Catch a Falling Star (16 page)

belt, a flash of annoyance crossing his features. “Look, don’t worry

about all the publicity stuff, okay? Let’s just hang out. Parker can

get a little —” He paused, taking a slurp of his own Starbucks.

“Well, let’s just say he takes his job a bit too seriously sometimes.

Don’t worry about the photos. Let’s just have a good day.”

“Okay.” I pulled a sheet of heavy stock paper from my purse.

Yesterday, I’d had an idea, something fun for Adam that would

show him our town but also be a little silly. So after Little Eats, I’d

stayed up until two a.m. finishing it. Now, clutching the handmade

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tour map I’d made, my idea seemed babyish, and I had a feeling it

was one of those ideas that seemed brilliant at midnight but totally

lame in the daylight.

“What’s that?” He grabbed at it.

Sighing, I handed it over. “It’s stupid.”

He scanned the page. “Did you
make
this?” Now he was really

laughing at me.

I tried to grab it back. “Don’t laugh. I made you a Little Star

Map. You know, like those Hollywood tours. Only it’s some of
our

most famous spots, famous people, famous legends. Parker said

you wanted a tour of Little and, well, this is what I thought we

could do. It didn’t take me very long.” I swallowed, embarrassed.

He didn’t need to know I’d spent hours on it. “Forget it, it’s dumb.

We should do something else.”

He shook his head, holding the map out of my reach. “We are

not
doing something else; we’re doing this. I don’t think anyone’s

ever made me something like this before.” He stared at the paper

again, his eyes serious, a shy smile on his lips. “I can’t believe you

made this.” He settled back into the seat, his gaze following a

group of kids on the other side of the street racing down the side-

walk, dressed in already-drenched swimsuits and armed with

Super Soakers, before letting those eyes, like the tide coming in,

fall back on me. “Thanks,” he said.

“Sure,” I managed, struck with the sudden, odd sensation

of floating.

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Standing beneath the shade of a monster oak, I pointed at the

Victorian house and Adam followed my gaze, staring up at the old

house, the yard quiet in the filtered morning light.

I leaned into the white waist-level fencing. “This is the Crowley

house, hence the name of the street. Anne Crowley lived here in

the late 1880s, and while it was officially a boardinghouse, most

people around here know that Anne Crowley ran a pretty success-

ful brothel out of it.”

“So our first stop is a brothel. I like your style.” Adam peered

up at the house, its green paint starting to peel at the edges. “It’s

not
still
a brothel, is it? Because this might not be the best publicity

spot for me, given my track record.”

“No, it’s a private house now. But I chose it as our first ‘Star

Tour’ spot because it’s one of our more famous ghost stories in

Little. And since you’re currently starring in a movie about ghosts,

I thought it’d be perfect.” I pushed through the white gate, motion-

ing for him to follow.

“Um, are you allowed to just walk on in there?” Adam grinned

at me from the sidewalk. He seemed at ease, loose, that usual dark

curtain drawn away from his face. With his hands stuck in the

pockets of his knee-length shorts, it struck me that at this moment

he could be any other guy at Little High. I guess, had life dealt him

a different hand, he might have been.

I held the gate for him. “It’s fine. The Roan family owns it

now, and they’re gone for most of the summer. I go to school with

Jack Roan, and he won’t care if I show you.”

“Show me what?” Adam raised an eyebrow at me. I felt myself

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blushing and quickly turned away. He followed me around the side

of the house and into the backyard. Fringed with dense trees, the

yard formed a sort of skinny, sheltered triangle, one slender point

of which ended at a weathered shack with no windows.

I walked to the middle of the triangular patch of lawn. “Okay.

Stand here. By me.” He joined me, and I closed my eyes. “Close

your eyes.”

“Seriously?”

“Do it.” I opened mine to make sure that he was following

directions.

Shaking his head, he closed his eyes.

“Feel how warm it is here?”

“It’s a pretty hot day.” He told me, his voice edged with

amusement.

“Right. Okay, here’s how it works; I’ll lead you. Don’t open

your eyes.” Opening my own, I led him toward the shack. Some-

where, someone was cooking bacon, the smell of it drifting on

the air. I guided him slowly, the way Jack had done with me for the

first time back in sixth grade. Right at the point where the lawn

met the path in front of the shack, the air temperature dropped

suddenly by twenty degrees.

Adam’s eyes snapped open. “Whoa.” He looked around. “What

is that?”

I’d been here dozens of times and it still rippled my arms with

gooseflesh.

As quickly as we felt it, it vanished, warmth flooding the air

around us.

“Weird, right?” I let go of his arm.

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He rubbed it absently, turning slow circles, studying the yard.

“Seriously, what
was
that?”

“That was Henry.”

He stopped turning, his hands finding his pockets again, his

eyes finding mine. “Henry?”

“The ghost.” At Adam’s bemused expression, I hurried to

explain that Henry used to work at Anne Crowley’s house as a

cook and gardener and all-around handyman, and the legend was

that he was desperately in love with one of the girls who lived at

the house, a sixteen-year-old girl named Emeline who was a part-

time dancer and a full-time employee of Anne’s. “Sick with

jealousy,” I continued, “he burst in on her during one of her, er,

um . . . sessions, and there was a chase, and then the guy she was

with killed Henry. Stabbed him right here on this path.”

Adam pointed at the ground, a smile twitching his features.

“This exact path?”

“Well, this spot anyway.” I shrugged. “It’s fine if you don’t

believe me, but you felt him. I saw you.”

His phone buzzed. “Mik wants to know if we’re dead. Should

I tell him, no — just consorting with them?”

“Next stop!” I headed toward the Range Rover. “Bye, Henry!”

I called over my shoulder, and I could almost hear Adam smiling.

We stopped at three other spots before lunch. First, we drove to

see Cleo Smythe, a woman who’d lived in the same house for 103

years. “Born in that house, gonna die in that house,” I told Adam.

“Her words. Hi, Mrs. Smythe!” I waved at her where she sat in her

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squeaky porch swing, and she waved back, holding a sweating glass

of iced tea.

Second, I took him to see the old jailhouse, now housing a gal-

lery dedicated to Gold Country lore and photography. “Creepy,”

Adam had said, peering at a yellowed ancient picture of the gal-

lows, two open graves near it waiting for the hanging bodies.

“People were buried where we’re standing?”

“People are probably always buried where we’re standing,” I

said, nodding a hello to Bess Harding, who ran the gallery. Bess

had the thin, bent shape of a lily, but she perked up when she saw

Adam, even if she couldn’t seem to make eye contact with either

of us.

After the jailhouse, I directed Mik out to the highway, to the

turnoff that lead to the rolling green fields of Little’s surrounding

areas. I pointed out a few odd things along the way — rotting

barns, an abandoned water tower, a rusting 1950s Ford truck

embedded nose down in a field — before I had Mik pull onto an

inlet of gravel along the road.

We slid out of the Range Rover, the heat coming off the dusty

road hitting us. Our feet crunched over the gravel as I walked

Adam toward the final stop before lunch.

“This one’s my favorite.” We stepped into a puddle of shade

beneath a leafy oak. “The Fairy Tree.”

Adam stared up into its messy branches. “What is it?”

I told him how Drake and I used to come to this tree as little

kids, along with thousands of other children over the years. For as

long as I could remember, Mr. Costa, the old man who had owned

this property, would leave little treasures in the dimpled hollows of

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the tree, taking anything kids left him in return. I showed him the

pockets and nooks of the tree, smoothed from years of little hands.

“When he passed away last year,” I told Adam, “they found

every available surface of his home covered with the treasures

from dozens of years of Fairy Tree children — every surface thick

with them, like snow.”

I told him how last summer, a local artist took all of them —

each bouncy ball, drawing, action figure, rubber band, pound of

loose change, hair ribbon, smooth river rock, everything — and

fashioned them all into an incredible replica of this tree. “It’s in the

main entrance of the County Library. Sometimes, I just go look at

it, when I’m feeling sad, and I think about Mr. Costa. I almost took

you to see that, but I thought maybe you’d rather just see the tree

itself.”

Adam remained silent, running his fingers over the lacquered

wood sign at the base of the tree:

Costa Fairy tree

“There never was a merry world

since The fairies lefT off dancing . . .”

—
John selden

He stepped back, his mouth a thin line. Across the street, a

dusty sedan pulled over, idling in the hot sun. Adam didn’t turn

his head, but I knew he sensed it had stopped. He tensed only a

little, the way Extra Pickles would if he heard a distant door slam.

I started to ask him about it, but he pulled me in close to him.

“This is a good spot.”

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The sun through the leaves of the Fairy Tree covered us in

dappled spots of light, and I almost laughed at how close I suddenly

was to him, how abrupt he’d been. “Scene eight,” he whispered

into my ear, his breath tickling me. “First public kiss.” I knew this

was coming. I knew scene eight meant the first kiss. I knew it; I

just hadn’t expected it
right now
. The press of his lips against mine

caught me unprepared. His lips were warm, but because I hadn’t

really had time to take a breath, they left me feeling like someone

had just pushed me into a pool before I could inhale, leaving me

swirling, eyes open, underwater. I was breathless for all the wrong

reasons; still, there was the warmth of his mouth, that spicy smell

of his.

Then he pulled back, just an inch or two, his lips hovering

there, and I could tell he was watching the photographer, just on

the periphery. He was waiting him out. Dazed, I waited, too, the

suddenness of his kiss like a wave at the beach knocking me off

balance, leaving me shivering in surprise.

The idling car sped away down the street.

As Adam took several steps back, I knew something had shifted

in our day. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but somewhere between

the moment that car had pulled up and the space where he kissed

me, the curtain had been drawn again, the distance between us

thick. He gave me an almost businesslike nod. “That was a good

shot. And the Fairy Tree thing was perfect. Nice work.” Not meet-

ing my eyes, he hopped back into the Range Rover.

I stared off down the road, at the swirling dust of the depart-

ing photographer, the simplicity of the day congealing, returning

to the former, complicated space between us.

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I slid into the backseat again. When I’d noticed the scene about

the kiss in the script, I’d imagined something bigger, something

perhaps with a sound track or at least better lighting. Not some

out-of-the-blue face-smash for the quick camera click of a jerk in a

Budget rental car.

I guess I needed to dial down my expectations. It might have a

script, but this was no movie.

After leaving the Fairy Tree, Adam’s mouth a ghost print on me,

we stood in the cool, canopied entry to Ander’s Community

Gardens. “Ready for lunch?” I said flatly, motioning to the entrance.

He walked with me under the wrought-iron trellis swollen

with leafy jasmine and out onto a sprawling stone courtyard.

Dozens of people sat at ten or so wood picnic tables. I waved at

Dad, who was handing out sandwiches and chips at a table near a

fountain on the far side of the courtyard. I could see Adam take in

the scruffy nature of most of the picnickers.

I leaned into him, whispering, “This is Sandwich Saturday.

One Saturday a month, Little Eats provides lunch to the families

staying at the Welcome House. I always help out.” When he con-

tinued to stare blankly, I added, “This was on your schedule today.”

Maybe Parker hadn’t mentioned it to him?

“What’s the Welcome House?” His eyes took in the rows of

food, the people sitting at tables.