Page 14

If there had been a pit in my stomach since our day at the aquarium, the entire peach had been there since my second day with Everett.

Hadley’s innocence was the only thing that fixed it, the way she spent her days with stuffed animals and library books and animated movies. I used to spend my days like that before I had to grow up.

I was in the kitchen making lunch for us. I slathered peanut butter on bread, washed green grapes, and stirred up some orange Kool-Aid. The mason jars started sweating the second we walked outside for our driveway picnic. Hadley had been really into picnics ever since we read a book about ants raiding a picnic. She took every opportunity to picnic, even when the sun was blistering, inviting the ants to arrive.

We sat in the middle of the driveway, sucking peanut butter off our teeth and washing it down with Kool-Aid. It was refreshing to spend time with someone so unbothered by the grit on the pavement, the heat that sent a waterfall of sweat down my calves.

The smallest part of me thought spending time with someone who saw the world in so much pink would give my perspective some of that whimsy, too.

Unfortunately, there was not much time left for her to color me pink. Blair would be splitting custody with Hadley’s dad starting in July, and I wouldn’t see Hadley for the rest of the summer. Blair said this would happen more now that Hadley’s dad was sober. I was glad he was back on his feet, at least. For Hadley’s sake.

I was also glad Haven and Holden were still in Mexico. If not, I didn’t know that I would have spent this much time with her this summer. We’d made a summer’s worth of memories in nearly two short weeks. We went to the park where I was glad to find my hidden heart untouched. We raided the candy store until we ate ourselves sick. One day at the beach, Hadley was so eager to find a whole sand dollar that I couldn’t resist planting a store-bought one for her in the sand.

I still pretended it was real when she showed me each night. I’d probably have to for the rest of my life.

When Hadley went to bed, I would stay up late and work on some poems. I’d been trying to write one about Piper Island each summer, but sometimes they turned into something else entirely. Lately, the pages were as confused as they were romantic. My heart fluttered when I wrote of the aquarium, then it shattered in the same stanza.

Reading was the same. The scandalous teen romance books I used to avoid in the library now sat in neat stacks on my dresser. They spoke of breathless days and heart-pounding nights. Of missed connections and outward forces that wove love together. It was exhilarating and horrifying at once to see me and Everett within them.

This new development even gave me the curiosity and courage to do something more unthinkable than holding Everett’s hand. One night, after a poem went sour and morphed into words about my dad, I texted him. It wasn’t sour—though it certainly could have been—but a simple text: This is Quinn, how have you been?

What else was there to say given the circumstances?

I hadn’t seen or talked to him since he left five years ago. I didn’t know if the number Mom had saved in my phone even still worked, but I guessed it was worth the try.

“Will you read the star book again?” Hadley asked when she finished her sandwich, jostling me out of my thoughts. She put her crust down and sipped her Kool-Aid, spilling some into an orange stain on her shorts, but she didn’t care about stuff like that.

While we were at the library last week, me getting yet another romance book, Hadley picked out a picture book about constellations. This began a new phase: an obsession with stars. After this, I would have read it to her nine times in four days.

“Go get it,” I mumbled between bites of her discarded sandwich crust.

Hadley ran into the house. She almost lost her balance on the front steps, then laughed at herself for it.

Watching Hadley be so unapologetically herself made me want to take lessons about the ways of the world from a six-year-old. Watching her was like opening up a fortune cookie and finding some way to shape its words into my life. My first fortune would be: Laugh at yourself. After that would come a million more:

Don’t worry about other people.

Find happiness in small things.

Don’t be so stupid.

It was simple. So simple, really, that it was all a six-year-old knew. I was just like her when I was six, because there was nothing else to be—no reason not to live by those simple rules. But with growing up came the reality that fortunes weren’t all pink. You found it harder to live life so carefree. You got stained by blackened fortunes that dictated the rest of your existence.

You didn’t have a dad to spend July and August with.

Your dad was sober—not from alcohol, but from you. Only you didn’t think fourteen-year-olds could be vices.

You said a stupid, mean thing to your friend at a jellyfish tank. You ruined a beautiful, blue moment when all he was doing was being nice.

Of course he was being nice. It was what he did. According to Haven during off-season phone calls, he couldn’t stop talking about you. He was excited to see you again this summer.

According to Haven, he like-liked you.

That thought presented itself as some fortune you’d wish you hadn’t cracked open, because that meant you had to open up another that said:

You like-liked your friend back.

That couldn’t happen. Too many fortunes before had made that clear.

Hadley ran across the yard with the book of constellations. I smiled and held my hand out for the book. She was out of breath, sitting next to me with her cheek all sweaty on my arm.

“What’s a constellation?” I pointed to the constellation on the cover, quizzing her from last night’s bedtime read and all the ones before.

“Star shapes in the sky!”

“That’s right. Good job!” I flipped to the first page.

At this point, I could read it with my eyes closed, but I kept them open to watch the glittery stars wink at us in the sun. Hadley traced each one with her finger.

With each passing page, I told the story of Orion, how his hunting ego got him trapped in the galaxy for eternity. The Big Dipper and Little Dipper and their constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, who lived in the stars as the mistresses of Zeus, cursed into bears.

Hadley’s favorite part was next: the zodiac constellations. I read through all twelve, stopping at the Gemini page to remind Hadley that Haven and Holden were Geminis who were real twins, just like the constellation. She always smiled at the coincidence.

I reread her favorite page, the one about Sagittarius’s life as a centaur named Chiron. He spent his life teaching archery. One day, he was accidentally shot by a poisonous arrow and chose to trade his immortality with Prometheus, who was doomed to a life of suffering for his own crimes. In return for his generosity, Zeus turned him into the stars we saw today, allowed to spend eternity without suffering.

Hadley looked up at me. “That’s my zodiac.”

“That is your zodiac.” I smiled and tapped my finger on her nose, right above her Kool-Aid mustache. “He is a lot like you. Smart and kind.”

“This is yours.” She paged back to Scorpio which she found only because she memorized the shape of the constellation. “You protected everyone from Orion’s meanness.”

“You’re welcome.” I laughed. Was being compared to a murderous scorpion a good thing?

“Thank you!” An idea spread across Hadley’s face. “We should draw us on the driveway!”

She ran in again for sidewalk chalk. I flipped back to Sagittarius just as she returned. We covered the driveway with shapes from the sky. They looked good—so good, in fact, that I hoped they looked down happy to see themselves reflected in our jagged driveway.

We ended up drawing every constellation in the book, then I challenged Hadley to a game of tag around the driveway sky. When we ran ourselves tired, we lay in the grass, squinting up at Scorpio and Sagittarius, invisible behind the day sky.

On our way back into the house for an afternoon nap, we picked some weeds from the front yard. But to us, weeds were not weeds, just misunderstood flowers perfect for a windowsill.

We were lying on a blanket outside under a band of stars.

It took some convincing, but we got Blair to agree to let us spend the night out here. She called our bluff, predicting we would sneak in by midnight thanks to the creepy crawlies and incessant insect songs. I heard the differences now, clear as the night sky, thanks to Everett.

I looked back at the kitchen window to see if Blair was checking on us again. The mason jar of weeds made a silhouette in the orange light, already slumped down to say goodnight.

We filled the tent with a couple of sheets and every stuffed animal Hadley owned, including her current favorite, the dolphin from the aquarium. But this was not goodnight.

We peeked our heads out of the tent to find the constellations from the book—for real this time. Even after memorizing the book, the only constellation I could find was the Big Dipper.

I’d been able to spot it for years. Ever since Dad and I had one of our firefly-fluffernutter nights and he pointed it out to me before it was too dark to see his finger against the darkening sky. He told me some story about how the Big Dipper was the dad and the Little Dipper was his favorite daughter. He said they were on a mission to scoop every star in the universe into their dippers as gifts to each other, one for each day they loved each other. I added that part whenever I relived the memory.

Obviously he’d made it up. I figured that one out all on my own.

I couldn’t miss the Big Dipper when it was visible. Once you finally saw a shape in the stars, your eyes never forgot where to look. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it shone even brighter for me under a clear night. Especially when I didn’t want to see it at all.

I dug my nails into my palm to stop a cry that threatened to explode out of nowhere. That story was not real. It was time to rewrite it for me and my baby cousin who was real and not so much a baby anymore. She used my arm as a pillow, but I didn’t mind the pinpricks of it falling asleep.

I tried to show Hadley the dippers, making up a new story about two cousins on a star-scooping mission. After a couple tries explaining left versus right, I gave up and suggested we play a new game.

“Let’s play One Sentence Story. We will take turns telling a story one sentence at a time. I’ll start: There once was a cat named Mr. Whiskers.”

Her head lifted off my arm and planted back down. Her hair tickled. “Mr. Whiskers is the king of space!”

I whispered so I didn’t wake the dwindling fireflies. “Mr. Whiskers has a best friend who is a mermaid named Aquamarine.”

“One day, Acca-marine ran away and it made Mr. Whiskers very sad.” Hadley made her voice sound sad.

I looked up and saw a triangulated cluster of stars that looked like a pool of fish, so I added, “Mr. Whiskers asks his fish friends for help.”

“They all go looking for him until they run into a snake. The snake’s name is Quinn!” Hadley giggled so loudly it certainly woke the fireflies.

“First I’m a scorpion, now I’m a snake?” I acted offended and tickled her side. “This snake is going to get you!”

She giggled again. Maybe I was good at this older cousin thing. I hoped it was moments like these she looked back on fondly to remember me by. When she was old like me, she could have her own nights with friends and call them her firefly-constellation nights. Thinking about them wouldn’t make her cry because I’d never leave her.

As if she was reading my mind, Hadley said softly, “I wish I could stay here all summer.”

My heart shattered all over again. I needed to stay strong for Hadley, ignore the parts of me that didn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to spend the summer with their dad. She didn’t know a different world. She was only six. She just loved her older cousin.

I toyed with my sadness of her leaving and my jealousy of her having a dad who fought for her. I mustered up the energy to say, “I know, but you’re going to have a great time at your daddy’s house. He loves you very much.”

“Yeah.” She sighed and got more comfortable on the grass. I couldn’t feel my arm since Hadley’s head had sent it all the way to dreamland.

“Before you know it, we’ll see each other again at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’ll tell each other more constellation stories.”

Hadley made a noise like she was too tired to form a full sentence. I shifted us both into the tent, surrounded us with stuffed animals, and threw the sheet over her.

“Goodnight, Hadley. I love you.”

But she was already asleep and I wouldn’t be far behind.

While we were lying under stars, lulled to sleep by our own book of constellations, I couldn’t help but hope that tomorrow, my horoscope would be good.

And that we’d make it the whole night out here without being overtaken by ants.