Dangerous (5 page)

and galaxies and massive expanses of endlessness. My brain

can’t think about it without having a heart attack.”

“Your brain has a heart?”

I laughed because I was sounding ridiculous, and for some

reason, I was loving it. “Sure, and it suffers a massive coronary

any time I try to comprehend the hugeness and possibilities of

space. I mean, just think about Jupiter’s moon Europa. With its

oxygen-based atmosphere and liquid ocean beneath a sea of ice,

it’s very likely a home to extraterrestrial life, which would be the

biggest discovery since . . . since . . .
ever
.”

“Someday we’ll spend trillions to get to Europa only to dis-

cover very expensive bacteria,” he said.

“By examining what’s different from us, we understand our-

selves better.” Why wouldn’t I shut up already? “Um, what lured

you to astronaut boot camp?”

“I have a crush on Cassiopeia.”

“Cassiopeia.”

Wilder nodded, eyes wide, eyebrows raised. “She is
stacked
.

Have you seen the size of her stars?”

“Right. And besides the bodacious and boastful Cassiopeia,

anything else drawing your attention to the big black yonder?”

Wilder’s teasing tone weakened. “I get bored easily. But

I can’t
know
space, so it keeps me wondering. Maybe there’s something worth finding out there, something that’s missing

down here. Life feels like half of itself.”

“‘A dream within a dream.’”

“And I want to wake up.”

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Shannon Hale

For the first time, I felt like Wilder was saying something

he really believed. But I couldn’t think of anything to say back

that wouldn’t sound nerdy.

“Maybe this is stupid, but do you ever feel like you’re

doomed?” He laughed. “Nevermind, anytime the word
doomed

is involved, it’s definitely stupid. But it’s like I’m chasing noth-

ing, and I can’t stop until . . .”

“Until what?” I said.

His gaze was up, almost as if he’s forgotten I was there.

“Till the stars run away, and the shadows eat the moon.”

I knew that line. He was quoting William Butler Yeats.

“‘Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,’” I finished the

poem, “‘One cannot begin it too soon.’”

He looked at me. His lips parted. Then he studied my face

as he quoted, “‘Oh, love is the crooked thing.’”

For the barest moment, I became aware of every part of my

body. Not only the pressure of my legs on the roof, the wishy

breeze tickling the hairs on my arm, the rise of my chest as I in-

haled, the click of my eyelids as I blinked. Not just those places

of touch and motion, but all of it. Everything. Everywhere. I

thrilled with life. And I looked at Wilder.

“I said I didn’t want you to woo me.” My voice sounded

foreign to my own ears.

“I wasn’t.”

“Oh. So . . . what does that mean, ‘love is the crooked

thing’?”

“I don’t know.” He was still looking at me. “I just like the

way it sounds.”

I looked down, twisting a loose thread on my T-shirt.

“Poetry kind of reminds me of looking at things through a

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Dangerous

microscope.” I didn’t know what I was saying—I just started to

talk. “I got a microscope when I turned six. You know, physi-

cist mom, biologist dad. I examined things I thought I knew—a

strand of my hair, a feather, an onion peel. Seeing them up

close, they changed. I started to guess how, you know, things are

more complicated than they seem, but that they have patterns,

and the patterns are beautiful. Space has all those patterns and

intricacies and mysteries, but not tiny under a microscope. So

big, so expansive, when I think about it, I feel like the solid parts

of me are dissolving and I’m out there in the blackness and light,

moving with the whole universe.”

I glanced up to see if he was bored. Instead I felt his hand

on my cheek and his lips on mine. Just a touch, a softness, a

greeting. One kiss that lasted seven rapid heartbeats. His other

hand lifted, both holding my face. A second kiss—one, two,

three, four, five beats. It was easy to count by my heart. I could

feel it thud through my whole body. My left hand clutched my

right arm, afraid to touch him or to not. His lips moved again

(how did mine know how to move with his?). A third kiss—one,

two, three, four. Only four beats before the fourth kiss. Either

the kisses were speeding up or my heart was. A fifth kiss, a sixth,

and I counted each beat. It seemed the only way to keep from

drowning. Numbers were solid things I could grip, a buoy in a

flood.

Seventh, eighth, one beat, two beats, three—

He pulled back (or I did?) but his right thumb stayed on

my cheek, his fingers on my jaw. His eyes were still closed.

“You’d better not talk about microscopes anymore,” he

whispered, “or I don’t know if I can control myself.”

I laughed. It was good to end a kiss (my first kiss—my first

35

Shannon Hale

eight kisses) with a laugh, because I didn’t know what I was sup-

posed to say. Thanks for the kiss? Um, nice lips? Did you know

there are over seven hundred species of bacteria living in the

human mouth?

So I laughed again. “I’m pretty sure there are rules against

this sort of thing at astronaut boot camp.”

“I sure hope so,” said Wilder, “or it wouldn’t be nearly as

fun.”

He’s dangerous, I reminded myself. And this is not the

experience you left home for. You should run away.

I didn’t move.

36

C h a p t e r 6

Would he have kissed me again?

I lay in my bunk staring at the tiny black dents in the white

ceiling tiles, wondering how anyone can sleep after her first kiss.

Or first eight.

It might have been more, but we’d heard a noise (a security

guard?), and I hurried back to the dorm. Though once the risk

of capture was past, I wondered what wouldn’t be worth another

kiss. I rolled over, pressing my fingers against a smile, and that

was the kiss. My bare feet searching for cool, untouched spots

at the bottom of the bed, my hand full of blanket, the press of

my collarbone into the pillow. Every touch, every motion was a

reminder of Wilder’s kiss.

I didn’t want to fall asleep and miss a single hour of

remembering. But once I did, sleep was lively with dreams.

Wilder wasn’t at breakfast. I’m positive about that, since I

checked a few times. (Maybe forty-eight.) He came to the tail

end of calibration, looking sleepy, his hair wet. He winked at the

instructor and took the chair beside me.

“Hey,” he whispered to the guy sitting on my other side.

“Are you checking out my girl?”

“Wha . . . what?” the kid stuttered.

“Not that I blame you,” Wilder said, “but have some respect

for the lady.”

I hid my face with my hand.

When the bell rang for lunch, I hurried off so Wilder

wouldn’t think I expected to eat with him. But then he was

Shannon Hale

walking beside me.

“May I escort you to lunch, Danger Girl? I noticed you

have a penchant for cheese—”

Wilder stopped, staring at a man in the atrium wearing

flip-flops, long cargo shorts, and a washed-out Hawaiian shirt,

his hair a little long, his beard a little bushy. He was juxtaposed

by three large suited men, buds in their ears.

Dr. Howell approached the Hawaiian-shirt guy. “Hello,

GT. Shall we talk in my office?”

He nodded at Wilder before following Dr. Howell.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“My dad,” said Wilder.

Dr. Howell had called him GT. I remembered the name

George Theodore Wilder from Wilder’s papers.

“Does he always dress like that?” GT was not what I imag-

ined when I thought billionaire.

“Yeah, it’s a power play. Come on,” he whispered, taking

my hand.

Another first. It felt like a surrender to let someone take

charge of my one hand, but the surrender came with a thrill.

He walked quickly away from the cafeteria. “I need out of

all this for an hour, and I want you with me, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

We ran into the parking lot. Wilder opened the driver’s

side door of an expensive-looking red convertible. He gestured

me in, and I scooted down the bench.

“And this car is . . .”

“Dad’s.” Wilder reached under the dash for a magnetic box,

pulled out a spare key, and started the engine.

“I don’t do stuff like this, you know.”

38

Dangerous

“That’s what makes you so enticing. One of the things any-

way. There’s also your black magic eyes.”

“And my cunning mind and rapier wit, right?”

“Hey, baby,” he said, chucking my chin, “all the guys want

you for your mind. Isn’t it refreshing to be with someone who

only cares about your body?”

I laughed. It was becoming my default response. “You

know, I’m not going to be that girl who gets pulled in by your

cheap lines.”

“
My
lines? You’re the one who gets things steamy discuss-

ing microscopes.”

“Are you only capable of talking to me as if an audience

were listening?”

“Okay, Peligrosa. Okay.”

I felt him relax as he put his arm around my shoulder, look-

ing back as he reversed.

“So what do you usually do to escape?” he asked.

“Escape? I . . . I guess I ride my bike to Luther’s.” Man, that

sounded pathetic to me now.

“And Luther is?”

“A guy. A friend. My best friend.”

Wilder glared as we zipped out of the parking lot, and I

suspected he wasn’t just squinting against the sunlight.

The gate was open. I could see a guard in a turret. I low-

ered my head, gripping the seat. Wilder waved and drove on.

No one stopped us.

“Why’d you come with me?” he asked. The honesty of the

question startled me.

“I don’t know. You have a certain gravity about you.”

“You be Europa, and I’ll be your Jupiter.”

39

Shannon Hale

“If you’re comfortable with that,” I said. “You know Jupiter

is one of the gas giants.”

“Now stop trying to woo me with all your sexy talk.”

We drove to the nearest town and found a drive-through,

filling the front seat with cheeseburgers, fried zucchini, onion

rings, sodas with straws, strawberry and chocolate shakes with

spoons. Wilder paid. Did this count as a date?

We drove and ate, music booming and the road going

straight, straight, straight, no signs, no stops, just fields and

hills forever. Sometimes he looked away from the road just to

smile at me. Maybe he was feeling like I was—that the day was

enough under the candy-blue sky, the wind swooping into the

car and taking parts of us away with it, swirling me and Wilder

into the whole big moving world.

I didn’t pretend to myself that someday I might drive

around my home-town in a convertible with Jonathan Ingalls

Wilder. He would get bored with me; summer camp would

end. This was a stolen moment, an impractical fantasy, candle

smoke that melts into the air as fast as you can blow.

I wiped mustard off his chin with my napkin.

“Thank you, darling,” he said, breaking the spell of silence.

“We should get back. They’re announcing the winners after

dinner, and I think my fireteam has a shot.”

Wilder frowned but sped back to the complex and eased us

into the spot we’d left. For a minute neither of us moved. The

day was fiery brown, the shrubs rattling with insects. It seemed

like everything was ticking toward an explosion.

“I’ve never done that with someone before,” said Wilder.

“The silence part. That it wasn’t awkward.”

He turned to look at me. My pulsed ticked to life in my

40

Dangerous

throat, and I wondered if he wanted to kiss me again. I didn’t

dare kiss him first in case I was wrong.

His glance caught in the rearview mirror. GT was standing

outside the building, watching us and chewing gum, his suited

goons flanking him. Wilder hopped out and tossed his father

the key. I scrambled out my own door.

“Jonathan . . .” GT’s voice was both inquiring and threatening.

“Everything’s under control,” Wilder said, holding his fa-

ther’s gaze as he sauntered into the building.

GT held out his hand, stopping me from following. “Hi

there. Who are you?”

“Me? I’m Maisie Danger Brown.” I don’t know why I used

my middle name—I wanted to be on the offensive, I guess.

“Brown . . .” He said the word as if tasting it for significance.

“What brought you to astronaut boot camp?”

“A box of cereal.”

His frown matched his son’s. “What’s your—” Then he

noticed Ms. Pincher. “Are you missing your arm?”

“Well, the separation was hard at first, but we’ve adjusted to

a long-distance relationship.”

His eyes flicked to the door where Wilder had gone. He

chewed, his gum clicking in his teeth, then he turned his back

and walked away.

I’m not an expert on manners, but I think he was rude.