Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(8)

“I like it. It’s cool.” He knows words other than cool but they’re not showing up right now.

“Joyce totally freaked out. Mostly ’cause I got dye on her guest towels.” Chloe finger quotes the last two words. “As if we’re gonna be having guests anytime soon.”

Joyce is Chloe’s mom. Their fights are legendary.

“Well. Joyce gonna Joyce.”

Chloe gives him a proper smile like she used to do back when they were best friends who talked every day, for hours, before the epic fight that ended all that. Miles wants to lean into the warmth of that smile, but five months is a long time. He twirls a spoon in a semi-melted pint of cookies and cream. “So. What’s up?”

“With everything going on, I just … wondered how you’re doing?”

He shrugs. “You know.”

“Yeah. For real.”

There’s another awkward pause.

“Is Mom Lisa … okay?

“So far. She’s living with some other nurses near the hospital for now. She didn’t want to bring anything home.”

Chloe shakes her head. “So scary. You and Mama D must be worried about her all the time.”

Miles doesn’t want to go there. “Funny story. Mama D is stuck in Amsterdam.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. She had just flown there to work on this exhibition when everything shut down. She figured it would be a week or two and decided to ride it out and, well, you know. Here we are.”

“Oh my god. So you’re, like, alone?”

“It’s a nonstop party. Dodger and me wilding around the living room.” He clears his throat. “You guys doing okay?”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “Joyce is up my ass twenty-four seven. Dad is doing deals from a makeshift office in the basement. And The Terrors are inventing whole new ways to be annoying and destroy anything that isn’t nailed down. If I had done half the crap they do, I would’ve been sent to boarding school.”

Chloe lives in Park Slope near Prospect Park in a completely renovated four-story brownstone with her mom, dad, and ten-year-old twin brothers whom she calls The Terrors, mostly because they are feral and constantly breaking Chloe’s stuff. Miles and his two moms live in Windsor Terrace in a ramshackle frame house with a leaky basement and an aging pit bull named Dodger who farts a lot. The distance between their houses is three subway stops and several million dollars.

“Sounds almosth normal,” he says around a mouthful of ice cream. Like this conversation, he thinks.

Chloe twirls her fingers in her bangs again. Her brown eyes are anime-character large. Her features could be called elfin except for her nose. Chloe tells everyone that she is “a hundred percent body positive,” but he knows that she secretly thinks her nose is too wide. He thinks it’s perfect, especially with the new gold stud in the left nostril. He wonders when the piercing happened, wonders what else he’s missed these past five months.

He thinks of all the things he’d like to say: Did you miss me at all? I had a birthday in February, in case you forgot. If this pandemic hadn’t happened, would we have just gone on not talking forever?

“So … what’s up?” Miles says again after an awkward stretch of seconds. “I mean besides watching movies about Ted Bundy’s lesser-known cousin, Fred Bundy.”

A real laugh burbles out of Chloe, high-pitched and snort-y. If Miles were to make a list of favorite things, Chloe’s laugh would be in the top three. “Oh my god! Fred Bundy!”

“It would totally suck to be on the serial killer D-list, right? Like, ‘Forget about Rusty-Chainsaw Mike—he’s not a closer!’”

She laughs harder. The conversation feels like a magic trick he’s trying to draw out.

“I’m sure Mystery Mavens will make that their next podcast,” she says.

“Definitely. Fer sure.”

An ambulance screams down the Prospect Expressway. They both pause to listen, like counting the seconds between thunder and lightning. Ten minutes between sirens means a bad day; five, a really bad day. The ambulance fades into a mournful lament. It’s quiet again.

“Anyway,” Chloe says. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”

“Yeah. You too. And Mormor?”

Chloe’s face falls. “She had a stroke. In January.”

January. She didn’t even call.

“Sorry. Is she…?”

“No! Thank god.” Chloe tugs on one side of her hoodie string, then the other, moving it up and down repeatedly. “Joyce moved her to this assisted living place in New Jersey, just a few weeks before the shutdown. I can’t even go see her because … you know.”

Miles doesn’t know what to say. Chloe and her grandmother have always been super close. Now that Chloe is finally reaching out, he doesn’t want to do or say anything that could mess up this moment. He fills his mouth with ice cream, nods solemnly, and hopes she moves on, which she does.

“Actually, I just got this weird package from her.”

“Weird how?”

She bites her bottom lip and stares up at her ceiling. “Uhhhh. Too hard to explain. I could show you? If you’re not busy.”

He gestures and angles his phone to the empty, quiet room.

“’K. One sec,” she says.