Porcelain Keys by Sarah Beard

me in front of the telescope.
    I leaned down and peered through the lens to see a planet with vague orange stripes. “Jupiter,” I said, “and four of its moons.”
    “You’ve seen it before, then.”
    I nodded. “It was the first thing your grandpa showed me.”
    Thomas reached for the keypad and entered more numbers, and the telescope panned to a new location. After he made more adjustments, he gestured for me to look. When I did, I saw a faint blue ring, glowing against black space.
    “A nebula,” I said.
    “How can I impress you with my vast knowledge of the universe when you already know what everything is?”
    I straightened and smiled. “Are you trying to impress me?”
    He didn’t reply, just typed more numbers into thekeypad. When the telescope came to a rest, he raised an eyebrow and nodded to the eyepiece, offering a challenge.
    I looked through the eyepiece and saw two bright stars close together, one a yellow hue, the other blue.
    “This I haven’t seen before,” I admitted. “It’s beautiful. What is it?”
    “Albireo,” he said. “It’s a binary—two stars orbiting around each other because they’re gravitationally bound.” He started going on about stellar mass and parameters, but all I could focus on was the warmth of his body beside me, his woodsy scent, and the calming timbre of his voice.
    “They’re so brilliant,” I said. “They seem alive.”
    “They are, in a way. There’s a lot going on up there—almost every element in the periodic table is being created. Carbon, oxygen, iron—all the elements in our bodies were made in a star or during a star’s death.”
    “Now that’s impressive. No one has ever told me that I was once a star.” I looked up at him. All I could see was the outline of his hair and shoulders, glazed in silver light. “You know, I’ve never had such a nerdy friend before. I think you’re the only person I’ve ever discussed the periodic table with in a social setting.”
    “Next time we can discuss galactic winds.”
    “Sounds fascinating.” In truth, though, I really was starting to become fascinated. Not with how stars create elements or with galactic winds, but with Thomas Ashby.

five
    W hen I woke up Saturday morning, the remnants of Vivian’s makeup job and my tousled hair made me look like I’d just finished an Elle Magazine grunge photo shoot. I tied my hair back loosely before going to work, but I probably should have washed off the makeup too because Dirk stared at me all day.
    “See you Monday, Aria,” Dirk said with a big grin as I left work. I noted it was the first time he actually called me by the correct name.
    Within days, our lunch table grew more crowded with Trisha’s pack of primped friends, and every day was the same awkward lunch party—Dirk flirting with me while occasionally eyeing Trisha, Trisha monopolizing Thomas, and me debating whether to extract myself and just go spend lunch playing the stage piano so I wouldn’t have to watch Trisha flirt with Thomas. But I continued to endure it day after day because I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from him. I wondered if he liked her, but it was hard to tell. He was nice to her, but then, he was nice to everyone.
    “I was wondering,” he said as he dropped me off on a Thursday afternoon, “where are some good hiking trails around here?” He nodded in the direction of Pikes Peak. “I noticed the colors are starting to turn up there.”
    Dad’s truck was gone, so I said, “I have some trail maps inside if you want to come look at them.”
    He followed me through the front door, and I watched uncertainly as his eyes moved from one preserved animal to the next. He bowed before the wolf to study his snarled muzzle at close range. “Well,” he said with a little smirk on his lips, “I know one thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Your dad’s not a vegetarian.”
    I smiled. “Have a seat next to the wolf. I’ll go find those maps.”
    After a few minutes