Don't Let Me Go by J.H. Trumble

Author:J.H. Trumble
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
Published: 2011-12-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Danial’s house backed up to a golf course, and that something he wanted to show me turned out to be an enormous telescope stored in a study in his house. I helped him wheel it to a small deck at the edge of his backyard overlooking the fairway. He set it up and trained it on the near full moon.

After making some adjustments with the knobs, he stepped back and pulled a joint from his pocket, gesturing toward the eyepiece with his other hand. “I don’t know about you, but I plan to get fucked up and look at some celestial bodies tonight.” He lit the tip with a match he’d fished out of another pocket, then sucked in deeply.

“Man, I didn’t know you were such a pothead,” I said with more disapproval than I really felt.

He laughed and coughed out the smoke. “You screw guys, and you’re going to go all Sister Mary Catherine on me for smoking a joint?”

He had a point, sort of, except for the guys part. Just one guy. My nose burned. I stuffed the thought back down and stepped to the eyepiece.

The moon was huge. I pulled back and looked at it with my naked eye, then bent to the eyepiece to look again. Amazing. The moon looked just like it did in library books I’d looked through, only it had a luminescence that didn’t translate in photographs.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Danial said in that tight voice that meant he was holding the smoke in his lungs.

“It’s incredible. I didn’t know you were into astronomy.”

“This was my brother’s telescope.” He handed me the joint and took my place at the eyepiece.

I watched him make some more adjustments and thought about the big brother that looked so much like him. Danial hadn’t told me anything about him, but I could tell from his voice every time he mentioned him that his death was still an open wound.

I rolled the joint between my fingers, then not knowing what else to do with it, I took a drag. The smoke caught in my throat, and I fell into a coughing fit.

Danial laughed without taking his eyes from the eyepiece. “Inhale more slowly, little bits until you get used to it.”

I tried again. I wanted to cough the instant the smoke hit my lungs, but I fought the urge and managed to hold it for a few seconds before coughing it out. I handed the joint back.

He took it and stepped aside. I moved back to the eyepiece. “How did your brother die?”

“He was murdered.”

My head snapped to him.

Danial inhaled deeply. I watched him for a moment before turning back to the telescope, but I wasn’t looking. I was listening.

“It was a random attack. He shouldn’t have even been there. He should have been at UT, studying for exams, eating ramen noodles, sleeping with his boyfriend.”

I glanced back at him again and wrapped my hand around the telescope to steady myself. I thought I knew where this was going.

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