“Let’s stop there,” I say, pointing to a hotel.
“Yes, great,” Jack huffs. “I didn’t realize I signed up for a marathon.”
“This is what you do in the city. You walk. This is our first hotspot of the night.” We tuck under a covered hotel entrance canopy where heat lamps are mounted into the underbelly of the awning. It’s like stepping under an electric fire, a heat bubble protecting us from the cold. I exhale in satisfaction. I pull up directions on my phone to pose as lost tourists instead of freezing strangers stealing free heat. Itseems to work. The doorman nods to us as we linger before refocusing on the hotel guests waiting for taxis and taking the warmth for granted.
“This is strangely satisfying,” Jack says, lifting his face up toward the heat lamps. “You call this a hotspot?”
I nod. “They’re the spots around the city that keep you warm. I found them as a kid. I know all of the different types. When you’re outside a lot, you find ways to stay warm.”
“Life in Los Angeles was very different,” Jack says. “My Gong Gong took me to the beach often. We’d eat ice cream and snorkel.”
“Did you wait thirty minutes in between?”
“Never. There may have been times I ate ice creamwhilesnorkeling,” he says, the corners of his mouth twitching into an almost-smile. “Have you ever snorkeled?”
“Once. In Hawaii. I traveled a lot with my mom. She took the afternoon off so we could try it,” I recall.
Jack loosens the scarf as heat radiates down on us. “My parents traveled a lot, too. But I didn’t go with them.”
“What do you think we would think about each other if we met as kids?” I ask.
Jack tilts his head in thought. “Honestly? I likely would’ve been so focused on my studies that I may not have noticed you. But if I did, I probably would’ve thought you were cute.” He immediately clears his throat after that last word. “Why? What would you think?”
I smile, still lingering on the idea of him thinking that I was cute. “I probably would’ve asked to wear your snorkel gear. Then I would’ve gone to an art museum to see what the paintings looked like through the goggles.”
“They do give us the ability to see other worlds,” he says, nodding.
I peer into the sky, on the lookout for our lantern. What I thinkmight be our lantern appears overhead. I stretch my hands out in front of me. “Can you feel your fingers yet?” I ask Jack.
He holds out his gloved hands. “Barely.”
“I see movement. You’re good. Come on!” I say, pulling Jack by the forearm. He stays close as we navigate the streets.
Another twenty or so minutes later, we’re in Hell’s Kitchen, having sprinted down Ninth Avenue in pursuit of our lantern. Another building obstructs our view. Just when I think all hope is lost, Jack spots the lantern hovering above an intersection. We found it!
We follow its light, stopping abruptly in place when the lantern goes dark. All that’s left is a shadow, the dark lantern now succumbing to wherever the wind will take it. Then, in an instant, the lantern combusts into a ball of fire, shooting through the air. It plummets to earth, leaving a streak of light in its wake. Finally it lands in a pile of slush, extinguishing on impact.
“No! Now we’ll never know if it was ours!” I scream at the pile of ash.
Jack frowns at the slushy mound and then points to his heart. “We know… in here.”
I raise my eyebrows. “But what does it mean that it ended like that? That can’t be good.”
“That was the closest meteor I’ve ever seen,” he says. “Just a little too close for comfort.”
“Yeah, it did look like a meteor, right?” I say.
Jack shakes his head. “No. Not a meteorite. It’s just a meteor.”
“What?”
“It’s just a meteor when a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere and burns up, like our lantern. It becomes a meteorite when a meteoroid survives its journey through the atmosphere and hits Earth.”
I stare at him for a few seconds. “You just had to explain that, didn’t you?”
“I needed to make sure you understood.”
“Were you popular as a kid, Jack?”
