“Just come on!”
She laughed and pulled my arm, harder than I liked, and I didn’t have time to do more than shout a harried “Bye!” to Walt before turning and racing with Rose back up the drive. Despite the inside of the house being off-limits, she pushed through the crowd and dragged me up the porch steps and marched straight into the kitchen. The lights were on and the place was a mess, food was everywhere, bottles, too, but the room was empty.
Rose stormed around the kitchen. “Goddamn it.”
“What?”
“They’re all gone!”
“Who’s gone?”
“Everyone!”
“Hey, assholes, I’m still here.” I glanced over the bar into the adjoining family room and spied Archie DuPraw slouched in an oversize recliner. He was a mess. It looked like he’d been up for days: Solo cup in hand, stubbled chin to chest. His hooded eyes were bleary, and his greasy hair fell past his shoulders. Not to mention, there were unflattering food stains—or worse—dotting the front of his T-shirt. He was also looking right at Rose. At her tits, really, from what I could tell—she had on this little tank-top thing—giving me the urge to strangle him.
Rose made a face. “Forget it, let’s go.”
“Who were you looking for?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s get a drink.”
“All right,” I said, eager to be alone with her or at least out of that brightly lit room. We turned to leave.
“So it’s going to be like that?” Archie called after us.
Neither of us answered.
“You’re a bitch, Rose Augustine,” he called out louder. “You know that? Una puta. A stuck-up Spanish bitch.”
I tensed. Froze mid-step at his words. “You want me to say something to him?”
Rose rolled her eyes before kicking open the door and pushing me through it, back into the night. “God, no. That’s the last thing I want.”
Then we were outside on the porch, and despite her bravado, she looked small suddenly, fragile, just standing there, with her bony shoulders shivering, while duskywing moths dove and danced against the carriage light above us.
I reached to touch her, protect her. “You sure you don’t want me to talk to Archie? He shouldn’t have said that to you.”
Rose shoved my hand away. Smacked it really. “What did I just fucking tell you?”
I recoiled. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Her eyes flashed. “Why the hell are you sorry?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at my feet and wondered what was wrong with me. My head felt fuzzy. Miserably so.
But then Rose was in my arms again, returning to me with her own winged dance, cooing and stroking and kissing me everywhere. “Shit. Shit. I’m the one who’s sorry, Ben. All right? Forget it. I was just being a bitch. I love you. Okay? I love you and I don’t deserve you and I hope you know how goddamn good you are.”
—
Rose never told me what she’d been doing in the kitchen that night or who she’d been doing it with, but I also never thought to ask. My takeaway was that Archie thought Rose was a stuck-up bitch, and that was fine by me. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
But now, being up on that mountain with both of them, drunk and jealous, my ego wounded, my heart brimming with guilt, the events of that night began to jitter around inside my mind. Over and over.
Because something had happened between them. It also seemed more had happened since. And I, who was indeed never without my Rose, had no idea what it was.
23.
NOTHING GOOD CAME of my moping. Nothing good ever did. But I was saved from saying anything stupid or drinking myself into a coma when Shelby shook my shoulder and told me to get up.
“Leave me alone,” I mumbled.
“You really don’t want me to do that.”
“Why would I say it if I didn’t want you to do it?”
“Are you joking right now? Rose, is he joking?”
“Move your shit, Ben,” Rose said lightly. “You can thank us later.”
Thank who? I opened my eyes and saw what the rest of them had already seen: the bobbing lights in the distance indicating stargazing had ended and that Mr. Howe and the rest of the group were minutes away from returning to camp.
Shit. I scrambled to my feet. The four of us flew into action. Shelby sprayed everyone’s mouth with Binaca while Archie jammed the Jim Beam into his backpack so fast he managed to kick over the camping lantern we’d been using. It rolled away from us, straight down a small incline before coming to rest in a patch of yellow grass.
“Glad that runs on batteries,” Rose noted wryly as I scrambled after it. Shelby gave a sharp bleat of laughter, and that’s how that song about the Chicago fire started running through my head. The line about the cow kicking the lantern over seriously gave me the urge to hoof Archie DuPraw in the face.
And then they were back, the whole group, flooding over us in a discordant wave of laughter and warmth and stargazing camaraderie—they’d all just glimpsed the heavens. Avery flopped down in the spot where I’d been sitting and picked up my cards. Dunc followed right behind, while Tomás and Clay went to sit side by side on the edge of the meadow, both leaning back on their elbows to continue their gazing and leaving me with little doubt as to who Rose’s brother was fucking. Mr. Howe called to me from where he was standing near the tents. I jogged over to him and hoped to God the Binaca didn’t fail me.
“How was the hike?” I asked, because that seemed like a totally normal not-underage-and-trashed-out-of-my-mind type of inquiry.
“Fine. It was fine.” Mr. Howe rubbed at his forehead the way I sometimes did when I felt unwell. “We saw Venus out there. Jupiter, too.”
“With the telescope?” I nodded at the case he’d set by his feet.
“Yes. But they’re visible without. You can see them, too, if you want. Just head around that bluff far enough so the peak’s not in the way.” He yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. I made myself stare at the sky, to act like I was interested in what was out there, but tilting my head back set the universe spinning. A sickening loop of stars and galaxies and the vast unknown. I straightened up and focused on Mr. Howe’s bearded face instead.
“You look tired,” I said.
He smiled. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah, it has.”
“How’s your head?”
“It’s okay.”
Mr. Howe pulled his phone from his side pack and turned it on. “By the way, I wanted to show you this.”
I stared at the glow in confusion. “I thought that didn’t work out here.”
“The phone doesn’t. But there’s a barometric sensor built in that does. I used it to check the weather after what you said about a storm.”
That got me to lean closer. All I saw on the screen was something that looked like a car speedometer, with a needle swaying between an illustration of the sun and a gloomy rain cloud. “What’s it say?”
“Looks like the atmospheric pressure’s dropping.”