After Eden (5 page)

“Why Orion?”

“It’s easy to identify. Give me your hand.”

I held out my hand. He covered it with his and extended my index finger.

“You’re cold,” he said. He moved my hand across the sky, using my index finger as a pointer. “These three stars in a row make up Orion’s belt. They’re easy to find and you can use them to locate lots of others stars and constellations.” He moved my finger down slightly. “That’s Orion’s sword. The hazy star in the middle is the Orion Nebula.”

“The what?”

“Orion Nebula. Do you see how fuzzy the middle star is?”

“Yes.”

“It’s because it’s not a star, it’s a nebula. Where stars are born.”

“Stars are born?”

“They’re born, they shine for a few billion years, and eventually they die.” He moved my hand again and made the shape of a rough square. “These four stars also make up the constellation Orion.” He moved my hand slowly around the square. “Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph.”

Suddenly there was a pattern, a shape, among the nameless chaos of stars in the sky.

He took my hand back to Betelgeuse. “Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, one of the largest, most luminous stars in the sky. It’s about sixty times bigger than our sun. It’s going to die soon. It will explode into a supernova and, when it does, we’ll be able to see it on Earth. It will be like Earth has two suns.”

“When you say
soon
, how soon are we talking?”

“Soon in astronomical terms. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a million years.”

“I won’t hold my breath.”

“Don’t,” he said with a laugh. “But there’s something else cool about Orion, and you’ll only have to wait a few months. If you look toward Orion in late October, you will see the Orionids, one of the most beautiful meteor showers of the year.”

“Shooting stars.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s actually dust from Halley’s Comet hitting the upper atmosphere. But it’s spectacular.”

I’d never thought about the stars as being anything more than a bewildering disarray of beauty, like glitter scattered onto black construction paper by a child. I’d never thought about the patterns they made or their size, or the fact that they were born and they died. “Show me another constellation.”

Ryan moved my hand across the sky, stopping at a w-shaped formation. “Cassiopeia.” He traced its shape with my hand. “Another constellation that’s easy to find.”

I found the pattern in the stars, drawing imaginary lines between the dots.

“And that cluster is the Pleiades.”

He pointed my finger to a small fuzzy area of the sky.

“Just keep looking,” he said.

I stared at the hazy shape and then it was as though the haziness disappeared and seven separate stars emerged.

“Also known as the Seven Sisters,” said Ryan. “Through
a telescope or binoculars you’ll see loads more. There are more than five hundred stars in that cluster.”

I looked back and found the three stars of Orion’s belt easily. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ryan looking at me. I turned toward him. Our faces were so close; his hand still held mine. For a couple of seconds we stayed right there, looking at each other, the stars pulsing and flickering above us.

“Who needs astronomy club?” I said.

Ryan laughed softly and I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face. “You know, when stars explode, they release their debris into the universe and this stardust forms new stars and planets and all the life-forms on those planets. Everything on Earth, even you and me, is made from atoms that were once inside a star. We’re made of stardust.” He held my gaze for another long second and then pulled me to my feet. “That’s enough stargazing for one night. Come on, we better get moving before you freeze to death.”

We clambered back over the fence onto the sidewalk and continued home. When we got to the bus stop near my house, I tried to say good night, but Ryan would have none of it.

“It’s very chivalrous of you to want to walk me home. But it’s fine. I’ve walked home alone from here hundreds of times.”

“Are you embarrassed?” he asked. “Don’t you want your neighbors to see me?”

“I’m trying to save you the bother of walking out of your way.”

“In that case, please humor me. I’d feel much better if I saw you safely home.”

The theories began again. Non-meat-eating, Kevlar-wearing, out-of-date manners. A cult of some sort, probably.

We stopped at the front gate.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” he asked.

Despite every cell in my brain and body urging me to say no, I told him about my plans to spend Sunday with Connor. “You could come too,” I said. “I think he’d like you a lot if he got to know you.”

“I think he’d like it a lot if I stayed away from you.”

“You’re wrong about Connor. I’ve known him most of my life. If there was anything like that going on, I’d know.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

He closed the gate behind me and waited until I was turning the key in the lock before disappearing into the star-studded night.

Connor lived in an old fisherman’s cottage with a view over the harbor beach, a tiny two-story with the world’s smallest bathroom. Despite the cramped conditions and the dampness, Connor’s mother had made the place into one of the coziest homes I’d ever been in. The whole house smelled like fresh bread and cookies when I arrived, and Connor’s mother was cutting up a tray of homemade shortbread.

“Here you go,” she said, carefully arranging the shortbread on a plate. “Connor’s upstairs. I’ll bring you up some tea in a sec.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Penrose,” I said, taking the plate and heading up the stairs.

The door was wide open and Connor was sitting on his bed reading a
Simpsons
comic.

“Working hard?” I said, clearing off a space on his desk for the shortbread.

“My brain is aching.” He tossed the comic on the floor.

Connor’s room was its usual mess. His desk was covered with textbooks, an ancient computer, a pile of overdue library books, and a collection of empty water glasses and coffee mugs. Discarded clothes were strewn across the floor,
and a poster of a rock band I’d never heard of hung from his bedroom wall by a single pin.

“It’s sweet of you,” I said, kicking his clothes into a pile so that I could find somewhere to sit on the carpet, “but you really shouldn’t have gone to the trouble of tidying your room.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” he said. “I did it for Megan. But she’s stood us up.”

“She’s not coming?”

Connor chucked me one of the pillows from his bed. “Sit on that. She’s come down with a virus. Symptoms appear to be a raging headache, the shakes, and vomiting. Not unlike a hangover from what I hear.”

I laughed. “Poor Megan. She never knows when to stop.”

Connor shrugged and passed me the shortbread. “Actually, I’m kind of glad that it’s just you and me.”

I suddenly felt very aware of the fact that we were alone. “You are?”

“We almost never get to spend time with just the two of us anymore.” He smiled. “You know what this means?”

I stopped breathing.

“It’s my go,” Connor said, reaching for the Scrabble board.

The last time Megan couldn’t make our review session, Connor and I had started a game of Scrabble that we’d never had time to finish.

Connor gave me a look. “Are you all right? What did you think I was going to say?”

When the door opened, and Mrs. Penrose came in with a tray of tea, I realized I’d been holding my breath.

“I’m popping over to see Nan and Grandad,” she told Connor. “I’ll be back this afternoon.” She looked around the room with disgust. “I suggest you clear your dirty clothes off the floor and put them in the washing machine if you want a clean school uniform tomorrow.”

Connor grunted. “Okay, Mum.”

Mrs. Penrose left and we were alone again. I poured the tea.

“So how did you get home last night?” He was frowning at his row of tiles.

“Walked,” I said.

Connor looked up from the game. “In the dark? It’s five miles to Penpol Cove.”

“It wasn’t that dark in the moonlight.”

He snorted. “Not that dark! I bet that was Westland’s genius idea. Walking you home in the moonlight.”

“Actually, it was my idea.”

“Your idea!”

“Connor, are you going to repeat everything I say?”

“I suppose walking home in the moonlight is very romantic.”

“In fact,” I said, “Ryan thought you were the one with the romantic ideas. He said that showing me Venus was a classic move.”

Connor blushed. “Venus was the only light in the sky at the time.”

“That’s what I told Ryan. I had to explain that you were my oldest friend and that there was nothing remotely romantic going on between us.”

“That must have made him happy.” He glared at his tiles.

“He doesn’t care one way or the other.” I sighed. “Come on, Connor. Are you going to make your move or not?”

Connor looked up from his tiles and met my eyes. The blush was still on his face. For a split second, I tried to imagine how I would feel about him if I didn’t know him so well. He was attractive in a beach bum kind of way—wavy blond hair, smattering of freckles on lightly tanned skin, clear blue eyes—and maybe if he wasn’t so familiar I would have liked him that way. The problem was that I knew Connor. Not just as the good-looking boy in front of me. I knew him as the little boy who had once had an obsessive interest in Star Wars, who still left dirty underwear all over his bedroom floor and had enjoyed a lengthy childhood habit of digging for nose gold and tasting the nuggets.

“Eden,” he said. He opened his mouth to speak again, but I cut him off.

“I’m going to go and wash my hands before I eat any of that shortbread. If you haven’t made your move on the board before I get back, you’ll have to forfeit your turn.”

I dashed down the stairs and into the tiny bathroom at the back of the kitchen. After bolting the door shut, I filled the sink with cold water and splashed my face. Connor and I were friends. We played Scrabble together. We prepared for our exams together and sometimes went to the movies. There had never been the hint of anything more from either of us and I probably wouldn’t even be considering it if Ryan hadn’t put the idea in my head.

Ryan hardly knew either of us. I had allowed my imagination to run away with me. Connor wasn’t going to say something embarrassing or try to kiss me. Smiling at my own paranoia, I unlocked the door and headed back up the stairs.

The bus for the Eden Project was already waiting by the time I got to the school gate. A group of shivering students was milling around and Mrs. Link was checking names off a list. I couldn’t help noticing that Chloe Mason was, despite the rain and cold, dressed in very short shorts and a flesh-baring crop top. Her navel was pierced with a fake diamond on a long silver pin.

“Here he comes,” I heard Chloe say to her friend.

Ryan was strolling down through the yard toward us. He seemed utterly unself-conscious in a way that I knew I would never be.

“Wait up, Picasso!” Ryan called.

He walked straight past Chloe and her entourage and up to me, a huge smile spread across his face.

“Picasso?” I said. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s unkind to poke fun at people’s weaknesses?”

“Picasso drew strange-looking people,” he said, shrugging.

“Picasso meant them to look strange.”

He put his arm around my shoulder, sending tingles down my spine. “I can’t wait to see how you draw plants,” he whispered in my ear.

We took a seat toward the back of the bus. As the rest of the art students ambled on and found their seats, several noticed Ryan and me sitting together, and I picked up snippets of gossip about the two of us arriving and leaving Amy’s party together.

“So what weaknesses do you have?” I asked. “You know mine.”

“None,” he said, grinning.

“Everyone has weaknesses.”

He sighed dramatically. “Beautiful girls. That’s my weakness.”

“Well, you seem to be resisting, from what I’ve heard.”

“Have you been talking about me?” He smiled at me in a way that made my heart jump.

Predictably, Chloe Mason and her friend Melissa took the seat in front of us. As the bus pulled away, Chloe turned around and stuck her face between the two seat backs.

“Hey, Ryan,” she purred. “How was your first week at Perran?”

“Educational,” he said with a smile.

Chloe frowned, clearly unsure whether he was being sarcastic. “I know the Eden Project really well,” she said. “Melissa and I go ice-skating there in the winter and there’s live music in the summer. I could show you around.”

“That’s nice of you, Chloe,” Ryan said, “but I already have a tour guide.”

Chloe gave me a quick look. “Eden won’t mind if you come with us, will you, Eden?” She didn’t wait for me to
respond. “You can spend the day with anyone you want; you don’t have to stick to your art partner.”

“But I want to spend the day with Eden.”

Her smile dropped and she flicked her eyes from Ryan to me and back again. “Are you two going out?”

“No,” I said quickly.

She pouted at Ryan. “If you change your mind, come and find me.”

She turned back to Melissa, leaving Ryan and me alone again.

“She’s scary,” Ryan whispered in my ear, close enough that I could smell his warm skin and the odd combination of lemons and metal. “Why is her skin so orange? Does she have jaundice?”

“That’s her makeup,” I whispered back. “And fake tan.”

“She made it look like that deliberately?”

I nodded.

The bus reached highway A30 and picked up speed. Through the windows, green fields and thick gray drizzle sped by in a blur.

“How was your study session with Connor?” Ryan asked.

“It would have been much better if you hadn’t said all those things about Connor liking me. Every time he said something I kept wondering if there was some double meaning.”

Ryan laughed softly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”