—
I stayed up too late reading, and then later still thinking about what I’d say to Daisy the next morning, my thoughts careening between furious and scared, circling around my bedroom like a vulture. I woke up the next morning feeling wretched—not just tired, but terrified. I now saw myself as Daisy saw me—clueless, helpless, useless. Less.
As I drove to school, my head pounding from sleeplessness, I kept thinking about how I’d been scared of monsters as a kid. When I was little, I knew monsters weren’t, like, real. But I also knew I could be hurt by things that weren’t real. I knew that made-up things mattered, and could kill you. I felt like that again after reading Daisy’s stories, like something invisible was coming for me.
I expected the sight of Daisy to piss me off, but when I actually saw her, sitting on the steps outside school, bundled up against the cold, a gloved hand waving at me, I felt like—well, like I deserved it, really. Like Ayala was the thing Daisy had to do to live with me.
She stood up as I approached. “You okay, Holmesy?” Daisy asked. I nodded. I couldn’t really say anything. My throat felt tight, like I might start to cry.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Just tired,” I said.
“Holmesy, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you just got off work from your job playing a ghoul at a haunted house, and now you’re in a parking lot trying to score some meth.”
“I’ll be sure not to take that the wrong way.”
She put her arm around me. “I mean, you’re still gorgeous, of course. You can’t ungorgeous yourself, Holmesy, no matter how hard you try. I’m just saying you need some sleep. Do some self-care, you know?” I nodded and shrugged off her embrace. “We haven’t hung out in forever just the two of us,” she said. “Maybe I can come over later?”
I wanted to tell her no, but I was thinking about how Ayala always said no to everything, and I didn’t want to be like my fictional self. “Sure.”
“Mychal and I are having a homework night, but I should have about a hundred and forty-two minutes after school if we go straight to your house, which just happens to be the running time of Attack of the Clones.”
“A homework night?” I asked.
Mychal appeared from behind me and said, “We’re reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream to each other for English.”
“. . . seriously?”
“What?” Daisy said. “It’s not my fault we’re adorable. But first, Yoda lightsaber battling at your house after school. Cool?”
“Cool.”
“It’s a date,” she said.
—
Six hours later, we lay on the floor next to each other, bodies propped up with couch cushions, and watched Anakin Skywalker and Padmé fall for each other in extremely slow motion. Daisy considered Attack of the Clones to be the most underrated Star Wars film. I thought it was kinda crap, but it was fun to watch Daisy watch it. Her mouth literally moved with each line of dialogue.
I was looking at my phone mostly, scrolling through articles about Pickett’s disappearance, looking for anything that might connect to joggers or a jogger’s mouth. I’d meant it when I told Noah I’d keep looking—but the clues we had just didn’t seem much like clues.
“I want to like Jar Jar, because hating Jar Jar is so cliché, but he was the worst,” Daisy said. “I actually killed him years ago in my fic. It felt amazing.” My stomach turned, but I concentrated on my phone. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Just reading about the Pickett investigation, seeing if there’s anything new. Noah’s really screwed up about it, and I . . . I don’t know. I just want to help him somehow.”
“Holmesy, we got the reward. It’s over. Your problem is you don’t know when you’ve won.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I mean, Davis gave us the reward so that we would drop it. So, drop it.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. I knew she was right, but she didn’t have to be such an asshole about it.
I thought the conversation was over, but a few seconds later she paused the movie and continued talking. “It’s just, like, this isn’t going to be some story where the poor, penniless girl gets rich and then realizes that truth matters more than money and establishes her heroism by going back to being the poor, penniless girl, okay? Everyone’s life is better with Pickett disappeared. Just let it be.”
“No one’s taking away your money,” I said quietly.
“I love you, Holmesy, but be smart.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
“And we break hearts, but we don’t break promises,” she said.
“You say that’s your ‘motto,’ but you spend ninety-nine percent of your time with Mychal now.”
“Except right now I’m hanging out with you and Jar Jar Binks,” she said.
We went back to watching the movie. As it ended, she squeezed my arm and said, “I love you,” then raced off to Mychal’s place.
SEVENTEEN
LATER THAT NIGHT, I got a text from Davis.
Him: You around?
Me: I am. You want to facetime?
Him: Could I possibly see you irl?
Me: I guess, but I’m less fun irl.
Him: I like you irl. Is now good?
Me: Now’s good.
Him: Dress warm. It’s cold out, and the sky is clear.
—
Harold and I drove over to the Pickett compound. He’s not much for cold weather, and it seemed to me I could hear something in his engine tightening up, but he held it together for me, that blessed car.
The walk from the driveway to Davis’s house was frigid, even in my winter coat and mittens. You never think much about weather when it’s good, but once it gets cold enough to see your breath, you can’t ignore it. The weather decides when you think about it, not the other way around.
As I approached, the front door opened for me. Davis was sitting on the couch next to Noah, playing their usual starfighter video game. “Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” Davis said.
“’Sup,” Noah added.
“Listen, bud,” Davis said as he stood up. “I’m gonna go for a walk with Aza before she debundles. Back in a bit, cool?” He reached over and mussed Noah’s hair.
“Cool,” Noah said.
—
“I read Daisy’s stories,” I told him as we walked. The grass of the golf course was still cut perfectly short, even though the only golfer in the family had now been missing for months.
“They’re pretty good, right?”
“I guess. I was distracted by how terrible Ayala is.”
“She’s not all bad. Just anxious.”
“She causes one hundred percent of the problems in the stories.”
He nudged his shoulder against me sweetly. “I kind of liked her, but I guess I’m biased.”
—
We walked around the whole property until we eventually stopped at the pool. Davis tapped a button on his phone and the pool cover rolled away. We sat down on lounge chairs next to each other, and I watched the water from the pool steam into the cold air as Davis lay back to look up at the sky. “I don’t understand why he’s so stuck inside himself, when there is this endlessness to fall into.”
“Who is?”
“Noah.” I noticed he’d reached into his coat pocket. He pulled something out and twirled it in his palm. At first, I thought it might be a pen, but then as he moved it rhythmically through his fingers, like a magician playing with cards, I realized it was the Iron Man. “Don’t judge me,” he said. “It’s been a bad week.”
“I just don’t think Iron Man is much of a superh—”
“You’re breaking my heart, Aza. So, you see Saturn up there?” Using his Iron Man as a pointer, he told me how you can tell the difference between a planet and a star, and where different constellations were. And he told me that our galaxy was a big spiral, and that a lot of galaxies were. “Every star we can see right now is in that spiral. It’s huge.”
“Does it have a center?”