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Her eyes widen. “We’ll tell him aliens. I’ve seriously been wanting to use that excuse for a while—aliens. Crop circle aliens. No one seems to appreciate the alien answer for anything else. Like Abby, where were you—I was abducted by aliens. They don’t even pretend to buy it, but this time—I can totally own the crop circle defense.”
“Can I show you something?”
She bobs her head. “Besides how to harvest corn early? Okay.”
“Lie down.”
Abby releases that dangerous grin that’s half seduction, half fear-inducing. “Is this where the thing you show me involves dirty secrets?”
“Only if you’re good.” I drop onto the grass. “I’m serious, come here.”
Abby plops down beside me and looks over at me expectantly. “What’s my prize?”
“Close your eyes and lie back. Then when I tell you, open them.”
Wariness hovers in Abby’s eyes, but she does what I ask, closing her eyes and lying back. I ponder lying down beside her to see what she’ll see, but instead stretch out beside her and prop myself up on my arm, settling for her reaction.
The grass is cool against my warm skin and the humid night. Beyond us pond frogs croak and the stalks of corn rustle in the slight breeze. Abby looks peaceful tonight. One day of rest and those dark circles she’s had since she was shot are fading and there’s a smoothness to her usually razor-sharp expression.
She’s a vision. She’s beautiful. Just like the natural night painting I’m about to show Abby.
“Open your eyes.”
Abby does, and after the blinks to readjust her sight, wonder and awe race across her face. “Oh...my...God. There’s thousands of them.”
Stars. She’s referring to the stars. We’re hours away from any city, a good forty-minute drive from the nearest expressway. We’re as far from civilization as we can get and by being here, we get to witness the world as God envisioned it, as God created it, and it is absolutely good.
I ease down beside Abby, allowing the skin of my arm to touch hers. “I was in eighth grade the first time my parents allowed me to come down here with Chris and his grandfather. Chris brought me and Ryan out here and we camped. Long after Chris and Ryan went to sleep, I lay on the grass and stared at the stars in the sky. Made me feel small.”
“You liked that?” There’s an unsure tone in her voice. “Feeling small?”
“Yeah. If I was small, then maybe my problems were, too.”
“I get that. I get that more than you’d think.”
We’re quiet for a bit and I don’t mind the silence. I tried counting the stars once, and I never got far. Always fell asleep before one hundred. “I’m going to quit the band.”
Abby leans up to her elbow. “Why?”
“Those guys—all they could talk about was music. Their music, other people’s music, arrangements, instruments, shots and dreams...I was more interested that they had a gig in Florida before the summer ended.”
Abby cracks a grin and nudges my ankle with her toe. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Beaches sounded good at the time. Don’t get me wrong, I like to play. Gives me something to do with my hands when I’m bored, but a deck of cards can do the same thing. They deserve someone who loves what they do as much as they do.”
Abby nods like what I said was insightful. “So you’re going to play baseball again?”
My stomach knots. “Maybe, but being a baseball player...that’s not me, either. I like to play. Gives me a hell of a rush, but Ryan’s a baseball player. He can’t live without the game.”
Just like Isaiah can’t live without cars and Chris can’t live without dirt beneath his feet. Sometimes, I think I’m more like Chris. I like the idea of owning something, not being underneath anyone else, my own successes and failures dependent on what I do or don’t do. Working in a place where I’m reminded, in a good way, how small I am.
I’m off-kilter with my diabetes admission and Dad’s rant. More than I care to be. Now that my friends know and they haven’t shoved me into a wheelchair or deathbed yet, I’m lost.
I’ve worked my entire life to not be the guy with diabetes, taking on whatever it is that was in front of me to prove it. If I’m the guy with diabetes and no one cares, then who am I? “Maybe I don’t know who I am.”
“I disagree with that. I think you’re mixing up what you want to do with the rest of your life with who you are. For instance, I think I would make a kick-ass high-level agent for the stars. Nobody would say no to me. I know what I want to do, but I have no idea who I am.”
I reach over and link Abby’s fingers with mine. “You want to be an agent for actors?”
