Out of the Blue by Sarah Ellis Page B

brat?
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œWhat can you smell at the moment?”
    Megan pulled her eyes away from the telescope.
    â€œSmell?”
    â€œYes, right at the moment. If you concentrate on all the things you can smell, what are they?”
    Megan closed her eyes and inhaled. “Nothing. Air.”
    â€œHmmm.”
    â€œWhy?”
    Natalie laughed. “Because I have this ridiculously strong sense of smell. If I could see like I can smell, I would have eyes like this telescope. And I’ve always wondered if it’s something I inherited. I asked Judy, but she says her sense of smell is just normal. And I figured if Betsy had an extraordinary sense of smell, we’d all know about it. So I just wondered about you.”
    Wondering.
    Dad looking in the mirror. “Glad you got my curly hair, Megan, as I have less of it every year.”
    The way Mum and Aunt Marie both had stick-out ears.
    Mum standing back to back with John. “You’re growing into a real beanpole, just like your dad.”
    Natalie didn’t have any of this. Was she sad about it? Megan put her eye back to the telescope and tried to choose a safe way for the conversation to go. “So what can you smell at the moment?”
    â€œFloor cleaner, the plastic smell of this equipment, and a whiff of Mike Swanson’s aftershave. He must have been here earlier this evening. How come men don’t realize that aftershave is completely unacceptable.”
    â€œPlastic doesn’t smell.”
    â€œThat’s just what I mean. It does to me. I don’t go around telling everyone this, though, because it makes them self-conscious. Like, everybody has this secret fear that they smell bad.”
    â€œEveryone?”
    â€œI figure. Whenever I see—oh, I don’t know, politicians, blabbing on and on about something like they know it all — I find it very comforting to know that in some part of their minds they’re worried about their armpits.”
    Megan snorted. “They could hire you to tell them if they were okay.”
    Natalie grinned. “Good idea. That’s a career opportunity I hadn’t contemplated. If astronomy doesn’t work out, I’ll think about it. So, have you had enough for one night?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œOkay. Next time we’ll find some planets, the next-door guys.”
    Next time. So Natalie was going to invite her again? Megan felt suddenly shy and put her eye to the telescope for one last look at Vega. Everything had already happened on Vega. But on planet Earth there was still next time.
    Natalie typed briskly on the computer. “Let me put things to bed here and we can go make hot chocolate in my office. It drives the janitor nuts when we make hot chocolate in there. One of a number of things that drive him nuts. We call him Dismal Seepage.”
    The panel slid shut and the night sky disappeared. Natalie turned on a light. The here and now crowded in.

Chapter Fifteen
    WHEN MEGAN GOT HOME from the university Mum and Dad were in the kitchen. Dad was massaging Mum’s shoulder and singing along to the radio. Some violin was sliding all over the place. Bumper was in the basement doorway impersonating a rug.
    â€œSo here’s the stargazer,” said Dad. “Did you see all those dippers and crabs and things?”
    â€œNo,” said Megan, “we mostly looked at the moon.”
    â€œI never could see those constellations. Orion’s belt and all that. In the books they put lines between the stars like dot-to-dot, but when you look up into the real sky, it always just looks like a bunch of stars to me.
    â€œThat’s because you have a literal mind and no soul,” said Mum. “Ow, that hurts.”
    â€œGood,” said Dad. “That means we’re hitting the spot. Bowler’s shoulder. But listen, how can you accuse a man whose whole being vibrates to the sound of Stephane Grapelli of having no