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Colt wished he brought a blanket out with him. Or even a coat. Something to keep the chill Janurary air at bay. He stuffed his hands into his armpits and sat on his feet, which only made the soles of his feet pinch together. He grumbled but stayed exactly where he was. If Krista couldn’t find him she couldn’t tell Spencer about the phone call, and that was the important part. Not that he was shivering so hard his teeth chattered, nor the fact that he’d been acting in defense earlier.
Spencer believed in an “eye for an eye” method of discipline. And because Colt had started a fight at school and knocked a kid out, as soon as Spencer found out the other shoe would drop.
A pair of orange headlights came around the bend. Colt pressed himself against the side of the house, bracing himself against the sloping roof with his hands and feet. The house rattled as the garage door opened. Krista’s grey ’96 Avalon pulled into the garage. Her headlights reflected out onto the driveway for a minute before turning off. Two car doors opened, then closed.
“Go grab some leftovers,” Colt heard Krista say. “I need to have a conversation with your brother about his behavior at school before Spencer comes home.”
A muscle in Colt’s jaw pulsed. A conversation. Sure.
Oh, how he wanted to run. He had a plan, too. Well, not exactly. A vague idea of a plan. Get a bus to Sacramento, find his way down to LA and then… That’s where the plan fizzled out. What would he do in LA? And then there was the fact he was still deep in the foster system and would be until he turned eighteen. So even if he did run away, he’d be found and carted back even if he crossed state lines. Ten more months. He could do this for ten more months.
The garage door closed and darkness settled around Colt like a blanket of ice. He blew warm air into his hands and stuck them back in his armpits. He knew he would be found eventually. He also knew the more he delayed it the worse it would get. But even with his nose and ears getting so cold they felt like they were about to burn off he couldn’t do it.
The light in the bedroom turned on, muted by the curtain covering the window. The window opened. Colt’s breath caught in his chest.
First out of the window was a blanket. Then another. Then his coat, and finally Ryland’s head. Backlit by the warm glow of a temperature-controlled house and light bulbs, Colt could see Ryland’s hands shaking as he climbed out of the window. Slowly. Almost painfully slow.
“Psst,” Colt hissed.
Ryland flinched and nearly rolled off the roof. Colt reached out with a viper’s grip and grabbed Ryland’s arm before he could fall twenty feet to the concrete below. Colt pulled him up and into the shadowy nook he’d been hiding in.
Ryland gave him a shaky smile. “Thanks.”
“Close the window.”
Ryland moved to, but his foot slipped. Pure terror flashed across his face.
“Never mind. I’ll do it.” An ember of warmth sparked to life inside his chest as he silently closed the window and tossed the blankets at Ryland. He put his coat on, his fingers shaking from the cold, and crept back next to Ryland. He already had one of the blankets wrapped around his shoulders and had his eyes closed, breathing deeply. Colt put the other blanket over both of them. “What are you doing out here?”
Ryland shrugged. “It’s a nice night for stargazing.”
“Your eyes are closed.”
Ryland opened an eye. “Haven’t you heard? Scientists say the best way to look at stars in areas with heavy light pollution are with your eyes closed.”
“We don’t have heavy light pollution.”
“We’re getting there.”
Colt nudged Ryland with his elbow. “Seriously.”
“I am being serious.”
“Ryland…”
“All right, fine.” He took his glasses off and hung them from a single ear as he turned his head up to actually look at the stars. It was a stupid way to wear glasses, but Ryland made it work. “I wasn’t sure if Spencer was home yet, and if he was…” Ryland trailed off. “You don’t have to put up with him.”
“I know.”
“We could try reporting him again—”
“It won’t do anything.”
Ryland fell silent. It was true: there was a dearth of foster parents in Nevada County, and those that were available didn’t want teenage boys. It was a miracle him and Ryland had stuck together for so long.
Well, not a miracle, per se. Their case worker was all right, and Colt knew Ryland had turned down several adoptions. As the state’s golden child (literally, as they were wards of the state), when Ryland said he wanted to stay with Colt, people listened. That’s why, when CPS came asking questions, Colt kept his mouth shut.
Ryland turned his face towards the sky. “What do you think is out there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just. I don’t know. In space. Or the sky. Or heaven.”
“You believe in heaven?”
“What? No.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“It’s been on my mind.”
Colt looked up at the stars. “Sure.”
There weren’t a lot of them poking through the thin layer of clouds, but the moon was what his grandpa had called a “toenail moon”: a thin sliver of light so thin it almost didn’t register as the moon. And thanks to Ryland, Colt could pick out every single constellation. Not the North Star—that was behind the house.
“Me too,” he said.
Ryland looked at him. “What? About heaven?”
“No. I’ve just been thinking a lot.”
“Shocking.”
Colt jabbed Ryland with his elbow. He grinned, and turned back towards the night sky.
“If there was a heaven,” Colt said, “what would it be like?”
“Are you talking pearly gates or something else?”
“Why would I…? No, not the pearly gates. Like, scientifically speaking if there was a heaven, what would it be?”
“Are you talking about what happens to our bodies after we die? Decomposition.”
“That’s not—” Colt saw Ryland’s grin, and rolled his eyes. “Forget it.”
Ryland nudged Colt softly with his elbow. “The Ancient Egyptians believed that your heart got weighed against a feather and if it was lighter than the feather you would go into paradise.”
Colt didn’t say anything.
“But if you’re talking science…” Ryland fell silent for a long time until he finally said, “I don’t know about after, but Carl Sagan did say we are made of star-stuff.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it basically went like how the iron in our blood, the carbon we’re made of, the...” He snapped his fingers. “I can’t remember the third one. But how all of that was made in stars billions and trillions of light years away that made its way here when those stars exploded and those atoms scattered across the universe. Maybe one day we’ll be stars again.”
“After we decompose.”
Ryland snorted. “After we decompose, yeah.”
Colt fell silent. “Do you think we came from the same star?”
“We came from the same zygote.”
“Fine, that was a stupid question.”
“Do you think we’ll end up as the same star one day?”
Colt looked at his brother. Ryland didn’t move as he stared up into the sky. That was probably a tactic to keep himself from thinking about just how far off the ground he was.
There weren’t many differences in their looks. Ryland kept his hair a little more combed, but not much; he wasn’t as tanned; and his features were softer than Colt’s. Then there were the other, miniscule things that only Colt could see.
There was that saying about knowing something so well like it was knowing the back of your own hand. Colt not only knew the back of his hand, but Ryland’s.
That was why Colt hadn’t run when Krista gave him the silent treatment. That was why he never ran when Spencer hit him. Ryland was why he sucked up all of the suspensions, detentions, and recessions. They both knew that as soon as they turned eighteen they’d be split up: Ryland to some fancy college with all of the money the state of California could give him, and Colt to… somewhere.
“Yeah,” Colt said. “We will.”