Page 14 of Under Story

He covered his eyes, grinning. “I can’t believe I did that. I figured, no one knows me, no one actually cares. At my old school, I never would have had the guts.”

“In Chicago, right? Is that where you’re going to college?”

Eli shook his head. “MIT,” he said, and added sheepishly: “I know how that sounds.”

“It sounds fancy,” said Laurel. “What do you want to study?”

“Engineering. I have to get my master’s if I want to be eligible for NASA’s astronaut-selection program—that or become a jet pilot.”

“No ambition, I see.”

“I probably won’t get in. Almost no one does,” he said. “How about you?”

“UW,” she said. “Botany.” And thought of how small she must seem to him, going twenty minutes away to study plants.

But he nodded, as if this were fitting. “You seem—comfortable here.”

“You aren’t?”

“Comfortable? Not really.” Eli set down the core of the Red Astrachan. “We’ve moved a lot. Before Chicago it was Ann Arbor, and Bloomington before that. Every time my parents pick someplace new, they try to sell me on it, but they find problems pretty quickly when we get there.”

“Why?”

Right away, it seemed too personal a question. Laurel was about to apologize when Eli said, “I don’t think that they’ve ever been very happy together. They probably should have split up instead of having me. ‘You were the test’—that’s what my aunt said.”

Laurel looked at him. “You were just a kid.”

“I know.” Eli shrugged, feigning lightness. “Anyway, who gets their parents?”

“No one,” Laurel agreed.

He leaned back on one elbow, and she tried not to stare at the slant of his arm, how his T-shirt skimmed his stomach. For a moment, they were quiet, and she felt comfortable that way, listening to the bright snap of the apples as they ate.

Eli tried the Pink Pearl she’d picked. “Hey!”

Laurel grinned; she had been waiting for this. The skin was creamy, but the flesh inside was coral, as if a traditional apple had been inverted.

“Which is your favorite?” she asked.

“This one,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

He held her gaze as he said the last word. She wondered what he saw. Hazel eyes mostly taken up by large black pupils. What people called dishwater-blond hair. A certain Midwestern frankness to her expression, less gullibility than guilelessness. Her body was strong from years of outdoor work, her summer skin a shade darker than usual. Laurel’s feelings about her own appearance swung from insecurity to fragile self-assurance, often within the same day. When she cut her hair in junior year, she felt like Claire Danes in The Rainmaker, at least for several hours; the next morning, two new cystic pimples stripped her pride back to the studs. In her best moments, she thought that she was pretty in the same way as her mother: her square jaw and high cheekbones, her eyes green-flecked and contemplative.

Eli was still watching her. His boldness startled her—though what if she’d read him wrong? Laurel pointed at the sky, squirming out of the moment.

“So what’ll you do, if you get up there?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?”

“I’d go anywhere,” said Eli, with an ardency that nearly made her shiver. “But the thing I want most is to do an EVA.”

“EVA?”

“Extravehicular activity,” Eli said, in a robotic voice, and Laurel giggled. “Better known as a spacewalk. You’re making a repair outside the ship. Ed White was the first American to do it. I used to watch the footage over and over; I even memorized the transcript.”

“Prove it,” Laurel said.

Eli glanced at her the way he had when she invited him to the orchard: with amusement, and a shade of admiration. Laurel didn’t know whether she was succeeding at flirtation. She knew only that she wanted to keep him there, talking.

“Well, there are forty pages of lead-up. Mission control is double-checking everything—you know, ‘Are you in prelaunch? Do you have a blood pressure on Ed?’ He’s supposed to get out over Hawaii, but they’re running late, and Jim McDivitt, the command captain, goes, ‘I don’t think we want to try it. Next pass around.’ ” Eli paused, self-conscious. “I’m being too detailed.”