Since You've Been Gone

7 SLEEP UNDER THE STARS

The bell over the door jangled, and I stood up from where I was cleaning the ice cream case, taking a breath to welcome the customer to Paradise, but I stopped when I realized it was only Dawn.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Okay,” she said, hurrying across the store and then leaning across the counter toward me, talking fast. “We have to discuss the fact that you made out with that dude for like half an hour in the pantry, and we have to talk about Matthew, because he seems awesome, and after all that, I have something for you.”

“It wasn’t half an hour,” I protested, but Dawn just raised an eyebrow at me and I felt myself smile.

“I need details,” she said, taking one of the perpetually empty metal seats and settling in. I noticed that today, her shirt read Captain Pizza—We do PRIVATE parties!

“Okay,” I said, coming out from behind the counter, realizing that before we gossiped about my make-out session, I had to tell her the truth. “So . . . you know my best friend, Sloane? The one who sent the list?” Dawn nodded and I took a breath. “She’s not camping in Europe. I don’t know where she is. She just left, and all I have to go on is the list.”

Dawn looked at me for a long moment. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the black-and-white patterned floor. “It just . . .” I shrugged. I hadn’t wanted to admit I had no idea where my best friend was. Now I knew that Dawn wouldn’t have judged me for it, but I hadn’t known that—or her—then.

“Wait a second,” Dawn said, leaning forward. “Was that why you wanted to go on that delivery with me? To cross off ‘Hug a Jamie’?” I nodded, realizing that while I’d been making out with Benji in the pantry, Collins must have been filling Dawn in on the rest of the list. “Well, I’m really glad you didn’t,” she said, her eyes wide. “Jamie Roarke’s puggle is crazy. He would have freaked out if you’d tried it.” She stood up and rummaged in her bag, then placed a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the counter in front of me.

“What are those?” I asked, picking them up. As I turned them over, I suddenly realized that they looked familiar—I was pretty sure these were the ones I’d seen on Bryan. “Dawn,” I said slowly. “What . . .”

“Number four on the list,” she said. She grinned at me. “Want to break something?”

Music: Better for Running than Observational Comedy

Make Me Lose Control

Eric Carmen

Let My Love Open the Door

Pete Townshend

Jolene

Dolly Parton

Springsteen

Eric Church

Badlands

Bruce Springsteen

Compass

Lady Antebellum

When You Were Mine

Cyndi Lauper

Let’s Not Let It

Randy Houser

Sunny and 75

Joe Nichols

And We Danced

The Hooters

Don’t Ya

Brett Eldredge

Anywhere with You

Jake Owen

867-5309 / Jenny

Tommy Tutone

Nashville

David Mead

Kiss on My List

Hall & Oates

Here We Go Again

Justin Townes Earle

Me and Emily

Rachel Proctor

We Were Us

Keith Urban & Miranda Lambert

Where I Come From

Montgomery Gentry

Delta Dawn

Tanya Tucker

Things Change

Tim McGraw

Mendocino County

Willie Nelson feat. Lee Ann Womack

The Longest Time

Billy Joel

The summer began to take shape. I had my largely customer-free job, I had early morning or late afternoon runs with Frank, and I had the list. But I was no longer, it was becoming very clear, on my own in trying to finish it. My friends were helping me.

“Want to go to a gala?” Frank asked, sliding something across the kitchen island at me. I’d been driving around with Dawn, keeping her company while she made deliveries, when Frank had called and invited me over, and he’d extended the invitation to her, so it was the four of us at his house. Dawn was out on the beach with Collins, and Frank and I had been tasked with bringing snacks outside. I looked at him over my armful of sodas, waters, popsicles, and the energy drink Collins loved and which I had a feeling would soon be banned by the FDA.

I glanced down and saw that it was the gala invitation I’d noticed when I’d been at his house the night I’d kissed Benji. Before I could read where it was being held, he put it back on the fridge with a Porter & Porter magnet. “It’s for my parents,” he said. “Collins is coming too, but since they’re going to have to be in the same room together all night, pretending they don’t hate each other, I could use as many friends as possible.”

“A gala, huh?” I asked, setting the waters down.

“And this way, we can cross off number eight.”

I smiled at that—it had actually been my first thought. Though I realized that I hadn’t checked on the dress in over a month, and it might have finally sold. “I’d love to.”

“It’s the last day in July,” he said, giving me a level look. “Do you need to check your social calendar?”

I laughed at that, taking the rest of the drinks with me and leading the way outside.

The next day, I stepped into Twice Upon a Time, blinking at the dimness of the store, which was a stark contrast to the brightness outside. It was a consignment shop I’d been to many times with Sloane, but never alone. Maybe it was just that I had more time to pay attention now, but the store seemed somehow smaller than I remembered it seeming only a few months before, and a little more shabby.

“Hello there.” Barbara, the owner, emerged from the back room with a vague, fixed smile, the kind she always seemed to give me. “Welcome to Twice Upon a Time. Have you shopped with us before?”

I swallowed hard and made myself smile at her. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised that she hadn’t remembered me, despite the fact I’d been in a dozen times at least over the years. “A few times,” I said, already heading for the last place I remembered the dress hanging. It had never been a question in my mind which dress Sloane had meant. It was a dress I’d tried on purely for fun one afternoon when she seemed determined to try on every skirt in the store, twice. I tried it on as a lark, since I had no pressing need for formal wear.

But as soon as I put it on, I realized I didn’t want to take it off. It was floor-length and black, with a high neck edged in gold and a plunging, open back. It was the most sophisticated thing I’d ever worn and I somehow felt different in it, like I was a person who had places to wear a dress like this, and exciting adventures to recount afterward.

Sloane had freaked out when she’d seen me in it, and insisted I buy it, right then and there, which was of course what she would have done. She even tried to buy it for me, sneaking it over to the register while I was getting dressed, and I had to wrench it away from her to get her to stop. Because the fact was, it was too fancy, too expensive, and I had no place to wear it.

Until now.

“I was actually looking for a black dress,” I called to Barbara, as I looked around the store, beginning to panic because it wasn’t hanging in any of the places I was used to seeing it. “I think I saw one in here, it had a low back . . .”

Barbara just blinked at me for a moment, but then recognition dawned. “Oh yes,” she said. “I think I just moved it to the sale rack. Did you want to try it on, dear?”

“Nope,” I said, as I plucked it from the rack and brought it up to a very surprised Barbara at the register. “I’ll take it.”

Getting through the list was apparently making me more bold in other aspects of my life—which was how I found myself sitting in a chair in front of Dawn’s cousin Stephanie, at Visible Changes, the downtown salon where she was apprenticing.

“Are you sure?” Dawn asked from the chair by my side, looking at me through the mirror.

I brushed some droplets off my forehead and thought about it, about how this was the only way that I’d looked for the past few years. I picked up a lock of the hair that hung halfway down my back, then dropped it. “Anyone can have long hair.” I nodded to Stephanie. “Let’s do it.”

An hour later I left the salon with sideswept bangs and hair in long layers that grazed my shoulders, feeling like someone else, but in the best way—like this was a me I hadn’t known existed until that moment.

Pick-Up Your Pace, Porter! (Even More Songs about Trucks)

Somethin’ ’Bout a Truck

Kip Moore

Before He Cheats

Carrie Underwood

That Ain’t My Truck

Rhett Akins

Cruise

Florida Georgia Line

Runnin’ Outta Moonlight

Randy Houser

That’s My Kind of Night

Luke Bryan

Dirt Road Anthem

Jason Aldean

Mud on the Tires

Brad Paisley

Drive

Alan Jackson

Papa Was a Good Man

Charlie Rich

Tim McGraw

Taylor Swift

Highway Don’t Care

Tim McGraw

Barefoot Blue Jean Night

Jake Owen

Dirt Road Diary

Luke Bryan

You Lie

The Band Perry

Take a Little Ride

Jason Aldean

“In a well-ordered universe,” I said to Frank, “there would be no mysteries.”

He glanced over at me. We were doing a late-afternoon run, seven miles this time. He’d noticed my hair as soon as I’d stepped out of my house. This surprised me, because, well, he was a boy, but also because it was back in my usual running ponytail, so the change wasn’t that obvious. But he’d told me that he liked it, which was more than I’d heard from my parents, who still hadn’t noticed anything different. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Sloane?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “You’d just know things. There wouldn’t be these big, hanging questions.”

Frank nodded, and we just ran for a while. “Lissa would argue with you about that,” he said. “She got really into philosophy last year. So I’d have a feeling she’d say something like ‘To know is not to know.’ ”

I glanced over at him. Frank didn’t bring up Lissa very often, so I noticed whenever he did. “Is she having a good time at Princeton?”

Frank nodded, but then added, “I mean, I assume so. We’ve both done it before, so it’s not like it’s a new experience. And it’s not really about fun. But she says the classes are great, really intense.” We ran in silence for a few minutes, and I thought maybe we had moved on, when Frank said, “I would have seen her more, but they don’t leave you a ton of time for socializing.”

“Absolutely,” I said, wondering why he felt the need to justify this to me.

“And she’s coming for my birthday,” Frank said, “so there’s that.”

“When’s that?”

“July nineteenth,” he said. He glanced over at me and raised his eyebrows. “Why? Are you going to get me a present?”

“No,” I said with a shrug, as I picked up my pace. “I just thought maybe that was the day I’d let you finally beat me.” I turned us down Longview, which had a hill that was going to be murder on the way up, but I’d been feeling that our runs had been a little too flat lately.

“Where are we going?” Frank asked, and he sounded worried, which I attributed to the fact that he’d just seen the hill. “Em?”

“Come on,” I said, nodding ahead. I knew that I wouldn’t have enough breath to talk, so I slipped in my earbuds and turned on Frank’s iPod. I’d scrolled through his list of band names, and I was pretty sure, at this point, that he didn’t even like any of these bands, and was just doing this to mess with me.

I struggled up the hill, and when I turned to look at Frank, I noticed that he was looking straight ahead, not meeting my eye, probably concentrating on the run. We had just crested the top of the hill when a sign in front of a house caught my eye. A Porter & Porter Concept, it read, in the same font as the sign by Frank’s house. I slowed as I looked at it. It was stunning, a beautiful three-story house done in a similar style to Frank’s, but on a larger scale. The front was landscaped, and there was a bright-red mailbox by the end of the driveway, but the driveway was empty, so I took a tiny step closer to it. “Hey,” I called to Frank, who was running in place, earbuds still in his ears. “This is one of your parents’ houses.”

“I know,” Frank said shortly, nodding toward the road. “Come on.”

“It’s so cool,” I said, taking a step closer, and then seeing what I’d missed before—there was a Realtor’s sign on the lawn, a for-sale sign, with Price Reduced! across it.

“Emily,” Frank called, and I walked away from the house, glancing back at it once before joining him and starting to run.

“Sorry,” I said, when we’d made it down the other side of the hill and were cooling down. I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for, but I somehow felt the need to say it.

“It’s okay,” Frank said. “I just try and avoid this place if I can.” We walked in silence for a few moments, and I realized that Frank had more to say and was just figuring out how to say it—and then I realized that I could now tell this. “I hate that house,” he finally said. “It’s pretty much what ended my parents’ marriage.”

“What happened?” I asked after a moment, when Frank didn’t go on.

He sighed. “It’s a spec house. They built it with their own money, no buyer, all their own design, it was supposed to be their ‘crown jewel.’ ” The way he put audible air quotes around the last two words made me think he’d heard this phrase a lot, and that he hadn’t been the one to come up with it. “But they started having disagreements right from the beginning. Could they afford it, was it worth it, was it a good idea? They started arguing about the design, the direction, everything. It turns out they’re really good working together when there’s someone else in charge. When it’s just them . . .” Frank’s voice trailed off. “They fought a lot,” he said quietly, and in that moment, I got a flash of what Frank must have been going through when this was happening, and how when I saw him at school, he just seemed so perfect, like everything in his life was working out.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

Frank shrugged and gave me a small smile. “Thanks,” he said. “Anyway, it’s done. It’s empty inside, but it’s done. And now that it’s done, nobody’s buying it.” I thought back to the house, the cheerful red mailbox that now just seemed depressing. “They keep lowering the price, but nobody’s even made an offer. It’s not such a great situation.”

We walked in silence, until Frank started to pick up the pace, moving into a jog. I started jogging along with him, keeping up even as we went faster, as he pushed our pace to the edge of where we’d gone, understanding that sometimes, you just needed to run.

The Fourth of July fell on a Wednesday, and with a stroke of good fortune, none of us had to work early the next day. So we’d all gone over to Frank’s, and had watched the fireworks from the beach as they exploded over the water in a bright shower of sparks. Whenever I hung out at Frank’s at night, we had the beach to ourselves, so it was strange to suddenly see other people sitting in front of their houses, on beach towels and blankets and lawn chairs, gazing up at the fireworks, bright against the dark sky.

Collins had decided a week before to take up the ukulele. He insisted on calling it his “uke,” and was vehement that the ladies “loved a uke.” To my surprise, he’d actually learned some chords, and as he played softly, I could almost tell what song it was. I leaned back on my hands and looked around, at Collins bent over his tiny instrument, and at Dawn leaning close to him, her eyes half closed as she listened to the music. Frank had his face turned up to the sky, and I watched him, rather than the fireworks, as the light changed over his features, from red, to blue, to orange.

I looked back up at the sky myself before he caught me staring, and realized how peaceful I felt. I couldn’t help but think about last year’s Fourth, when I’d gone with Sloane to a party. She had been invited to it, but I hadn’t, and even though she’d assured me it would be okay, I’d spent the entire night feeling like I was in the way, knowing I didn’t really belong. I didn’t feel that way now.  And while I would have given anything to have Sloane there with me, it didn’t change the fact that I was having a good time.  And as I watched Collins play his last chord with a flourish and Dawn clap for him, as I watched the fireworks overhead bathe Frank’s face in blue light, as I saw myself in the middle of it all, I realized that this was better. Even though Sloane had been there with me last year, this felt like I was where I belonged.

Hours later, I pulled into our driveway and then stepped hard on the brake. My mother was sitting on the porch steps, a mug in her hand. I glanced at the clock, even though it was pointless, and then down at the time on my phone. It was almost three a.m., which meant I was in big trouble. I’d avoided having the curfew conversation with my parents all summer, and had been coming home whenever I wanted, but I had the distinct feeling my luck had just run out on that front. I hadn’t intended to stay at Frank’s so long, but after the fireworks, none of us had wanted to stop hanging out. We’d played Honour Quest, Collins had attempted to make pancakes at midnight, and then we’d all ended up back on the beach.

I parked in my usual spot, trying to judge by my mother’s expression in the moonlight just how much trouble I was in. I got out of the car, grabbing the striped beach towel that was going to let me cross off number three on the list. It had belonged to Frank’s neighbor, but it had been forgotten on his deck post-fireworks, and with everyone cheering me on, at one a.m., I’d dashed across the sand to grab it. I knew I should probably feel bad about my first criminal act, but mostly I was just happy to get this one crossed off. It wasn’t Sloane’s sign, but it was something.

I took a big breath as I walked toward my mother, who smiled at me as I got closer, and braced myself for the worst.

“Late night?” she asked, taking a sip from her mug, and I could see how tired she looked.

“I guess,” I said, not wanting to pretend it was an anomaly, just in case she had noticed me gone this late other nights. “You too?”

She shrugged. “Well, you know how the second act goes. Plus, there’s a bit of a crisis with your brother.”

“With Beckett?” I took a step closer to her, hoping that he hadn’t finally fallen off something. “Is he okay?”

She nodded, but didn’t look certain about this. “It’s this camping trip. We’re right in the middle of the play, so your dad had to tell him they weren’t going to be able to go this summer.”

I glanced up at Beckett’s bedroom window, as though this would somehow give me some insight into how he was feeling. Of course, it showed me nothing, but I had a pretty good idea nevertheless. “How’d he take that?”

My mother bit her lip and looked down into her mug, cupping her hands around it. “Not well.  Your dad told him there will always be next summer, but . . .” Her voice trailed off and I felt an acute pang of sympathy for my brother. I knew all too well what it felt like to have the summer you’d looked forward to taken away just like that.  After a moment, my mom looked up at me and tapped the spot next to her on the porch. “Want to sit for a minute?”

Knowing this wasn’t really a question I could say no to, I settled in next to my mother, setting my ill-gotten towel down next to me. She squinted at it. “Is that one of ours?”

“Kind of,” I said, pushing it off to the side. “I got it at Frank’s.”  This was, at least, slightly close to the truth.

“Ah,” my mother said with a smile. “Frank. I like him.”

I sighed. I’d gone through this with my mother the morning after Living Room Theater, but she still didn’t seem to grasp it. “He has a girlfriend, Mom.”

“I just said that I liked him,” my mother said mildly, raising her eyebrows at me. “I think he’s nice.  And I’m glad you’ve been able to make some new friends this summer.”

“Yeah,” I said as I ran my hand along the wood of the porch, which had gotten so smooth over the years, you never had to worry about splinters. “Me too.” My mother smiled at me and ran her hand over my head, smoothing my new bangs down. I saw that FARRELLY was written across the top of my new towel in big block letters, and I quickly folded the top of the towel over. “So what’s the second act issue?” I asked, hoping my mother hadn’t seen anything.

“Oh,” my mother said, taking a long sip of what I could now smell was peppermint tea. “Your father and I have just come to a difference of opinion. He wants to focus on the rivalry aspect. But the fact is, Tesla and Edison were friends. That changed, of course, but they both got something from each other. And I don’t think we should discount that.”

I nodded, like I understood what she was saying. But mostly, I was thrilled that this conversation hadn’t involved any lectures. “Well, I’m going to bed,” I said, pushing myself to my feet, making sure the FARRELLY was hidden.

My mother smiled at me and waited until I was almost to the door before she added, “And, Em? Don’t come in again at three a.m. and not expect any consequences.”

“Right,” I said with a sinking feeling, realizing I should have known this was probably too good to be true. “Um, got it. Night, Mom.”

“Night, hon,” my mom said. She stayed where she was, and for just a second, I thought about joining her. But I realized she had things to sort through—Edison and Tesla and friendships and rivalries. So I just looked at her for one more moment before turning and heading inside to bed.

“Wasn’t that awesome, Em?” Beckett grinned at me from across the diner booth and I tried to smile back. My brother had been staying on the ground and barely speaking since he’d found out about the camping trip, so I’d taken him to the one place I was pretty sure would cheer him up. We’d met up with Dawn and gone to IndoorXtreme late, getting there just as they were closing, so Beckett could have the run of the place. He’d scaled the climbing wall with Collins, having races to see who could get down to the ground faster. Dawn and Frank had had an epic paintball fight, and I had somehow gotten stuck with Doug at the front counter, who had presented me with the first book in the series he was obsessed with, and then proceeded to tell me how it fit into the pop culture canon at large.

“And some people think,” he’d said, as he flipped pages, and I looked longingly in the direction of the paintball area, where I could see Dawn slinking behind a hay bale, spy-style, “that Tamsin and the Elder are just rip-offs, so I don’t want that to turn you off from the book.”

“It won’t,” I assured him, hoping that this might wrap things up.

“Because that’s a stupid argument,” Doug said, clearly just warming to his theme. “Because that relationship exists everywhere. Look at Obi-Wan and Luke. Look at Dumbledore and Harry. Look at Gandalf and Frodo. They all have these people. They have to learn from them. But then they have to find their own strength and go it alone. So it’s not derivative. Don’t listen to the message boards.” I had assured him that there would be very little chance of that, but by the time he’d started going into character backstory for me, Frank and Dawn, both paint-flecked, had called a truce, and Beckett was declared the victor, having beaten Collins in their last three races.

But despite the fact I hadn’t had any fun, it was clear my brother had, and that was what I’d been aiming for, after all. I smiled back at him and then pulled out the laminated menu, wondering why diners always had the world’s largest menus, and also if anyone had ever ordered the five-dollar lobster. We were all grabbing dinner before Dawn had to take over the evening delivery shift, and hoping nobody would want to know why one side of her hair was orange.

“So,” Beckett said, looking up from where he was dripping water on his folded-up straw wrapper, turning it into a snake, “Frank and Collins and Dawn and everyone.  They’re your friends?”

“Yes,” I said, a little surprised by the question. “Why?”

Beckett shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just different.  You never used to have this many friends.”

I opened my mouth to say something to that, when the diner’s glass door opened and Dawn, Collins, and Frank all came inside, Dawn shaking her head at me. “Oh no,” I sighed, as I slid to the end of the booth so that Frank could sit next to me. Collins slid in next to Beckett, and Dawn next to him, and she nodded at me.

“They’re back to it,” she confirmed.

“Don’t let me down,” Frank said to Collins, pointing across the table. “You said you’d pay this time.”

“In my life, have I ever lied to you?” Collins asked, sounding affronted.

“Let it be,” Frank said, shaking his head. “We don’t need to go into that.”

“Please stop this,” I said, but Frank and Collins just shook their heads without even looking at me. For the last three days, they had been starting their sentences with only the titles of Beatles songs. They were allowed to speak normally to everyone else—and they’d put the game on hold when they were at work—but with each other, they were locked in, trying to prove who was the bigger fan.

“What’s going on?” Beckett asked, looking from Frank to Collins.

“I wish you guys would just declare a winner,” Dawn said, then frowned. “Actually, ‘winner’ might be the wrong word in this situation.”

“Bucket,” Collins said, turning to my brother, “how well-versed are you in the Beatles?”

“I’m looking through you,” Frank said, shaking his head, and Collins pointed to my brother.

“With a little help from my friends,” he said, defensively. “Since when is that not allowed?”

“Anyway,” Dawn said, turning toward me. “I want to set you up with someone.” This was surprising enough that I just blinked at her, and saw Frank turn his head sharply to look at Dawn.

“I’m so tired,” Collins was saying as he flipped through the menu. “Maybe I’ll get some coffee.”

“I don’t . . . ,” I started. I was about to tell Dawn that I wasn’t interested, even though I really couldn’t have said why. It wasn’t like I still wasn’t over Gideon, or anything like that. “Um, who is it?”

Collins was snapping his fingers at Frank, who said, sounding distracted, “Right. Um . . .” A moment later, he seemed to realize what he’d done. “Wait,” he said quickly. “Help. You can’t do that. . . .”

“I just totally won!” Collins yelled, pumping his fist in the air. “There is not, to the best of my knowledge, a Beatles song called ‘Right Um.’ ” He drummed his hands on the table excitedly, then leaned back against the booth, like he was settling in. “Bucket, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a place called Liverpool . . .”

I looked at Frank. “Sorry you lost,” I said, even though I couldn’t be happier this game had ended.

Frank just shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll do it again at some point,” he said. “Every few years, we seem to need to try and prove who’s a bigger fan. But listen,” he said, suddenly looking serious, the way he did when we were strategizing about my list. “I have the perfect solution for number thirteen.”

Thirteen was “Sleep under the stars,” and I looked across the table at my brother, who seemed absorbed in learning about how Paul and John met. While I appreciated Frank’s initiative, I’d had an idea for this brewing ever since I’d talked to my mother on the porch. “I’ve got that one taken care of.”

“You do?” he asked, sounding surprised. “Oh. Okay. What is it? And when?”

I just looked at him, suddenly knowing the exact right way to answer this. “It won’t be long,” I said, and was rewarded when Frank smiled, suddenly, like I’d just surprised him.

That night, I tiptoed into my brother’s room, trying not to make any noise, but finding it difficult when I kept impaling my feet on the toys that seemed to cover his floor more evenly than his carpet. “Beckett,” I whispered when I got close to his bed. “Hey. Beck. Ow.” I tried to take a step closer, and felt something small and plastic lodge itself in my foot.

“Em?” Beckett sat up in bed, blinking at me in the faint glow of his nightlight, which he always swore he didn’t need. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to shake what turned out to be a Lego from my foot as I limped over to him.

“Then why are you here?” he asked, sitting up farther.

“I had an idea,” I said, crouching by the side of his bed, trying not to put my feet any new places. “Want to go camping?”

Beckett sat all the way up, pushing his curls out of his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, let’s sleep outside. I have the whole thing set up. Mom and Dad won’t care.”

Beckett just looked at me for a long moment, like he was weighing whether I was being serious, or maybe if this was just a very realistic dream. “But how?” he finally asked, which was how I knew he was getting on board. “We don’t have any camping stuff. Dad and I were supposed to get it together.”

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said, crossing my fingers in the dark that I had. “Meet you in the backyard in ten.”

Ten minutes later, almost exactly, Beckett stepped outside in his pajamas, still looking dubious. “Ta-da,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t think it was stupid, or turn around and head back in. I had set up a mini campsite, in the very center of the yard. Since we didn’t have a tent, I’d just laid out two sleeping bags and pillows head to head.

“Really?” Beckett asked, taking a small step forward, beginning to smile.

“Put this on first,” I said, tossing the bottle of bug spray at him. It was the one thing I was worried about—since we would be sleeping out in the open, I had a feeling that unless we took precautionary measures, we were going to get eaten alive by mosquitos.

Beckett sprayed himself until he was coughing, then ran over to the sleeping bags, tossing the spray in my direction. I doused myself in it, then crawled into my own sleeping bag.

I settled back into my pillow and looked up. I was glad that these sleeping bags were the crazy insulated you-can-take-them-on-mountains kind, because despite the fact the evening was still warm, it felt cooler at ground level, and a little damp. I looked straight up and just took in the stars shining above us, with nothing blocking their view, and suddenly regretted all the nights I’d slept with anything between me and the sky.

“This is cool,” Beckett said, and I turned my head to see him looking up, his arms folded behind his head. Neither of us knew any constellations, so we found our own, groupings of stars like Crooked Necktie and Angry Penguin, and made up the corresponding stories that went with them. Beckett’s voice had started to slow down halfway through the origin of Basket of Fries. I had a feeling he was about to fall asleep, and I knew I wasn’t going to be far behind him. I closed my eyes only to open them once more, and make sure it was all still there—the riot of stars above me, this whole other world existing just out of reach.

“Can we do this again?” Beckett asked.

“Sure,” I said, as I let my eyes stay closed this time. “We’ll do it next month.”

“Okay,” Beckett said. After a stretch of silence in which I was sure he had fallen asleep, he asked, “What about Sloane?”

I opened my eyes and pushed myself up on one elbow to get a better look at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . we won’t do this when she comes back, right?” My brother’s voice was small. “You’ll probably be too busy.”

It was my first instinct to deny this, to assure him that nothing would change. But a second later, I knew that I wouldn’t be here, now, with my brother, if Sloane was still in town. I would either be hanging out with her or waiting to hang out with her. “It won’t matter,” I finally said. I could hear the certainty in my voice, and just hoped Beckett could too. “You and me. Next month. I promise.”

“Awesome,” Beckett said around a yawn. “Night.”

A moment later, I heard his breathing get longer and more even—it was a running joke in our family how quickly Beckett could fall asleep, and apparently being outside wasn’t impeding that.

I rolled onto my back and looked up at the stars. Beckett’s words were reverberating in my head, but for some reason, I didn’t want to think about what would happen when Sloane came back, how things might change. Instead, I looked over at my brother, already fast asleep, before letting my own eyes drift closed, feeling like maybe I’d been able to set something right.