Connect the Stars Read online

  “You have to read something to have it imprint on your memory, right?” I asked.

  “Read or hear or see, but a lot of times it happens with reading.”

  “So why were you reading about zippers? Was it a zipper book? The history of clothing closures or something?”

  As soon as I said it, his shoulders tensed up, and I wondered if there might be Lyza Turnbills at his school too, “cool” kids who smiled and acted interested, even though they were laughing at him behind his back the whole time. I hoped not. Because I was really and truly interested, I quickly said, “I mean, I read a lot of quirky stuff too, like Walden by Henry David Thoreau, for example, which is why I was wondering.”

  He relaxed. “Oh, well, yeah, I read the weird letter sections of the dictionary sometimes. You know. Q, Z. Or relatively rare letter combinations, like Ps . . .”

  “Cool. But why?” I said, and I really wanted to add, By the way, if your school does have a version of Lyza Turnbill, never, ever tell her that you read the dictionary.

  “I guess I find words interesting.” He shrugged and smiled a half smile. “But also sometimes I just need stuff to talk about with people. So anyway, I found the word zipper, which got me wondering about zippers, so I checked a book out of the library.”

  We’d gotten to some taller, thickset shrubs and brush. Aaron went first, occasionally holding branches so they wouldn’t spring back and hit me. I thought this was really nice of him, but when I whispered, “Thanks,” he looked puzzled, like he had no idea what I’d be thanking him for. We’d only gone a little way into the woods when Aaron stopped, turned around, and put a finger to his lips to tell me Quiet. Through the trees, I could see the tangerine glow of Daphne’s team’s campfire.

  Slowly Aaron and I made our way closer, staying low and trying not to step on anything noisy, until we were right on the edge of the clearing where the team was camped. Daphne and Randolph sat near the dying fire. They were facing us, but I was pretty sure we were lost in shadow. I really, really hoped so. Their other two teammates, Cyrus and Edie, must have been sleeping or just lying in their tents, and I would have bet that they’d been there since setting up camp. If I were on Daphne’s and Randolph’s team, I knew, I would take off and zip myself into my tent before it even got dark.

  “We’ve got to figure this out,” said Daphne. “No way am I letting that pack of misfit, preppified, math-club dorks get their dweeby hands on the air mattress.”

  Aaron and I exchanged a look that said, Those misfit, preppified, math-club, dweeby-handed dorks would be us.

  “Hey, maybe it means we should set our watches back!” said Randolph excitedly. “But how far back? That’s the question.”

  Daphne snorted. “That might the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. You’re kidding, right?”

  Randolph forced a laugh. “Yeah. Duh. Totally kidding.”

  A lie. Obviously. He ended it with a squeak, a classic Helium Liar.

  He stared up at the sky, squeezing his hands into fists and pounding them gently against his thighs. After I watched him for a few seconds, I realized this was Randolph’s version of thinking, as if even just using his brain required hitting something. He stopped pounding.

  “Okay, how’s this? Maybe we should hike backward? Like face one way and walk the other way?”

  Aaron touched my shoulder and mouthed the word “Clue.”

  To delve back in time. They hadn’t figured it out yet! And obviously, if it were up to Randolph, they never would.

  “Why would we have to do that?” scoffed Daphne. “What would that lead to, besides you walking off the edge of a cliff?”

  Randolph laughed uneasily again. “Well, what do you think it means?”

  “I think it means we should walk back the way we came.”

  “Really? But that would be, like, backtracking, right?”

  Daphne gave him a withering stare and then sighed. “Look, everyone will assume the flag is up ahead because they haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll bet Jare is out there in the dark, sticking it someplace back along the trail right this minute. That’s why he didn’t want us searching at night.”

  Randolph narrowed his eyes and nodded, slowly. “Whoa. I bet you’re right.”

  Viciously, Daphne stabbed at the fire with a stick. “This whole thing is so stupid. I’d run away except the only place stupider than here is home with my so-called mom.”

  “Is she not really your mom, you know, biologically?” asked Randolph.

  Daphne gave him a shove. “Don’t be an idiot. Yeah, she’s my mom, biologically! What do you think, I’m adopted? Or some pathetic foster-care kid?”

  Randolph’s face drooped. “No way,” he said, a little halfheartedly. “Foster care? Seriously? I don’t even know what that is.”

  Lie. Randolph knew what foster care was. Who didn’t? But something about his tone made me worry that Randolph hadn’t just heard about it or seen it on TV, that his knowledge was more of the firsthand variety. I hoped not.

  “I meant that she acts more like a prison guard. All she does is make insane rules just so she can punish me when I break them. She says she wants me to be responsible, but if that means turning out like her, I’d rather drop dead. All she does is work at her stupid office job. She’s like a rat in a cage on one of those rat wheels.”

  “Rat wheels,” said Randolph sagely. “I know what you mean.”

  “It’s why she keeps sending me to these camps. She thinks if I spend enough time roughing it, I’ll finally get how great our life is and appreciate all she does for me. Like that’ll ever happen. No wonder my dad left when I was a baby. He is so awesome, it’s not even funny. Totally fearless. He helicopter skis. He surfs ridiculous waves. He scuba dives the Great Barrier Reef, like, annually.”

  Daphne wasn’t lying. Her dad’s awesomeness might have been debatable (helicopter skiing sounded plain stupid to me), but Daphne didn’t doubt it at all.

  “Cool!” said Randolph. “Why don’t you go live with him?”

  “Brilliant idea,” said Daphne. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess you probably did think of it.”

  “Uh, once or twice, moron. My witch mom hired some fancy lawyer who tricked my dad into giving up custody of me. But as soon as he can work it out, he’s totally taking me back. We’ll go live in this amazing town in Montana where he grew up. It’s so far north that it’s practically Canada. Which means I’ll never see my mom again, thank god. She hates the cold and the wilderness, anyplace she can’t wear her hideous blue suits.”

  “Oh, yeah, my mom wears those suits too. And she’s super strict. Last July, on my birthday, she made me do yard work all day because I talked back to her. I got blisters all over my hands and got stung by a hornet on my freaking birthday. And sunburn!”

  Lies. The suit, the yard work, the hornet, all of it. Possibly even the mom was a lie. It almost annoyed me, feeling sorry for Randolph, but no matter how big a jerk the guy was, I really hoped he had a mom.

  “Hey, I was born in July, too. The sixth. When’s your birthday?” asked Daphne.

  “July seventeenth. And we live in this town on the Georgia coast, which is a million degrees in July.”

  “You’re a Cancer, like me,” said Daphne. “Cancers are the best!”

  Randolph’s eyes glittered, as though being a fellow Cancer of Daphne’s was the best thing that had ever happened to him. She raised her hand, and he high-fived her, then stared down at his palm, awestruck. Daphne kicked sand on the fire.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” she said. “We need to get out of here as soon as it’s light if we want to beat Little Miss Perfect Ponytail and her band of freaks.”

  “Yeah! What a bunch of losers!”

  “She and I left from the same airport. Her parents walked her all the way to the security line and then hugged her like she was going off to war or something. Her dad actually got teary eyed. It was sickening.”

  It took me a
second to realize that Little Miss Perfect Ponytail was probably me. I felt a jolt of anger and wanted to slap Daphne for having the nerve to even talk about my parents. But right then, Aaron turned and nodded at me, and we carefully, silently backed deep into the thicket of creosote bushes.

  When we were a safe distance away, I said, “Did you see Randolph’s face when she high-fived him? I bet he won’t wash that hand for a week.”

  “Like he was going to wash his hand anyway,” said Aaron.

  Surprised, I laughed.

  “What?” said Aaron.

  “That was funny.”

  “It was?”

  “Yeah, and I think it was also the first mean thing I’ve heard you say.”

  “Oh,” said Aaron, a little guiltily. “Well, I guess maybe I don’t like Randolph that much. He’s not exactly nice to me, right?”

  “Well, there was that brutally-smacking-you-to-the-ground incident.”

  Aaron smiled. “Yeah, there was that.”

  “He was lying, you know, about his mom making him do yard work on his birthday.”

  “I know. Last July seventeenth, Hurricane Ernesto hit coastal Georgia. It started at noon and hovered over the region all day. There were hundred-mile-per-hour winds. No one was doing yard work that day.” Then he gave me a puzzled look. “But how did you know?”

  I made an offended face. “What? You’re just assuming I don’t know the weather conditions in Georgia on July seventeenth of last year?”

  “No!” Then he scratched his head. A Poison Ivy liar, unless he only scratched his head, which would make him a Lice Liar. I tried to remember what he’d done before, but then I realized this was the only time I’d ever heard him lie. And he took the lie back about three seconds later. “Well, yeah, I was. Sorry. Like I said, sometimes I forget that other people know things.”

  “I was kidding,” I said, elbowing him. “I had no idea what the weather was.”

  “Oh, well, how did you know he was lying, then?”

  “I knew because—” I had never told anyone about my special ability, my unsuper superpower, but I decided, right there on the spot, to tell Aaron. I don’t know why. Maybe because he was so open about his own weird gift. Maybe because he just seemed like someone you could trust. Maybe because I knew I’d never see the guy after camp ended, so it didn’t matter what I said to him. But really I think it had more to do with the night sky, how immense and starry it was. I know it doesn’t make sense, but there was something about being under that sky with Aaron that made me want to tell him the whole truth. I took a breath. “Because my brain can do this strange thing.”

  And then I told him. After I finished, he didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell from his expression that he was mulling it over. I braced myself, waiting for him to spurt out some fact about the prefrontal cortex of the brain or about a world-famous pathological liar, or maybe he was even going to lie to me to see if I could detect it, but when he finally spoke, he said, “Do you ever wish people wouldn’t talk about it all the time?”

  “About what?”

  “Your lie-detecting ability.” He smiled. “Your superpower.”

  “I don’t really call it that. Sometimes, to myself, I call it an unsuperpower.”

  “I don’t call it that either,” said Aaron, “except as a joke. But whatever you want to call it, both our brains can do strange things. I just wondered if you ever get tired of people talking about your strange thing.”

  “Do people talk about yours a lot?”

  Aaron nodded. “Sure. All the time. They’re not being mean or anything; at least, most people aren’t. They think it’s cool. They think I’m cool because of it, and when they talk about it, they’re, like, cheering me on. But now, for some reason, I wish they wouldn’t talk about it so much.”

  I thought for a second. “Well, yeah, it probably gets old being known for just that. You wouldn’t want it to become your entire identity.”

  Aaron’s eyes clouded with confusion. “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

  “You know, your amazing memory is, well, amazing. But you probably wish people saw the other interesting things about you.”

  Aaron looked even more confused, as if it hadn’t occurred to him before that there might be other interesting things about him. I didn’t see how that could be true, though. He was probably just tired.

  “Well, I’ll try not to talk about it a lot,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. “And I’ll definitely never call you Memory Boy.”

  Aaron smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Although it is a really clever nickname. Sounds like something a first grader would make up,” I said, “which isn’t that surprising, since it was Randolph.”

  “Right.” But Aaron didn’t jump in and start talking about what an idiot Randolph was, which is what most people would have done. I figured that with the hand-washing insult, maybe he’d used up his meanness quota for the day.

  “I don’t get tired of people talking about my lie-detecting ability because no one knows about it,” I said.

  Aaron looked at me, startled. “Seriously? Why not?”

  “I guess since it’s something I hate about myself, I don’t feel like going around broadcasting it to everyone. Only my parents know.”

  “Hold on. You hate it?”

  “Anyone would hate it.”

  “I don’t know about that. I mean, I can see how it would be a problem sometimes, but it’s part of who you are.”

  “So?”

  “So hating it seems . . . counterproductive.”

  I stopped walking and put my hands on my hips, annoyed. “My so-called gift messes up my life on a daily basis. So what am I supposed to do? Just start—poof!—liking it? Does that sound easy to you?”

  “I guess not,” said Aaron. “Sorry.”

  He sounded so downcast and regretful that I felt bad about snapping at him. Why should you feel bad? I chided myself. He’s not your friend, remember? You don’t have any friends.

  Even so, I flashed back to him patiently fixing my zipper when I hadn’t even asked him to.

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  When we got back to our campsite, Kate and Louis were waiting up for us. Kate pointed and said, “Here they are!” and I noticed that she seemed less sad than usual. I thought about how maybe those companion ponies (or monkeys) weren’t only helping the racehorses. Maybe taking care of the racehorses helped them too.

  We filled them in on what we’d overheard.

  “Do you think they’re right?” asked Louis. “About heading back down the trail?”

  He sounded hopeful, and I thought he was probably thinking that he might not have to hike through that dark, narrow crevice in the rock after all. But Aaron was shaking his head.

  “‘Delve’ comes from the Old English word delfan, which means ‘to dig.’ It’s an odd choice of words, so I think Jare must have done it on purpose. We’re not just supposed to go back; we’re also supposed to go down, into the ground.”

  “Not to be negative or anything, but do you think Jare knows Old English?” asked Kate.

  “Maybe his girlfriend or his mom or his English teacher does. Whoever wrote the clues also knows about Benedict Arnold and Dylan Thomas’s poetry. He—or she—could easily know about the word ‘delve.’”

  Louis shuddered but then sat up straighter. “Okay. So we’ll get up tomorrow morning and go.”

  “It’ll be fine, Louis,” said Kate. She reached out as if to pat his arm but, as if remembering that he didn’t like to be touched, stopped a few inches from it and patted the air instead. Louis gave a shaky smile, but he didn’t look one bit convinced.

  “Actually,” I said, “I think we should leave before morning.”

  Louis’s eyes widened. “You mean go in the dark?”

  “Well, it would only be dark at first, before we get to the gully, and we’ll use headlamps,” I said. “Look, I don’t love the idea of hiking in the dark either, but Daphne�
�s team is planning to start first thing in the morning. I bet it won’t take her that long to figure out they made a mistake. So I think we should get a head start.”

  “‘We need to get out of here as soon as it’s light if we want to beat Little Miss Perfect Ponytail and her band of freaks,’” quoted Aaron.

  Louis and Kate stared at him. He shrugged.

  “Sorry. That’s just what she said,” he explained.

  “Yeah, thanks for repeating it word for word,” I told him, but I wasn’t really mad. Aaron was somehow a hard person to be mad at.

  “Your ponytail is nice,” said Aaron helpfully.

  Maybe we were giddy from exhaustion, but this struck us all as hilarious. When we stopped laughing, we agreed that Aaron would set his watch so that we’d be up a half hour before sunrise.

  “I wear earplugs when I try to sleep, so you might need to talk extra loud to wake me up,” said Louis, climbing into his big tent. “If I sleep at all. Anyway, good night, guys.”

  “Yeah, good night, everyone,” said Kate sadly. She sighed as she unzipped her tent, and I thought that nights must be especially hard for her, lying there alone with whatever it was that made her so miserable.

  “Night,” I said.

  “Good night,” said Aaron. Then, when the other two were in their tents, he added, quietly, just to me, “I was thinking. Maybe you don’t have to actually like it, your unsuperpower.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, maybe you don’t have to go all the way to liking it. But remember what you said about my memory? That it doesn’t have to be my whole identity? Maybe if you thought about your lie-detecting ability as just another part of who you are, like your brown hair or whatever, it wouldn’t seem like such a big pain,” said Aaron.

  I know I should have been irritated that this kid I wasn’t even friends with was giving me advice I hadn’t even asked for, but somehow all I could feel was touched. All this time, just because he wanted to, Aaron had been thinking about how to help me with my unsuperpower problem. But I realized that showing him I was touched would be a mistake—it would make him think we were friends or something. So I just shrugged.