Page 34 of Atmosphere

“Why’d you do that?”

“She’d gotten pregnant the year before. She’d miscarried early, before she’d even figured out she was pregnant. She never told our parents. I was worried it would happen again, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Vanessa thought this over. “There were better ways to go about it, maybe. But I don’t know…”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Oh, well then, by all means…”

“When my sister came to my room the next morning complaining about being grounded, I pretended I knew nothing about it. I told her Dad must have heard her climbing out the window.”

Vanessa raised her eyebrow and bit her lip. “Why not tell the truth?”

“Barbara is…very delicate. If you so much as look at her the wrong way, she might just say the worst things you can think of. And mean each and every one of them. We all just tiptoe around her. We always have. I am not…I am not honest with her. Maybe ever. I don’t even know what that would look like. And I hate it about myself.”

Vanessa put her hand on Joan’s shoulder.

“Forget I said that. You go,” Joan said.

Vanessa stopped at the red light. “Wait, I feel like there is a lot to discuss there.”

“No, no, you go. Please.”

“Okay.” Vanessa shifted her head from side to side. “Oh, what to pick, what to pick. There are so many. Even as a teenager,” Vanessa said, “I stole money out of the vending machines by taking them apart. I hot-wired a car for a friend of mine. I drank too much. I slept around.”

That last one made Joan take her eyes off the red light to look at Vanessa. She turned back only when she remembered herself.

“I did too many drugs.”

“Drugs? What drugs?”

“I smoked pot at first, did LSD.” Vanessa looked at her and considered whether to go on. “Tried heroin.”

The sound Joan made was somewhere between a gasp and a gulp.

The light turned green, and Vanessa pressed her foot on the gas. Suddenly Joan hated the way her own confession had sounded coming out of her mouth.

“Please don’t read too much into my story,” Joan said. They were approaching the park.

“What do you mean?”

“About ratting out my sister. Just…please don’t think that I can’t be trusted, or I ruin people’s fun, or I’m a coward, or anything like that. I’m not.”

“I know.”

“Okay, it’s just, with my sister, it was…I always feel like I’m trying to do the right thing and getting it wrong. I don’t know why I told you that story. You’re right, I am a prude. And always early. And all the things you think I am.”

“I don’t think of you any differently than I did when you got in the car,” Vanessa said. “You are what you are, and I like what you are. Anyway, nobody is one thing all the time. Maybe you’ve been a Goody Two-shoes up until now. But anything can happen,” she said, laughing,as she pulled into the parking lot. “The night is young, and you’re out with a bad girl.”

—

It was dark now, withhundreds of stars visible. They put down a blanket, and Joan set up the telescope as Vanessa stood on the grass and stared up at the sky.

“We might be up there one day,” she said.

Joan looked through the eyepiece. “I know.” She could show Vanessa the constellations without it. But the truth was, Joan relished any moment to show people certain stars up close. How else could she tempt them to fall in love? Joan got Rasalgethi, the head of Hercules, into view. She looked at Vanessa.

“Okay, come look.”

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