The Geography of You and Me(11)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

That was the part that knocked the wind out of him every single time.

He swallowed hard and raised his eyes to meet Lucy’s.

“Won’t he miss having you nearby?” she asked, and he forced himself to shrug.

“He’ll come visit,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He felt beside him, where there was a small piece of gravel, and then used it to scratch absently at the black surface of the roof. “What about you?”

“Will I miss having you nearby?” she asked with a grin, and he smiled in spite of himself.

“No,” he said. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

“Well, New York, of course,” she said, holding out a hand to tick off her fingers as she counted. “Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida. I was hoping to get to California when my brothers left for school a few weeks ago, but they ended up just driving out together. My cousin’s getting married there in a few months, though, so I guess I’ll be able to add it to the list then.”

“Pretty good list,” he said with a little nod.

“Oh, and London,” she said, her face brightening. “Almost forgot about that. Just twice, though. It’s where my mom’s from, so…” She shrugged. “But that’s it for me. Not all that impressive, either.”

He sighed. “When my parents graduated from high school, they bought a van and saw the whole country. Two years on the road. They went everywhere.”

“I’m more interested in going abroad,” she said, her voice unmistakably wistful. “I want to see all the places on those postcards. Especially Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “All those beautiful buildings and cathedrals…”

“You mean all those postcards.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “All those postcards. They’re very selling.”

“What do you want to see most?”

“Notre Dame,” she said without hesitation.

“Why?” he asked, expecting to hear something about the architecture or the history or at least the gargoyles, but he was wrong.

“Because,” she said. “It’s the very center of Paris.”

“It is?”

She nodded. “There’s a little plaque with a star in front of it that marks the spot: Point Zero. And if you jump on it and make a wish, it means you’ll get a chance to go back there again someday. There’s something kind of magical about that, don’t you think?”

“It’d be nice if every place came with that kind of guarantee.” He leaned over to draw an X between them with the piece of gravel, then rubbed it out with the heel of his hand and replaced it with a crooked star.

“Does that mean we’re in the exact center of New York?” she asked, nodding at it, and he felt momentarily unsteady beneath her gaze.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that we’re in the exact center of the whole world.”

She held out a flattened palm, and it took a moment for him to realize that she was asking for the rock, not his hand. He passed it over, and she drew a circle around the edges of the star, then scratched the words Point Zero along the outside.

“There,” she said. “Now it’s official.”

“See? No need for Paris.”

“Not for tonight, anyway,” she said, handing back the stone. “But I’d still like to go.”

“How come they never took you along?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s hard to travel with three kids. My brothers are awesome, but they’re twins, and when we were little, they were complete nightmares. The first time we went to London, I remember them running up and down the aisles of the plane, locking themselves in the bathroom.” There was a hint of a smile on her face, but then she shook her head. “That’s not really it, though. The thing is, I think my parents just really like traveling alone together.”

“Alone together,” Owen said. “Oxymoron.”

“You’re an oxymoron,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But really, it’s always been their thing. It’s partly his job, but they also just really love it. Some people shop. Some people fish. My parents travel.”

“What does he do?”

“He works for this British bank. They met in London, but he’s had jobs in all these other places, too, Sydney and Cape Town and Rio. When my brothers were born, he took a job in the New York office, since he’s from here, and I think the plan was to settle down, but that part never really took. Instead, they were always just jetting off and leaving us with the nanny.”

“Sounds glamorous.”

“For them,” she said. “But I would have loved to go, too. I still would.” She swept a hand through the air, scattering a few mosquitoes. “Sometimes I think they liked their lives a whole lot better before they had kids.”

Owen thought of his own parents, putting down roots the moment they found out they were pregnant. “It’s probably not that it was better,” he said. “Just different. My parents did the same thing, settling down when I came along, and they were happy.” He paused, blinking fast. “We were all happy.”

Lucy was sitting with her arms resting on her knees, and when she turned to look at him, her leg bumped against his. Right then, he had a sudden urge to inch closer to her, to close the space between them, and the force of it surprised him; it felt like a very long time since he’d wanted anything at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching over to put a hand over his. “About your mom.”

The warmth of her palm cracked at something inside him, that hard shell of hurt that had formed over his heart like a coat of ice. She was watching him intently, her eyes seeking his, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Because the numbness was the only thing keeping him going, the only thing preventing him from falling to pieces in front of his dad, who was falling to pieces enough for both of them.

He turned his eyes back to the sky. “They look almost fake,” he said. “Don’t they?”

Lucy followed his gaze. “The stars?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. He was thinking of the ones on the ceiling of his bedroom back home, little pieces of plastic that glowed green in the dark. His mother had put them up when he was little, when Owen first became obsessed with the sky, spending summer nights on his back in the front yard, staring up at the scattering of lights until his eyes burned. They bought him a telescope, and they bought him binoculars; they even bought him a globe that showed all the constellations. But, in the end, the only way to convince him to go to bed were those glowing plastic stars, which his mother tacked up on the ceiling herself.