She exhaled, relaxed her grip on the book. She put it down carefully, as if it were one of the twins’ art projects. She walked to the window, stuck her head outside, and looked for stars. Stars grounded her. Their distance offered perspective when she couldn’t see beyond her own pain. But the stars weren’t out in Eureka’s sky tonight. They were hidden behind a cloak of thick gray clouds.
Lightning splintered the darkness. Thunder boomed again. Rain came heavier, thrashing the trees outside. A car on the street sloshed through a pond-sized puddle. Eureka thought of Brooks driving home to New Iberia. The roads were dark and slick, and he’d left in such a hurry—
No. She was mad at Brooks. She shuddered, then shuttered the window, leaned her head against the cold pane.
What if what he said was true?
She didn’t think she was better than anyone—but did she come off as if she did? With a handful of barbed comments, Brooks had planted the idea in Eureka that the whole planet was against her. And tonight there weren’t even stars, which made everything even murkier.
She picked up her phone, blocked Maya Cayce’s number with a scowling press of three buttons, and texted Cat.
Eureka could imagine Cat snorting a laugh in her candlelit bedroom, her feet propped on her desk, while she stalked future boyfriends on her laptop. The speed of Cat’s response comforted Eureka. She picked the book up again, opened it in her lap, and ran her finger around the circles of the final illustration, the one she’d thought she’d seen mirrored in Brooks’s wound.
A moment later, her phone rang.
“You two bicker like old marrieds,” Cat said as soon as Eureka picked up.
Eureka looked at the dent in her polka-dot wall. She imagined a similar-sized bruise on Brooks’s chest where she’d hit him with the phone.
“This was bad, Cat. He told me I think I’m better than everyone else.”
Cat sighed. “That’s just because he wants to do you.”
“You think everything is about sex.” Eureka didn’t want to admit they’d kissed. She didn’t want to think about that after what Brooks had said. Whatever that kiss meant, it was so far in the past it was a dead language no one knew how to speak anymore, more inaccessible than Diana’s book. “This was bigger than that.”
“Look,” Cat said, chomping on something crunchy, probably Cheetos. “We know Brooks. He’ll apologize. I give him until Monday, first period. In the meantime, I have some good news.”
“Tell me,” Eureka said, though she would rather have pulled the covers over her head until doomsday, or college.
“Rodney wants to meet you.”
“Who’s Rodney?” she groaned.
“My classicist fling, remember? He wants to see your book. I suggested Neptune’s. I know you’re over Neptune’s, but where else is there to go?”
Eureka thought about Brooks wanting to go with her when she got the book translated. That was before he’d exploded like a levee in a flood.
“Please don’t sit around feeling guilty about Brooks.” Cat could be surprisingly telepathic. “Put on something cute. Rodney might bring a friend. I’ll see you at Tune’s in half an hour.”
Neptune’s was a cafe in a strip mall on the second story, above Ruthie’s Dry Cleaners and a video game store that was slowly going out of business. Eureka put on sneakers and her raincoat. She jogged the mile and a half in the rain to avoid asking Dad or Rhoda if she could borrow one of their cars.
Up the wooden staircase, through the tinted glass door, you knew you would find at least two dozen Evangelinos sprawled out over laptops and doorstop-sized textbooks. The decor was candy apple red and worn, like an aging bachelor’s pad. A sinkhole aroma hung like a cloud over its slanted pool table and its flipperless
Eureka used to be a regular. Last year she’d even won the pool tournament—beginner’s luck. But she hadn’t been back since the accident. It made no sense that a ridiculous place like Neptune’s still existed and Diana had been swept away.
Eureka didn’t notice she was dripping wet until she walked in and heavy eyes fell on her. She wrung out her ponytail. She spotted Cat’s braids and moved toward the corner table where they always used to sit. The Wurlitzer was playing “Hurdy Gurdy Man” by Donovan as NASCARs circled on TV. Neptune’s was the same, but Eureka had changed so much it might as well have been McDonald’s—or Gallatoire’s in New Orleans.
She passed a table of arduously identical cheerleaders, waved to her friend Luke from Earth Science, who seemed to be under the impression that Neptune’s was a good place for a date, and smiled wanly at a table of freshman cross-country girls brave enough to be there. She heard somebody mutter, “Didn’t think she was allowed out of the ward,” but Eureka was here for business, not to care what some kid thought about her.
Cat wore a cropped purple sweater, ripped jeans, and the lighter-than-average makeup meant to impress college men. Her latest victim sat beside her on the torn red vinyl bench. He had long blond dreads and an angular profile as he slung back a swig of Jax beer. He smelled like maple syrup—the fake, sugary kind Dad didn’t use. His hand was on Cat’s knee.
“Hey.” Eureka slid into the opposite bench. “Rodney?”
He was only a few years older, but he looked so
He smiled. “Let’s see that crazy book.”
Eureka pulled the book from her backpack. She wiped the table with a napkin before she slid it to Rodney, whose mouth stretched into an intrigued, academic frown.
Cat leaned over, her chin on Rodney’s shoulder as he turned the pages. “We stared at the thing forever trying to make sense of it. Maybe it’s from outer space.”
“Inner space is more like it,” Rodney said.
Eureka watched him, the way he looked up at Cat and chuckled, the way he seemed to enjoy her every wacky remark. Eureka didn’t think Rodney was particularly attractive, so she was surprised by the twinge of jealousy that snuck into her chest.
His flirtation with Cat made what had just passed between her and Brooks feel like a Tower of Babel–scale mis-communication. She looked up at the cars circling the track on TV and imagined she was driving one of them, but instead of her car being covered in advertisements, it was covered in the inscrutable language of the book Rodney was pretending to read across the table.
She should never have kissed Brooks. It was a huge mistake. They knew each other too well to try to know each other any better. And they’d already broken up once before. If Eureka was ever going to get involved with someone romantically—which, since the accident, she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy—it should be someone who didn’t know anything about her, someone who came into the relationship ignorant of her complexities and flaws. She shouldn’t be with a critic ready to pull away from their first kiss and list everything about her that was wrong. She knew better than anyone that the list was endless.
She missed Brooks.
But Cat was right. He’d been a jerk. He should apologize. Eureka checked her phone discreetly. He hadn’t texted.
“What do you think?” Cat asked. “Should we do it?”
Eureka’s left ear rang. What had she missed?
“Sorry, I …” She turned her good ear toward the conversation.
