Chapter 18. In Which My Enemy Calls Me Hot, and I Almost Eat It on a Slab of Ice #2
I place my hands into his. The warmth of his skin against mine only further activates my nervous system.
As Luca leads me deeper onto the ice, I consider how to start the conversation I came to have. “You know, you should teach everyone how to ice-skate at the upcoming disco skate night, too. I bet they’d love to learn from you.”
“You think?”
“I remember you saying that you’ve felt a little out of place here. Sharing your passion for hockey and connecting with everyone else that way might help.”
“I’m not sure,” Luca says flatly. He’s unconvinced.
New tactic. “This isn’t just about you. Think of all the people who plan on not attending because they don’t know how to skate.
If you publicize that you’ll teach them, then they can.
We could ask the mentors to share about it during morning announcements.
And you can invite everyone in your cabin, too. ”
Luca falls quiet for a moment, like he’s considering the idea. “Maybe. If you help me.”
An unexpected response. “With?”
“Teaching a big group of people how to skate isn’t easy. I’ll need an assistant.”
Just the notion startles me so much that I step wrong on my left skate, and my body stretches in ways it shouldn’t be able to. Luca stabilizes me with a protective grip around my arms and slides me upright again. “See?” I say on a panicked breath. “I can’t skate. How can I be your assistant?”
“I’m teaching you right now. You’ll be a pro in no time.”
“At what? Falling?”
Luca just picks up the pace, forcing me to turn my awkward marches on the ice into inconsistent glides. “I don’t think I’m the one who needs to get more involved at camp, anyway,” he says. “It’s you.”
“Me? Why?”
“When was the last time you were focused on anything but our labs or tests? Have you gone to any events? Done anything for yourself? Like a hobby or something. Like, I have hockey. And you have … what? What are you passionate about?”
My mind zeros back to JSHS Nationals and the words Professor Hiller uttered to me. There is no passion in this work. Look around to those who are exhibiting such.
“There’s no time,” I insist.
I must have struggled to hide my touchiness because Luca slows to a stop on the ice. “I don’t believe you. There’s always time for something you’re really passionate about.”
“I guess I can name any star on a map,” I say, just to get him to stop the line of questioning. “Or planet.”
“You do seem the happiest when you talk about the stars and the planets,” Luca says. Like he’s noticed this about me. Paid attention.
What else has Luca observed about me that I haven’t noticed?
Will he use it against me?
“I mean,” I say, unsure now, carefully thinking through my words to filter out any damaging vulnerabilities—one of the worst of the Seven Deadly Distractions—“learning more about the universe helped me finally care about math, which made Prince List successful. And I’ve done my best to follow what I like, even though I’m on a trajectory set by my parents.
But I know they think that astronomy isn’t the right path for me. ”
“A trajectory?”
“They have a lot of rules to ensure Prince List’s image stays solid. Like making sure I”—I hesitate—“look physically pleasing to customers.”
“You mean hot,” Luca says simply.
I jolt like I’ve been shocked.
“I—I guess you could put it that way,” I say, unable to mask the stutter in my voice. “Anyway, I’m glad my parents allow me to at least present on topics related to astronomy. But the research they approve of is never what I’m super excited about. They always require a mathematical element or—”
“Talk to me about the parts that are fun, then,” Luca says suddenly.
“Right now?”
“Right now.” He offers his hand again. “While we skate.”
It’s a waste of time. Mom and Dad say so constantly: Just focus on what can be applied to the future. Not the fun facts Dad taught me as a kid.
But it’s impossible to say no when Luca is looking at me with those eyes. He’s so talented at making me believe that he cares. Even if it is a trick, it elicits an emotional response in me that’s hard to ignore.
So as Luca guides me around the rink, slow and steady, I tell him how the moon is shaped like a lemon.
We just can’t tell because the face bulges toward us instead of the sides.
That turns into how time moves quicker on the moon, so if you lived there, you would technically die faster.
In fact, time speeds and slows depending on how much gravity is in any given area, and two black holes colliding distorts all space-time—but we don’t know what that even means because our physics can’t explain or quantify it.
And when physics, the set of so-called concrete rules that define how our universe works, fails, I find it hard to also assert that the Bachelor Island Ghost doesn’t exist, because what else don’t we know?
“Wow,” Luca says once I leave my first gap of silence.
Maybe I steered off track.
Or I totally bored him.
Embarrassment slinks through my every cell. If I had been starting to get Luca to fall in love with me, then this must have majorly reversed that.