Catch a Falling Star (12 page)

How did you describe Zack to someone just like him? Rich.

Entitled. Ridiculously good-looking. If you were into the kind of

boys who spent longer staring at their own reflections than you

did. Which I wasn’t. “Yeah, I guess his dad’s pretty generous.

Donates to a bunch of local charities and stuff. But Zack’s sort of

a jerk.”

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“Still, the school got a sweet track out of it.”

This wasn’t going well; he was missing my point. “I guess

Zack doesn’t know how to be anything other than what he is,” I

conceded.

Adam looked sideways at me. “Do any of us?”

“What?” My stomach flipped. I wasn’t used to him looking

directly at me.

“Know how to be anything other than what we are?”

“I guess not.”

Rubbing his hands together, Adam took a step toward the pic-

nic basket. “What do we have for eats?” He flipped open the lid,

digging around inside until he came out with a couple of sand-

wiches, some chips, and two sweating bottles of lemonade. I

recognized them as Little Eats Treats and To Go items, the pre-

made things we kept stocked in a low refrigerator case in the café

for people who didn’t want to wait for made-to-order food. He

handed me a sandwich. “Hungry? These pesto ones rock.”

I blushed. “I made those.”

“For real? They’re good.” He peeled off the white paper and bit

into one. “What do you use for the cheese?” He plunked down

onto the grass, kicking his legs out in front of him, and inspected

his sandwich.

“Gruyère.”

“Tasty.” He took another bite. “So, where’s this Zack?”

I scanned the track. “There.” I pointed to the lone figure

stretching at the edge of the track. Zack practically lived here, so

I knew we’d see him. “He trains
a lot
.”

Adam gave him a little salute. “Good to have discipline. I don’t

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have that sort of discipline. Just parties, girls.” I wasn’t sure if he

meant his character Scott or himself.

I unwrapped my own sandwich. “Oh, Zack does plenty of that.”

“But there he is.” Adam motioned to the track. “Running his laps.”

“He’s just not very nice,” I mumbled into the white wrapper of

my sandwich.

Adam scanned the expanse of Little High below us and gave a

small shudder. “Man, school looks a lot like jail.”

“It’s not too bad.” I settled next to him, popping open a bag of

barbecue chips. Little High was deserted except for Zack’s lone

journey around the track. Funny how schools turned into grave-

yards in the summer, all the busy day-to-day energy gone, the space

left humming with emptiness. “Have you ever gone to school?”

“I’ve had tutors,” he said, shrugging, his face guarded again.

“The show kept me pretty busy. And now movies.”

“Do you ever wish you’d gone to regular school?” I imagined

Adam wandering the halls of Little High, waltzing into Algebra,

going to football games. It would probably seem pretty lame to

him. And they’d make him put his phone away.

“I don’t think about it.” Then he seemed to do just that. “I

mean, I probably would have thought it was cool at first, the whole

high school thing — parties, football games, dances. Of course,

none of those things are really school, I guess.” He took a drink of

his lemonade. “Actually, I don’t think I would have liked it at all. It

sounds boring. Always having to be somewhere every minute,

packed into rooms too small for half that many people. Always

having to ask permission to do anything.” He shook his head.

“Yeah, no — I would’ve hated that.”

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“Well, not all of us can be calling our own shots at age eight.”

I stared at my uneaten sandwich, noticing his was already gone.

“You still hungry?” I motioned to where my sandwich sat on its

white paper in the grass.

“You sure?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

He eyed me for a minute. “You’re not one of those girls who

doesn’t eat, right?”

“Oh, believe me, I eat. I’ll split it with you.” I plucked half the

sandwich off the open paper, grabbing a stray tomato slice before

it fell.

He polished off his half in three bites. “I dated this actress. She

ate, like, wheatgrass and tofu cubes. Disgusting.”

A shiver went through me. He meant Ashayla Wimm, real-life

Disney princess. They had dated for a while, and then, accord-

ing to
Celebrity!
he dumped her in a horrible, public way. At a

Lakers game, if I could remember Chloe’s recap of it accurately.

She’d told me she’d almost taken down all the pictures of him

from her wall when she’d read about the Lakers game breakup.

Almost. It was weird to sit here with the guy whose pictures were

plastered all over Chloe’s wall. Right now, he seemed almost nor-

mal, but he could sneeze and it would be news on some online

magazine.

I swallowed the rest of my sandwich. “My dad runs a café. You

can always count on me to make food a huge priority.” I cleaned up

our wrappers, stuffing them into the picnic basket.

He leaned back on his elbows. “I’m glad I didn’t end up having

to fake-date some starry-eyed idiot, speaking of boring. Not that

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I’m glad your brother’s in trouble or anything, but at least you had

to take our offer.”

My skin iced over. “What do you know about my brother?”

He must have sensed the temperature change, deciding to tilt

his head toward the sun instead of answering me.

I let a minute slip past, then stood and gathered the picnic bas-

ket together.

“Where are you going?” He sat up.

“It’s probably been forty-five minutes.” I found the trail, my

eyes trying to focus on the ground, the sun hot on my back. “I’m

not sure this was really that helpful,” I called behind me. “I don’t

know anything about acting.”

He followed me down the path, so when I turned, trying to

still my heart, he almost crashed into me. I didn’t like him think-

ing he
knew
something about John. He didn’t know him. Or me.

And we weren’t some plot point in Parker’s stupid script. “I would

prefer we didn’t talk about my brother. That’s one of
my
rules.”

He put warm hands on my shoulders. “Okay, whoa.” A breeze

rustled the grasses around us. “Relax, okay?”

His hands sent a warm wash through me, and I held tight to the

basket as if it could steady me. Up close, I noticed that spicy scent

again from his trailer, and it struck me that you had to be really

near someone to smell them. Nearer than I wanted to be right

now. “You don’t know him.” I slipped out of his grasp and started

back down the path.

“Carter?” He called out to me, silhouetted against the bright sky.

“For what it’s worth, I know what it’s like to have people assume

they know you. In my experience, they’re almost always wrong.”

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eight

downtown was the opposite of Little High; this time, the hum

came not from empty space but from the pressed-in bodies of hun-

dreds of people. Apparently, everyone from Little had shown up to

watch the filming and brought along about five extra friends. Mik

had trouble maneuvering the Range Rover around the throng at

the base of Gold Street, but finally, two men let us through a bar-

ricade and onto Main Street. At that point, they’d roped off the

sidewalks so the crowd wasn’t allowed onto the street.

As we moved up Main Street, I recognized two girls from my

Spanish class, half the football team, and Beckett Ray, Little High’s

own version of a movie star. Beautiful, out of touch with real life,

and a total pain in the butt. She often told people, “R-A-Y, like a

ray of light,” in that whispery, high voice of hers that was some sort

of Marilyn Monroe derivative. Now, she had her pale, willowy

legs planted in the street near Mountain Books — I could spot that

spill of black hair anywhere — chatting with a young police offi-

cer who had somehow decided the roped-off areas did not apply to

Beckett Ray.

When she saw me in the Range Rover, her mouth actually

dropped open. I’d never seen that before. Only read about it in

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books. But her jaw went slack. I saw teeth. Her dark blue eyes fol-

lowed our passage up the street, her mouth never closing, and I

couldn’t help but smile. For the most part, I got along with pretty

much everyone, but something about Beckett Ray brought out the

dark bits in me and I wanted to start hurling knives. Ever since

she’d moved here in seventh grade, she didn’t miss an opportunity

to remind us she was just biding her time until she could get out

again. She
hated
Little, constantly told us what a prison sentence it

was to live here and how she couldn’t wait to leave for the real

world (aka Los Angeles), which seemed about as real to me as

Neverland. Once, in sophomore English, our teacher, Mr. Gomez,

pointed out that Shakespeare’s Dark Lady “probably had hair a lot

like Beckett’s.” She’d flipped her glossy mane over her shoulders

and said, totally seriously, “Oh, probably not, Mr. G. I put a lot of

time into it, and they just didn’t have the product then that we

have now.” So, yeah, I took just a tiny bit of pleasure in watching

her stare after our car, Adam Jakes at my side.

Mik pulled onto the side street near the bookstore, away from

the crowd, and jumped out to open Adam’s door. Turning, Parker

studied the swarm of gawkers behind us. “Your people don’t have

anything better to do on a nice day?”

“My people?”

Adam already had one leg out of the door, mumbling, “Parker

can fill you in on the schedule,” as he scrambled out of the car.

Before I could open my door, Parker turned in the passenger

seat to face me. “I need you to not change up the schedule like that

again.”

My hand paused on the door handle. “What?”

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Parker’s chilly stare rivaled the air-conditioning. “That little

visit to the high school. No more improvising. Stick to the script. If

you want to make a change in the future, run it by me, okay, love?”

I dropped my gaze like a scolded child. “Okay.”

He dug through his bag and handed me a white envelope.

“Here. Some cash to hold you over. You’ll get the rest at the end.”

Peeking in, I could see a thick stack of one-hundred-dollar

bills. Parker pushed open the driver’s door. “And some advice:

Don’t get too attached.” He didn’t wait for my response before he

slammed the door and disappeared up the street.

I’d never held that much money in my hands before.

It felt awful.

Later that night, I felt even worse. After finding my way out of the

crowd in town, I had tracked down T.J. Shay. He met me at the

back of the Taco Bell parking lot, whipping his white Honda into

the hot shade of a tree. He rolled down the window, a smile playing

at his lips as I handed him the envelope. He counted the hundreds.

“Does that cover it?” I’d asked. “For now,” he’d said, already putting

the car in reverse. I had expected to feel lighter after paying him,

elated, but I only felt a sour squeeze in my stomach as he drove

away.

Now, I pinned the phone between my shoulder and ear, calling

my mom. As it rang, I reached for a bowl for my Raisin Bran. Like

father, like daughter. I guess I shouldn’t give Dad such a hard time

about his Wheat Thins.

She picked up on the third ring. “Hi, sweetie.”

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“Hi, Mom.” I could hear the sounds of traffic behind her voice.

She must have been standing on a street somewhere. “Is the world

a better, shinier place yet?”

She chuckled. “Hardly. Though we’re making good progress

with some of the local legislators.”

“Excellent.” I poured cereal into my bowl.

“You doing okay?” Her voice sounded weird. Motherly.

“I’m good.” I tried to sound light and airy.

Her voice told me she wasn’t buying it. “Is Mr. Movie Star

behaving himself?”

“He’s fine. You know, when he’s not being a narcissist.”
Which

is nearly all the time
. I opened the fridge and took out the milk.

“Figures.” I heard someone sidle up and talk to her. She held

the phone away to mumble something. “Well, keep an eye on him,”

she said to me.

“That’s what they’re paying me for,” I told her with a hollow

laugh.

“I’m not sure how funny I think that is yet.” But her voice was

smiling. “Oh, and, Carter?”

“Yeah?”

“You tell me if you need me to come home, and I’ll drop every-

thing and come home. You know that, right?” She sounded serious,

the way she got when she was talking to the city council about

garbage in our parks or something.

Warmth flooded me. “I know.” Then, I said good-bye before

she could hear the threat of tears in my voice.

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Extra Pickles was not behaving himself. Adam and I walked my

dog on the small loop near my house at Hawkin’s Pond, an oblong