Page 43 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH RETURN

Della lay in bed beside me.

She ran her hand up and down my shoulder, under the wide sleeve of my T-shirt, and across my chest. But not on my chest, not like there was anything she wanted that I could give her.

I did not deserve this, or her.

Della whispered again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t.”

It had been like this for hours. Della holding me, rubbing my back, bringing me water while I cried and slept and woke and cried again.

I shivered under my blankets and hers. She took my temperature.

She left once, briefly, and I thought she had come to her senses.

I thought she’d remembered how impossible I was.

She came back with Tylenol, a mug of tea for herself, and a study guide for her next exam.

Della had found me minutes after the explosion, alone on the basement floor.

She led me up the stairs to my room. She had been at the free-bagels community watch party with all our friends, and I told her I was surprised they’d been interested in the shuttle return.

“You don’t own space!” she snapped. Then she pushed me gently into bed and wiped my forehead with a cool washcloth.

Beside me now, her voice was fading. It was late. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. But if you do want to talk about it, wake me up.”

I tried not to think about why she had left me, or how I had handled myself in the three months without her. Like a person out of control.

Della pulled her knees up against the backs of my knees; she tucked my back into her chest. She kissed my shoulder. I felt my body waking into her. Then I saw the explosion, bright light falling through blue sky.

I was terrified of dying in space. I was ashamed to think, again, of myself. Twelve children that morning had lost a mother or father.

It was obvious to me now. I couldn’t be a parent on a shuttle to space. I couldn’t be a spouse.

Della fell asleep with the full weight of her arm across my chest, and I stared up at the green-blue glow-in-the-dark stars, at the nonsense patterns she’d once placed them in.

I thought of Brett’s constellations on the ceiling of my childhood, as perfectly charted as a map.

I thought about people in Texas and Arkansas, flashlights in hand, walking slowly through their fields: a search party for fallen astronauts.