He’s staring at me, watching me so intently that I shrug. “Is that stupid?”
“Not even close. Where do you go?”
“Franklin Falls.”
“I want to see them.”
“Yeah, for sure, this winter,” I promise. Hang on, I didn’t just ask Josh out, did I?
“Yeah?”
I swear, Josh’s voice is a shade husky, as if I did just that. Our eyes meet, mine startled, his sultry. His lower to my lips, mine follow to his. But this is Thor, and I am so far from Persephone, with my post-Darren frostbitten heart that kind of likes its shell of ice. I clear my throat with a professional: “So.” Which breaks the spell and only goes to show how miraculous it is that our species has survived.
By the time I look back at Josh, he’s studying my list again.
“Paris, I get,” Josh says. “But what are catacombs?”
“Underground cemeteries in Paris. They’ve got something like six million bodies under there. Skeletons. Technically, they’re not buried. More like stacked.”
“And you want to see them because … ?”
“Because a journalist needs to be brave enough to face anything, even six million skeletons. If I can’t do that, how would I ever be able to go to war-torn places and confront what’s going on without running from the story? And if I don’t report it, who will?” I stop, shocked with myself, because I have never breathed a word of my plan to anyone besides Aminta and Auntie Ruth.
“So these are training exercises.”
I nod.
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Well, yeah! But someone’s got to report the truth. So I need to be comfortable traveling anywhere, seeing anything, if I’m supposed to get a story and report what’s really happening around the world, no matter what. I can’t look away. I can’t even flinch. And that’s hard and scary to do because, well, all I’ve ever been to, really, is Disney until this last summer with Auntie Ruth. She took me to Africa—Ghana—where one of her friends was making a documentary on child trafficking. And Tanzania, too.”
“Didn’t that make you nervous?” asks Josh.
“Yeah, but I was with Auntie Ruth.” I’m suddenly aware of the itchiness of my arms, and I need to lighten the conversation. “And then there’s yak milk. Number Three.”
“Seriously?”
“Fermented yak milk, actually. The stuff of my people. Well, half my people. I figure, if I can learn to drink what the Mongolians drink, I’ll be able to subsist anywhere I travel.”
“I can see that I need to do a lot more traveling and toughening my stomach and a ton more research,” Josh says.
Research. If I had one superpower, it’s research. After all, that was my main job during my Lee & Li internships. Aside from sitting at the front desk, manning calls, I would hunt down facts that my parents and their associates needed: every single city with a reported case of the Zika virus. Number of people around the world forcibly removed from their homes in conflict zones. Areas with the highest incidence of health centers closing because of strife.
Before I even know what I’m saying, I offer, “I could help. Research.”
“Yeah?”
Yeah, what the heck am I thinking? My mouth has mounted a coup to replace my brain as the center of my nervous system. I am literally all jittery, prickly nerves at the way Josh is grinning, not a single hint of predatory player. His warm gaze is my undoing; the lowering of my eyes to his lips is his.
I lean closer to him and promise, “Yeah.”
He seals that promise with a kiss so soft, it makes me demand another. And another. My mouth opens. Even if the tiny speck of my (poor) survival instinct reminds me, ever so faintly, that Josh can seriously kiss because he’s gotten serious practice, when he deepens the kiss, I moan. He pulls away, and I’m about to protest until I finally open my eyes and see my hands on his shoulders and spot the reason my skin was prickling: I’m pebbled with hives. How the heck could this have happened? The sun didn’t even graze my skin.
“What?” he asks.
I have never been more happy to hear Roz bellow, “Viola!” My relief doesn’t diminish when she yells, “Mom wants to know if you’re wearing your hat.”
He rises easily with the empty mason jar in one hand and passes me my hat just in time before Roz barges in. Her mouth drops open when she sees the Y chromosomes in my room. Josh nods at her, then smiles at me. “I’ll text you tonight.”
Quickly, I plunk the hat back on my head. Roz’s eyes narrow, the little extortionist. I wonder what she’ll demand for keeping this a secret.
The hat is no protection, after all. I burn.
A LITTLE LIGHT READING
RESEARCH & RUMINATIONS FOR JOSH TAYLOR
The colors we see are actually sunlight reflecting off objects. (So it’s possible that Persephone has never seen the colors that we have on Earth.)
Colors are different wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. (Wouldn’t it be cool if Persephone could see colors unknown to humans?)
“Visible light” refers to the rainbow of colors we see. (You know: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.)
Ultraviolet (UV) rays are the ones that go beyond the violet rays that we humans can see. (Yes, there are colors that humans can’t detect!)
Some animals can see UV light. Take reindeer: Their ability to detect UV light enables them to spot the white polar bears hunting them. (So maybe Persephone has an epic battle in the snow.)
Some kids and teens can actually see UV light. (What?!)
UV light includes UVA rays (A is for Aging) and UVB rays (B is for Burning). (Persephone could learn about UVA rays when she suddenly ages in Earth’s atmosphere.)
When you suntan, freckle, or sunburn, it means you’ve spent too much time exposed to UV rays. (Hence: Superheroes need sunscreen, too.)
Some animals produce their own light. See: bioluminescence. (If Persephone and her people live on the farthest planet of our galaxy, then maybe they’ve evolved to create their own light?)
By ten that night, there is no trace of our Souper Bowl Sunday: not our friends, not our family, and certainly not any Joshes. I know it’s early, but I should know better than to hope that he’s going to text me tonight, just the way he said he would. Only a complete idiot would still do a quick hour (or two) of research for him, just the way I said I would. What’s pathetic, though, is how I keep glancing at my phone now when my credible source (Aminta) has already confirmed that I shouldn’t hold my breath for a response from Josh.
Aminta: Did I or did I not warn you about him?
Aminta: He changes girls the way Caresse changes outfits.
Aminta: Let’s talk about something really important: sleepover at my place after the bake sale?
She’s right, of course. Josh will probably go as abruptly dark as Darren had. For months, Darren the soccer guy multitexted me all day, every day. Then came the supermassive black hole of not one more peep. Ever.
A RECIPE FOR DISASTER
Serves: 1
Ingredients
1 teen boy with a well-ripened ego
1 rogue journalist with a malfunctioning BS detector
1 ex-girlfriend simmering on the back burner
Directions
Heat the summer day to a hot, humid, and sultry eighty-nine degrees. Head to Tiger Mountain for a fast run. Wear a skimpy tank top, branded with Liberty Prep.
Add the entire Liberty men’s soccer team, who are running, too. While these guys may hit the flat streets near school, few have trained on rocky, dirt-packed, uphill switchbacks in the heat. You have.
Race past each and every one of those huffing and puffing soccer players, including said teen boy with the (shall we say) healthy ego.
Swig your water bottle at the top of the mountain, as the soccer team (finally) makes it to the summit.
Ignore the now shirtless teen boy with the (shall we say) robust ego, who swaggers toward you, all “Wait, you go to Liberty, too?” Now wo
uld be a good time to retort that you’ve been in the same school with him since ninth grade. You don’t.
At this point, your BS detector should be on high. However: The siren call of six-pack abs is loud and strong. Perhaps you should remember the siren’s job is to lure sailors to their death. You do not listen.
Add his text to you that night. And even more texts and texts and texts. Whisk in your own.
Wait two full days before he responds. Stir back in his text, text, texting you, multiple times a day. Do not overmix. Yet you speed text, text, text him right back.
A few days later of intense texting, he reveals that he’s never been able to talk with a girl this way. You melt faster than ice on a scorcher of a day. Even faster, you type the fateful words: “Me, too.” Immediately, he sends an exploratory “hey, girl, what’re you up to now?” Do not say, “Nothing.” You say, “Nothing.” He invites you over. You drive to his house, hook up, and go farther than you ever have in the history of you, and drive back alone. There is no text asking if you made it home safe. No text saying he can’t wait to see you tomorrow. No text at all. You ignore the slight sense of hurt.
Wait three whole days for more Nothing.
Set BS detector to extremely high.
Just when you near the full boiling point of anxiety and rereading your texts to see if you had said something wrong, he pings you, not one little reference to his days of silence. Instead, he is funny and charming about a whole bunch of nothing. Before you know it, you are doing a whole bunch of something with him in the backseat of his car.
Wait two whole days before his texting resumes.
Continue cycle for the entire summer and into the school year.
Cook’s Note: All of his “hey, we should go running,” “hey, we should grab some dinner,” “hey, we should hang out” rarely turns to reality—aka a REAL date. Instead, those suggestions vaporize like mist in the desert whenever you try to nail down basic details, such as when and where. Do not overheat. But you do. Nothing stops you from hooking up with him in the rare times you see him.
Pulverize your own self-esteem.
To make the frosting on this sad, sad upside-down cake: Combine teen boy with superhuman ego with ex-girlfriend who’s been on simmer. Bring them to a roiling boil in front of you and the rest of the school in the middle of the hallway.
Without delay, lower temperature down to arctic cold. Listen. That is the sound of your heart cracking.
…
The next morning, there is still Nothing from Josh.
I’ll research for you. I groan the next morning in the living room. The embarrassing memory of those words is nothing compared to the memory of our kiss. I kissed another player. Why? Why? No, even worse, I spent hours of my own time researching for him.
Done obsessing about him, I shut off my phone and spot one lone cup from yesterday’s Souper Bowl Sunday, used and forgotten on the mantel. Snatching it, I march the cup into the kitchen, where my parents are putting away the dry platters. Dad mentions to Mom, “Hey, your sister emailed about Viola’s graduation again.”
Mom breathes out, irked as usual by this phantom aunt I’ve rarely seen, the only person who elicits that impatient, verging on hostile sigh. It’s an eye roll set to sound. I echo that annoyed sigh now, as I plunk the cup hard next to the sink. My parents startle at the same time, then Mom asks, “Where’s your hat?”
“Baseball caps are in the hat family,” I tell her, touching the brim.
“Wait! That’s mine,” Roz says as soon as she looks up from the book of Robert Frost poems that she was supposed to have read over the summer. She scowls, holds out her hand, and wriggles her fingers expectantly. “Did you go in my room?”
“Yeah, it was on your floor next to my Firefly vest,” I tell her.
“Give it back!”
“Princess, let her wear it now,” Dad says.
“But it’s special. The Princeton coach—”
“Fine.” I barely swipe the cap off my head before she grabs it out of my hand. Of course she does. Roz sets it down, not on her head but next to my dessert plate that, once upon a time, had housed the corner piece of brownie, reserved for me. Empty, of course. What’s mine is Roz’s, what’s hers is never mine, house rules, always has been, always will be.
I ask, more rhetorically than anything, “Where’s my brownie? She ate my brownie.”
“There’s more,” Mom says, gesturing to the leftovers, all of them center pieces. It may just be a brownie, but the injustice burns.
Dad leans against the sink and says casually, “So, Viola, honey, we were thinking.”
A trickle of dread skitters down my spine at those famous last words: “We were thinking.” Those words tip me off that they have a proposal, no veto allowed. Like a meerkat sensing danger, too, Roz jerks her head up from her book. Her eyebrows raise like twin caution flags as she meets my eyes.
Brownie wars forgotten, we are both remembering the infamous “we were thinking” of years past.
…
WE WERE THINKING: CHRISTMAS EDITION
Mom: We were thinking that since we represent several clean energy companies, we should support a more ecological Earth.
Dad: So we were thinking that we won’t chop down a Christmas tree this year.
Translation: Not chopping down a Christmas tree in the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest (sanctioned with a tree-cutting permit) meant rosemary plants that went bald indoors, then an olive tree that lost the war with the heater, followed by a beady-eyed, partridge-like bird on a pear tree that dropped all its leaves (scared to death, like the rest of us). Our garden outside has become the burial ground of Christmases past.
…
WE WERE THINKING: PARIAH EDITION
“We were thinking that since your skin reacted so quickly to the light again,” Dad continues as he hands Mom the newly scrubbed cup to dry.
Mom: When you weren’t wearing your hat yesterday. And had your blinds up.
Dad: At this early stage, it’s best if we play it safe with your condition.
Mom: So we were thinking that it would be wise for you to carry an umbrella at school tomorrow just in case.
Dad: Better safe than sorry, right?
…
Flushed as if she’s the one who’s hypersensitive to the sun, Roz slams her poetry book shut and huffs, “No way.”
“You’ll get used to carrying an umbrella. Everyone will after the first day. You might even start a trend,” Dad says as if he, Mr. Khaki Pants, somehow has become a street-fashion trend spotter.
Roz scoffs; I second that scoff.
“Doesn’t that seem a little extreme?” I ask, digging hard in my mental closet of random but useful scientific facts my parents can’t contest or debate. Victory! “I mean, don’t you think we should have a control case to test what my skin can tolerate?”
My parents may exchange an impressed look, but as it turns out, being impressed is cheap. Mom says, “You make a great point, honey, but you’ve already had a control case. Yesterday afternoon. In your bedroom when you took off your hat and opened the blinds. You broke out in hives.”
“But—” Barely in time, I cut off my protest: But I haven’t been wearing my big hat at school and I’ve been fine. Instead, I cast around for another mutually palatable solution or, heck, one that wasn’t so personally humiliating. “How about heavy-duty sunscreen? SPF 200?”
“SPF only goes up to 100,” corrects Mom.
“And only protects against UVB rays, not the UVA ones that you seem to be sensitive to,” says Dad.
If my parents can help a world food organization revive itself after a corruption scandal, I should have known they would have complete command over the ins and outs of my (still undiagnosed) condition better than I do. Even so, it rankles. My skin literally heats up. Clearly, I’ve developed a severe case of parental sensitivity, overexposure causing irritation, loss of temper, and in some cases, blood-red rage.
“We
have no idea what kind of light bulbs you have in school,” Dad says reasonably even as he aims an accusatory finger at the overhead lights. “They could be fluorescent.”
“We should email Dr. Luthra,” Mom says to Dad, who nods eagerly as if it’s perfectly acceptable to ask the head of Liberty Prep on Labor Day (a public holiday that entails no labor) to specify the type of light bulb installed at school.
“An email, perfect idea. Documentation is everything,” Dad agrees.
“Wait. Document what?” I ask.
“Document our first official ask of the school to prepare for your condition,” says Mom as if that’s logical.
From working summer afternoons at Lee & Li since I was twelve, coupled with osmosis from living with my parents my whole life, I know how crises start. Just one unthinking comment on anyone’s part—principal to teachers, teachers to my classmates—and boom! Rumor. As everyone learns in middle school, rumor is the speedskater of information, fast, efficient, and brutal. Then there is Roz, who doesn’t look like she is in much of a secret-keeping mood when she just ups and leaves—not my problem!—without putting her brownie plate in the sink.
“We don’t even know what my condition is yet,” I protest, automatically cleaning up after Roz. I sweep her crumbs onto the plate and rinse it in the sink.
“Which reminds me. Your phototest is on Friday afternoon,” Mom tells me.
“But that’s the bake sale.”
“You’re selling in the morning before school and at lunch, right?” Dad confirms. When I nod, he says, “Well, then, the club members can handle the afternoon.”
“Plus, it’s going to be sunny on Friday. The UV Index is supposed to be six. High risk, honey,” Mom says knowledgably like she’s become a meteorologist. “We don’t want to take any chances.”
There’s no hope of winning against Mom and Dad. So I place everyone’s breakfast plates in the dishwasher and bargain for whatever freedom I can get. “How about I just wear an even bigger hat at school? Table the umbrella for now.” Even if I cringe at that concession—was an even more gargantuan hat possible?—it’s way more preferable to looking like a sunny-day, umbrella-wielding Mary Poppins inside every class. “Maybe that’ll be enough.”