She’d better tone down her mood to match Grandma’s.
“Can I make you some tea, Grandma?”
“I hate tea.”
“No, you—” Angel stopped midprotest. “Okay.”
“I’m bored,” Grandma said. “Ain’t nothing to do around here.”
“Well, I could read to you.”
“You already read them books. Ain’t you got nothing new to read?”
“I could run down to the library.”
“No!” Grandma sat up straight. “You’d just go off blabbing about all our troubles to Liza Irwin. I don’t like that smarty-pants butting her nose into my family business. You ought to know that by now, girly!” She slumped against the back of the rocker. “Didn’t you bring something new home from school?”
How could she know? “I don’t think you’d like it.”
Grandma closed her eyes. “I guess I could be the judge of that,” she said.
She slung her backpack off her shoulder and onto the table and took out Starry Messenger. Grandma had her eyes shut and was gently rocking back and forth, so maybe Angel could just skip the pictures and the script—just read the words in print. “For hundreds of years, most people thought the earth was the center of the universe, and the sun and the moon and all the planets revolved around it....”
“That ain’t true. People don’t think no such thing.”
“No, Grandma, that’s what the book—”
“I’m telling you, people don’t give a flip about the rest of the world, much less the blinking universe. They just care about themselves. I been sitting here all these days trying to figure out that mother of yours. That’s exactly her problem. She thinks she’s the center of the universe, and you and me and Bernie and even poor old Wayne is just something to whirl around her every want and wish. Well, I tell you, she is wrong, one hundred and forty percent wrong.”
“Yes, Grandma.” While the old woman ranted on, Angel slipped the precious book back into her pack and set about making tea.
***
It was a wonderfully warm night for late October, and the sky was as bejeweled as the pictures inside the cover of Starry Messenger. She decided to take the book outside and try to show the star man the pictures by Grandma’s flashlight. He’d probably want to take it home to look at better, but she’d just explain that it was a school library book and you weren’t allowed to lend it to anybody else. He’d understand that. Even if he didn’t seem to worry about rules, she was sure he’d think that the school had plenty of them for kids to follow.
When there were no more sounds from the kitchen, Angel went downstairs. She was wearing her winter jacket. It wasn’t really cold, but by ten or so she’d be glad she had it. She got the big flashlight from the drawer in the cabinet nearest the door and tiptoed out, pulling the door gently behind her. Tonight of all nights she didn’t want Grandma hearing her sneak out.
He wasn’t there. It was a perfect night, balmy as summertime, and he wasn’t there. All that worry about if or how to share her library book and he wasn’t even out there where he was supposed to be, where he always was when the night was clear and warm. She went on out to the field, looking right and left, sweeping the flashlight in great swaths across weedy land. He was nowhere to be seen. She headed toward the trailer. Maybe he was just late tonight. But when she got closer, she could see that there were no lights on in the trailer, and his old car was missing.
Why had he gone away? Was it because he somehow knew she didn’t want to share Starry Messenger with him? No, that didn’t make good sense. She must have done something to hurt his feelings or make him not want to be with her anymore. That was it. She racked her brain for what she might have said the last time they were together. She’d nagged him about his smoking. No. That wasn’t it. Face it. It was because she was too dumb. She couldn’t see all the things he wanted her to see and so he’d lost patience with her. He didn’t want to be bothered with someone so slow that it took her a couple of weeks to be sure where Polaris was—the one star that hardly moved, and—
No! She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. She was not stupid. She had to stop telling herself stuff like that. It was him. He was letting her down. Just like Galileo Galilei 191 everyone else. That’s what grownups did. They got kids to trust them, and then they just let go—blam. They didn’t know what it felt like to be dropped like that, or they didn’t care. To the kid being dropped, it hurt just the same whether the grownup was being mean or careless. It felt the same to the kid. And it wasn’t the kid’s fault, either! It wasn’t. The first time a social worker had told her that, it had just melted on her ears like snow. But now she knew it was true. At least in her head she knew it was a fact. All the things that had happened to her and Bernie hadn’t been their fault. She was sick and tired of thinking it was her fault when they got left at cold apartments and all-night diners and grandmas and, and—She turned and, stumbling over the uneven ground, ran back toward the safety of the house, clutching Galileo Galilei under one arm and trying to follow the bouncing light of the flashlight through a mist of tears.
She was never going to trust anyone again. Not even Mrs. Coates. Not even Miss Liza. Not even—She could hardly breathe. Her toe caught on the doorsill, and she fell, the flashlight bouncing and rolling, rattling across the kitchen floor until it came to a noisy stop against a chair leg.
“What’s that!” Grandma’s voice cried out from the bedroom.
“Just me,” Angel said.
“My gawd, girl! You trying to scare the liver out of me?”
“I’m sorry. I tripped.” Angel got up. She felt bruised all over. Even her heart felt sore. “Just go back to sleep, Grandma. It’s okay.” She closed the door as quietly as she could and slid the flashlight into the drawer. When she turned around, Grandma was standing in the doorway.
“Turn on the light, girl. No wonder you nearly broke your neck. Wandering about the kitchen in the dark. I thought you had some brains in that head.”
“I’m sorry, Grandma.”
“Just turn on the light, silly.”