All the Major Constellations

VIKING

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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New York, New York 10014

First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by Pratima Cranse

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LIBRARY
OF
CONGRESS
CATALOGING
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I
N
-
PUBLICATION
DATA

Cranse, Pratima, date–

All the major constellations / Pratima Cranse.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-698-13952-7

[1. Coma—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Christian life—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.1.C73Al 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014044806

For My
Parents

eden

two or three times i've stood under

you

this window of yours is so

incredibly

painfully

blue

and you never come out or show

me

(past this infinite garden of regrets)

your face

—W
ALEAD
E
SMAIL

HE STOOD AT THE TOP of the stairs and listened.

A single note.

A vibrational pull.

A silk string.

Laura
.

“Jeeeesus, Jesus saves. He saves . . .
me
,” she sang. And then the single note returned, a wordless
mmmm
. Like the sound you make when you're kissing someone, or pretending to kiss someone when you're actually just pressing your face into your pillow.

Laura.

Their eyes had met in the hallway that morning. She had blinked at him, slowly, like a cat. Hadn't she? What did it mean? Maybe she'd merely been blinking because people constantly blink, and time had slowed down when their eyes met. Laura's
almond-shaped eyes were dark blue and beautiful, but it was their expression that most intrigued him: unreadable. Her long hair was the lightest shade of amber, like custard under burnt brown sugar. She looked like a doll, a Disney princess, a Greek statue, a goddess.

“They shouldn't be doing that. Church and state, right?”

“Who cares?”

Andrew glanced toward the voices and saw two girls from the junior class. They looked like preppie high-achievers. One of them smiled up at him and tossed her hair over her shoulders. He returned her smile but then looked away. The sound of their retreating giggles echoed down the hall. A piece of paper slipped from the wall and drifted down to his feet. He picked it up and studied it. An Uncle Sam–like caricature pointed at him with a stern accusation:
Class of '95! Have YOU ordered your GRADUATION gown?
His graduation. Then summer, then college. This was it.

“Fuck it,” Andrew said, and he squared his shoulders and marched in the direction of the singing.

The hallway was quiet, except for the low hum of voices coming from the girls' bathroom. It was ridiculous, church and state aside, to sing about Jesus in a high school bathroom. And yet that was exactly what Laura and her friends—the girls, anyway—did almost every afternoon. Their free periods must have lined up. Or maybe some of them snuck out of class or got passes just to join in a song or two. Everyone knew about it, including the teachers. But they were harmless, and the singing
was nice, so no one bothered much about it. It was Vermont, after all. People were pretty laid-back about stuff.

Laura was deeply religious, some fundamentalist something or other. Andrew wasn't quite sure. She kept to herself and her crowd of Christian fellows. They were a mild and nice bunch of kids who went to church together, hung out together, and sometimes, he suspected, quietly dated one another. They had an after-school club with an open invitation for new members. How many times had Andrew walked past the door of their gatherings, eyes fixed on the ground, headphones jammed in his ears, hands shaking in his pockets? More times than he liked to recall.

Her devotion to her faith made her practically inaccessible. Infatuated as he was, Andrew was smart enough to understand that Laura's untouchable quality was part of her appeal, her mass appeal. He was well aware that he was one among the many boys who loved her. At best, a lovesick army; at worst, a horny horde. There were boys who bulked up their muscles because of her, became better students because of her, cultivated sexy sneers and reckless rebellion in case that was her thing.
It's not, obviously,
Andrew thought with contempt for his rivals.

The singing grew louder, more impassioned. Andrew wondered,
Why the bathroom?
Privacy? Refuge?
Or perhaps it was just because the acoustics of the tiled walls made their voices sound better.

“Hey, you,” Sara said.

“What's up?” Andrew said, taken aback. “I thought you had gym.”

“Class canceled. Mrs. Calin went home sick.”

“No sub?”

“What can I say? End-of-the-year madness. Marcia scurried off to the library before I could stop her.”

“Poor Mar,” he said.

“Are you coming over today? She wants to practice her valedictory speech on us.”

“Nah. I got work.”

“Avella already?” Sara said.

“Busy this year. We're making a pond or some shit.”

“
Making
a pond? What are you, God?”

“And on Thursday, He made a pond for the pharmaceutical company,” he said in a deep, portentous voice.

“And it was good,” Sara said with equal solemnity.

They laughed.

“Speaking of which, you here for the show?” Sara said as she glanced at the bathroom. She gave him a sly smile.

“Uh, no. Just wandering around,” Andrew said. He could feel himself blushing.

“I love to go in there to get tampons when they're at it. I wish there was a condom machine.
That
would be hilarious.”

“Indeed.”

They started walking in the opposite direction, toward the lockers, and Andrew glanced behind him. The bathroom door swung open as someone went in, and Andrew thought perhaps he caught a glimpse . . . but he turned away.
Don't be a perv,
he thought.

“Are they weird?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The Christians.”

“That's a loaded question,” Sara said. “No, they're fine. They'll even stop singing if you ask. And hardly anyone uses that bathroom because the one on the second floor is nicer.”

“But you use it.”

“Well, yeah, but I like to mess with people.”

“Please,” Andrew said.

“You sure you're not checking out Laura? Hell, even I think she's a piece of ass,” Sara said, and nudged his shoulder.

“Cute, sure,” Andrew said. He tried to look disinterested. He did not want to be teased about his pathetic unrequited crush. It just seemed so typical, so high school. He had tried hard to hide his obsession from Sara and Marcia, his two best, and only, friends.

“Come on, you can tell me anything,” she said.

“Okay, you have something in your teeth,” he said.

“Bullshit!” she said. But she started rubbing her teeth vigorously with her finger.

“And you have something right there,” he said, tickling her stomach. “And there,” he said, aiming for her armpit but accidentally grazing her breast. He started to apologize, but she dissolved into laughter as she grabbed his hands.

They were still wrestling around when Kyle Donovitch walked up to them and said loudly, “Hey, Sara. 'Sup?”

“Nothing,” Sara said. Andrew and Kyle nodded to each other. Sara started sifting through one of her notebooks, not looking up. Kyle watched her for a moment, tossing a baseball back and forth in his hands. Kyle was team captain of everything, it seemed, and was good-looking and popular. Andrew didn't know him that well. Sara had become engrossed with her history notes, so Kyle turned his attention to Andrew.

“How's Brian?” he asked.

“Fine,” Andrew said.

“Hell of a season for him.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Been down there at all?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

An awkward silence followed this exchange. Sara continued to flip through her notes. Kyle cleared his throat.

“Busy this weekend, Sara?”

“Yup,” Sara said, and snapped her notebook shut. “Sorry.” She slipped her arm through Andrew's, and they walked away.

“What was that about?” Andrew asked.

“What's it ever about? Old news.”

Andrew looked at her sharply, but she seemed, as usual, careless and carefree.

“Besides,” she said, “who gives a shit about shitty Brian?”

“Only everyone.”

“Except
us
,” she said, and squeezed his arm tightly to her side.

“I'M STARVED,” ANDREW SAID.

“So let's get Marcia and go to lunch.”

They went to the library and threw things at Marcia, little bits of fluff and crumpled-up pieces of paper, until the librarian shooed all three of them out.

“Thanks a lot,” Marcia griped as they walked to the cafeteria.

“You're going to ace all your exams anyway,” Sara said. “Like always.”

“Seriously, you study too much,” Andrew said.

“I do not,” Marcia said.

“You make yourself sick with anxiety,” he said.

“Chance favors the prepared mind,” Marcia said.

“Chance is just ‘chance' by definition,” he said.

“That's a facile argument,” Marcia said.

“Whatever,” he said.

They got in line at the cafeteria. Andrew got a cold deli sandwich, Sara a burger and fries, and Marcia a salad.

“And you always say ‘whatever' when you know I'm right. I
hate
that comeback. It's not even a real response,” Marcia said once they were seated.

“It's the perfect response. It dismisses the speaker. It dismisses the whole argument. If you don't care, you can't lose.”

“It's mean and sarcastic. It's a cheap way to step back and refuse to engage.”

Marcia half stood up as she spoke, closing her little hands into fists as if readying herself to pound on the cafeteria table. A few kids sitting near them giggled. Andrew glared at them before he continued. “But isn't that what being a teenager is all about? The privilege of not giving a shit?”

“So that's victory? To
not
care, to
not
be invested?”

“A pyrrhic victory, for sure, but still a win.”

“Now you're just screwing around, which is a lesser form of sarcasm.”

“Or a higher form.”

“Come on, knock it off,” Sara said.

Sara disliked it when Andrew and Marcia argued, especially when they threw around words like
facile
and
pyrrhic
. Marcia was the valedictorian, Andrew an effortless and lazy B student, but Sara had to work hard to maintain her own B average.

“Can I have some of your fries?” Andrew said.

“Go ahead,” Sara said.

“Do you have any salt?”

Sara dug around her tray and found a mini salt packet. She tossed it to him.

“So, how's the speech coming?” Sara asked.

Marcia waved her hand in response.

“Don't ask,” Andrew said.

“Don't you have to turn that thing in, like, tomorrow?” Sara said.

“Technically. But graduation is still two—no, shit, a little over a week away,” Marcia said. She began chewing on her fingernails.

“Marcia, chill,” Andrew said. He placed his hand over her torn cuticles.

“Easy for you to say. You're not the one—”

“Just thank everyone ever and get out of there,” Sara said.

“Or pass out kazoos and lead the audience in a round of ‘Pomp and Circumstance,'” Andrew said.

“Or flash your bra—”

“Or your panties—”

“Or give the speech in Korean with, like, no explanation.”

“Or declare your undying allegiance to some obscure band.”

“And then drop the mic.”

“The possibilities are endless!”

Marcia finally laughed. “I'll run it by Mr. Gonzalez tomorrow,” she said.

“Good plan. He's cool,” said Sara.

Marcia frowned as she pulled the sprouts off her salad. Then she left to get some milk. Andrew made a stick figure out of Sara's fries. He drew a face with ketchup and decorated it with curly sprout hair.

“That your girlfriend?” Sara asked.

“My dream girl.”

Sara smirked at this, then took the fry girl's torso and popped it into her mouth. Marcia returned with three chocolate milks and three straws.

“Thank you,” Andrew said as he reached for one of the milks. Marcia liked surprising them with little treats every once in a while. Chocolate milk never failed to delight.

“Oh, Marcia. You're a peach,” said Sara. She tore the wrapping off the straw with her teeth and blew it gently. The headless tube drifted down across the table and out of sight. “Andrew's making a pond at Avella. We should break in and go night swimming,” she said.

“Break in to Avella? We'll get shot,” Marcia said.

“I'm sure Andrew has an in,” Sara said.

“I have no in,” Andrew said.

“No big jangling set of keys?” Sara asked.

“Why would you want to go swimming in a man-made pond anyway?” Marcia asked.

“Even if it is nighttime,” Andrew added.

“Oh, I don't know. I just thought it would be something silly
and fun to do during our last summer together.”

“Oh,” Marcia said. They finished their lunch in silence. The din in the cafeteria grew quieter as kids left for their classes. Marcia began packing up her bag.

“Wait for me, okay?” Sara said.

Marcia liked arriving early to her classes. She had a little routine of setting up her desk, sharpening her pencils, and even checking her pens for ink. Sara preferred drifting in just under the wire.

“She likes making an entrance,” Marcia had once complained to Andrew, but Andrew knew better. Sara, with her curly blonde hair and phenomenal body, was one of the prettier girls in their school. She generally made an entrance whether she intended to or not. Her wanting to go in late was actually an attempt to break Marcia away from her spastic little habits.

“Sara, let's go. I don't want to be late,” Marcia said.

“All right, all right.” Sara put their leftover food and wrappers on her tray and grabbed her bag.

“I got that,” Andrew said, reaching for the tray.

“Thanks,” the girls murmured as they got up.

Andrew watched them as they left for class. Marcia had a focused walk. Her steps were brittle and nervous compared to Sara's loose and graceful stride. He and Marcia were smarty bookworm types with fucked-up families. They found solace in each other's loneliness and awkwardness. Sara was different; there was nothing awkward about her. She was vivacious and
confident. Her mom was working-class and single, so Sara never quite fit in with the popular crowd, which tended to be preppie and sporty and well-to-do. She took great pleasure in the fact that the guys who used to make fun of her secondhand clothes now pined after her first-rate looks. She dated a lot, fooled around a little, but her heart was untouched.

Sara had befriended Marcia freshman year after defending her against the type of people that bullies harmless nerds, and then the three of them became almost inseparable. Their little triad was disturbingly like a family, Andrew mused. He and Sara hovered protectively over Marcia, who was practically parentless, Andrew was like a brother figure to both, and Sara was instinctually mothering. Andrew had never sought friendships beyond the trio, nor had they. They were a self-contained unit, the only members of a gang of three, and they needed no one else. In a few short months they'd go in separate directions. It was hard to comprehend the idea of life without them always near. At the same time, a small part of him was looking forward to something new.

He turned his attention back to the tray of trash. It was his free period, which meant he could do one of three things. He could report to the library, aimlessly wander the halls, or continue to stare at the garbage in front of him.

Or he could go ahead and keep stalking Laura Lettel.