How dare he.
I thought we loved each other.
I thought he respected me.
Cold trickled through my body like slivers of ice. I read it again.How dare he.
There were no further pages.
What had happened? Grace had said she’d taken pictures of the rest of the journal available. Had all the journal’s pages been filled, or had Andrea stopped writing in it? Had she censored the pages she gave to Harvard? Or had Harvard censored her?
How dare he.
Who was “he”?
But of course he, to Andrea Darrel, always meant Frederick Gibson. And Gibson had discovered his comet in 1911.
I’d expected Andrea to be envious about her boyfriend discovering a comet, but to be furious…to sound betrayed…How dare he what? How dare he…break up with her? Discover a comet first? Say something cruel?
I wished I could talk this out with someone—and then I realized I could. Ethan was right down the hall. Ethan and I were dating, and I could go to his room if I wanted.
Without letting myself think about it too much, I slipped out of my room and knocked on Ethan’s door. “Hello?” he called, his voice croaky and sleepy. Shoot, I hadn’t even checked the time. After midnight, for sure.
I pushed the door open, then shut it behind me and leaned against it. “Hi.”
He blinked, then sent me a bone-melting smile. “Hi.”
“That is not why I’m here,” I told him, trying not to pay attention to how good his messy hair looked. “Grace sent me more of Andrea Darrel’s diaries.”
“Okay…?”
I sat at the foot of his bed. “The last two entries are weird. Something happened, and I don’t know what—but I think it was about Gibson.” I showed him my phone, flipping between the two entries.
“What are these numbers?” Ethan asked through a yawn, nodding at the string attached to the first entry.
“I don’t know. But—Ethan, when did Gibson discover the comet? Was it—it wasn’tthen, was it? It wasn’t April eighth or ninth?”
“Huh?” Ethan rubbed his eyes. One of his curls stood straight up.
“Something big happened, to Andrea. And the next day, she was furious. In 1911, the year of the comet’s discovery. Maybe Gibson dumped her…or said something rude…I’m trying to figure out why she was crying and speechless and furious.”
“I dunno.” Ethan still looked sleepy.
I worried at my lip with my teeth. “I feel like it was about her work, since she saidI thought he respected me, and Andrea desperately wanted to be respected for her work. She was so ambitious. But also…” I looked at the first page again.
I don’t even know what to write. I think I might cry.
“Sometimes, you don’t cry out of sadness or fury.” I worked through it out loud. “Sometimes you cry out of joy. Sometimes you’re speechless from awe.” A shiver danced across the base of my neck. “Isn’t it funny? An amateur astronomer discovering a comet, instead of his girlfriend, a professional astronomer, who’s been sweeping the skies for years?”
I raised my gaze to Ethan’s and found him staring straight at me, completely awake now. His eyes widened. “You think…”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think she felt a very strong feeling on the eighth, and then she felt betrayed on the ninth. What if…she was speechless from awe? What if this string of numbers…What if the reason she felt betrayed…”
He said the words out loud because one of us needed to. “You think Gibson’s comet—one of the most famous comets out there—wasn’t discovered by Frederick Gibson. You think Andrea Darrel discovered the comet, and Gibson took credit for it.”
The words settled over me, heavy and blunt and real. I couldn’t be sure, of course. But in my gut, the words rang true. “Do you know when, exactly, Gibson discovered the comet?”
“Let me see.” Ethan rolled out of bed—seriously, he rolled over and landed on the floor in a cross-legged position, like a supremely sleepy acrobat. He pulled his laptop toward him, and I sat at his side, my back against his bed, as he tapped away.
