Throat (13 page)

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to report you.” He pointed at my chest and I thought for a second he was looking at my boobs. Guys were always doing that.

I leaned back in my chair, looking into his eyes again. Ready to run. Part of me would enjoy knocking him down on the way out. Although I had to admit … compared to what I had been through the last couple of days, this was a blast.

“What are you doing out here so late?” I said.

Sagan grinned. His bottom teeth were a little bit crooked. “Hey, I’m the one who should be asking the questions.” He pointed at my chest again.

“What? Is something hanging out?”

“No badge,” he said. “A big no-no out here. They give us security briefings about it all the time. I’m supposed to ‘challenge’ you, then wrestle you to the floor and wait for security to come.”

“Good luck,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“So how’d you get in the building, anyhow?” Sagan said. “How’d you get on the base?”

“ ‘Bishop’ doesn’t sound very Norwegian.”

“It’s not,” he agreed. “Does anybody ever tell you you are great at avoiding questions?”

“Does anybody ever tell you you’re nosy?”

“You got me. Okay, so you don’t want to tell me your name or how you got out here. I can live with that. I like mysteries. That’s the reason I do what I do.”

“What?” I said.

“I’m going to be an astronomer. You know, mysteries of the universe and all that?”

“Not for the billions and billions?”

Sagan reached over and tugged the hem of my pajama top. “Those are pj’s you’re wearing, aren’t they?”

“Sleepwear. That’s what they call it these days. The latest thing in high school fashion. Are you an albino?”

“Only on my father’s side.” Sagan looked down. “And you’re wearing … rubber boots. And … is that gasoline I smell?”

I couldn’t help it, I giggled a little. I never giggle. “Do you really work here?” I said.

“I’m a NASA co-op,” Sagan said. “I go to classes at UA–Huntsville by day, then work here after hours. Right now it’s volunteer stuff. But starting in June, I’m going to be a summer intern.” He rubbed his hands together. “The big bucks!”

“How old do you have to be to do that?”

“Nineteen.”

“So how old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

I laughed. “Divided by two?”

Could this really be happening? I had spent the day preparing to fight a vampire to the death. Now I was joking around with some strange guy as if knowing him was even possible. But it felt so good to think about something else.

“So you still live at home?” I said.

“Sure. All of us do.”

“All who?”

“I’ve got three sisters.”

“Wow. Big family. And where are you?”

“I’m the oldest.”

“So come on, how old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Please don’t ask
, I thought.

“What about you?” Sagan said.

“I’m … um … I’m eighteen.”

“I thought you were always honest?”

“Okay. Seventeen. But that’s my final offer.”
And if you call me a kid, I just might break your face
.

I got up from the table and walked back over to the chip case.

“Stand back,” I said.

Sagan got up too. “Hey, hold on. You don’t have to get violent. We’ll figure out something.”

I dropped my arm. “No joke, I’m starving. You got anything on you?”

“Food? Maybe a candy bar back in my desk.”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, so I was saving it for later. I have to eat chocolate every 11.3 hours to survive. I’ll split it with you. Just tell me your name.”

“You’ll give it all to me or I’ll beat you to death with a stapler.”

“I sense issues with anger,” Sagan said, grinning. “I’m kind of gifted that way. Glimpsing the inner person.”

I started to grin too. “Let’s go.”

“So you’re basically homeless,” Sagan said.

“I didn’t say that,” I mumbled.

My mouth was full of Snickers. God, it was so good. He was lucky he kept his arm when he offered it to me. We were sitting at a tiny wicker table in Sagan’s cubicle, the kind of wicker they use for outdoor furniture. The cube was micro-sized, just big enough for the table, a desk, and two chairs. We were surrounded by the walls of other cubes. If I stood on my tiptoes, I could see them going on and on into the distance. Most seemed to be empty. And not just because it was after hours, either.

“Devoid of human habitation,” Sagan said. “They used to use this building for something else, before they built the Solar Observatory. All these long buildings out here are pretty old, most dating back to before the moon landing.”

“Don’t you ever get creeped out at night?” I said.

“I’m not the type.”

“Me neither.” Well, I wasn’t until yesterday, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Well, actually I might be the type, but … I’m too focused, I guess?” Sagan said. He leaned back in his government-issue chair and kicked his feet up on the table. It started to fall over, so he took them off. His legs were long. “When I’m thinking about something I’m interested in, everything else just goes away,” he said.

Kind of like a seizure
, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I studied
Sagan’s desk—none of the usual stuff you would expect to see. No pictures, nothing personal, not even a calendar. Maybe he just hadn’t been there long enough? I stuffed the last of the Snickers in my mouth. I was still ravenous.

“Do you ever get tempted, you know …”

“What?” he said.

“To look around?”

“At other people’s stuff? Sure. All the time. Well, not all the time. Most of the time what I’m working on is so interesting, I don’t think about anything else.”

“Ever found anything weird?” I said.

Sagan looked disappointed. I could tell he was itching to explain all about the work he did, but astronomy just wasn’t my thing.

“Weird like how?” he said. “Mostly I’m just grazing for food. I look for places where somebody put out a bowl of something. I don’t go through their drawers and stuff. I wouldn’t do that.”

I smirked. “Sure you wouldn’t. I really believe you. I would.”

He looked at me. “I bet you would.”

I couldn’t get over the washed-out blue of his eyes. Nice complement to the blue he gave off in the dark, I bet. “I’ve always been the curious type,” I said.

“What about privacy? Somebody’s personal space?”

“I never respect that.”

Sagan laughed. No doubt about it, I really liked his laugh. “Actually, I bet nobody does,” he said.

“Yeah. I bet when someone is alone, they do whatever they want, just as long as nobody finds out.”

He swung his head left and right, as if he could see through the cube walls. “Some of these people—I wouldn’t want to know. If you’re so curious, how come you haven’t asked me what I do out here?”

“Astronomy is boring.”

“What!”

“Deadly.”

“Have you ever looked through a telescope?”

This time I put my feet up. The table didn’t move. I had taken the gum boots off to give my toes a rest. In spite of all my scrubbing, they were green.
That’s what running through miles of grass barefoot will do to you
. I wiggled them.

“A couple of times,” I said. “Back in the eighth grade we went up to the Von Braun Astronomical Society on Monte Sano.”

“Hey, I’m a member!”

“You would be.”

“So? Whatcha think?”

I glanced at him. I could tell by his face he really cared about my answer. “The telescope was pretty impressive, if size is a big deal with you. I was all ready for blazing fireballs, dust storms on Mars. Rainbow stripes on Jupiter—”

“Hubble stuff,” Sagan said, nodding. “That’s what everybody expects their first time—”

“I guess so. But everything was so small. Just tiny little white dots. Even Jupiter. I could barely see the red spot, and it wasn’t red. And the stars weren’t even dots, just pinpoints of light.…”

“Stars can’t be resolved down to disks.… They’re too far away—”

“There was this funny old guy there.…”

“Dr. Hermann.”

“Yeah. He had hair growing out of his ears and showed us a binary star and practically had a stroke, he was so excited. And it was just two tiny pinpricks of light.”

“What about galaxies?”

“They showed us one.…”

“I bet it was M31. Andromeda. That’s the one he always—”

“Who cares.” I made my voice deep, imitating Sagan imitating his hero. “Billions and billions of stars. And nothing but a smudge. See? Boring. Okay, put me out of my misery. What do you do here?”

“I hunt for comets,” he said, the disappointment unmistakable. “The observatory is booked solid doing solar stuff during the day. Comet hunting they save for late at night for the cheap help.”

I took my feet off the table and let myself slump over, making snoring sounds.

“No, it’s really cool if you find one,” Sagan said, perking up again. “They name it after you. Well, unless some guy in Japan has snagged it already. So every time it comes around again …”

“People all over the world pass out from sheer excitement.”

Sagan grinned.

“You have a really big mouth,” I said before I could think to stop myself.
Good God, Emma
.

“I get that from my grandfather, I guess,” Sagan said, smile fading a little. “Everybody says I look like him. Works for me.”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I like it. Your mouth, I mean. A lot of the time I just blurt out the first thing that jumps into my head.”

“Yeah, well, it still jumped in there, didn’t it?”

We didn’t say anything for a while.

“So … what do your parents do out here?” I said finally to break the silence.

“My mom works here doing solar stuff,” Sagan said. “My dad is in another building dreaming up deep sky projects.”

“Why don’t they work together?”

“They figure it works better this way. You know, so they aren’t on top of each other 24/7.”

“Oops,” I said.

“That didn’t come out right, did it?” he said, blushing like mad.

“You ever find one?” I said.

“What?”

“A comet.”

“Not yet.”

“And you’ve been out here how long?” There I went again.
Shut up
.

Sagan’s eyes widened. I actually think he was excited. “Believe it or not, some guys do this stuff for years before ever finding a single one,” he said.

I thought about saying something positive, like, “You’ll get yours soon, I bet.” But I kept my mouth shut. No sense going against type this late in the game. Besides, what was I doing? It’s not like I was crushing on this guy or anything. Okay, I liked him. But I had business to get to. A vampire was looking for me.

“So. Food,” I said.

Sagan picked up the Snickers wrapper from where I had thrown it on the wicker table. “What, that didn’t do it?”

I just looked at him.

“Okay. Let’s say I order a pizza,” he said. My insides practically convulsed in delight at the thought. “What do I get in return?”

“Nothing,” I said.

But I tried to make my eyes bigger, give him the kind of face Gretchen Roberts was so good at. I’m pretty sure I looked more like a wolf.

“Deal,” Sagan said.

We had pepperoni, of course. Sagan got us drinks from a machine and we moved back into the cafeteria. I ate all of a large except two slices and didn’t feel quite so anxious. Maybe there was something to that hypoglycemic vampire notion. Afterward I felt a little more generous.

“I have a home,” I said, gnawing on a piece of crust.

Sagan blotted pizza sauce with a napkin at the corner of his mouth. “And it’s … where?”

“Not here.”

“Are you going back there tonight?”

“No. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

I glared at him to let him know that one was off-limits. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands for mercy. “Your family. Do they know where you are?”

“No. I called my mom to let her know I’m all right. She was pretty crazy.”

“Are you? All right, I mean?”

“Don’t I look all right?”

Sagan studied me a long time until I started to feel uncomfortable.
Those eyes
.

“Well, you don’t look homeless,” he said. “Except for your clothes.”

“Profiler.”

“And you’re not emaciated.”

“Watch it.”

“And you’re clean.” He glanced at my boots, no doubt remembering my green toes. “Well, mostly.”

“I told you. I’m not technically homeless,” I said. “I’m just temporarily … hiding out.”

“And you won’t tell me what you’re hiding from? Okay, let me guess. Violence at home. A weird father. The cops?”

I shook my head in a way that didn’t say no. It said, “None of your business.”

“I’d still like to know how you got on the base,” Sagan said. “It’s not the most secure place in the world, but no way could you get
through any of the gates. Not without a badge and a vehicle. So you had to climb the fence somewhere. Or you walked in through the alligator swamp. But you’re not all—”

“Alligators?” I said.

“Hundreds of them. Big as Escalades. You ever see
Primeval
?

“Bull …,” I swore.

“Okay, not so big. Probably just pets somebody threw out their car doors or flushed down the toilet. But they found a guy’s head out here a few years ago. I’m not lying. Just a head.”