
“So she could fight vampires in a dress.”
“For sure.”
“So increase Persephone’s badassery—”
“And layer.”
Before I can elaborate, a meteor flashes across the break in the clouds, a streak of gold that slices the sky open. I’m surprised stardust doesn’t shower down on us. The meteor moves so fast, if I had blinked, I would have missed it. Even now, a split second later, still staring hard at the sky, I lose the tail. As one, Josh and I slam out of the truck. At first, I don’t notice the cold much, figuring I’ll grab my parka in a moment. We stand side by side in the dark with his arm around me. I’m officially freezing now, but I don’t want to risk missing the next meteor by getting my coat or my hat and scarf. I stare so hard at the sky that my eyes start to water, blurring the pinprick stars. I blink away the tears rapidly.
Josh calls, “There!”
Too late. In that blink of my eye, I’ve missed the fleeting meteor in another part of the sky that I hadn’t been watching. I sigh, disappointed.
“There’ll be more,” he promises. “NASA predicted a hundred an hour. Give or take a dozen.”
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself.
“Hang on a sec.” Josh leaves for the truck and returns with a familiar blanket, the one I had forgotten after the poke restaurant. He hands me my coat, then hops onto the hood of the truck, holding his hand down to me. I don’t even hesitate, shrugging first into my parka, then clambering to sit next to him. Josh maneuvers behind me so that he can enclose me against his chest, wrapping his legs around me. With the blanket snug around both of us, we are cocooned tight.
He murmurs, “Go ahead. Lean back.”
I tilt my head against my new favorite pillow, his shoulder, as I stare up at the sky. I swear he can hear the thudding of my heart. I know I can. My body should be approximately negative thirty degrees of cold. Instead, I am a furnace of warmth and wanting. And then, then, Mother Nature acts, unleashing a comet-dragon, gold-streaked and long-tailed. The meteor bolts across the sky.
?
??Did you see that?” I ask him, myself, the stars. Maybe it took this very moment and that very meteor to appreciate the darkness. The night isn’t a prison closing me in, but freedom. Here, outside in the dark without any fear of my body shutting down, I can breathe and shed protective layers and be me. “Did you see that thing?”
He leans down, his breath warm on my cheek. “It’d be hard to miss.”
“It was so beautiful.”
“It is.”
We turn toward each other, untangling only to tangle again, now with my legs wrapped around him. He stares so hard down into my eyes that I don’t think he means the meteors. Or even me, really. But this—this electricity, this comet of an emotion streaks from him to me, and back again.
“You want to kiss me,” I whisper to him, this elemental fact seeping all the way into my bones.
“You say that to all your guys.”
“Just you.”
No more questions, no more replies, I know he’s going to kiss me, the air is fraught with expectation. Anticipation. My lips tingle. He closes the gap between us, his hands tracing the edge of my low, low-cut shirt, his tongue gently following up the curve of my neck. Then, nothing, but his lips held a mere breath from mine. Not even a soft brush of his lips. Instead, he makes me wait, wait, wait.
I sigh, breathe, moan.
When I finally feel his lips hard upon me, I suddenly understand the workings of physics and reject its laws outright.
Because.
This kiss is pure action, reaction, reaction.
Reaction.
All I can do is trust that the Earth is still spinning, gravity still anchors us to the ground, meteors are still flashing across the sky. Eyes closed, pressing into this boy, all I know for sure are his kisses—soft, hard, slow, thorough—that dance across my lips. My skin has become his sky.
Minutes, hours, light-years later, a single snowflake grazes my cheek. Its sister lands on my forehead. Little whispers sent from Mother Nature: Welcome back to my world. Josh kisses the wetness away, melted snowflake tears: not yet, not yet, not yet. We lose the competition with Mother Nature, which is no contest anyway. There’s no way he can kiss all the snowflakes away when the snow falls harder. Stars, meteors, and moon disappear overhead, graying the night sky. Now, only now, do I feel the ice-cold air lash my cheeks and my neck. I shiver. Only then do I remember the time.