Between Us and the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

fuzzy. It’s the tear ducts obstructing my view.
    Crying = death. I will not cry two days in a row.
    Especially not in this small space where Scarlett can watch my tears fall. I take a deep breath and hold it in—I’m not going to cry. I know what to do. I’ll recite the elements backward this time.
    Zirconium. Zinc. Yttrium. I will not cry. Ytterbium. I will not cry. Xenon . . .
    “Bean, Bean, Bean, look at you. All that cleavage just showed up in a year!” Aunt Nancy somehow thinks that because she is sixty-something she can say whatever she wants to me. She smothers me against her white Chanel suit.
    I pull away from her overzealous embrace and cross my arms. I’m pretty sure I will stink like Dior for the rest of the day.
    “I see you brought your little gadgets,” she says and raises an eyebrow at the Stargazer. It sits next to the car along with four catalogued boxes of comet-tracking equipment.
    “It’s my Stargazer 5020.”
    “Just make sure you put it up in your room where it can’t stain the carpet.”
    “It’s a telescope.”
    Aunt Nancy hated the rock polisher I brought along last summer and the portable microscope the year before that. There may have been a small incident when I was transferring some algae to the slides, but it ended up being fine. That part of the carpet was cut out and replaced.
    Looming above us is Nancy’s four-story, light gray, shingled monstrosity, our home every single summer since before I was born. A plaque over the five-car garage reads: Seaside Sanctuary. Or as I like to call it: Seaside Stomachache. Scarlett calls it Seaside Shit Show, but I don’t tell anyone that. Once, when Scarlett and I were little, we carved our initials into one of the shingles on the back of the garage. I should see if they’re still there.
    “You are a vision!” Nancy says and basically mauls Scarlett. “Your hair is like gold. Look at you!” We just saw Nancy over spring break, but she fawns over Scarlett like she’s Miss America.
    I roll my suitcase into the front entranceway and haul it up the main stairs to my usual bedroom on the third floor. I should think about the comet every time Tucker’s “apologetic” face comes into my head. I’ll track the comet, write my essay, and win that damn scholarship. I’ll go to the reception lunch at Brown University, where I’ve heard they serve nineteen different kinds of cake.
    By the time I reach my door on the third floor, I’m out of breath. I open up to the familiar bedroom. Nancy might be hell to deal with, but she keeps my room the same every year. She doesn’t even let guests stay in here when someone comes to visit.
    As a kid, I picked this room because of the massive skylights. I wanted to watch the stars when I lay in bed.
    I throw my shoulders back and lift my chest up. “Stand tall and proud,” Gran always says. I do, even though I don’t feel very proud. The summer away from Tucker will help. It doesn’t matter if he comes to the party or not. Without Tucker, I won’t have any distractions from my scientific observations on the Comet Jolie.
    I’ve spent eleven long months tracking its movements—132 hours at the Frosty Drew Nature Center & Observatory, 149 hours of backyard gazing, 82 hours of research in the library.
    I can’t give up now. I’m so close.

FOUR

    WHEN I CALL ETTIE THE NEXT MORNING, SHE doesn’t even say hello. It rings once and she says, “First, I cannot believe you told me about this breakup via text. And second?” She takes a deep breath and her tone softens. It’s enough to make me cry. “He’s a bastard.”
    “I know.”
    “You’re not alone in your summer of woe. Your summer of pain ,” she cries.
    “Wow. We’re dramatic today, Ettie.”
    “I didn’t even see you before you left,” she says.
    I sit in Nancy’s oversized Adirondack chair and make a visor with my hand. The sun sparkles high on the bay in the distance.I can just make out the path to the harbor beach below, but