None of the Regular Rules (14 page)

Johnny laughed, but Ella and Grace didn’t. “Just climb the ladder, Sophie,” Johnny said finally. “It counts.”

I put my foot on the first rung, then the second, and before I could think it through properly
,
I was three
stories up
. Grace followed right behind me, then Ella, and finally Johnny. I made the mistake of looking down somewhere around the fourth floor, and had to stop for a few seconds before I could continue to climb. Looking down at the ground from way up here, it reminded me of the view of the water from the edge of Hanging Rock. Except here there was no water to fall into—just hard, unforgiving ground and four deathly stories.

My stomach clenched, and I willed myself to think of Suzy and how I knew that she probably didn’t have these fears. How she could have done this, no problem. I thought about how she’d always done what she wanted to do and lived her life on her terms, and died anyway—
died
, my subconscious reminded me,
doing something like this
. My head spun and it felt like my stomach might drop out of my body and land, splat, on the others below me.

Eventually I regained my composure and continued to climb. When I reached the top, I passed my leg over the short lip of brick that lined the edge of the building and stepped onto the rubber surface. I reached out my hand to help Grace over the edge, then did the same for Ella. Johnny hopped up and over like it was nothing.

We all stood together at the edge of the building, staring out into the expanse of sky that wrapped around us. The planetarium was up on a hill, surrounded by parkland, and from up here on the roof, it felt like we were
covered in a blanket of stars. T
he piercing dots of light made
the sky
look almost blurry.

“It’s pretty from up here,” Grace mused.

“It almost feels fake,” Ella agreed.

“Worth it, right?” I smiled. “But you guys? I really don’t know how I’m going to get back down again.” I peeked over the edge of the building, and swayed backward. “My body is
not
willingly getting back on that ladder.”

“You have to,” Ella said simply. “You can’t live here.”

“I might need to,” I said, shrugging. “I can’t get back down. There is absolutely no way I’m going to convince my legs to go back over that edge. I can’t jump off Hanging Rock—you think I’m going to dangle over the edge of a deadly cliff that has no water below to catch me?”

Johnny chuckled. “And this is why it counts,” he said quietly. “I had a feeling you’d freak out at the top.”

“I’m not freaking out,” I said levelly. “I’m just stating the facts. My body is not going down that ladder.”

“And that’s not freaking out, how?” Ella asked.

“There is another way,” Johnny offered. “We could go out the main entrance.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do that.” I looked at him. “
How
do we do that?”

Johnny stuck his hat in his back pocket again, rubbed his hair so it was sticking up, all askew, then put his hands in his pockets. “Jimm
y
the fire door to get in, walk down the stairs, and pop out the front entrance. Easy.” He shrugged. “The only challenge is, when we open the front door, the alarm goes off.”

“No way,” Grace said, jutting her chin out. “You promised we wouldn’t get caught.”

“We might not get caught,” Johnny said. “Depending on where they are, the cops could get here in a minute, or it could be three or four. It’s a risk we’d need to take unless Sophie changes her mind about going back down the ladder.”

“If I had to call my mom from the police station, she would literally kill me,” Ella said simply. “I’ll take the ladder.”

“Me too,” Grace said. “I think this is enough sneaking for me.”

I bit my lip. “So we separate?” I suggested. “I’m going through the building. I’m still convinced it doesn’t count otherwise. This is technically the
outside
of the planetarium. I need to sneak
in
.”

Ella shrugged. I could tell she was pissed at me. As if it was my fault I was scared of heights and didn’t want to cheat on my list of dares. “I guess we separate,” she said bitterly. “We’ll meet you back at the lawn mower in a
few minutes
, okay?”

I shrugged back. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Grace added.

Johnny laughed. “Fine with me, too. I’ll show you the way, Soph.”

We left my friends standing on the roof, and Johnny showed me how to jimm
y
open the door that led inside. As we crept through the darkened halls inside the planetarium, I was grateful to have Johnny next to me.

“Thank you,” I said. “For coming with me, I mean.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he said. There was a pause, then he said, “So what is the deal with this list?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I have a hard time believing that, Sophie.” He glanced at me as we passed through a long, dark hall
lined
with offices and administration stuff. “But I understand if you don’t want to tell me.”

I slowed my pace as we walked out of the fifth-floor hallway and into the giant atrium. The planetarium building had been built in the shape of a comet, with a large round atrium at one end and a hallway on each floor that protruded out from the center like a tail. The lower half of the atrium housed the auditorium and actual “planetarium” projection area. The top of the atrium was constructed out of giant glass panels that made the full sky visible from the circular hallways that wrapped around the upper levels of the building. I looked up and noticed that the moon was directly overhead—it made the inside of the atrium glow with a diffused light.

“Okay,” I said finally. “I’ll tell you about the list. But you have to promise not to make fun of me.”

Johnny crossed his finger over his chest in an X. “Cross my heart. I don’t make fun of people, and that’s a rule.”

I laughed, and the sound echoed through the atrium.

“I’m serious,” he said. “No judgment. I mean, if I
were
going to judge you, it would have happened at Hanging Rock,” he said, grinning. “We’ve tried, what? Five times? And you still won’t jump. I’m starting to wonder if you even want to jump, or if you just like my company.”

“Obviously I just like your company,” I said, teasing. But I also meant it.

“Who doesn’t?” Johnny said grandly. The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and I felt my stomach flip the way it always did when he looked right at me. Then his voice got serious again and he asked, “So?” We were still leaning against the railing up on the top level of the atrium. I stared up at the sky, but I could feel Johnny’s eyes focused on my face. Once again, he was making me feel like I was the only person on earth.

“So…” I began. “The list.” I tried to figure out where to
start. W
hile I said nothing, Johnny just watched me, his beautiful eyes fixed on my face, waiting. “When I was a little kid, my aunt Suzy was my hero. She was ten years older than me, and without a doubt the coolest person on earth. In a lot of ways, she was like my big sister. She even babysat me in the summer when school was out and my parents were working
and Shane was off at camps and whatever
. The thing I loved most about Suzy is that she was so different from my parents—she always had these crazy ideas, and she didn’t seem to care what anyone thought about her.”

I took a breath, and looked over at Johnny. His eyes met mine and I looked away. “I guess the things I most admired about Suzy were the things everyone else saw as her faults. My family is about as cautious as they come, and Suzy never quite fit the mold. My grandma was always criticizing her and telling her she needed to grow up and figure out what she was actually good at—then just go after that instead of wasting her time wishing. Looking back, I’m sure I didn’t really understand what was going on at the time, but it seemed like Suzy had everything figured out—and my family was always pushing her back, holding her against the ground when all she wanted was to fly.”

After a few minutes of silence, Johnny prompted, “So what happened?”

“Well, when she was a senior—I was eight—she died. She fell off the water tower. There was this big ice storm early in November, and I guess she was climbing up to the top when it hit. She slipped.”

“That’s horrible,” Johnny said, pushing his hair back from his face. I was glad he didn’t say he was sorry, or tell me he understood how hard it would have been for me. For some reason, that’s what people had said for months after they heard about Suzy. Apologies didn’t bring her back, and no one understood. So they always felt like hollow words. Eventually, I stopped talking about her altogether. My parents never wanted to dwell, and my grandparents went from grief to anger way too fast. They acted like it was all her fault, which I guess is how some people might see it. I realized early on that it was just easier to stop talking about her, since everyone but me had obviously moved on. Johnny cleared his throat. “What does her accident have to do with this fabled list?”

“Right. The list.” I said. Only then did I realize that while I’d talked, we’d been walking down the stairs toward the big, domed auditorium that filled the first and second level of the atrium space. We stepped inside and Johnny walked into the projection room. He expertly pushed at the buttons on the large machine in the middle. Suddenly, the night sky came to life on the huge domed ceiling above us. “Do you think we should get going?” I asked, realizing my friends were probably off the roof by now and waiting for us outside.

“Probably,” Johnny said, with a grin. “But don’t you think we should enjoy this, just for a minute? After all, we do deserve a reward for our efforts.”

“I guess,” I said, smiling. “I mean, they
could
have come with us. And I’m sure it will take a while for them to climb back down that crumbling ladder.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “We can just pretend this fake sky is all ours—it’s like our own private universe, for tonight.” He looked at me and I felt something pass between us, something unspoken and powerful. “None of the regular rules are true here.”

I swallowed, wishing for a moment that we were the only two people in the world, and willing myself to forget that my friends were outside, waiting for us. They hadn’t been waiting long…surely they wouldn’t mind that they had to wait just a couple extra minutes. They would understand. “How did you know how to turn the projector thingy on?”

He shrugged. “Sophie, sometimes you don’t need to ask so many questions or think through everything so much. Just go with it.” Johnny gave me a crooked half
smile, and I looked away. It almost hurt how much I wanted him to want me.

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said quietly. His eyes were focused on mine, and I willed myself to look straight back at him. Finally, he was the one who broke our gaze. He shoved his hands in his pockets and sat down on the floor to look up at our make-believe sky.

I settled in next to him, silently promising Grace and Ella that I’d get up in two minutes. “So…my aunt’s list.” I told Johnny about how we’d found Suzy’s list, and gave him a quick rundown of a few of the things on it. As usual, I pretended the last thing wasn’t there. I didn’t need to tell him about
eating dessert on top of the water tower
.
That would be something
for me to deal with, eventually.

He turned his head so he was looking at me, instead of the sky, again. “So you’re fulfilling her fantasies,” he said. “Living out her last wishes. Being the rebel she always wanted to be.”

“I guess so, yeah,” I said. “If I could be even half the woman she was when she died, I’d feel like I’d achieved something. I guess I also just feel like…I don’t know, following in her footsteps is going to help me find my own way, you know?”

Johnny put his hands behind his head. “Yeah, I can see why you might think about it like that.”

“How would you think about it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not in your shoes.”

“Well, if you were…”

“I don’t think that’s for me to say,” he said. “You can never put yourself in someone else’s situation without having all the facts. It’s impossible to understand exactly how other people react to things. Stuff that seems so simple or straightforward or scary or stressful to one person can be monumentally different for someone else with a different chemical makeup.” He rolled onto his side and stretched out so his head was resting on his bicep. His knees were curled into an L
shape and I thought about how wonderful it would feel for me to roll over and tuck into the curve of his body.

Instead of doing that, I thought about what he’d just said. It made sense in a lot of ways. Johnny’s comments also reminded me, not for the first time, how little I really knew about Suzy and how little I knew about what had been going on in her life when she’d written the list. I knew I’d never know exactly, so the best thing I could do was treat the list as my own and try to rekindle her spirit within me.

“We should go—” I sai
d, just as Johnny said, “Sophie
?”

“Yeah?”