We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach Read Free Book Online Page B

she was pissed at.
    â€œJeez,” he said, “that must have been some shitty sex.”
    â€œIt was,” Eliza said, without stopping.
    But she was glad to hear him laughing behind her.

    She couldn’t focus during chemistry class. The blue star kept popping back into her head, like the memory of a bad dream. And every time it did, her heart began to race.
    She didn’t think to ask about it until lunch, and only then because she happened to pass by the table in the corner of the lunchroom, farthest from the windows. Maybe it was judgmental, to think of it as the “nerd table,” and yet there was no getting around the fact that a school had its factions, and one of those factions happened to consist primarily of intelligent, not very attractive, not particularly socially capable boys, along with a few girls who hadn’t yet learned how to dress or put on makeup or pretend to be dumber than they were. It was the girls who eyed Eliza with suspicion when she sat down at the table, as if she were an emissary from a tribe of Amazon women sweeping in to steal the menfolk away. The boys tried to look blasé, but they couldn’t hide a bubbling undercurrent of fandom.
    â€œHey,” she said. “I’m Eliza.”
    A boy with thick brown hair styled in an unfortunate mullet reached out a hand. He had an air of authority about him, confident in his element.
    â€œHello, Eliza. I’m James.”
    â€œHi, James.”
    He introduced the rest of the table, but Eliza didn’t absorb any of their names.
    â€œYou’re here because of Ardor, aren’t you?” James’s eyes had the bright, almost manic intensity of extreme intelligence. Eliza knew she was reasonably smart, but brilliant people still freaked her out. She didn’t like the idea that somebody might be seeing more of her than she wanted them to see.
    â€œWhat’s Ardor?”
    One of the girls answered without looking up from some Japanese comic. “It’s JPL’s name for the asteroid. ARDR-1388.”
    â€œArdor,” James said, “is a near-Earth object, or NEO, a category including asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that orbit close to our planet. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory keeps tabs on all of them. It’s part of their job.”
    â€œIs it big?”
    â€œBig enough to wipe us all out.”
    â€œSo why haven’t I heard about it before?”
    James raised his eyebrows. “You regularly visit the JPL website for updates on NEOs? You keep up with contemporary astronomy journals?”
    â€œI do not.”
    â€œSo there you go.”
    Eliza did her best to smile through this meteor shower of condescension. “Thank you, James. That was very helpful.” She stood up. Across the lunchroom, Peter Roeslin and his still-girlfriend Stacy looked over at Eliza at exactly the same time. She pretended not to see them.
    â€œHey,” James said, waving to get her attention, “if you’re wondering whether or not to be afraid of Ardor, you shouldn’t be.”
    â€œI’m not afraid.”
    â€œSure you’re not,” he said, as if conceding a point he knew he’d already won. “But just in case you were considering being afraid at some point in the future, I wanted you to know that there’s little rational basis for it. The odds of collision are very slim. In reality, everything we ought to be concerned about is already right here on planet Earth.”
    â€œI thought you said not to be afraid.”
    â€œI said don’t be afraid of the asteroid. This is the twenty-first century. The oceans are rising. Mad dictators have access to nuclear weapons. Corporatism and the dumbing down of the media have destroyed the very foundations of democracy. Anyone who isn’t afraid is a moron.”
    There was something violent in the way James said that last word—“moron”—as if he were at that very moment surrounded by