“That sounds—”
“Like I was a huge dork.”
His eyes cut to me. “Like something I would have done. Are they still there?”
“No way. After we discovered the meteorite, we were all really into space. The possibility. And then it occurred to me how scary endless possibility is. Like, isn’t there enough possibility on Earth where a zillion crazy-awful things can happen?”
“Or a zillion wonderful things. To me that’s what’s cool about space,” Harry said. I watched his profile. His hair was combed to the side, and his shirt collar brushed just below the knot of his throat. I swallowed. “Anything could be up there. I used to imagine other planets and I’d make really long lists with the characteristics of their solar systems and how the lifeforms in them evolved. And for my favorite worlds I drew comics. Not good ones. Not like your drawings.”
“What were the comics about?”
“Uh . . .” Out of force of habit, he pawed at phantom hair on his forehead. “One was about a family of aliens and another one was an alien war over resources. A lot of them had revolutions and heroes and battles with lasers. But my all-time favorite was about an alien boy sitting in his room drawing comics and imagining me, on Earth. It was like I had this interstellar friendship and no matter what happened, I had this friend out there, like a reflection, the same and different.”
The tops of palm trees moved across the rectangle in the car roof. Between their fronds the stars burned brighter as Harry spoke.
“Do you still think he exists?”
“Who?”
“The teenager living on another planet, wondering if you exist. Taking a girl to his civilization’s version of homecoming.”
He shook his head. “What? No way. I was younger than Simon. He still thinks a fairy leaves him cash for baby teeth.” He shook his head again. “Kids are crazy-stupid.”
“Liar. You totally believe.” I laughed and pointed to his deepening right dimple. “You’re trying too hard to convince me.”
He raised a hand in surrender. I wanted to pluck it from the air, to kiss his palm. “I’m not a liar. Not exactly. Maybe a boy like me is up there. I just don’t buy that he’s thinking about me. Why would he bother?”
“That’s sad.”
“Or realistic.”
“Do you still have the comics?”
“My mom keeps my baby teeth in her jewelry box.”
“So obviously,” I said.
“Definitely.”
It would have been motion-picture perfect if that year’s homecoming theme had been the cosmos. A night of twirling past Venus and Mars. But our journey into the gymnasium remained a terrestrial one, to France. A fifteen-foot cardboard replica of the Eiffel Tower was midcourt, and teachers manning the macaron and sparkling lemonade tables wore red berets and horizontally striped shirts. Our classmates were in quiet clusters around the room. The night was early and sober.
Viv and I usually went stag to dances. Graham couldn’t be persuaded and Harry got a subsequent pass. I felt short an appendage without her; her smile hopeful at the night, the way her eyes reflected the lights and decorations like she was trying to soak it all up, and the contact high of her enthusiasm would send me twirling onto the dance floor.
I fidgeted with my dress without much purpose other than looking the part of girl-with-date-at-a-formal. Easily said and awkwardly done. I had a blister forming on my heel, my forehead was starched with hairspray, I was sweating through my deodorant, and I had just noticed that only the nails on my right hand were painted. Harry tugged at his tie like it was constricting. Suddenly I wished he’d lose the suit jacket.
“Look,” I said, fluttering my fingers.
“Nail polish on one hand. Cool,” he said.
I patted my stiff updo and fluttered my lashes. “I’m very fashionable, you know.” I dropped my hands. “You want to take your tie off, huh?”
“Uh, no. I mean”—his expression seized up—“I want to look how I’m supposed to, for you.” He stuck his chest out, wincing slightly when his collar bit into his neck.
I reached over and worked at the tie’s knot. “I want you to look like you.” He smiled and shoved the tie into his pocket. “Good-bye torture devices for my feet,” I said, kicking my shoes under a skirted table.
We were Harry and Izzie again.
Halfway across the dance floor a familiar laugh came from under the glittery planetary mass of a disco ball. Viv was a 1950s screen vixen; a glimmering figure in a silver gown.
Graham came striding up—classic black tux, cuff links winking at us, a shadow in the cleft of his chin, and enough bob-and-weave to his torso that I knew he’d been drinking. “You two have to liberate me from this nightmare of the American dream,” he said loudly.
I waved at the cardboard Eiffel Tower and smiled cheekily. “You mean Parisian.”
“You know what I mean,” he grumbled.
Harry knocked his shoulder companionably into Graham’s. “That bad?”
“The corsages are making my allergies flare up.” Graham pointed to his watering eyes. “The limo is a white stretch Hummer, it was stocked with bottles of cinnamon whiskey and buckets of fried chicken, Viv’s laugh has reached DEFCON cackle, and I’m considering slitting my wrists in the bathroom so I don’t have to go to her afterparty.”
My throat tightened. “Whose party?” But I already suspected, didn’t I? Inviting the others to our territory was the next logical step in recruiting them. A step that Viv wanted to take. The barn, the orchard, the rock—they were our fortresses. Where better to entertain the enemy? See if we could manipulate them into being our foot soldiers?
Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. No spectacles. “I buried the lede,” he said. “Viv invited them to the barn, after the dance. They’re going to drink our cider and invade our headquarters.”
“They’re going to ask us more about the Order,” I whispered.
“Absolutely,” Graham said. “Amanda has a one-track mind. She’s already brought up you guys at the butcher four times. It’s like she’s trying to see inside my brain.” A feigned shudder. “They’re afraid they’re missing out. Viv wants to let them in.”
“So do you,” Harry said.
Graham held his stare, unblinking. “Indeed, for slightly different reasons, I presume. It needs to be unanimous—on account of democracy.”
“Izzie,” Viv yipped. She plowed into me, arms pitched around my neck, her wet, breezy breath in my ear. “I’m in love with your dress. Where are your shoes?”
She swung away, one hand fastened onto my arm, trying to twirl me. “Whoa,” I said, resisting her momentum. “Do you need water?”
“The limo was so fun, Izzie. We sang to music and snapped pictures and they’re all following and tagging me.” Like a tick, she was checking over her shoulder, making certain Amanda’s group hadn’t dropped out of orbit.