Page 53 of Take It Till You Make It
“Zena, that’s Brook, River–clearly related if you can’t tell from their names—and my current fake girlfriend, Sally, who is actually dating River. And this here is my fake girlfriend’s fake little sister, who is actually older than her fake big sister.”
Sally laughs. “And if you followed all that, I’ll be beyond impressed.”
“Easy!” Zena points between River and Brook. “Brother and sister team. Brother dates you. You play Crispin’s girlfriend, and she plays your little sister.” Zena points to me.
“Wow. I live it and I’m not sure that’s what I understood from Crispin’s description,” I say.
She waves a hand. “Aw, heck, I’ve been around the business forever. Everett and I got married young. He used to sneak me onto the sets. I thought it was super cool. That’s how I met this dolt.” She slaps a hand onto Crispin’s back.
“Hey, I resemble that remark.”
“Let’s see if we can shove some knowledge into that empty head of yours and learn about the planets. Let’s start in the planetarium so they can get out of here.”
“You guys are too good to me.”
Zena narrows her eyes. “You’re literally paying them to be here.”
“Crispin!” Sally whines. “What the heck?”
Crispin mumbles, “Thanks for outing me.”
Zena shrugs, spins on her heel, making her long hair swing attractively, and strides away.
Crispin reaches out a hand toward me and then, at the last minute, awkwardly waves for us to follow. “Come on, everybody. Here we go,” he says in a high, squeaky voice that makes me chuckle.
I blink at the bright lights of a clinical hallway that seems to be used by employees. Zena holds a door open for us. “Take any seats you want.”
We enter a cozy auditorium with soft lighting and a ring of seating all the way around the room. I choose a seat on an aisle. Crispin sits next to me. Sally and River have gone across the aisle and further back, while Brook settles alone a few rows behind us. The seats are cushy and tip back.
When the room goes dark, a field of stars slowly appears along the curved ceiling, though I can’t see the ceiling anymore in the dark. It’s disorienting in the best way. I’m immediately enraptured, my gaze scanning the night sky above us. But the chairs are so comfortable and the room so dark, I’m worried I’ll nod off. Luckily, the presentation keeps me fully engaged by talking about star clusters and black holes, and discussing the search for signs of life and other space exploration. I’m almost heartbroken when it’s over.
“That was so cool!” I breathe as the lights come up.
Crispin grins. “You liked it?”
“I loved it. I had no idea we were actively looking for life out in the universe. That seems so science fiction-y to me.”
“Okay.” Zena steps into the center of the room. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to the telescopes and we’ll do some exploration of our own.”
My eyes probably look like saucers when I look excitedly at Crispin. “We get to look through telescopes, too?”
“What’s an observatory without some observation?” He laughs and steers me out of our row with a light hand on my back, which sends shivers up and down my entire body.
As we approach the door, Crispin peels to the right and knocks on a door I hadn’t even seen because it blends in with the wall so well. The door cracks open, and I hear excited greetings from within. I see Crispin lean in to shake hands with a couple of people, but I can’t see anything beyond that until Crispin lifts some money from his wallet to hand to each of them. Though I know the payment was agreed upon beforehand, I suspect Crispin might have been more generous than originally negotiated, because I hear excited responses before I step out the door Zena holds open and into the darkened lobby outside the planetarium.
“Man, that was amazing,” Sally says.
“That was so cool,” Brook gushes. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
I raise my brows. “Does the night sky in the planetarium look like the night sky over the ocean?”
River nods. “Different constellations, since the planetarium mimics our night sky and we’re so much further north than, say, when we sailed around the Philippines.”
“Wait, there are different constellations over the Philippines?” I ask.
Zena cocks her head and studies River. “Did you sail in the Southern Hemisphere?”
He nods. “We sailed around the tip of Africa, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea.” He looks at me. “There are different constellations in the Southern Hemisphere, like the Southern Cross, Centaurus, and Carina.”
