“Are those the only tweets you saw? I’m pretty sure I had a few about my boyfriend who did nothing while his parents treated me like shit.”

“I told you my parents were crazy.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me you’d be such a pushover about it,” Zed snapped, storming out of the kitchen and toward the pool.

° ° °

Apollo followed her, brushing past gawking eyes, Sol’s, Theo’s, and Kai’s among them.

Zed was planted at the edge of the yard, her back to the party and her neck craned upward, moonlight washing over her like a tractor beam. Apollo anchored himself beside her, idly shuffling through his pockets. Still nothing but fabric. Words formed in his mouth but failed to condense outside of it, stifling his thoughts. His hands listlessly scrambled through his pockets. Was he about to get the silent treatment that Kai was always giving to Theo? He hoped not.

Eventually, Zed spoke, her voice calm but still tense. “What was it like up there, Apollo?”

“Where?”

“Space.”

“Nothing new. We’ve looked at Google Earth a bunch of times. You know that. I actually found another available satellite earlier today. Want to look through it later?”

“I didn’t ask what it looked like up there. I want to know what it felt like. You weren’t just looking at Earth. You had your own giant spray can pointed at it. How’d it feel?”

Apollo spoke immediately. “It was amazing. I never felt that powerful before in my life. It felt like I was doing exactly what I wanted, like pure freedom. It was like tagging, but it didn’t feel like it could ever be whitewashed or painted over, you know? It wasn’t a giant spray can. It was power. Just power.”

“I thought so,” Zed briefly replied, her voice trailing off. Another stretch of silence began. The sound of cicadas erupted back into Apollo’s ears as if they’d somehow been paused while he and Zed were talking. Apollo tried to let his mind drift along the crest of the insects’ dull drone, escaping into the night, but Zed’s mute hostility pulled him right back into the intensity of the moment. Again, the cicadas paused.

“We’ve got to do it again,” Zed announced. Apollo didn’t respond.

“We’ve got to do it again,” Zed repeated, her voice lowered further, to a hiss.

“That was a onetime thing, Zed. It can’t be repeated. The satellite isn’t even showing up online anymore. It’s probably been decommissioned. This isn’t like Jerry’s grave. What we did will be there forever. No one will ever wipe it away.”

“No, Apollo, you’re wrong. No one knows what happened but us. It doesn’t have to be wiped away if no one even sees something to wipe.”

“But isn’t that what we wanted?”