Chapter Three
THREE
You will never forget the way you met her because of two things.
One: It was your sixteenth birthday. And two: You were on the roof of your garage.
The two were related. You’d decided long ago, after a childhood birthday party where only two people showed up, that you would never again risk the humiliation of a great big blowout fiesta with a guest list a mile long and enough food to feed the neighborhood.
From then on you kept birthdays painfully low-key:
German chocolate cake with your family.
Maybe a movie.
And then a little time alone (sometimes, to be completely honest, with an old Playboy magazine you found in a box of your dad’s stuff from college) reflecting about the last year, which was usually—let’s keep being honest—a highlight reel of various cringeworthy things you said and did in key situations, played over and over again by the relentless sadist who lives in your brain.
It wasn’t the world’s greatest tradition.
But at this point, you were sticking to it for lack of anything better.
On the night you met Diana, the cake part of the evening was done and you were full of sugar and familial support.
You’d watched a movie earlier that day, so you were on to the reflection bit, crawling up on top of the garage for a little stargazing.
This was a new thing for you, in part because you were afraid of heights, and had been since you were a kid.
But recently your therapist had told you about exposure therapy, so you were trying, occasionally, to expand your “window of tolerance” for high places.
Also, you had just gotten a new app called Pocket Planetarium that alerted you to various astrological events, and all day it had been going completely apeshit, excited beyond belief about the Draconids meteor shower that was set to begin in the next fifteen minutes.
To be clear: You did not care that much about the Draconids meteor shower.
What you mostly cared about was distracting yourself from the fact that another year of high school was beginning and it was already evident that nothing much was going to change.
As sure as the meteors would soon radiate from the constellation Draco, you would undoubtedly spend your days radiating social anxiety, and looking on from distant parts of the galaxy while other people had memorable experiences.
Like that very night, for example. Just across the moonlit lawn, in his bedroom, your brother and some of his friends were having an impromptu party.
The shades were pulled, but you had seen the crew earlier, a few guys from his diving team and an unfamiliar girl or two, their pockets sloshing obviously with contraband as they lumbered into Sean’s room.
Even from the roof, you could hear the occasional “Shut up, bro!” echo against the garage, while you tried not to think about the fact that it should probably be you having friends over.
Where are the goddamn meteors? you were thinking when the strange girl crawled out of Sean’s bedroom window.
At first you thought it was one of his buddies from the team.
They weren’t exactly the most risk-averse group of guys you’d ever met, and jumping out of windows was absolutely on brand.
But then you saw a girl’s leg straddle the windowsill and a small body drop to the ground and it was clear that whoever this was, they were not doing this on a dare.
“Ow. Screw a kangaroo!” she said. “My ankle.”
Sean poked his head out the window.
“I said you could go out the front. My parents are sleeping!”
The girl gave him the finger and brushed herself off.
You turned over onto your stomach then, your body shaking slightly, and looked down the slope of the roof just as she stepped into the light from the upstairs window.
All you saw was dark curly hair and a baggy jean jacket, and it wasn’t until she looked up and spied you on the roof that you understood why she was there.
Initially, she hadn’t looked like Sean’s type exactly—girls who spent most of their time in yoga pants, posting carefully staged selfies taken in forests.
But when she moved closer, it was clear that she was, like the others, very beautiful.
“Dude,” she said, standing right below the roof. “You startled me. What are you even doing up there?”
Then she started laughing really hard, which was how you realized she was probably kind of hammered.
This was not uncommon. Sean, for all his sports conditioning and boy-next-door charm, smoked and drank quite a bit, and so did most of the people he spent time with.
He had recently come into your room at 3 A.M. on a Tuesday for help cleaning a scorched sauté pan.
Eventually it came out that he had tried to make cookies “faster” on the stovetop.
“I’m watching the Draconids,” you said because you never, ever said the right thing, so why should you start now?
This started her laughing again, and she had to lean against the garage to keep her balance.
“Hold on,” she said. “That sounds awesome. I’m coming up.”
The thought of her falling sent a jolt of anxiety through you.
And you were about to tell her about the pile of firewood around back that she could use to get a leg up.
But before you could get the words out, she jumped up, grabbed ahold of the gutter, and began to hoist herself toward the roof.
You nearly left your body watching her hang there, but it was impressive upper-body strength, especially given her state.
She managed to get a foothold on a windowsill, and in what felt like seconds, she was lying flat on her back only a few feet away from you.
“All right,” she said. “Okay … I think I get it now.”
“Get what?” you said.
“Why you’re up here. I thought maybe you were peeping in people’s windows. But it’s kind of nice like this. Stars and stuff.”
She burped incredibly loud then.
“Oh my god,” she said. “That feels so much better.”
You weren’t sure if you were supposed to laugh, so you stayed quiet.
She didn’t seem to mind. It wasn’t often that you were this close to a girl, and you had decided that the best strategy for not embarrassing yourself was to say nothing that you absolutely didn’t have to.
She seemed content with this until something must have occurred to her.
“Wait a second,” she said. “You’re Case, right?!”
“Yeah,” you said.
At that point, she punched you hard in the arm.
“I just ate some of your cake.”
“Thanks?” you said.
“No offense,” she said, “but this is how you’re spending your birthday? Alone on a garage?”
You sighed.
“I guess that was kind of offensive,” she said.
“It’s okay,” you said. “I get it. It’s not the world’s most exciting place. But it’s kind of a tradition to spend it … with myself.”
She nodded.
“Okay, respect,” she said. “I’m not great at being by myself, personally. Which is probably why I was just in your brother’s room even though it’s clear he barely remembered my name. He does have good taste in whiskey, though. Cutty Sark!”
She burped again. Then she sat up, her hands flat on the shingles behind her, and closed her eyes. She had dark eyebrows, a little unkempt compared to most girls your age, and they connected when she frowned.
“I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again, Case,” she said then, “so I’m going to tell you something.”
“Okay,” you said.
“That dude in there really loves you.”
“Who, Sean?” you said.
“Yeah, he wouldn’t shut up about you. How smart you are.”
“That’s not really…”
“Did you actually skip two grades?”
“Well, one, and then some specific subjects…”
“Do you really write his papers for him?”
“I consider myself more of an editor.”
“One more question,” she said.
“Okay.”
Her eyes went a little glassy and she looked back at the house.
“Is he nice to girls?” she asked.
But before you could answer, she looked up and her eyes went wide.
“HOLY SHIT! I just saw a UFO! In real life!”
You felt a squeeze on your leg then, and when you looked down, her hand was clamping onto your thigh.
You knew it was probably just instinct on her part, a gesture born out of shock, but nonetheless, a charge passed through your body in that moment that left you breathless.
Her nails were sharp even through your jeans, and they pinched your leg.
“Meteor shower,” you managed.
“What?”
“Comet debris. It … According to my app, it burns as it enters our atmosphere. And then…”
You waved toward the sky, and another one arced by on cue, like a tiny sparkler someone had tossed javelin-style through the night.
She didn’t say anything. She just watched the sky now, and you saw maybe a half dozen more, flying pinpricks trailing light so quickly they were gone before you were even sure you’d seen them.
Then everything was static again, all the stars fixed in their right places, and she was staring at you with a very different kind of look on her flushed face.
“Wow,” she said. “Okay. That was actually kind of amazing. You’re like a star wizard.”
She finally seemed to notice her hand on your leg, and she gently pulled it away.
“Yeah,” you said. “That’s actually my nickname. Star Wizard.”
She laughed.
“Not so bad for being alone on a garage, right?” you said.
“Only you weren’t alone,” she said.
She seemed completely sober now, like the meteors had zapped her of something. She looked at you again, and it felt like she was going to say something else, but you cut her off.
“He’s nice,” you said.
She didn’t ask for any additional explanation. She knew what you were referring to.
“Hmmm,” she said. “It’s sweet that you would lie for him.”
And before she disappeared beneath the lip of the roof, she gave you one last smile that appeared genuine.
“Happy birthday, Case,” she said.
And you thought, after she left your sight, that this would probably be the last time you saw her. She didn’t seem like the type to keep coming around—too interesting—and Sean got bored of people pretty quickly.
But, amazingly enough, this was not to be the case.
Diana, as it turned out, had staying power.
And before long, she had done what few others had managed to do: achieve girlfriend status with your fickle brother.
Which meant you would see her again over the next year until they broke up only weeks before he died.
At which point she would call you every night at exactly ten o’clock for nearly a month, and you would never pick up, not even once, even though you wanted more than anything to do just that.
So she never called again.