‘So you don’t mind wearing leather?’ I said, zipping up his jacket.
‘The jacket’s not leather.’
I ran my palms down the front of it. It was supple like leather and felt super-strong. ‘Is it plastic?’
‘It’s a synthetic material similar to Kevlar. It’s strong, but also flexible.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘Connor showed me Venus. What would you have shown me?’
I could see his smirk in the moonlight, but he didn’t make any of the obvious innuendoes, the way the boys at school would have. He looked around. We were passing the golf course that lay halfway between Perran and Penpol Cove.
‘Come here,’ he said, taking my hand. He helped me climb over the low wooden fence and we walked to a sand bunker just a few metres from the road. ‘Lie down.’
Something about the serious look on his face told me that he wasn’t about to suggest we hook up out here in the cold winter night. He lay next to me, close, but far enough away that no part of our bodies touched. Above us, the sky was a hard black, thousands of pinpricks of light shimmering.
‘You can’t really blame Connor for starting with Venus,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s the brightest object after the moon. You can also see Jupiter tonight.’ He pointed to another bright light in the sky. Like Venus, it shone steadier and brighter than the surrounding stars. ‘You need good binoculars or a telescope to see her moons. But I would start there with Orion.’
‘Why Orion?’
‘It’s easy to identify. Give me your hand.’
I held out my hand. He covered it with his and extended my index finger.
‘You’re cold,’ he said. He moved my hand across the sky, using my index finger as a pointer. ‘These three stars in a row make up Orion’s Belt. They’re easy to find and you can use them to locate lots of others stars and constellations.’ He moved my finger down slightly. ‘That’s Orion’s Sword. The hazy star in the middle is the Orion Nebula.’
‘The what?’
‘Orion Nebula. Do you see how fuzzy the middle star is?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s because it’s not a star, it’s a nebula. Where stars are born.’
‘Stars are born?’
‘They’re born, they shine for a few billion years and eventually they die.’ He moved my hand again and made the shape of a rough square. ‘These four stars also make up the constellation Orion.’ He moved my hand slowly around the square. ‘Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph.’
Suddenly there was a pattern, a shape, among the nameless chaos of stars in the sky.
He took my hand back to Betelgeuse. ‘Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, one of the largest, most luminous stars in the sky. It’s about sixty times bigger than our sun. It’s going to die soon. It will explode into a supernova and, when it does, we’ll be able to see it on Earth. It will be like Earth has two suns.’
‘When you say soon, how soon are we talking?’
‘Soon in astronomical terms. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a million years.’
‘I won’t hold my breath.’
‘Don’t,’ he said with a laugh. ‘But there’s something else cool about Orion and you’ll only have to wait a few months. If you look towards Orion in late October, you will see the Orionids, one of the most beautiful meteor showers of the year.’
‘Shooting stars.’
‘Yeah. Well, it’s actually dust from Halley’s Comet hitting the upper atmosphere. But it’s spectacular.’
I’d never thought about the stars as being anything more than a bewildering disarray of beauty, like glitter scattered on to black sugar paper by a child. I’d never thought about the patterns they made or their size, or the fact that they were born and they died. ‘Show me another constellation.’
Ryan moved my hand across the sky, stopping at a w-shaped formation. ‘Cassiopeia.’ He traced its shape with my hand. ‘Another constellation that’s easy to find.’
I found the pattern in the stars, drawing imaginary lines between the dots.
‘And that cluster is the Pleiades.’
He pointed my finger to a small fuzzy area of the sky.
‘Just keep looking,’ he said.
I stared at the hazy shape and then it was as though the haziness disappeared and seven separate stars emerged.
‘Also known as the Seven Sisters,’ said Ryan. ‘Through a telescope or binoculars you’ll see loads more. There are more than five hundred stars in that cluster.’
I looked back and found the three stars of Orion’s Belt easily. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ryan looking at me. I turned towards him. Our faces were so close, his hand still held mine. For a couple of seconds we stayed right there, looking at each other, the stars pulsing and flickering above us.
‘Who needs astronomy club?’ I said.
Ryan laughed softly and I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face. ‘You know, when stars explode, they release their debris into the universe and this stardust forms new stars and planets and all the life forms on those planets. Everything on Earth, even you and me, is made from atoms that were once inside a star. We’re made of stardust.’ He held my gaze for another long second and then pulled me to my feet. ‘That’s enough stargazing for one night. Come on, we better get moving before you freeze to death.’
We clambered back over the fence on to the pavement and continued home. When we got to the bus stop near my house, I tried to say goodnight but Ryan would have none of it.
‘It’s very chivalrous of you to want to walk me home. But it’s fine. I’ve walked home alone from here hundreds of times.’
‘Are you embarrassed?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you want your neighbours to see me?’
‘I’m trying to save you the bother of walking out of your way.’
‘In that case, please humour me. I’d feel much better if I saw you safely home.’
The theories began again. Non-meat-eating, Kevlar-wearing, out-of-date manners. A cult of some sort, probably.
We stopped at the front gate.
‘Are you doing anything tomorrow?’ he asked.
Despite every cell in my brain and body urging me to say no, I told him about my plans to spend Sunday with Connor. ‘You could come too,’ I said. ‘I think he’d like you a lot if he got to know you.’
‘I think he’d like it a lot if I stayed away from you.’
‘You’re wrong about Connor. I’ve known him most of my life. If there was anything like that going on, I’d know.’
‘We’ll have to agree to disagree,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’
He closed the gate behind me and waited until I was turning the key in the lock before disappearing into the star-studded night.
Chapter 4
Connor lived in an old fisherman’s cottage with a view over the harbour beach, a tiny two-up two-down with the world’s smallest bathroom. Despite the cramped conditions and the damp problem, Connor’s mother had made the place into one of the cosiest homes I’d ever been in. The whole house smelt like fresh bread and biscuits when I arrived and Connor’s mother was cutting up a tray of home-made shortbread.
‘Here you go,’ she said, carefully arranging the shortbread on a plate. ‘Connor’s upstairs. I’ll bring you up some tea in a sec.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Penrose,’ I said, taking the plate and heading up the stairs.
The door was wide open and Connor was sitting on his bed reading a Simpsons comic.
‘Working hard?’ I said, clearing a space on his desk for the shortbread.
‘My brain is aching.’ He tossed the comic on the floor.
Connor’s room was its usual mess. His desk was covered with textbooks, an ancient computer, a pile of overdue library books, and a collection of empty water glasses and coffee mugs. Discarded clothes were strewn across the floor and a poster of a rock band I’d never heard of hung from his bedroom wall by a single pin.