Binary Star by Sarah Gerard

Author:Sarah Gerard [Gerard, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Adult
ISBN: 9781937512255
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Published: 2015-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

THE SECOND DREDGE-UP

THE RED GIANT HAS TWO SHELLS: ONE INNER, burning hydrogen, and outer, helium.

The star begins to cool and hydrogen burning is pushed to the core. The surface grows opaque. Convection extends inward.

The convective envelope penetrates the hydrogen, and dredges to the surface the products of the burning.

This is the second dredge-up.

I sleep a deep, hyperbolic sleep all the way to Raleigh. I awake with my face in the sun. It is wet with sweat. I’m nauseous. My mouth tastes like acid.

We’re stopped outside a Shell gas station, and a thick brush forest behind the Shell. There’s a picnic table between the forest and the curb, a few thousand feet from the freeway, where a family sits eating Lunchables and passing around Juicy Juice boxes.

The sounds of cars are a hush in the distance. A sign by the freeway tells us we can also find Cracker Barrel, Subway, and Quiznos at this exit, and a BP further on. John opens the driver-side door.

What do you need?

Aquafina, Red Bull, Ultra Lights.

Banana?

No. I’m nauseous.

I watch him enter the store and then I open the door and step into my Converse, leaving the laces untied. The day is cold and bright. I close my eyes and stand. Blood rushes from my head.

The hard air blends with the sweat on my skin. I’m alive. I have breath. I have heat from the car. I expand and I cool.

I sit on the curb and pull up my sleeves. My wrists are thin and pale and I turn them over, hold them away from my body. A semi-truck hauling milk passes another semi hauling bread. I place my hand before it and let it drive through my palm. The road curves. The truck follows it.

I feel that, starting here, I could become anything.

I feel that I could climb into any car in this lot. Go anywhere.

Who would stop me? Not John.

Red Bull, he says. What are you looking at?

Nothing.

I got Corona. Let’s sit at that table.

I’ll follow you anywhere.

He seems to like this.

We call a Days Inn and reserve a room with a queen-sized bed and a flat-screen TV, which makes John happy. I use the bathroom in the gas station and smell the soap and rub it under my armpit and wipe it off on a rough hand towel because I don’t feel like showering later at the motel. I don’t feel like seeing myself naked.

We bring John’s Corona to the picnic table and I sit across from him drinking my Red Bull and shivering, smoking an Ultra Light, which tastes like air. He slides a bottle into a paper bag, opens it, and offers it to me but I decline. Behind him, cars are turning on their headlights and exiting toward Virginia and South Carolina as the night falls, going wherever they’ve decided to go. Or at least, wherever the road leads them.

I think we should live together, says John.

I ash my cigarette. I don’t know what to say.

You think so?

You’re not excited.

I just didn’t know you felt that way.

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