After Ricky and Nini both stood up to Lily like they had planned, together, Lily seemed to quickly lose interest in trying to play with Ricky alone at recess like she had been. They had both made it clear the last thing either wanted was to be separated from their best friend. For about a week Lily went along with their plan to let everyone take turns choosing what to play, but now whenever Lily tried to cry or throw a fit over not getting her way, all it took was Nini reaching out to squeeze Ricky's hand in a silent signal not to fall for it.
Whenever Ricky started calling her out on her behavior, she stopped crying immediately, only making it ever clearer how her plan was to manipulate him and lessen the chance of Ricky falling for it in the future.
So then, most days at recess returned to them either playing as a duo, or in their normal quartet with Red and Kourtney. To make things even better, a few weeks after recess returned to normal, Mrs. Schultz changed the seating chart so Ricky and Nini were once again seated together in class as well, and they picked up right where they had left off.
With the end of the school year approaching, not only were all the students in their class counting down the days to summer vacation, but everyone was also pumped up for the end-of-the-year field trip.
The fourth-grade students knew they were headed to the Salt Lake Natural History Museum, and the Clark Planetarium in the afternoon. Nini was excited to learn more about the wildlife in Utah, since beyond the local rabbits and squirrels, she hadn't seen very much. Ricky was hoping to learn more about what it would take for him to walk on the moon by his 18th birthday, as neither of them had forgotten about the bucket list, even if they hadn't tried to accomplish anything new lately.
The bus was crowded and noisy, filled to the brim with students, some excited about the museums, while others were mostly excited to not be sitting in their classrooms today. To Ricky and Nini's surprise, their teachers had a rule against boys and girls sitting in the same seat on the bus. But they made do by Red sitting next to Ricky, and Nini sitting next to Kourtney with only the aisle separating them.
"I think this is so unfair." Ricky declared with his arms crossed as the bus began pulling away from the school.
"You know what Ricky? I completely agree with you." Nini crossed her arms too.
Red and Kourtney shared matching smirks with each other past their friends' heads. "Oh please," Kourtney scoffed, "we all know why you two have a problem with the seating arrangement."
"And it's not like this ride is supposed to be only fifteen to twenty minutes," Red added.
"Hey, it's not that we don't want to be sitting with you guys-" Ricky started saying.
"Of course not." Nini agreed, "but it's the principle of the rule. It's telling us that the adults don't trust us not to act stupid."
"Yeah, like what are a guy and a girl even going to do on a twenty-minute bus ride when we're surrounded by 50 other kids, plus teachers?" Ricky asked.
"Why don't you two tell us?" Red teased them. "Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this rule only came up on our bus because you two are on it."
"Hey, we're always good together." Nini defended herself. "Well, I'm always good."
"Hey, I'm good too, most of the time." Ricky admitted, "As long as my teachers don't put me to sleep. But yeah, we never get into trouble when we're working together."
"Yeah, and all our teachers over the years have told us how it's so great that we're so close and work well together and make great partners on any projects or games."
"Yeah, if anything, this rule shouldn't apply to us at all." Ricky declared.
"Exactly." Nini snapped her fingers. "If everyone else believes that boys and girls sitting together is so scandalous, we should be allowed to prove them wrong."
"OK, ok we get it, you two want to sit together. Just wait until we get there, we all know our groups already." Kourtney grinned at them. "You two can cuddle and hold hands all you want when we go the the planetarium and watch the movie or whatever it is we're seeing."
"What? We, we don't hold hands and cuddle!" Ricky shouted as both his and Nini's faces lit up with heat.
"Yeah, of course not, where do you get a crazy idea like that?" Nini asked.
"Please, do you know how many movie nights we've had? Sure you two always, always sitting together, that's been going on forever, but you really think I never notice how tangled up you two get under the blankets?" Kourtney asked sarcastically.
"OK, we're not admitting to anything." Nini declared, "and even if we did that would be a totally normal, friendly thing we do together, right Ricky?"
"Of course Nini."
"Come on, I bet even Red's noticed, right?" Kourtney asked.
Red shrugged his shoulders. "What? I don't know. Yeah, they always sit on the couch together, but we all do that. I never noticed anything weird."
"OMG! Red, you're even more oblivious than those two are!" Kourtney shouted
"Oblivious to what?' Red, Nini, and Ricky all asked, looking at Kourtney like she was the crazy one.
"I can't somedays with you three, I don't know why you're my best friends." Kourtney said sarcastically.
"Because you love us," Nini answered.
"Since we're awesome." Ricky declared.
"And amusing," Red added.
"Hmm, I'm going to go with two out of three of those for the boys, but I agree with all three for Nini." Kourtney joked. "And for you two, any of those reasons really depends on the day, and if there's skateboards involved."
Ricky groaned, "Come on, the lemonade stand was years ago, and I wasn't even on a skateboard when I crashed it."
"You brought it up, not me."
"OK, change of topic," Nini said, hoping to distract the group from both a potential argument or the ever more common refrain about her and Ricky's unique friendship. "What's everyone looking forward to seeing the most?"
"The moon exhibit. I need to find out how to walk on the moon with only 7 more years to go." Ricky said.
"I can't wait to see all the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum." Red added.
"I don't know, probably whatever movie or documentary or whatever we'll be watching at the planetarium. No matter what it is, it'll be better than normal classes." Kourtney shrugged her shoulders.
"So, what about you Nini?" Ricky asked.
"I'm not sure. I think all of your things sound super exciting, especially since if you do find a way to go to the moon, I'm coming with you."
"Was there ever any doubt about that?"
"No, there never is, and there never will be," Nini promised. "I heard that part of the planetarium is about the constellations, and I'd love to learn more about all the stars in the night sky, and all the stories connected to them."
"Wow, that does sound cool. Which would you rather go to, a star, or the moon?"
"The moon."
"Moon."
"Moon."
"Wow, looks like we have lots of moon fans here." Ricky joked.
Kourtney just rolled her eyes at him. "Ricky, for one, every star except the sun would take us like a million years to reach, so the moon is the only good answer."
"Ok, don't need to take all the fun out of it. I wanted to say the moon so I can do the moonwalk, on the moon."
That earned him smiles from both Red and Nini, which was already a sign of his success and comedic genius.
"Hey, Nini, do you want to be my buddy at the museum?" Kourtney asked.
"Sorry Kourt, I would love to, but Mrs. Schultz told our class that she's already assigned all the buddies."
"Oh, that's too bad. Mrs. Fossey said we get to choose. So if you can't be my buddy, who do you have to be with all day?"
"Well, you can probably guess." Nini smiled, and Ricky had a matching smile on his face right across the row from her.
"Why am I not surprised?"
"You shouldn't be, of course all our teachers always know that the two of us work the best together. And we were able to each write down three names for who we want to be with in secret."
"So we just made our teacher's choice easy peasy," Ricky added.
"Whatever." Kourtney shrugged, "Hey Red, since we get to choose our buddies, want to join me?"
"I think that sounds like a great idea Kourtney. What do you want to see first?" Red asked.
"I know we're supposed to watch the constellation movie or whatever it is first at the planetarium, but sure we can head straight to the dinosaurs at the history museum."
"Thanks so much, Kourtney."
"No problem. And what are you two doing first?"
"We're both just going with the flow so we can see what we want to see," Ricky answered.
"But we do have a list of things we for sure want to see. We checked online so we know what areas we want to focus our time on."
"You mean you did that." Ricky clarified.
"You were there too, remember two days ago after school?"
"Of course I do, but I really am ready to go with the flow, just as long as we include the moon exhibit, I couldn't care less about what you choose to see."
"So, what? I get to just drag you around all day to look at whatever it is I want to look at?"
"Is that not what we normally do? One of us drags the other somewhere, and it's great with both of us as long as at least one of us is happy, we're both happy?"
"Ok, I get your point." Nini smiled sweetly at him, holding his gaze for a long, stretched-out moment.
"And you two wonder why we say you're oblivious," Kourtney whispered under her breath so no one else heard, least of all the two best friends unknowingly staring into each other's eyes from across the aisle.
When they arrived at the museum, their teachers and other chaperones were quick to herd all the kids inside, they had a schedule to keep that day, and while the day was mostly meant to be fun, there were plenty of learning goals for students to take away from today as well.
Mrs. Schultz's class split off in one direction in the museum as all the other classes did too in order to avoid creating too large of a crowd in the hallways and rooms filled to the brim with artifacts.
To help them learn more, and stay focused, each student had a virtual tour recording for them to use. It just consisted of a small cartridge player that each student could place in their pocket and listen to descriptions of the exhibits and artifacts housed within.
As buddies, their main assigned job was to have someone else be assigned to each student to make sure no one got lost or into trouble by themselves, just to make things a little bit easier for the chaperones.
Nini and Ricky were walking side by side to each display. They had to press in a code at each exhibit to hear the description through their headphones, and then after the audio played, they would usually turn to each other to discuss whatever they were looking at. They often also tried to impress each other with their obscure history knowledge, but since they were both listening to the same recording, they were learning new things, but not knowing anything new their best friend had learned about 30 seconds earlier.
When they stopped at an exhibit about the founders of Utah and Salt Lake City, Ricky's audio guide suddenly stopped playing. He pulled out the little device and typed in the room's code again, but nothing happened, not even the tiny screen was lighting up.
"Hey, Nini." Ricky nudged her shoulder and she looked at him questioningly for a moment. She pulled the headphones out of her ears.
"What is it, Ricky?"
"Um, I think my player ran out of batteries. It just stopped talking all of a sudden."
"Let me see." Nini took the player from his hands, and tried turning it off and then back on once again, but nothing seemed to change. "Yep, I agree, it looks like it's dead."
"What should I do? We're already halfway through the museum."
"Well," Nini thought for a moment. She then took one of the headphones out of her ears. "We can just share mine if you want, that way you can still hear everything."
"Really? Thanks, Nini." Ricky stuffed his player and headphones in his pocket and took the headphones from Nini's hand, so that he had one headphone in his left ear, and she had one in her right ear.
They walked off to the next exhibit, but that didn't work out too well since Ricky's headphones immediately pulled out of his ear. "Oops, looks like that didn't work."
"We can try again silly." Nini giggled at him and handed him his headphones back.
But once again, as they walked forward, Ricky was moving faster than Nini and his headphone fell out a second time.
"Alright, clearly we need a better plan if we want this to work," Nini said.
"Yeah, it looks like it." Ricky agreed. "Do you have any ideas? And if not I'll be fine just reading everything."
"Yeah right." Nini smirked at him. "You need the recording. Unless it's Animorphs, I don't see you going out of your way to read everything."
"Because those books are exciting. I don't think even you could say the same about…whoever Brigham Young was." Ricky read off the wall in front of them.
"Seriously, that's who half this exhibit is practically about. Which is why you need to have the recording guide with you. Because then you'll be bored and end up bugging me and try to convince me to goof off with you."
"You know me so well." Ricky playfully put his hand over his heart. "But you got one thing wrong, I wouldn't try to convince you to goof off with me, I'd succeed. There have to be at least some fun things to do at this museum. Honestly, I was mostly looking forward to the planetarium a lot more than this."
"Yes, for your moon mission. I think you've only mentioned that 10 times this week." Nini teased him. "But we need to move on, and we are still sharing." Nini held up the headphone once again and Ricky took it from her. "We'll just stay really close together."
"Yeah, like that will be hard," Ricky said sarcastically. "For once, we have a good excuse in addition to being best friends."
"Yep, so follow my lead."
Nini stepped forward and Ricky kept his eyes focused on her, making sure he moved forward in step with her. It took them a few tries but by the end of the hallway, they were able to move somewhat in sync, or at least in sync enough for them to both listen to their guide as Nini controlled the audio pack. They were walking just barely more than shoulder to shoulder, the tiniest bit of space open between them. Not that they minded at all. After a few more bumpy stops and starts where the headphone would be tugged out of either of their ears, they finally seemed to find a rhythm.
Ricky was taking smaller steps than usual, and Nini, slightly bigger ones, so despite their height difference, they could stay together better. It also helped that putting the thought into moving together came naturally to them. They had more experience traveling together than just Disneyland by this point, and making sure nothing could separate their best friend was just instinctual by this point.
Although they were walking a bit closer than usual. Close enough that their hands kept brushing against each other's. Ricky did his best to not make it a big deal or anything, but everytime their hands or fingers touched for even a moment, he completely zoned out of everything else around him, including the museum guide which Nini seemed to cool and collected the whole time. Beyond music and PE, Ricky usually had a hard time choosing a favorite class, really it depended on the day, or who his teacher was, but history, especially history about the state of Utah was not his idea of fun.
But he could see how Nini was eager to learn more, just for the sake of learning something new. History was definitely one of Nini's top 3 classes after Music of course, and it seemed like history, or to be specific, his and her past history made the brush of their hands inconsequential to her.
Or at least that's what Ricky thought was going on. But in reality, Nini was hyper-aware of their hands every time they even had the tiniest bit of skin-to-skin contact. It was something so simple, yet each touch was sending goosebumps over her skin, but in a good way.
Every time, Nini just focused her attention either straight ahead or on whatever exhibit they were currently looking at, praying that she wasn't blushing as much as she thought she was, or at least that Ricky wouldn't notice anything.
She couldn't even imagine what Ricky was thinking right now. Probably about nothing, or at the very least, he could be thinking about how bored he was, but usually when that happened, it wasn't long before he'd start bothering Nini so they could amuse themselves.
Although he was being weirdly quiet, or at least for Ricky when he was with Nini, while before they had been joking around at the funny pictures or statues of old historical people and places and their objects, he hadn't cracked any jokes at all since he put his headphones in.
A few times she tried to catch his smile with her own, but more often than not he seemed to be lost in thought, or somehow incredibly enthralled by the museum.
"Hey, are you good Ricky?" Nini finally asked.
"Huh? Oh yeah, I'm great Nini, and I'm learning so much about…" Ricky grinned sheepishly, "about our great state of Utah and how it was founded."
"Oh really? And who founded Utah?"
"Was it Brigham Young? Is that why there's a college named after him?"
"OK, seriously? Did you know that, or did you just guess?"
"Why so surprised? Even I know who Brigham Young is, you can even ask Red. We all grew up in Salt Lake City, of course, we all know more about him than probably any 4th grader ever should."
"So what I'm hearing is, you got lucky with my softball question."
"And I'm pretty sure I made a home run if you want me to keep going with your sports analogy. Although your lack of faith in me is heartwarming."
"It's not a lack of faith, I just know your strengths and weaknesses. For example, you could give a tour of a Pokemon or Tony Hawk or Animorphs Museum."
"And you could give a tour of East High as the High School Musical Museum." Ricky teased her right back.
"Fair point, but are you ready to move on from Brigham Young, I honestly don't know how much you were paying attention or not, but yeah, I definitely know more than enough about him already."
"Oh I heard everything, but whether or not I listened to all of it…that's a different question." Ricky grinned.
"Ok, let's go." They kept walking to the next section of the museum, still occasionally brushing hands or bumping shoulders, neither really minded, and neither would have minded a bit more constant contact either. They were soon pretty much in sync moving together, it was second nature for them by this point, even if this was the first time they truly realized just how easy it was to keep the other close without consciously thinking about it. It was just instinct.
"Oh, I think I see the exhibit with all the animals. I heard there's a bunch of cool dioramas with all those different animals. Let's go see it, Nini." Ricky sped forward a few steps, and without even thinking about it, he grabbed onto Nini's hand to pull her with him.
Nini just sped up so she could keep up with him as they arrived in the next room. It was only after they were standing in front of the scene with a rearing grizzly bear as a centerpiece that Nini took notice of Ricky's grip on her hand.
"See, doesn't this look cool?" Ricky was glancing all over the display, pointing out all the different animals frozen in the moment of action.
"Yeah, it looks like they could come to life."
Ricky laughed, "Oh yeah, Night at the Museum. Think they have a monkey named Dexter anywhere?"
"Considering this is the Utah History Museum, I doubt it." Nini laughed and then looked down at their joined hands. This was far from the first time they had held each other's hands. Often it was in situations just like this where one of them was dragging the other along to see something cool or exciting. But strangely, Nini really didn't feel like letting go. Something about their interlaced fingers made her feel warm inside.
"OK ok, smarty pants. Why don't you punch in the exhibit number so we can learn all about them." Ricky pointed to the plaque next to the display. "Number 5074 "
"OK, I got it." Nini awkwardly tried to pull the audio player and type in the code with one hand, because she didn't want to let go just yet.
Ricky though acted like nothing was amiss as they listened to the recording, he even stepped closer to her so that their shoulders were brushing against each other too as they pointed at each of the animals as the recording mentioned them and making jokes or coming up with their own stories as to what all the animals would do if they could come to life like Night at the Museum.
They continued through the animal gallery. Ricky was convinced that while they didn't have a monkey anywhere, a raccoon would probably be this museum's Dexter, but the big grizzly bear would probably be the biggest problem to keep contained.
Nini just laughed along at all of his ideas as he laid out what he would be doing as the night guard, and occasionally gave her own suggestions, but now that the idea was in her head, she was thinking more along the lines of if she wanted to meet any of the famous historical figures she had scene so far, and there were definitely a few she had in mind.
For nearly the rest of their time at the museum, they kept holding hands. Nini had noticed, but she had no reason she wanted to stop, and so she didn't. As far as she could tell, Ricky didn't seem to even notice, he was acting the same as they always did whenever they hung out together. Neither made any mention of this close contact, and eventually Nini didn't even think about it until they ran into Kourtney and Red near the end of their time at the museum.
"Hey, guys. How'd you like the museum?" Ricky called out as they both sat down on a bench beside Red and Kourtney.
Both Red and Kourtney smiled for a moment, but then Nini could see both of their eyes zeroing in on her and Ricky's joined hands.
"It was mostly interesting," Kourtney said slowly. "How did you two like being…buddies all day?"
"Oh, it was great. Nini even let me share her headphones after my battery died." Ricky reported.
"Oh, so is that why two are holding hands?" Red asked.
Ricky and Nini looked down at their hands for a moment, then looked at each other, glanced at their friends who had even more questioning looks on their faces and then abruptly let go of each other.
"Um. yeah, I…kind of." Ricky said, Nini was refusing to look at him, and she could already feel her face heating up from the knowing look Kourtney was sending her, as well as Red's mostly oblivious one as he still seemed to have no clear idea as to why they could be holding hands.
"Yeah, it was annoying to keep brushing against one another since we were standing so close, so we just held each other's hands. It's no big deal, we do it all the time."
"Oh really?" Kourtney asked, and Nini realized she may have said more than she should have.
"Yes, because we're best friends." Nini said pointedly.
"Exactly, just holding hands in a friendly manner, nothing else. Except like Nini said, it was convenient and helped us stay together so our headphones wouldn't fall out." Ricky added.
"Whatever you two say." Kourtney just shook their head at them.
"OK, but are you sure there's nothing more going on, because I think something is going on here?" Red asked obviously and all three of them rolled their eyes.
"Well Red, you can ask Ricky all about it on the bus." Kourtney sighed.
"What? Me? No, no, definitely not me. I'll… tell you when you're older."
"I'm older than you are dude." Red pointed out.
"Ok then let's just forget it." Ricky suggested instead. Around them, all the teachers started trying to gather their students together to get on the bus.
"Oh, would you look at that? Looks like it's time for us to go." Ricky said, and both he and Nini were internally grateful for the interruption to this conversation.
So they all got on the bus, and even though the quartet was seated next to each other on the bus once again, the previous conversation appeared to be forgotten.
About an hour later, after they all finished eating their lunches at the planetarium, it was time for them to see the show about stars and constellations in the giant IMAX theater. Ricky and Nini were both super excited, this was the first time either of them had been in such a huge theater like this one.
But as the documentary started, Nini started to feel a bit woozy and nauseous. The documentary was breathtaking, it was like they were truly flying amongst the stars, including apparently the feeling of motion sickness.
Nini closed her eyes trying to block out the dizziness for a few moments so she could get her bearings, but she should have known her discomfort wouldn't go unnoticed.
"Hey, Nini, are you ok?" Ricky whispered to her.
Nini opened her eyes again, seeing Ricky's face knitted in concern for her. "Honestly no, I think this movie is making me feel sick and dizzy."
"Do you feel like hurling?" Ricky asked in alarm.
"No, not yet at least, but my head feels woozy. I think you're right, skydiving definitely shouldn't be for me." Nini half-heartedly attempted to joke.
"Oh," Ricky smiled softly at the memory of a long-ago conversation. "Do you want to leave?"
"No, I want to stay and watch this, and that's considering Mrs. Schultz even would let me leave and be on my own."
"First off, you know you wouldn't be alone right?"
"Ok, having the two of us alone and unsupervised in a planetarium is going to convince her even less when she already has to keep track of everyone else." Nini smiled at his suggestion but knew it wouldn't work either.
"OK, so what do you need? What can I do for you right now?"
"Can you just hold my hand? I know at the beginning they said it's best to try to ground yourself if something like this happens."
"Of course, I would never say no to that." Ricky reached out to intertwine their fingers. "I'll be your rock for you whenever you need me."
"I'll always need you, because you're not just my rock, you're my Ricky." Nini smiled sweetly at him and then returned her attention to the film. She did her best to control her breathing and relax, and she couldn't tell if feeling Ricky's warm grip in her own was helping, or it was just her head, but she could feel some of the dizziness fade away as he helped remind her that while it looked like they were flying amongst the stars, they were still on planet Earth, and she was still with her favorite person in the entire world.
For Ricky, the rest of the documentary was completely ignored. He was much more focused on Nini's needs, and it was only once she turned back to him about thirty minutes later with a small smile on her lips that he knew she was going to be ok.
"Thank you for helping me out in there," Nini whispered to him as they exited the theater with the rest of their classmates to explore the rest of the planetarium.
"It's no big deal, you'd do the same for me."
"I know I would. I'm just that great of a friend." Nini joked superiorly. "But seriously thank you."
"You're welcome." Ricky smiled, "I hope that movie didn't sour your view of space travel because we still need to walk on the moon."
"Only for your ridiculous list, would I ever consider doing anything like that for real? So are we headed to the moon?"
"Let's go see what the exhibit has to say for Project Moon."
"Hey, we should give it a new name, like the Apollo mission."
"Sure, but why was it called the Apollo mission? He's the sun god, not the moon god. Let's call it Project Artemis instead."
"OK, whatever you want. Percy Jackson." Nini joked.
"Who's that? In the constellation video, it talked about how Apollo is connected to Lyra, and Artemis goes with the story of Orion and Scorpio."
"OK, ok Artemis it is, and if you don't know who Percy Jackson is, you should be reading more."
"Oh, I'll get you for that, but first… To the moon!" Ricky cheered, and once again held his hand out to her.
Nini grabbed it as quickly as possible. To the moon! Nini repeated and then eagerly made their way to the exhibits ready to reach not just the moon, but also the stars themselves with their favorite person right next to them, and maybe even just a bit closer than before.