“Yeah, we should be good,” Finn says. “Come on.” He hops out of the truck, goes to the back, and climbs up. He offers me a hand, and I scoot next to him, both of us leaning against the truck cab right as the first firework explodes above us, so loud it makes me start.
“Wow,” I say, my neck angled back, watching red and blue blooms burst into existence above us.
“Just a second,” he says, opening the window to the cabin and grabbing a grass-covered old red plaid blanket from the backseat. He spreads it out.
“Lie down. It’s easier to see them this way,” he says.
With any other guy, it would be a come-on line, but with Finn, it’s what he means. So I do.
“You know, for a while after I met you, every time I looked at the sky, I wondered if I’d see Major Tom up there,” I say, watching the sky explode with silver and gold light. It reminds me of the patterns in Finn’s tunnel. “My dad finally told me the song wasn’t real, but I guess I was still hoping.”
“Sorry about that,” Finn says.
“You really loved that song, didn’t you?”
A new round of fireworks come to life, silver shimmers like stars.
“I think I just thought if I could find Major Tom, I’d be a hero, you know?” he finally says.
“Finn,” I say.
“Everyone knows my brother’s an asshole and my dad’s an asshole and his brother is too. But when I was little, I thought if I could bring Major Tom back, people would know I was different.” He looks briefly at me, then turns back to the fireworks. “It’s ridiculous, I know.”
But I get it.
Little parts of my heart break off then, for Finn, for Ruby, for Charlie, for me, for all the ways we’ve let ourselves become who people think we should be instead of who we really are.
“That’s not ridiculous,” I say, looking over at him. He won’t look at me, so I take his chin gently and turn it toward me. “That’s not ridiculous, Finn.”
His eyes hold mine, and I trace my thumb along the line of his jawbone. “You are the best person I’ve ever met,” I say, my voice soft as the night around us.
He smiles. “You’re here, Bird McCullough.”
“You’re here, Finn Casper.”
I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a helium person, your heart on the outside, vulnerable and open in the sky.
And then I forget to watch for any fireworks finale, because Finn pushes himself up and leans in to me, his lips meeting mine, tentative at first, and then, when I don’t pull away, harder, more insistent, like we’re crashing into each other, my fingers in his hair, his hands on my back, and he smells like the field, like summer and goldenrod and sweat and evening. Around us, I swear the sunflowers are opening to the fireworks, to the explosions of light above us and between us.
Fifty-One
MISS PEGGY SMILES AT an elderly man browsing through the selection of vases. He grins back.
“Only fifteen dollars. Such a bargain, no?”
“But we’ll take more,” Harriet barks from behind her. “Fifteen is just the suggested price.”
“Have you seen this one?” Ruby asks him, holding up a vase painted in brilliant shades of blues with Harriet’s black slash marks around the edges.
The fund-raiser is going better than I could have dreamed. Ruby came to help us set up and ended up enjoying the ladies and Henry so much, she offered to stay for the afternoon. We still have another two hours of the art fair to go, and there are only a few vases stamped LAPPHH left on the table (LAPPHH being the extremely eloquent name Harriet came up with for our enterprise, signifying each of our first names—Lorna, Alice, Parker, Peggy, Harriet, Henry—after having shot down Miss Peggy’s suggested name of “Flowers for Alice” on the grounds that Alice wasn’t dead and it was too corny). In fact, we’ve sold so many of our creations, Carla had to go back to the studio to get some of her vases so we didn’t completely run out of merchandise. Not to mention the fact that Carla’s e-mail sign-up list is well onto the fourth page.
Henry chuckles as Lorna pulls out a bunch of sunflowers from a box. They match her outfit today: golden yellows and warm oranges.
“They’re too big for the vases,” she says in dismay.
“Give ’em to me,” Harriet says, and when Lorna hands them over, Harriet begins hacking at the stems with a pair of blunt scissors.
“Atta girl,” Henry says as she hands him shortened sunflower stems. He stuffs them in the vases so sunflowers are bursting out the top.
Seeing the flowers makes me blush, and I busy myself with counting the money before anyone notices.
Finn and I stayed in the sunflower field well after the fireworks ended. I have mosquito bites up and down my legs, and even though it’s five days later, my lips just stopped feeling puffy from making out.
“This is going so well, Parker. And Harriet and Miss Peggy are actually getting along,” Carla says to me under her breath.
“Don’t jinx it,” I say as I finish counting the change, then look up, smiling. “Sweet. We’ve already raised more than enough for the tickets!”
“Bravo!” Carla says, and Harriet lets out a loud whoop from across our booth. Ruby claps.
“Maybe you can use the extra money to get some new glazes for the studio?” I say as I’m putting the cash in the lockbox.
“I had another idea,” Carla says.
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking we could start some art classes at Wild Meadows, for the residents who aren’t mobile enough to get to the studio, like Alice.”
“That’s awesome,” I say.
“And I know I’m losing you to Harvard this fall, but maybe you can help me get it set up before you go?” she asks.
“Really?”
“Of course! You have a gift working with these people—you’re way better with them than I am.”
I snort. “Well, it’s clear my gifts aren’t in the throwing-pottery realm.”
“Patience, Parker. You can’t be good at everything right away.”
I scoff, but inside, the idea of setting up classes with the people at Wild Meadows makes me wish I could stick around to run the program full-time.
And then a revolutionary thought sneaks into my consciousness: Maybe I can.
I stop in place, the world of the art fair buzzing around me.
The realization is like sun bursting through the clouds—all the nagging dread and heart-racing anxiety I’ve been feeling since I got the acceptance letter pushed aside by one single clear thought: I don’t have to go to Harvard.
I feel giddy, clear, and light.
I have no clue how I’d tell my parents or how I’d make it working at Carla’s, but while normally those things would paralyze me in place, the rightness of the notion—of not doing something that I don’t really want to do—is so obvious, I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get here.
“You look pretty pleased with yourself,” Harriet says to me, nudging me in the stomach with her elbow.
“Ow,” I say.
“Oh, you’re fine. You’re stronger than you think, girl.”
“I am, aren’t I?” I ask.
“You remind me of Alice that way, before her Alzheimer’s kicked in,” Harriet says.
I look over at her, surprised.
“I’ve known her for the past six years, and it’s only been the last two that she started withdrawing more and more, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Did you know she used to be a writer? Wrote a bunch of spy thrillers. Kind of violent stuff. Tiny little lady with a core of iron on the inside. Oh, don’t look so shocked. We all had glamorous lives back in the day. I used to be a burlesque dancer in Coney Island.”
“I know,” I say.
Harriet winks at me and goes to help a girl who’s trying to decide between one of Carla’s vases—a sedate, graceful light-green glazed piece—and one of ours—raucous and clashy and mismatched.
“You definitely want this one,” Harriet says, pushing ours forward and setting Carla’s vase to the side. The girl holds it up, taking in the glaze, examining the vase at different angles.
I slide my phone out of my pocket to check the time, and that’s when I see three missed phone calls from Charlie and one from Finn, all from the past forty-five minutes. He and Charlie promised to stop by and help us clean up after the fair, but there are at least another two hours to go, not to mention the thirty minutes of last-minute stragglers I’m sure we’ll get.