* * *

  —

  The movie we watched was called It Came from Outer Space. It was about an amateur astronomer who spots a meteor striking the desert near a small Arizona town.

  “This is a rare cinematic masterpiece,” Lisa said dryly. “It’s different from most 1950s sci-fi movies. They were almost all about people freaking out over nuclear war or Communists secretly invading America. You know, Invasion of the Body Snatchers stuff. This one is about aliens who don’t actually want to harm us. They crash-land here on accident and need to repair their ship before they go home.”

  “Like E.T.,” Mel said.

  “Sort of,” Lisa said. “There’s also some mind control and kidnapping.”

  The film began with the astronomer—a white guy in a tweed suit whose name I immediately forgot—driving out to the desert, searching for the crashed meteor. His fiancée, Ellen, who was impeccably dressed 1950s-style, went with him in his convertible.

  “Steph said you want to be an astronomer?” Lisa said to me.

  The astronomer on-screen was clambering over the lip of the meteor crater. “Yeah,” I answered. “But if I were him, I would not go climbing into that hole alone.”

  Despite the movie’s extremely tenuous connection to actual science, I was enjoying it. Lisa said parts of it had been filmed in the Mojave Desert, and the alien-like Joshua trees and craggy rocks, shot in black-and-white, had an otherworldly quality. In one scene a telephone repairman climbed to the top of a telephone pole and listened to the strange alien sounds coming through the wires, which made me think of that Jodie Foster movie Contact. When the aliens finally showed up, they were magnificently bizarre creatures with tentacle-like limbs and one giant, bulbous eye—and they left trails of glitter instead of footprints.

  “It’s a gay allegory,” Mel said suddenly. “The aliens are drag queens.”

  Lisa laughed. “Just you wait.”

  Toward the end of the film, the astronomer followed the glitter trail through Ellen’s apartment (she had been kidnapped by the aliens) to a closed door. He flung it open to reveal an empty closet.

  “Look!” Mel cried, pointing at the hangers. “She’s out of the closet!”

  “You think Ellen being kidnapped by aliens means she’s queer?” Lisa said. “That’s a messed-up interpretation.”

  Mel shrugged. “I just call it like I see it.”

  Steph caught my eye and grinned.

  * * *

  —

  After the movie, Lisa went out to the courtyard to smoke. I tried to help Mel and Steph put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, but the kitchen was so small we kept bumping into one another. I ended up back on the stool outside the kitchen, where I couldn’t help but notice how run-down the apartment was. The beige linoleum, printed with fading tan flowers, was peeling up along the edges. The white stove had electric burners, the black coils embedded in stained metal bowls. The fluorescent-light panel overhead was smudged with black spots where the corpses of dead insects had left indelible stains.

  Steph opened the fridge and took out more beers, handing one to Mel and offering me another Diet Coke, which I refused. I asked for some water instead.

  “I’m going out front for a minute,” Mel said. “You wanna come?”

  Steph shook her head. “I’m good.”

  Mel glanced at me, but I also shook my head. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

  “Not cigarettes,” Mel said with a grin.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling stupid.

  But then Steph said, “You wanted to borrow that book, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said gratefully, and as Mel went outside, I followed Steph to the back of the apartment, past the bathroom and into her and Lisa’s bedroom.

  There was a single queen-sized bed, unmade, with pale blue sheets rumpled up in the center. A nightstand stood on one side, and wedged between the bed and the window on the other side was a narrow desk. Beneath the window was a bookcase crammed full of CDs, books, and stacks of papers that I realized were musical scores. Two guitars were in the corner. I recognized the acoustic guitar in its case from the open mic, and there was a shiny white electric guitar on a stand. On the dresser I saw a framed photo of Steph with her arms around Lisa’s waist, her head resting on Lisa’s shoulder. Steph was smiling only slightly, but Lisa looked radiant—as if this was the one place she had always wanted to be.

  Steph was sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling out a thin blue paperback from the bookcase. I went to join her, and the mattress sank softly as I sat beside her. I made sure to leave several inches between us.

  She gave me the book and said, “This is the one I was telling you about.”

  The spine was cracked, and the book opened on its own to a series of poems titled only with roman numerals. I flipped back a page and read the title: “Twenty-One Love Poems.”

  “I think the CDs are in here,” Steph said, opening the closet. It was jammed with clothes—hers and Lisa’s—and shoes piled on the floor. She reached up to the shelf above the clothes and pulled down a cardboard box. Inside it was a mess of spiral notebooks, yellow bubble envelopes, Sharpies, and tape. She opened one of the envelopes and said, “I forgot about these.” She handed me a postcard-sized flyer for Madchen, and I realized the name must be related to that movie poster on Steph’s living room wall. The postcard featured a photo of the band taken on a beach. Steph was on the left, dressed all in black, with her hair gelled into a fauxhawk. Roxy stood next to her in a hot pink tank top, ruffled black miniskirt, and those steel-toed boots. On either side of them I recognized the other band members, Talia and Jasmine.

  “Here it is,” Steph said, pulling a CD out of another padded envelope. “I still have a few.”

  The CD cover used the same photo, with MADCHEN printed across the center. “Can I borrow this?” I asked.

  “You can have it. I’m not selling them anymore.”

  “Thanks.” I stacked the CD on top of the book, and when Steph didn’t ask for the postcard back, I tucked it inside.

  As Steph returned the cardboard box to the shelf, she said, “I hope you had a good time tonight? Hope the movie wasn’t too weird.”

  “It was weird, but I liked it. It was unexpectedly philosophical.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember the beginning? It starts with that voice-over where they’re like, Welcome to this town in Arizona, where everybody is so sure of the future.” I pitched my voice lower.

  “Future voice,” she intoned, turning back to me with a smile.

  “Exactly. But then the future turns out to be not so certain. They thought they knew what would happen, but nobody knew anything.”

  “That’s why I don’t plan ahead. If you plan too much, you’ll just disappoint yourself.”

  “But you have to make some plans. Otherwise how can you work toward your goals?”

  She laughed slightly. “I bet you have your whole life planned out.”

  “Not my whole life. But definitely the next few years.”

  “You didn’t know where you’d be this summer.”

  “True,” I admitted.

  “Disappointed?”

  I was still holding the Adrienne Rich book and the CD, and I pressed the hard corner of the plastic case against my fingertip, reminding myself that this was real. I was in Steph’s bedroom, and she was looking at me with a curious light in her eyes, a smile on the edge of her mouth, not quite there, but maybe I could tease it out.

  “I’m not disappointed,” I said softly. “Not anymore.”

  There was the smile.

  I listened to the Madchen CD on the way home in Joan’s car. Two of the four songs were fast and angry, a third was more mid-tempo, and the fourth was contemplative and a little sad. It was called “Twenty-One,” which made me think this was the song inspired by the Adrienne Rich poems.

  The music was very different from Steph’s open-mic performance, but of course it would be different. At the open mic she’d only had an acoustic guitar. Madchen reminded me of Metric, but less polished.

  I thought I heard Steph singing harmony behind Roxy, and then on “Twenty-One,” Steph sang the chorus alone.

  You drove me to another place

  To sleep in your arms

  You said you waited for me

  You said you chose me

  There was something plaintive about it, as if Steph resented the person who had chosen her. Was it Lisa? Did it mean something about their relationship? I could spin a whole story out of those few lines.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, I listened to the CD again as I drove to Corte Madera. I wanted to buy some bigger brushes for painting, and Joan told me about an art supply store on Sir Francis Drake. I played “Twenty-One” on repeat until I had the lyrics practically memorized. You said you chose me, Steph sang over and over.

  After I bought the paintbrushes, I stopped at the Starbucks next door for an iced chai. It was late morning by then, and when I got back to the car, the interior had heated up. I turned on the engine and the AC, and Steph’s voice came out of the speakers. I had parked facing Sir Francis Drake, and across the street I saw a sign for the Greenbrae Garden Center. It took a second, and then I remembered that was the place where Steph worked.

  I could go over and say hello.

  Immediately I felt my heartbeat quicken, as if I were preparing to commit some kind of crime.

  What would I say?

  She might not even be there.

  I backed the car out of the parking spot and drove to the shopping center exit, where I turned left to head back to Woodacre. I approached the garden center on the right. It was a one-story building with a big fenced-in area in the back. Through the fence I saw rows of plants, bags of soil, stacks of pots, and then I passed it and couldn’t see it anymore.

  I could go back.

  Sir Francis Drake was a busy four-lane divided road with shopping centers on either side, but there were also single-family homes and apartment buildings behind fences and hedges. A middle-aged man was pushing an old mower across a tiny lawn in front of a white bungalow. Trash barrels were lined up on a side street, where a yellow VW Bug pulled up to the intersection. I glimpsed the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. Four construction workers were sitting on a low concrete wall outside an apartment building, eating their lunches, their orange hard hats lined up beside them. None of these people knew what I was thinking as I drove past, and I felt sharply disconnected from them—from everything—as if I were in a parallel universe that mirrored this one but could not influence it.

  According to the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics, there is an infinite number of universes. They exist independently but in parallel to our own, so each of us may have an infinite number of replicas living in other universes. When I first learned this, I wondered if each version of myself lived exactly the same life, or if sometimes different versions made different decisions. And if one made a different decision, wouldn’t that set off a chain reaction of different decisions? Wouldn’t those different decisions transform us into different people? Or were we still the same person at heart?

  “Twenty-One” started to play again.

  At the next stoplight I made a U-turn.

  * * *

  —

  Greenbrae Garden Center had a big parking lot that was about half full. I pulled into a space, switched off the engine, and sat there in silence, looking in the rearview mirror at the store’s entrance. People were coming and going, pushing carts full of flowers and tools.

  It would probably be weird for me to show up at her work. I could back the car out and leave without anyone knowing. I didn’t want to seem desperate.

  I checked my hair in the rearview mirror. I didn’t have any lip gloss with me, so I licked my lips.

  I got out of the car and realized I was wearing my cutoffs again. I rolled up the bottoms, cuffing them high on my thighs. Looking at my dim reflection in the car window, I adjusted my tank top, and then I headed into the store.

  I immediately saw the flaw in my unplanned visit: The place was huge. I passed spinning racks of seed packs, aisles of rakes and spades and ceramic pots, a carousel of gardening hats. The employees wore brown aprons with Greenbrae Garden Center printed on the front, but I didn’t see Steph anywhere.

  I walked through the store to the vast backyard. Beneath the angular plastic greenhouse roofs were rows of flowers and plants that I didn’t know, and even more pots spread out on a long, low platform. They were glazed in violet or Mexican blue or goldenrod, the colors bright as jewels.

  An employee who was pricing the pots asked me, “Can I help you find anything?”

  “No thanks, I’m just looking,” I said automatically, and then wondered if I should have asked for Steph. What if I couldn’t find her? What if she wasn’t working at all?

  But I wanted this to be accidental. Getting someone else involved made it feel planned, and I didn’t have a plan.

  I kept searching. At the back of the yard, the plastic roof ended, leaving the open area baking under the bright sun. Here there were pallets of soil and fertilizer and rocks, but still no sign of Steph.

  It was too hot out here, so I headed back to the covered area. Down the aisle to my right a middle-aged blond woman was pointing at something on the ground, and as I approached, I realized she was gesturing to a person who was nearly hidden behind a cart full of plants. When the person stood up, it was Steph.

  Once I saw her it felt inevitable, even though a second before it had seemed impossible. She didn’t notice me until the woman left with another plant in her basket. Steph was clearly expecting another shopper with another request, and the moment she recognized me, her entire expression changed, polite blankness swept away by surprise.

  “Aria? What are you doing here?”

  I gave her a tentative smile. “I was across the street, and then I remembered you work here. Hi.”

  “Hi.” She smiled back. She began to move small pots of white and purple flowers from the cart in the aisle to the platform beside her. I walked down the aisle and looked at the plants; I was pretty sure I’d seen them in Joan’s yard.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “Impatiens.”

  “Impatience?”

  “No.” She pulled a stake out of one of the pots and handed it to me. Impatiens.

  “Oh. I don’t know much about plants.” I gave the stake back to her, and her fingers brushed mine as she took it.

  “That’s what I’m here for.” She glanced up at me as she worked, and there was something knowing in her expression as she said, “So, are you here to broaden your knowledge of plants?”

  There was a teasing tone in her voice. I knew she was giving me an opening to flirt with her, and I felt a thrill go through me.

  I knew how this worked with boys. There was a kind of offering I could make, an invitation for them to look at me. I’d smile at them for longer than was strictly necessary, sit a little closer than I needed to, accidentally-on-purpose brush against them. I wasn’t entirely sure how to do that with Steph, who wasn’t a boy, and always at the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that Lisa existed, but when I looked at Steph and she looked at me, something happened to push all reason aside. As if my body had already made a decision without any input from my brain.

  I sat on the edge of the wooden platform next to the rows of impatiens, stretching my legs across the aisle. I saw her gaze drop, sliding over my limbs. My shorts were almost too short to sit in, but I didn’t unroll them. I crossed my ankles, my fingers curling over the rough edge of the platform, and said, “I listened to the Madchen CD. My favorite is ‘Twenty-One.’ You sing the chorus on that, don’t you?”

  A tinge of pink rose in Steph’s cheeks, but it was so faint I might have imagined it. “Thanks,” she said. “Yeah. It’s the song I told you about.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Did you read the poems, too?”

  “Not yet, but I’m going to read them. Thanks for letting me borrow the book.”

  “Anytime.”

  We were looking at each other again, and her hand came so close to my thigh as she placed the potted impatiens on the platform, the tiny pink blooms limp and defenseless. Maybe she would brush her hand accidentally against my skin. The thought of it made a thrill go through me, as if she already had touched me, and I remember thinking that we were looking at each other for far too long—this was getting obvious—and then Steph seemed to shake her head slightly and broke the gaze. She shifted, straightening up to push the cart a little farther down the aisle, because the platform near me was full now, and she had to stock the next section.

  I was a little disappointed. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. I started to wonder if I’d gotten this all wrong, but she said nothing and I said nothing. I heard the sound of carts rolling and the hollow thunk of someone placing a terra-cotta pot on the ground, and a woman asking loudly, “Where are your gardening gloves?”

  And then Steph said, “I have my lunch break in half an hour. If you want to hang out here for a while, we could get something to eat.”

  She met my eyes again, directly, and just like that my disappointment vanished.

  “Okay.” I stood up, brushing the dirt off the back of my shorts, and when I turned around to walk away, I knew she was watching.