Page 38

Delilah flushed and stepped back, and I took the chance to claim the basket. When I offered her my free hand, she took it without comment. Thus began the most delightfully infuriating grocery shopping I had ever done.
“What are you going to make for me and my mom tonight?”
I grinned at her. “My signature pasta dish.”
“I hate pasta.”
Oh, Delilah. “Oookay. I’ll make my famous spicy garlic pork instead, then.”
“I hate pork,” she snapped.
“I can make it with chicken.”
“I hate chicken.”
I almost laughed out loud then. God, she was so feisty. “What do you not hate?”
“Food that isn’t cooked by my stalker.”
“Pasta it is.”
She scowled but didn’t say anything.
Despite Delilah’s insistence on being contrarian, I noticed after the first couple of aisles, we fell into an easy step with each other. Her hand was no longer curled up tight in mine, as if to ensure minimal skin contact. Instead, it hung nicely loose, like holding each other’s hands was the most natural thing in the world. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop the huge grin from taking over my face.
I paused at the cookie aisle. “One of my vices,” I said.
She shrugged and scanned the shelves. I pointed at a box of chocolate-flavored rabbit cookies.
“Ever tried these?” I asked.
A long-suffering sigh. “No.”
“You’re going to love them.” I popped a box in our basket.Ourbasket! “I started eating these because of Jade Rabbit.”
Delilah actually sneered at me, which made me love her even more. “What’s that, like some Asian fetish version of Jessica Rabbit?”
“What? No!” My eyebrows were up. “You’ve really never heard of Jade Rabbit?”
Another shrug.
“Jade Rabbit is—was—China’s moon rover. It was launched in…um, twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen or something, and it was supposed to explore the moon. They named it after Chang’e’s pet rabbit.”
Delilah stopped scowling. “I grew up listening to stories about Chang’e,” she said, and for the first time, her voice didn’t have any barbs.
“You’ll have to tell me about Chang’e sometime. Jade Rabbit landed successfully and everything seemed fine, but then it turns out it couldn’t go into its dormant state, which it needed to do to survive the super-cold lunar nights. Its machines started to break down, and China could no longer control its movements. Basically, Jade Rabbit was slowly freezing to death. But the worst and best part was that Jade Rabbit started tweeting about its oncoming demise,” I said.
“The rover tweeted?” Delilah arched her eyebrows.
“Well, some people in charge of Jade Rabbit’s social media accounts tweeted. But the tweets were amazing. I actually saved them, just ’cause I loved them so much. Hang on…” I took my phone out and located them. I cleared my throat. “‘Although I should’ve gone to bed this morning, my masters discovered something abnormal with my mechanical control system. My masters are staying up all night working for a solution. I heard their eyes are looking more like my red rabbit eyes. Nevertheless, I’m aware that I might not survive this lunar night.’”
Delilah looked the way I felt when I first read Jade Rabbit’s message, like she was being pulled between laughter and tears.
“Just like any other hero, I’ve only encountered a little problem while on my own adventure. Good night, planet Earth. Good night, humanity.” My voice trembled a little at the end, but I could be forgiven for that; no one could possibly read Jade Rabbit’s dying message the whole way through without getting a little wobbly.
Delilah looked at me like she was finding a whole new way of thinking of me, because none of the old ways worked, and she had to shift her whole perspective. Something jumped in my stomach, sending warmth shooting through my chest. She must’ve seen it, she must have felt it in my voice, in my story; the beauty ofus.
“Dee—”