He licked his lips. “Ah, not that you’re my girlfriend. It’s just,you know, a really neat idea. A nice thing to do for someone. Astronomy. I like stars.”
Orion Parkertongue-tied? True couldn’t stop staring. Orion was sweet, yes. Gentle, uh-huh. But he was also, True knew by now, confident and gallant and sure. Seeing him tongue-tied on her account was kind of… well, flattering. And hella cute.
True’s mother spoke up, coming to his rescue. “I think so, too, Orion. But unfortunately, Bradley didn’t. True was always showing him what she was interested in, and he was always making her feel bad about it. Just completely stomping all over her poor, sweet heart.”
Oh god. The woman wouldn’t stop.
“That’s why I don’t think True should be dating anyone at all,” her dad put in, eyeing Orion rather viciously.“Ever.”He popped a Whopper in his mouth and crunched it with the menace he felt in his heart.
Her mom swatted at him. “Oh, Rohan. You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I, Emilia?” her dad asked, narrowing his eyes at Orion. “Don’t I?”
Orion, thankfully, didn’t run screaming from her crazy family. Instead, he turned to True. “Bradley’s an assho—” Here he glanced at True’s dad and amended hastily: “a jerk. He didn’t appreciate you sharing yourself with him, which is one hundred percent his problem. It doesn’t mean it was the wrong thing to do.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” True pushed the toe of her boot into the plush carpet. “Being incessantly, unstoppablytruthful about everything is one of my not-so-fine traits. It’s why my parents nicknamed me True.”
There was a tiny pause.
Her parents frowned in tandem and then exchanged looks with each other. It was like they’d memorized the moves beforehand: synchronized parental concern.
“That’s not why we named you True,” her mom said, still frowning. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“Yes, it was!” Their collective expression of utter confusion was throwing her a little bit. But she knew her own origin story. “Remember? It’s that little anecdote you love to tell so much. I wasn’t even three years old yet, and Dad brought that colleague of his with the halitosis problem home for dinner? Everyone was sitting around the table and saying how good the food smelled, and I proclaimed, very loudly, ‘Food yummy. Him stinky.’ And pointed right at that poor dude. You guys were so mortified you tried to tell him that I had a favorite bear named Stinky and I’d clearly just taken a liking to him and was calling him Stinky after the bear. You told him it was an honor.” True snorted. “And ta-da, ‘True’ was born. Before that I was always and only Aria.”
There was the synchronized parental concern again, mixed with a healthy dose of confusion. “That’s not entirely accurate,” her dad said. “I mean, yes, you did say that to my poor colleague. And we did laugh about how fitting your name was for you at that point. Maybe that’s what you caught on to. But we were calling you True long before then. Ever since you were born, in fact.”
It was True’s turn to frown. “What? But that doesn’t make any sense. Newborns don’t spout brutal truths, do they?”
Her mom raised an eyebrow. “That’s to be debated. Some of your dirty diapers felt very targeted. Regardless, what your father’s saying is absolutely correct. You were True from the moment we set eyes on you.” She smiled gently. “Do you know why?”
Completely thrown now, True shook her head. She saw Orion listening in interest. “No, why?”
“Because you were the product of true love,” said True’s dad. “You were the culmination, the perfect representation of how your mom and I feel about each other.” Her dad reached out and put an arm around her and her mom. “You made us a family. You were everything that was true, and right, and precious about the world.”
Her mom nodded, completely serious. “The name just came to me as I gazed down at you in the hospital and you gazed back. And it stuck.”
True opened her mouth, but no sounds came out for a long moment. “Wow. I… I don’t know what to say.” It was like finding out you weren’t descended from a line of Valkyries at all, but rather from a line of golden retrievers. It was… unsettling. Weird. And kind of… sweet?
“That’s a beautiful story,” Orion said softly, his eyes warm on her skin. “And it’s much more fitting than the other one, I think.”
True snorted. “I think you’re the only one who’d say that.”
“He is not,” her mom said immediately, and her dad nodded in agreement. “I think Ash and Onny and the people who can really see to your core would all say the same thing. You’re made of love, not hardness. No matter how much you might fight againstthattruth, ironically enough.”
True glanced sideways at Orion. When they were tending the line to Wicked Wynona, he’d said it would be a shame if she lost herself. Did he feel real acceptance for her annoying need to speak her mind and assert her will? But maybe to him it wasn’t annoying. Maybe, to Orion Parker, True wasn’t too… True.
The thought made her dizzy. She wasn’t sure what to do with that information.
So she stood abruptly, Wicked Wynona’s green scarf fluttering to the floor. Bending down and snatching it up, True straightened again and turned to her parents, her tone brusque. “Well, okay. Thanks for that history lesson. But we have to be going.” She turned to Orion, her face a mask of businesslike determination. “Right? We have a mannequin to take back.”
“Oh. Yep.” Orion arranged his face to mirror hers and stood. “It was really nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Tandon.”
“You too, Orion,” her mom said, looking curiously between the two of them. Clearly her mother’s intuition had picked up on True’s inner turmoil.
Her dad, on the other hand, reverted to blissfully chomping on his Whopper-popcorn concoction. “See ya, kiddos. Close the door on your way out, would ya?”
Out in the hallway, True tried to push aside her million conflicting emotions and surveyed the path before them. Turning right would take them toward the main stairs that would lead themback to the first floor. But turning left…? Tucked away by the window and around a corner was a spiral staircase that led to one of the turret balconies. “My dad said they were headed to the turret staircase, right? So they must be up on the balcony; that’s why we haven’t been able to find them. I really hope they’re not planning something stupid. Come on.”
