The Chaos of Stars

“Oh, do they?”

“All the time.”

“So you hold hands with Scott a lot, then.”

“Had to quit. Sweaty palms.”

“Tyler?”

“Too bony. Brought up childhood nightmares of dancing skeletons.”

“Any other friends I don’t know who you regularly clasp digits with in this apparently very normal aspect of friendship?”

“No, not really.”

“So by ‘friends’ and ‘all the time,’ you mean ‘no one’ and ‘never.’”

“Did I mention that English isn’t my first language? Much like with Girl, sometimes the nuances elude me.”

“Good thing you write poetry then.”

He laughs, throwing back his head like the force of mirth is too much for his neck to handle. It is an avalanche of a laugh, a zephyr wind that sweeps me back with its warm surprise, and I realize too late I am smiling and laughing with him.

Then his eyes meet mine and the warm desert wind zips away, leaving a vacuum in its wake, and there is no air in the room, no air between us, and I cannot look away. He leans in closer and his gravity-enhanced eyes flick down to my lips then back up to my eyes, binding me pulling me terrifying me.

“Isadora?”

“Yes?” I answer, but something’s wrong with my throat and it comes out strange and breathy. Does my name always sound like music?

“Could you maybe not point the nail gun at my chest?”

And there’s that air that was missing before. I thank the idiot gods for my dark skin as my face burns and I whip the gun back to the work that needs to be done. This room can’t be finished soon enough.

“How do you do it?” I ask Tyler, not looking up from the neon manicure I’m giving her. She’s spending the night so we can get an early start on painting the plywood boards tomorrow. And because Tyler convinced me we both needed a girls’ night or she would lose her mind. I’m so tired I can barely see straight.

“How do I do what?”

“How do you love Scott?”

“Whoa, hate my boyfriend much?”

I look up, panicked that I’ve offended her, but she’s still smiling. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. Scott is awesome. I mean, how do you . . . how do you let yourself love something you know will end? Don’t you feel sick all the time? Terrified? What will you do when you lose him? Even if you don’t break up, you’ll die. It won’t matter in the end.”

She takes the nail-polish brush out of my hands, screwing it back onto the bottle. “Isadora, sweetheart, that is the saddest thing I have ever heard. I don’t say this lightly, because my mom is a therapist and she drives me nuts with the analysis, but have you considered therapy?”

I shake my head, avoiding her eyes. “I don’t mean to be depressing. I just . . . I used to think I was part of something that would last forever, you know? And it didn’t. And I don’t want anything less than forever, because it feels so empty. I don’t ever want to be used again.”

She leans back against the edge of the bed and puts her arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “I don’t know about forever. It’s not something that concerns me. And maybe Scott and I will get married and have fifty babies and be old and wrinkled together. Or maybe we’ll crash and burn and break up, and if it happens it’ll be devastating, but what we have now makes me happy. And I can live in that happy, and feel safe there, knowing that even if things change, I’ll always have had this. You know?”

I nod my head against her shoulder, but it’s a lie. I don’t know. I wish I did.

The sky is achingly blue, the air achingly sweet, my hand achingly aching. I finish drilling the last of the stars on my section of the huge sheets of thin plywood that will be the new walls and ceiling. My stars are so accurate you could navigate a boat by them. Assuming you had a boat that needed navigating in the middle of an exhibit in a museum.

The sound of the drill whining higher and lower as Ry works on the already-marked pieces drowns out almost everything, including the laughter from the tarp by the pool where Deena, Sirus, Tyler, and Scott are painting.

I crack my neck, raising my arms straight up to ease the pain in my back from spending so many hours leaning over. It’s been nice to work outside, at least, and I’m glad that Sirus and Deena have a big enclosed patio and pool instead of a yard.

Ry is both fast and accurate, and only a few minutes after I’m done, he’s already finished with his much larger section. We walk over to the others to help there. So many things to do, still. I keep a running list in my head, going over it constantly. I will not forget anything. Everything will be perfect.