“It is?”
She nodded. “There’s a little plaque with a star in front of it that marks the spot: Point Zero. And if you jump on it and make a wish, it means you’ll get a chance to go back there again someday. There’s something kind of magical about that, don’t you think?”
“It’d be nice if every place came with that kind of guarantee.” He leaned over to draw an X between them with the piece of gravel, then rubbed it out with the heel of his hand and replaced it with a crooked star.
“Does that mean we’re in the exact center of New York?” she asked, nodding at it, and he felt momentarily unsteady beneath her gaze.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that we’re in the exact center of the whole world.”
She held out a flattened palm, and it took a moment for him to realize that she was asking for the rock, not his hand. He passed it over, and she drew a circle around the edges of the star, then scratched the words Point Zero along the outside.
“There,” she said. “Now it’s official.”
“See? No need for Paris.”
“Not for tonight, anyway,” she said, handing back the stone. “But I’d still like to go.”
“How come they never took you along?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s hard to travel with three kids. My brothers are awesome, but they’re twins, and when we were little, they were complete nightmares. The first time we went to London, I remember them running up and down the aisles of the plane, locking themselves in the bathroom.” There was a hint of a smile on her face, but then she shook her head. “That’s not really it, though. The thing is, I think my parents just really like traveling alone together.”
“Alone together,” Owen said. “Oxymoron.”
“You’re an oxymoron,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But really, it’s always been their thing, traveling together. It’s partly his job, but they also just really love it. Some people shop. Some people fish. My parents travel.”
“What does he do?”
“He works for this British bank. They met in London, but he’s had jobs in all these other places, too, Sydney and Cape Town and Rio. When my brothers were born, he took a job in the New York office, since he’s from here, and I think the plan was to settle down, but that part never really took. Instead, they were always just jetting off and leaving us with the nanny.”
“Sounds glamorous.”
“For them,” she said. “But I would have loved to go, too. I still would.” She swept a hand through the air, scattering a few mosquitoes. “Sometimes I think they liked their lives a whole lot better before they had kids.”
Owen thought of his own parents, putting down roots the moment they found out they were pregnant. “It’s probably not that it was better,” he said. “Just different. My parents did the same thing, settling down when I came along, and they were happy.” He paused, blinking fast. “We were all happy.”
Lucy was sitting with her arms resting on her knees, and when she turned to look at him, her leg bumped against his. Right then, he had a sudden urge to inch closer to her, to close the space between them, and the force of it surprised him; it felt like a very long time since he’d wanted anything at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching over to put a hand over his. “About your mom.”
The warmth of her palm cracked at something inside him, that hard shell of hurt that had formed over his heart like a coat of ice. She was watching him intently, her eyes seeking his, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Because the numbness was the only thing keeping him going, the only thing preventing him from falling to pieces in front of his dad, who was falling to pieces enough for both of them.
He turned his eyes back to the sky. “They look almost fake,” he said. “Don’t they?”
Lucy followed his gaze. “The stars?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. He was thinking of the ones on the ceiling of his bedroom back home, little pieces of plastic that glowed green in the dark. His mother had put them up when he was little, when Owen first became obsessed with the sky, spending summer nights on his back in the front yard, staring up at the scattering of lights until his eyes burned. They bought him a telescope, and they bought him binoculars; they even bought him a globe that showed all the constellations. But, in the end, the only way to convince him to go to bed were those glowing plastic stars, which his mother tacked up on the ceiling herself.
“They’re not in the right places,” Owen had said that first night, his eyes pinned above him as he climbed into bed.
“Sure they are,” she told him. “It’s just that these are very rare constellations.”
He frowned up at them. “What are they called?”
The Geography of You and Me
JENNIFER E. SMITH's books
- As the Pig Turns
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Breaking the Rules
- Escape Theory
- Fairy Godmothers, Inc
- Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism
- Follow the Money
- In the Air (The City Book 1)
- In the Shadow of Sadd
- In the Stillness
- Keeping the Castle
- Let the Devil Sleep
- My Brother's Keeper
- Over the Darkened Landscape
- Paris The Novel
- Sparks the Matchmaker
- Taking the Highway
- Taming the Wind
- Tethered (Novella)
- The Adjustment
- The Amish Midwife
- The Angel Esmeralda
- The Antagonist
- The Anti-Prom
- The Apple Orchard
- The Astrologer
- The Avery Shaw Experiment
- The Awakening Aidan
- The B Girls
- The Back Road
- The Ballad of Frankie Silver
- The Ballad of Tom Dooley
- The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel
- The Barbed Crown
- The Battered Heiress Blues
- The Beginning of After
- The Beloved Stranger
- The Betrayal of Maggie Blair
- The Better Mother
- The Big Bang
- The Bird House A Novel
- The Blessed
- The Blood That Bonds
- The Blossom Sisters
- The Body at the Tower
- The Body in the Gazebo
- The Body in the Piazza
- The Bone Bed
- The Book of Madness and Cures
- The Boy from Reactor 4
- The Boy in the Suitcase
- The Boyfriend Thief
- The Bull Slayer
- The Buzzard Table
- The Caregiver
- The Caspian Gates
- The Casual Vacancy
- The Cold Nowhere
- The Color of Hope
- The Crown A Novel
- The Dangerous Edge of Things
- The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets
- The Dante Conspiracy
- The Dark Road A Novel
- The Deposit Slip
- The Devil's Waters
- The Diamond Chariot
- The Duchess of Drury Lane
- The Emerald Key
- The Estian Alliance
- The Extinct
- The Falcons of Fire and Ice
- The Fall - By Chana Keefer
- The Fall - By Claire McGowan
- The Famous and the Dead
- The Fear Index
- The Flaming Motel
- The Folded Earth
- The Forrests
- The Exceptions
- The Gallows Curse
- The Game (Tom Wood)
- The Gap Year
- The Garden of Burning Sand
- The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)
- The Getaway
- The Gift of Illusion
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- The Girl in the Steel Corset
- The Golden Egg
- The Good Life
- The Green Ticket
- The Healing
- The Heart's Frontier
- The Heiress of Winterwood
- The Heresy of Dr Dee
- The Heritage Paper
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