Chapter Text
Summer of 1994
It was way too late for this.
Which was, of course, why everyone was doing it.
The lights in Cabin C had been off for exactly twenty-seven minutes, which meant we were all supposed to be asleep, dreaming about space shuttles and mission patches and whatever else the official NASA Space Camp brochure probably imagined teenage girls dreamed about.
Instead, eleven of us were sitting cross-legged on the floor between two rows of bunk beds, whispering too loudly, passing around a flashlight like it was contraband, and playing truth or dare with the same seriousness mission control probably used for actual emergencies.
So, basically, the same thing.
“Okay,” Mara whispers, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Truth or dare?”
Across the circle, Tessa grins like she has been waiting her entire life for this moment. Which is dramatic, but also probably true.
“Dare.”
A few girls make quiet ooooooh sounds, which immediately earns a sharp shush from Priya, who has been self-appointed as Lookout despite having absolutely no authority and, from what I can tell, very little actual lookout ability.
Mara’s grin widens. “I dare you to go outside and steal Counselor Whitaker’s clipboard.”
“No way,” Tessa says immediately.
“That is literally the point of a dare.”
“That is not a dare, that is a crime.”
“It’s a clipboard.”
“It’s government property.”
“It’s laminated paper on a piece of cardboard.”
“With NASA on it,” Tessa argues. “That makes it federal.”
Christina, who is sitting beside me with her knees pulled up and her chin resting on top of them, lets out the smallest laugh. Not loud enough to get us caught. Just enough for me to hear it.
Unfortunately, I do hear it.
Which is annoying, because it makes me smile before I can stop myself.
“Technically,” Christina whispers, leaning slightly toward me, “it might be more of a misdemeanor.”
I turn my head. “That is not helping.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“Clearly.”
She smiles into her knees, and I look away before my face can do anything stupid.
The flashlight moves around the circle again. Tessa accepts a reduced version of the dare, which is to sneak to the bathroom and come back wearing the hand soap dispenser’s paper refill label as a crown. She does it successfully, which is honestly more impressive than I want to admit. Everyone applauds silently by wiggling their fingers in the air.
It is ridiculous.
It is also maybe the most fun I’ve had all week.
And considering this week involved a flight simulator, a model rocket launch, and pretending to dock a shuttle without killing an imaginary crew, that’s saying something.
“Your turn,” Mara says, and then the flashlight lands on me.
Which feels aggressive.
I blink at the beam of light in my lap. “Oh. Great.”
Christina shifts beside me, close enough that her shoulder almost brushes mine. Almost. Not quite. Still enough for me to notice, apparently, because my brain has decided to become deeply invested in shoulder distances.
“Truth or dare?” Mara asks.
There is only one smart answer in a cabin full of girls who have just tried to commit clipboard theft.
“Truth,” I say immediately.
A few girls groan.
“Coward,” someone whispers.
“Alive coward,” I whisper back.
Christina makes that quiet laugh again.
Mara taps her chin like she’s thinking, even though she absolutely already knows what she’s going to ask. “Okay. Have you ever kissed anyone?”
The circle goes quiet in the way circles of teenage girls go quiet when the question is technically harmless and socially devastating.
I feel heat crawl up my neck.
Which is stupid. It’s a normal question. People kiss people. People have been kissing people for centuries, probably. Maybe even longer. I don’t actually know. It wasn’t covered in the “How To Become An Astronaut” class, though frankly, that class left out a lot.
“No,” I say.
It comes out flatter than I mean it to.
Mara blinks. “That’s it?”
“What else do you want, a dissertation?”
“Well, no, but—”
“No,” I repeat. “Final answer.”
Tessa, still wearing her soap-label crown, squints at me. “Not even spin the bottle?”
“I’m from Oregon,” I say, as if that explains anything. “We climb trees and avoid feelings.”
Christina’s shoulder actually does bump mine this time.
On purpose, maybe.
Or because the cabin is small.
“You climb trees?” she whispers. I glance at her. “You say that like it’s a strange concept.”
“No,” she says, eyes bright in the low flashlight glow. “Just trying to figure out if that was an Oregon requirement.”
“Mandatory. Right after learning how to identify rain clouds.”
“That seems useful.”
“It is. What do people from North Carolina do?”
She thinks about it for half a second. “tinkering with things in sheds.”
I nod solemnly. “Ah. The other essential life skill.”
“Exactly.”
The flashlight moves on.
Thank god.
The circle loosens again, attention shifting away from me and onto Jo, who picks dare and is told to eat an entire packet of powdered lemonade mix from the snack table. She does, because apparently she does not value her tongue.
While everyone is busy trying not to laugh loud enough to wake the counselors, I let myself lean back against the side of the lower bunk.
The room is warm and smells faintly like shampoo, old sneakers, and the industrial laundry soap they use on the camp sheets. Outside, the Alabama night presses against the cabin windows, dark and humid. Somewhere beyond the trees, the actual training center sits quiet under moonlight.
Tomorrow morning, we all leave. I try not to think about that too much.
Which, naturally, means I think about it immediately.
Mostly because of the hair tie holding my braid together.
It is not mine.
It is Christina’s.
She braided my hair, and leant me the hair tie, ten minutes before the game started, when I had been trying to twist my hair into a knot with the desperate determination of someone who believed force alone could overcome a lack of materials.
It couldn’t.
Obviously.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Christina had said from the bunk behind me.
I had turned around with one hand tangled in my own hair. “That’s a very bold thing to say to a person who is clearly thriving.”
“You look like you’re fighting a raccoon.”
“I might be winning.”
“You’re not.”
Then she had reached into the small canvas bag at the foot of her bed and pulled out a black hair tie, stretching it once between her fingers before holding it out to me.
“For the raccoon,” she said.
I stared at it. “I can’t take your hair tie.”
“You’re borrowing it.”
“What if I lose it?”
“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been.”
“Wow,” I said, taking it from her. “That’s a lot of pressure.”
“I believe in you.”
“Terrible judgment.”
She smiled. “I’ve been told.”
She asked if she could braid my hair, and i let her, trying very hard not to notice everytime her fingers had brushed over the skin on my neck.
Which was normal.
If someone is braiding someone elses hair, they are bound to get into contact with their neck.
It’s not an event.
There is no reason to log it as an event.
And yet.
“I’ll give it back before we leave,” I told her.
“You better.”
“Or what?”
She tilted her head, considering. “I’ll send NASA after you.”
“NASA has better things to do.”
“Not if I make a convincing enough case.”
“About a hair tie?”
“About theft.”
“You people from North Carolina are intense.”
“You people from Oregon are apparently criminals.”
“Allegedly.”
She laughed then, and it had made something in my chest feel weirdly light. Like the moment had expanded around us. Like everything else in the cabin—the bunks, the whispering girls, the counselors doing hallway checks—had moved a little farther away.
Which is ridiculous.
It was a hair tie.
That’s all.
A borrowed hair tie. and a braid.
Nothing else.
Across the circle, Jo is still recovering from the lemonade powder, and I am trying to focus on that instead of the elastic resting warm against my pulse.
It is not going well.
My problem, I think, started on the first day.
Which is inconvenient, because first days are supposed to be for introductions and awkward icebreakers and learning where the bathrooms are. Not for meeting someone who makes conversation feel like skipping stones over water—easy, quick, surprisingly smooth.
I met Christina outside the mock shuttle trainer, where I was standing with my duffel bag still slung across my shoulder, pretending I wasn’t lost.
I was very lost.
Not catastrophically. Just enough that the map in my hand had started to feel personally insulting.
The problem was that everything at Space Camp had names that sounded important. Training Center. Mission Complex. Habitat. Simulator Bay. Rocket Park. All of them sounded like places I should know how to locate, and none of them appeared to be where I was standing.
I turned the map upside down.
It did not improve.
“Looking for something?” someone asked.
I looked up.
A girl with light-brown hair in two dutch-braids and a camp shirt tucked into jeans stood a few feet away, one strap of her backpack hanging from her shoulder. She had the kind of expression that made it clear she already knew the answer.
“No,” I said, too quickly. “I’m just… evaluating the map from all possible angles.”
She glanced at the upside-down paper. “How’s that going?”
“Poorly.”
“That’s the cafeteria.” She pointed behind me.
I turned.
There was, in fact, a very obvious cafeteria behind me.
“Right,” I said. “I knew that.”
“Sure.”
“I was testing you.”
“Oh, were you?”
“And you passed.”
She smiled, like she had decided to let me keep whatever dignity I had left, which was very generous considering I had arrived with almost none.
“I’m Christina,” she said.
I gave her my name.
Or rather, I heard myself say it, which felt strange because the moment already seemed to be turning into the kind of memory where the edges get too bright. Her name stayed sharp. Mine sort of floated away with the heat rising off the pavement.
She nodded toward the map. “Where are you actually trying to go?”
“Cabin C.”
Her smile got a little bigger. “Same.”
“Great,” I said. “Then I’m going to pretend this was intentional and walk with you.”
“That’s probably best.”
We started down the path together, the Alabama sun pressing hot against the back of my neck. The air smelled like cut grass and asphalt. Somewhere in the distance, a group of boys shouted about rockets, because apparently that was the required soundtrack here.
“So,” Christina said, “Oregon?”
I looked down at my duffel, where the luggage tag still had PDX written in block letters. “That obvious?”
“Only if you can read.”
“Dangerous skill.”
“I try not to brag.”
“I’m from outside Portland,” I said. “Technically a town near it, but Portland is easier to non-locals.”
“I’m from North Carolina,” she said. “Near Jacksonville.”
“Is that near the ocean?”
“Close enough.”
“That sounds better than rain.”
“Rain has its uses.”
“Name one.”
“Trees.”
I considered that. “Fine. One use.”
“You like trees?”
“I like climbing them,” I said. “And building things in them.”
“Like tree houses?”
“Exactly like tree houses.”
Her eyes lit up a little. “You built tree houses?”
“With my brothers,” I said. “Two older ones. Which means half my childhood was being told I couldn’t do something and then doing it out of spite.”
“That’s a very powerful educational model.”
“It worked. I can hammer a nail sideways into plywood while someone yells unsolicited advice at me.”
“My dad has a shed,” she said, like she was offering up something in return. “We like to tinker with things in it sometimes. Or fix things. Or take things apart and pretend that counts as making them better.”
“That absolutely counts.”
“Even if they don’t work afterward?”
“Especially then.”
She laughed.
And it was easy.
That was the strange part.
Usually, talking to new people felt awkward and weird. But with Christina, things just lined up. Question. Answer. Joke. Laugh. A pause that didn’t feel like failure.
By the time we reached Cabin C, I had learned that she wanted to be an astronaut, that she liked figuring out how things worked, and that she did not believe in taking the last cookie unless she had confirmed everyone else had already had one.
Which was suspiciously moral.
I told her I wanted to be an astronaut too.
I expected her to make the face people usually make - the half-amused, half-concerned expression adults put on when you say something too big for the room.
She didn’t.
She just nodded, like it made perfect sense.
Like of course I did.
Like why wouldn’t I?
That was probably the first problem.
The second problem was the class.
The “How To Become An Astronaut” class was held on Wednesday afternoon in a room that had aggressively beige walls and an overhead projector that made a noise like it was losing the will to live.
A counselor, whose name I was too busy chatting with Christina to hear, stood at the front beside a screen, clicking through a slideshow on a computer that everyone treated like advanced alien technology.
On the first slide, in large blue letters, it said:
SO YOU WANT TO BE AN ASTRONAUT?
Which, yes.
Obviously.
That was why we were all here.
The counselor cleared his throat. “There are many paths to NASA,” he said. “But most astronaut candidates pursue advanced degrees in fields like engineering, mathematics, biological science, or physical science.”
Beside me, Christina leaned over slightly and whispered, “So nothing fun.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling. “You don’t think mathematics sounds fun?”
“It is fun, but where is the creativity?”
“You want to go to space.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to do long division there.”
I had to look down at my notebook.
Not because I was taking notes.
Because if I looked at her, I was going to laugh.
Our counselor clicked to another slide. A list appeared: PILOT. ENGINEER. DOCTOR. SCIENTIST.
“All excellent options,” he said.
Christina made a tiny disappointed sound.
I whispered, “What now?”
“I just think they’re missing some categories.”
“Such as?”
“Person who builds a spacecraft in her backyard.”
“That seems hard to certify.”
“Person who can climb out of a tree house without breaking both ankles.”
I nodded. “Highly relevant in zero gravity.”
“Exactly.”
The counselor glanced in our direction.
We both immediately looked forward with the innocent expressions of two people who had absolutely not been whispering about unofficial NASA qualifications.
Which lasted maybe twelve seconds.
The next slide showed a timeline. High school. College. Graduate school. Experience. Application. Selection. Training.
It was neat and clean and terrifying.
It made becoming an astronaut look like assembling furniture from instructions written by someone who had never seen furniture.
“Now,” the nameless counselor said, “I want you to pair up and create your own astronaut timeline. Start from today. Think about the choices you’ll need to make to become competitive candidates.”
Everyone shifted at once.
Before I could even pretend to look around, Christina slid her chair closer to mine and pulled a blank sheet of paper between us.
“Partner?” she asked.
“Only because you asked before I could reject you.”
“Harsh.”
“I’m very selective.”
“I’m honored.”
“You should be.”
She wrote TODAY at the top of the page in neat letters, then drew a line across the middle.
I watched her hand move for a second too long before grabbing my pencil.
“So,” she said. “Step one. Finish Space Camp”
“Easy.”
“Step two. High school.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Step three. College,” she said, then paused. “Probably engineering.”
“Maybe,” I said.
We both stared at the paper.
The room buzzed around us with other pairs planning sensible futures. Aerospace engineering. Air Force ROTC. Medical school. Physics. Flight hours. Perfect grades. Perfect bodies. Perfect everything.
Christina tapped her pencil against the page.
“This is boring,” she whispered.
I looked at her. “The entire future?”
“No. This version of it.”
I knew exactly what she meant.
The timeline made it seem like there was only one correct way to want something. Like the dream had already been built, and our job was just to climb inside the right shape.
“What would you put instead?” I asked.
She leaned back in her chair, eyes on the blank line. “Build something that almost works.”
I smiled. “Almost?”
“Working is ideal, obviously, but almost working teaches you more.”
“That sounds like something someone says after breaking a lawn mower.”
“I have never broken a lawn mower.”
I gave her a look.
She looked away. “Not permanently.”
I laughed under my breath.
She wrote: BUILD SOMETHING THAT ALMOST WORKS.
“Okay,” I said, taking the pencil from her. “Climb something too high.”
“That’s your step?”
“Absolutely.”
I wrote it down.
Christina looked delighted. “What does that teach you?”
“How to get down.”
“Important.”
“And how to ignore people yelling that you shouldn’t have gone up there in the first place.”
“Even more important.”
Soon our astronaut timeline had become less of a professional plan and more of a manifesto.
Build something that almost works.
Climb something too high.
Learn how engines don’t work.
Read every book with a spaceship on the cover.
Get lost somewhere and figure out the map.
Ask better questions.
Make something ugly but strong.
Don’t let boys take over the tools.
Don’t pretend not to want it.
That last one was Christina’s.
She wrote it smaller than the others.
I looked at it for a moment, then at her.
She shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “People make you feel weird when you want something too much.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “They do.”
Another pause.
Not awkward.
Just quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels like both people found the same thought at the same time and decided not to ruin it by explaining.
Then she cleared her throat and pointed at the page. “This timeline is terrible.”
“It’s the best one in the room.”
“Obviously.”
“We’re visionaries.”
“NASA should be concerned.”
“NASA should watch out.”
She smiled at that.
I remember thinking, very suddenly, that I hoped we got paired together for everything else too.
Which was a normal thought.
Probably.
The flashlight is back near me now.
I blink, pulled out of the memory by Mara saying, “Okay, okay, next.”
I look around and realize I have missed at least two turns, one of which apparently involved Priya admitting she once wrote a love letter to a substitute teacher and signed it from someone else.
Honestly, devastating to have missed the details.
Mara points the flashlight at Christina. “Truth or dare?”
Christina lifts her head from her knees.
“Truth,” she says.
A chorus of disappointed whispers ripples around the circle.
“Coward,” I whisper, because I am nothing if not consistent.
She glances sideways at me. “Alive coward.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Mara narrows her eyes. “Fine. What’s something you’re scared of?”
For some reason, everyone gets quieter.
Christina looks down at her hands for a second. The flashlight catches the curve of her face, the thoughtful line between her brows.
Then she says, “Not getting to do all of it.”
Mara frowns. “All of what?”
Christina shrugs one shoulder. “Everything.”
No one laughs.
I understand what she means immediately, which feels unfair.
Because that is the thing about wanting something like space. It is not just one dream. It is every version of yourself reaching for the same impossible thing at once. Scientist. Adventurer. Engineer. Explorer. Girl in a shed. Girl in a tree house. Future person whose life has not yet narrowed.
How are you supposed to choose one path when the sky keeps being that big?
Christina looks over at me then, just briefly.
I look back.
It is nothing.
It feels like something.
The game continues.
The flashlight goes to Tessa, then Jo, then Priya again. There is a dare involving socks. A truth about cheating on a math test. A heated debate over whether Han Solo counts as boyfriend material or an early warning sign.
And then, eventually, the beam lands in my lap again.
I sigh. “I feel targeted.”
“You are,” Mara says.
“Good to know.”
“Truth or dare?”
I consider picking truth again, because I am not stupid. But everyone is looking at me, and Christina is beside me, and for some unknown reason I don’t want to seem boring.
Which is how most disasters begin.
“Dare,” I say.
The circle reacts like I have just announced a moon landing.
Mara sits up straighter.
I immediately regret everything.
She looks from me to Christina.
Then back to me.
Her grin turns wicked. “I dare you to kiss Christina.”
The room goes silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
Like all the air has been sucked out through the vents.
For one terrible second, no one moves. The flashlight shakes slightly in Mara’s hand, throwing uneven light across the floorboards.
I feel my whole body go hot.
Christina is sitting right beside me.
Too beside me.
Extremely beside me.
I turn my head just enough to look at her.
She is already looking at me.
Her expression is not horrified, which is helpful. It is also not laughing, which is less helpful. Her eyes are wide, but not in a bad way. More like she also got handed an equation with too many unknowns and no time to solve it.
“You don’t have to,” she says quietly.
Which somehow makes it worse.
Not because I feel pressured.
Because I don’t.
That’s the problem.
But I am not against it.
I feel nervous, obviously. Mortified, definitely. Like my skeleton might try to exit my body, sure.
But i am not against it.
And that realization lands in me with the subtlety of a dropped toolbox.
“I know,” I whisper.
Someone across the circle makes a tiny sound and is immediately elbowed by someone else.
My heart is beating so hard I’m convinced the counselors can hear it from the next cabin.
Christina’s knee is almost touching mine. The borrowed hair tie is resting against my back at the end of the braid. Her face is close in the strange, compressed way everything becomes close when a room is dark and everyone is waiting.
I could do it.
That is the thought.
Not I should.
Not I have to.
I could.
And immediately after it comes an even more alarming thought:
I kind of want to.
Which is ridiculous. And not to mention confusing.
It is something I have absolutely no time to inspect while sitting in a pajama circle under a bunk bed at midnight.
Christina’s gaze flicks down for half a second, then back up.
My breath catches.
I lean forward a fraction.
The cabin door swings open.
Every single person in the circle freezes.
Counselor Whitaker stands in the doorway wearing sweatpants, a Space Camp staff sweatshirt, and the expression of a woman who has had exactly enough of our nonsense.
“What,” she says, very calmly, “is going on in here?”
No one answers.
Which is fair, because the honest answer is: emotional catastrophe.
Tessa, still wearing the soap-label crown, slowly reaches up and takes it off her head.
Counselor Whitaker closes her eyes for one second.
“Beds,” she says.
Immediately, everyone moves.
It is less like a group of girls going to sleep and more like a small wildlife population scattering from a flashlight. Sleeping bags rustle. Bunk ladders creak. Someone trips over a sneaker and whispers a curse that earns another sharp look from the doorway.
I stand too fast, nearly knocking my shoulder into Christina’s.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s okay,” she whispers back.
For half a second we just stand there.
The dare sits between us, unfinished.
Not gone.
Definitely not gone.
Then Counselor Whitaker says, “Now,” and the moment snaps.
I climb into my bunk.
Christina climbs into hers across the aisle.
The cabin settles into darkness again, but nothing feels settled.
I lie on my back, staring up at the wooden slats above me, listening to the whispering fade into sleep.
My braid is resting on my right shoulder, and I am overwhelmingly aware of what is keeping it together.
Across the aisle, Christina shifts in her bunk.
I turn my head before I can stop myself.
In the darkness, I can’t really see her. Just the outline of her shoulder. The shape of her hair against the pillow.
“Hey,” she whispers.
My stomach flips.
“Hey.”
A pause.
Then, softer, “Goodnight.”
It should not mean anything.
It is one word.
A normal word.
People say it constantly.
“Goodnight,” I whisper back.
I don’t fall asleep for a long time.
The next morning is too bright.
That is my first complaint.
My second complaint is that everyone is acting normal, which feels deeply unfair considering I spent most of the night mentally replaying an almost-kiss that did not technically happen.
The camp dining hall is loud with the scraping of trays and last-day excitement. Girls hug each other over pancakes. Counselors hand out certificates. Someone cries because she lost her mission patch. Someone else cries because she found it again.
I eat half a piece of toast and pretend that counts as breakfast.
Christina sits across from me, talking to Priya about an activity whe did yesterday, and everything about her seems normal.
Completely normal.
Which is rude.
Her hair is pulled back with another hair tie, because apparently she owns more than one and therefore my entire emotional spiral has been built on a false sense of object scarcity.
Still, the one on my wrist stays there.
I keep meaning to give it back.
I do.
But then someone asks us to sign their camp booklet. Then Mara wants a photo in front of the shuttle mock-up. Then Counselor Whitaker starts calling cabin groups toward the buses. Then everything becomes movement and noise and duffel bags banging against knees.
Goodbyes happen too quickly.
That is the thing no one tells you.
All week, time stretched. Days felt packed so full they could barely close around everything we did. But the leaving part folds in on itself, fast and messy.
One second Christina and I are standing near the curb with our bags at our feet.
The next, her bus is being called.
North Carolina and eastbound connections.
Oregon and westbound connections are apparently on the other side of the parking lot.
Of course they are.
“Well,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, because language has abandoned me.
She hooks her thumbs under the straps of her backpack. “I guess this is it.”
“Unless one of us gets lost again.”
“Possible.”
“Probable, honestly.”
She smiles, but it’s smaller than usual.
For a second, I think about saying something.
Not about the dare. Definitely not about the dare. But maybe about writing. Or seeing each other at NASA someday. Or how this week felt bigger than a week.
Instead, I say, “Don’t break any more lawn mowers.”
She laughs, and the sound loosens something in my chest and tightens something else at the same time.
“No promises” she says. “Don’t fall out of any trees.”
“Also no promises.”
The counselor responsible for the east-bound buses calls for final boarding.
Christina glances over her shoulder, then back at me.
There is that pause again.
The one from the first day. The one from the timeline. The one from last night, right before everything got interrupted.
Then she steps forward and hugs me.
It is quick.
Not dramatic.
Just arms around shoulders, backpack straps pressing awkwardly between us, her hair brushing my cheek for half a second.
I freeze for maybe one-third of it, then hug her back.
By the time my brain catches up, she is already pulling away.
“See you around,” she says.
It is a ridiculous thing to say to someone who lives across the country.
But I nod anyway.
“Yeah,” I say. “See you around.”
She climbs onto the bus.
I stand there like a very normal person who is not having any confusing internal developments at all.
Then someone behind me calls my name.
Or, well, I hear my name being called, sharp and impatient, from the direction of the west-bound buses.
I grab my duffel and force my feet to move.
By the time I climb into my seat, Christina’s bus is already pulling out.
I press my forehead lightly against the window and watch it turn toward the main road. The glass is warm from the sun. The parking lot blurs a little as our bus starts moving too.
It isn’t until we pass the Campsite sign that I notice.
The hair tie.
Still keeping the braid secure
I lift the braid and stare at the hair tie.
“Oh,” I whisper.
The girl beside me is already asleep, cheek smashed against her sweatshirt, completely unaware that my life has just developed a loose end.
I was supposed to give it back.
I promised I would.
I imagine Christina realizing later. Maybe at the airport. Maybe at home. Maybe not at all, because again, she has other hair ties and is probably a stable person.
Still, my chest pinches.
Because now I have something of hers.
Something small.
Something borrowed.
Something that means nothing and somehow absolutely does not feel like nothing.
I lean back in my seat and close my fist gently around it.
The dare comes back to me then.
The flashlight. The circle. Christina beside me. Her saying, You don’t have to. Me knowing that.
Me leaning in anyway.
Almost.
Almost is a terrible word.
It gives you too much room to think.
Almost means nothing happened, except something did. Almost means there is no story to tell, except I can’t stop telling it to myself. Almost means I don’t have to know why I wanted to kiss her.
Except I kind of do.
Outside, the nature-scene surrounding our campsite slides past the window in green flashes of trees and highway signs. Soon there will be an airport, then a plane, then Oregon rain, then my brothers asking if Space Camp was full of nerds, and me saying yes, obviously, because I was there.
Everything will go back to normal.
Probably.
I look down at the hair tie again.
Then out the window, where Christina’s bus is long gone.
“What the hell,” I mutter under my breath.
Not loud enough for anyone to hear.
Not even close.
The bus keeps driving.
And I keep thinking about the kiss that didn’t happen.