Stargazer

I feel all virtuous inside.”

“Virtuous? Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you’re smarter than that, that’s why.” Between feigning a lifelong friendship and laughing at Dana’s jokes, I didn’t have time to get too upset about not seeing Lucas. It didn’t really hit me until later, when we were boarding the bus again. Balthazar gave me a questioning look, clearly wanting to know if he and Lucas had a deal; I had to shrug a little and shake my head. He seemed to understand that the meeting hadn’t happened, but we didn’t have a chance to discuss it. We just had to hang on to each other again as the bus sped across the river.

That night, at bedtime, Raquel was more cheerful than I’d seen her all year. Dana could get almost anybody into a good mood. But I felt like I’d left part of myself standing by that river, waiting for Lucas, who couldn’t come. I closed my eyes tightly, willing myself to sleep. The sooner this day was over, the sooner I could stop thinking about how I should have seen Lucas today. I could start thinking about how we would be together soon. That was how I had to look at it, or else I’d never get through.

But even my dreams conspired against me.

“You have to hide,” Charity said.

We stood in the old Quaker meetinghouse where I’d first encountered Black Cross the year before. The chill of consecrated ground crept into my bones and made me shake. Charity clung to a doorjamb, as if she had to hold herself upright.

“We don’t have to hide,” I told her. “Lucas won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t have to hide from Lucas.” She brushed her wheat-colored curls back from her face. Though her coloring was almost entirely different from Balthazar’s, I could see the likeness now—the wavy hair, their height, and the intensity of their dark-brown eyes. “But you still have to hide.”

What was she talking about? Then I thought I knew. The last time I was in this meetinghouse, it burned to the ground. Was that what the strange shadows were all around us? Was it smoke? “It’s burning,” I said.

“No. But it’s going to burn.” Charity reached a hand out toward me.

Was she trying to pull me to safety or into danger? “Lucas doesn’t know that you’re going to burn up.”

“He’ll save me! He’ll come for me!”

She shook her head, and behind her I could see the glow of flame.

“He won’t. Because he can’t.”

I woke up breathing hard and lonelier than ever.

Chapter Twelve

“ROMEO AND JULIET DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER very well.” The words sounded strange, even though I had written them.

“They defy their parents for each other, risk their lives for each other, and finally die for each other, even though they’ve only met a handful of times. It’s a huge love story built on infatuation. Maybe Shakespeare should have let them know each other longer.”

“Everything you say is true, Miss Olivier, but I am not convinced that it is a flaw in the play.” Mrs. Bethany sat at her desk, tapping her fingers against the wood so that her long, grooved fingernails clicked loudly enough to be heard. “Romeo and Juliet are virtually strangers to each other, even at the play’s end. But is it not possible that this is Shakespeare’s point? That the kind of mad, self-sacrificing passion Romeo and Juliet share usually belongs only to the first flush of love? That their mistakes should not be made by more mature, informed people?” I shrank down in my desk. Fortunately, Mrs. Bethany didn’t want to make me her personal piñata for the day. She glanced around the room.

“Does anyone else want to suggest a flaw he or she perceived in the play?”

Courtney raised her hand, eager as ever to show me up. “They acted like there was just no way they could have had sex without being mar-ried, and, hello, not true.”

Mrs. Bethany sighed. “Keep in mind that, despite the bawdy humor in Shakespeare, he generally wrote to suit the morality of the time. Anyone else?”

For the first time I could remember, Vic spoke up in class. “If you ask me, the Bard kind of wussed out by having Tybalt kill Mercutio before Romeo killed Tybalt. They’re all supposed to be blood enemies, right? And the Montagues aren’t any better than the Capulets, if that prince guy at the end is telling the truth. So it would’ve been gutsier to have Romeo and Tybalt fight only because they hated each other. Having Tybalt kill Mercutio first lets Romeo off the hook.” I waited for the inevitable smackdown, but it never came. Mrs. Bethany said, “Mr. Woodson makes an excellent point. By framing Romeo’s murder of Tybalt as he does, Shakespeare loses a certain amount of moral ambiguity.”

As Mrs. Bethany wrote moral ambiguity on the chalkboard, I glanced over at Vic, who shrugged with a look on his face that clearly meant, I just can’t help my genius.

Despite the entertainment value of listening to Vic and Mrs. Bethany discuss literature, I had a strange, hollow feeling all through class and long afterward. In the library, I sat alone in a small chair in one corner, the light orange and gold through the stained-glass window, and kept staring down at my notes. How well did Lucas and I know each other, really? We’d met more than a year ago, and I had sensed the connection between us from the beginning. But the meeting we’d lost in Riverton had reminded me how rarely we’d been able to be together, or to reveal the full truth about ourselves or anything important to us.

What if we were like Romeo and Juliet, risking everything too soon?