“You guys might as well just roll me down the pier,” Vanessa says as we step out of the cafe, her hands clutching her stomach. “That was so good. So worth it.”
Coop slings his arm around her shoulders, following the train of people that are headed down to Pier 39.
We pass by more shops, the homeless population drawing Chloe’s attention. On the corners, street performers attract a crowd.
“This breaks my heart,” Chloe says as we pass a woman asleep on a piece of broken-down cardboard. “It seems like we should be able to do something to help these people and help prevent it for others.”
I kiss her temple, feeling the hopelessness that shines in her eyes and slumps her shoulders. “You’re right.”
“Guys! Come on!” Vanessa yells, already halfway through the crosswalk as cars inch closer. We run to catch up, seeing the ocean in the background. Music plays softly through speakers, bringing the mood up as we approach the mouth of the pier.
“This is so much bigger than I expected,” Chloe tells me, her gaze traveling over the two-story buildings that lead us down the pier, everything glowing with lights as tourists file around in groups.
“I’ve heard you say that before,” I say, squeezing her shoulder.
She slaps a hand to her forehead and laughs before wrapping her arms around my waist. “Thank you,” she says. “This has seriously been the best week ever.”
I slant my lips over hers, forgetting about Cooper’s warning that she doesn’t like change. We’re all afraid of change. Sometimes we just need the right motivation. I’m well aware of this as my lips dance across hers.
26
Chloe
My fingers and lips are still sticky from the bucket of doughnuts we demolished as we window shopped and watched a magic show where a stage and benches are permanently set up near the end of the pier.
Tyler and Cooper each throw in a few bills as they pass around a hat, and then Tyler jerks his chin toward the end of the pier. “We might not be able to see them, but let’s take a look.”
“See what?” I ask.
He smiles mischievously in response, two of his fingers in my back pocket as we reach a set of stairs with a giant red heart in the middle that leads to an area that looks out over the bay.
The wind off the water is chillier without the warmth of the sun, but I can’t bring myself to complain because this moment is so perfect, and the clear skies above only promise better viewing for the meteor shower tomorrow that has me glancing skyward. “Look,” I tell them as light streaks above us. “It’s the meteor shower.”
“I thought it was tomorrow?” Tyler asks, glancing at the sky.
I shiver from the breeze coming off the water and move closer to him. “No, you can actually see it for five weeks. Tomorrow’s just the best day when we’ll be in the thick of it, but we’re currently passing through the comet’s orbit, so the meteors are coming into our atmosphere.”
“Coming into our atmosphere?” Ty asks, his eyebrows knit like I’ve just told him a line from an alien takeover movie. “Does that mean they might hit Earth?”
I shrug, trying to recall all the data about comets and meteors. “Meteors generally disintegrate before they reach Earth. Most of them are only a few millimeters in diameter—dust essentially. But, once in a while, there will be a large enough meteor that it will make it to our surface, and then it becomes a meteorite.”
“Weird to think we’re watching specks of rock that are on fire and admiring them, right?” Vanessa asks.
“They’re on fire? Is that why they glow?” Ty stares at the sky.
I glance at him, wanting to kiss him again because each time he asks a question and invests his time and interest in this part of my life and other interests of mine, I can feel another piece of my heart get lost to him.
“Is that a stupid question? Do all kids learn this in like, third grade, and I didn’t pay attention?”
Vanessa shakes her head. “I just live with her and have sat through this conversation a hundred times.”
I laugh, shaking my head as I try to shuffle my thoughts back to his question. “It’s kind of complicated. I don’t study meteors, so I can’t give you the full explanation, but basically, the rocks hit our two outer regions: the exosphere and the thermosphere where there’s no air, and the meteors are rocketing to Earth—like twenty-five-thousand to one-hundred-and-sixty-thousand miles per hour—but then they hit the middle layer of our atmosphere: the mesosphere, and the gasses cause friction, which heats the meteors, so they mostly burn off in the mesosphere, and that friction and their speed create the falling star.”
“Mesosphere? Is that the layer we live on?” he asks.
“No, we live in the troposphere,” I tell him.
“But none of this has anything to do with what you’re studying?”
“Not really. All of this involves the Milky Way Galaxy. But, it’s still very complex and involves multiple areas of study. During meteor showers, astronomers measure objects in the Kuiper belt, which extends into our outer solar system, because we believe some comets, like this one, might have been created in an outer solar system and then got kicked into our solar system, so lots of planetary science is involved. That’s one of the coolest things about astronomy, so often it requires teams of people from all over the globe to all have the same goals and objectives
