Wildalone (24 page)

His voice still reached me but I was no longer listening. Someone had come out of the building next door—a miniature compared to Gehry's indulgence, with slim windows chasing their identical arches down receding walls—and I recognized the figure instantly.

The dimensions had collided again. Caught at the epicenter, I wondered how to tell Ben that I wouldn't be returning to Forbes with him.

“HI, THEA.” HE SAID MY
name almost in a whisper, as if it held a secret. The way he always said it. And the way his brother never did. In fact, Rhys hardly said my name at all—except to warn me or apologize. “What brings you to Ivy Lane?”

“My first kosher meal. You?”

“This is my department.” His eyes glided along the arches. “Astronomy.”

I imagined him looking at the sky, at the cold darkness of its universe. “And what did the stars tell you today?”

“The stars have been silent for a long time.” He must have regretted the weakness instantly, because his voice became formal again—formality I couldn't stand. “What else have you been up to?”

“Keeping your brother entertained. Wasn't this my mandate?”

“You are much more than entertainment to Rhys.”

“Let's hope so. But you and I both know I can be wrong about what I mean to someone.”

He remained silent. It felt good to provoke him. To accuse him of what it was already too late for him to fix.

“Do you always look out for your brother like that? Stepping aside, so things will align for him. It's very altruistic of you.”

“He deserves to be happy, Thea. More than anyone else I know. Certainly more than me.”

“Yes, he seems to think so too.”

I expected that he might argue, try to justify himself or defend Rhys. But he only shook his head. “Come. I want to show you something.”

I followed him into the building, up a staircase and into a room that looked ordinary, gray—until he pushed the lever of a shutter and the sky poured in, released over us through the glass of a magnificent domed ceiling. Under it, negligible against the vastness it would soon carry to our eyes, waited a teal-blue telescope.

He typed something into the control panel, and the words [STAR object:___] popped on-screen. Next to the keyboard, an instruction sheet listed several codes.

“What do you want to see first, a planet or a star?”

“Neither.” I reached out and pressed three digits, 9-0-3: the moon.

As if woken by a spell, the telescope began to align itself until the lens chose an angle and froze in it. I lowered my face to the eyepiece—

Deep black. A scattered mosaic of distant stars. And within it—a silver orb. Strangely pale, desolate. Lost in the folds of a bottomless sky.

“It's a full moon, isn't it?”

He didn't answer, but the perfect circle was unmistakable. “Do you like the moon?”

“I always have.”

“Of course. You created it.” A smile brushed the corners of his lips. “Ever heard of Theia?”

Not exactly my name, but almost. Someone else had pronounced it that way, on a full-moon night like this. A night that had demanded its music.

“It's a planet. A mystery one. The chase after what's left of it still keeps NASA awake at night.”

He drew the sun on a sheet of paper. A smaller Earth next to it. And a circle around the sun—the Earth's orbit. Then he marked five dots: three
along the circle, one inside it, and another one outside, next to the Earth.

“These are the five Lagrange points in the sun-Earth system. They are regions in space where the pull between us and the sun creates a gravitational static, collecting floating wreckage from the cosmos much like water gathers at the bottom of a well. Anything caught inside that well will rotate with the Earth and the sun indefinitely, unless another pull of gravity interferes from outside. Here, in L4 or L5”—a small
x
appeared over two of the dots along the circle—“is where Theia is rumored to be floating still, after five billion years, in the form of leftover asteroids.”

I tried to picture my mystery namesake and not get lost in Jake—in his voice, whose stories I could listen to endlessly; in his fingers that held the drawing of gravitational wells and cosmic secrets. “And this planet created the moon?”

“So they say. Disturbed out of its equilibrium, Theia collided with Earth, then the debris from both coalesced into the moon. It's known as the Theia hypothesis, and the part about the origin of Theia began right here.”

“At Princeton?”

“Yes. Belbruno and Gott. Gott is my thesis adviser.”

“You are writing about all this?”

“I wish I were!” The laughter cleared his eyes to a softer, almost transparent blue. “It would have made a fantastic thesis:
Astronomy and the Greek Myths
.”

I thought he was making things up to provoke me, alluding to our chat by the Greek vases. “Jake, this isn't funny.”

“I'm not joking. Sort of eerie how everything is linked, right? Theia is the Greek Titan who gave birth to the moon goddess Selene—which is why your name is by far the best choice for the colliding planet. Every once in a while, though, an alternate name is thrown around: Orpheus.” He gave me a moment to absorb that last detail. “And it doesn't make sense, because Orpheus has no connection to the moon. None whatsoever.”

Maybe not to the moon, but he had a connection to me. So much, in fact,
that hearing the name no longer shocked me. Orpheus—and through him, Elza—had permeated my entire life at school. Why would they miss my few moments with Jake under the dome of stars?

“This reminds me what I wanted to show you.” He typed new digits into the panel, erasing the moon from it. The telescope went back into motion. Searched the sky. Stopped. “Constellation Lyra. The lyre of Orpheus. Not exactly the one from your vase, but still—”

“Jake, would you mind if we . . . can we look at something else?”

My request startled him but he didn't ask anything, just changed the digits again. “Okay, how about my favorite piece of the sky? Here . . . take a look.”

It was as if his eyes had left behind the stunning residue of their color: a cluster of stars imbued the night with a pale sapphire glow.

“That's the most luminous constellation in our hemisphere. And one of the closest to Earth.”

“How close is ‘close'?”

“Four hundred light-years.” He waited until I looked back at him. “Amazing, aren't they?”

“I never knew stars could be this color.”
Nor eyes. Your eyes, the blue universe of their silence.

“These are the Pleiades. They owe their color to a very fine interstellar dust through which they happen to be passing. It reflects blue light from all the younger stars.”

“How old are the Pleiades?”

“A hundred million years. About twice as much left to go.”

“And then what?”

“Then the gravity of the universe will take its toll, forcing the sisters to go their separate ways.”

“Sisters?” Something about the way he had said that word gave me chills.

“The Pleiades are seven sisters. Orion tried to woo them, but they fled from him until Zeus turned them into stars.” He looked through the telescope and adjusted the lens. “They should be easier to spot now. Do you see them, all seven?”

This time the shapes emerged distinctly in the sky. A four-cornered diamond and a small triangle next to it, encrypted into dots that even a child could have connected within seconds.

I asked him why one of the stars was less bright, the one at the very bottom.

“That's Merope, the youngest Pleiad. She barely shines because she is eternally shamed.”

“For what?”

“For falling in love with a mortal man.”

His voice had become so quiet that I lifted my face from the eyepiece. “How can falling in love be shameful?”

“Apparently it could be, to the Greeks.” He put the cap back on the lens. “Let's go, I'll take you to Forbes.”

I would have loved to be with him longer. To walk in the moonshade of trees and buildings, all the way across campus, back to my room. But this was Jake. There could be no “back to my room” with him.

While he was shutting down the telescope, I checked my phone and found a text from Rita:
Dev did get persuaded. The answer to your question is yes.

“Ready?” Jake was at the door, waiting to turn off the lights.

“Thanks for showing me all this. But don't worry about coming to Forbes. I've taken up enough of your time, and given that it's Friday night—”

“My time is yours whenever you need it.”

Mine? Since when?! This was the guy who had wanted a dorm room just so he wouldn't run into me at his own house. Now, all of a sudden, he was giving me astronomy tours and offering to walk back with me? Unless he had done it out of pity. Some vicarious guilt for what his brother—that same brother of his who so deserved happiness—was doing right now on the Street, behind my back.

“Good night, Jake.”

The staircase flew under my feet, the door of the building flung open for me, and the quiet Princeton night took me in, rushing my steps while I made up my mind—about Rita's text, about Jake's role in all of this, and
about what those mocking stars must have known all along was going to happen next.

“GOOD EVENING, MISS THEA. IS
Master Rhys expecting you?”

This had been a bad idea, I knew it the moment I saw the butler's sullen face. He didn't invite me in, didn't move an inch from the door. Only glanced at the bike I had borrowed from Rita—it waited by the wall, ready to take me back.

“I don't believe Rhys is expecting me, no. This was a . . . spur-of-the-moment visit. Would you mind telling him I'm here?”

He minded. It exuded from every pore of his being. But a voice echoed down the hallway:

“Tell them I'll be a minute, Ferry. I just need to find the damn—” Then he saw me and froze. “You?”

The old man stepped aside, making way for Rhys to come out and close the door.

“What are you doing here?”

Good question. Clearly, I was no longer even allowed in his house. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About everything you haven't told me.”

He tensed up—the instinct of an animal preparing for an ambush. “And what do you think that is?”

“You know very well.”

“I don't. And I also don't have much time. So whatever it is you came to talk about—say it.”

His voice was calm but he left no doubt about the icy distance in it. I felt humiliated. Lower than those precious pebbles under his feet.

“Thea, will you please tell me why you're here?”

“I can ask you the same thing.”

“Me? This is my house!”

“I thought you said you'd be gone.”

“Plans change.”

“Party plans?”

He might have answered, but a rumbling noise stormed up the driveway and we were drenched in the glare of two giant headlights. An open jeep full of guys, louder than both the engine and the blasting music.

One of them jumped out, only inches from me. “Nice! Who is she?”

Rhys was already standing between us. “Get back in the car, Evan.”

“Chill, man. I was just checking her out. She's coming, isn't she?”

Rhys pushed him back. “Get in the car and shut up!”

The others were laughing, shouting things I tried not to listen to.

“What's your problem?” It was Evan who pushed Rhys this time. “I thought the rule was we don't bring our own snacks to the picnic.”

“
I said shut up!”
Rhys's voice drowned the music, the engine, and any other sound still coming from the jeep. “Since when are
you
telling
me
what the rules are?”

He grabbed Evan and hurled him back with such rage that the guy hit the front tire and collapsed on the gravel. The others watched. Rhys grabbed him again, pulled him up, and shoved him in the front seat.

“You don't make the rules, you fucking asshole!”

Someone had stopped the music. The engine was now the only sound left.

“Get the hell out of my house!
Out!”

They didn't wait to hear it a second time. And neither did I. The moment that jeep drove off, I reached for the bike.

“Hey—” He turned me around. The bike fell to the ground, tires spinning. “Sorry about all this. Let's pretend it never happened.”

“Pretend? As in get amnesia?” I pulled myself out of his arms. “It doesn't work that way, Rhys.”

He lifted the bike and leaned it back against the wall. “I already said I'm sorry. What more do you expect me to do?”

“At this point—nothing.”

“Come on, I don't want to fight.” His voice was receding back to its disarming velvet. “Let's finish this inside. Then I'll drive you to Forbes.”

And drop me off and be free? All according to plan.

“I think the snack is leaving, Rhys. Have fun at your picnic.”

Then I got on the bike and left. He shouted something after me—it sounded like a question, but I had no more answers for him.

BEN OPENED THE DOOR AND
his face flushed with relief. “Finally! I've been calling you all evening. Did Ivy Lane swallow you whole?”

I skipped the explanations. “Is the invite to Boston still open?”

“Of course it is.”

“When are you driving there?”

“Tomorrow, with the others. Why, what's wrong?”

“Would you mind if you and I left tonight instead?”

“Tonight?” His eyes searched mine, cautiously. “I thought we were going to a party later.”

“We were. I just . . . I really need to get out of this place, Ben.”

It was obvious that my change of mind had nothing to do with him, but he didn't hesitate. “Come, I'll help you pack.”