Catch a Falling Star (34 page)

reference to Little. It was Robin Hamilton’s story, which had been,

despite Adam’s warning, funny and sweet. Chloe had tacked it to the

message board in the back, circling it with her green Sharpie. “‘The

Star and the Moon’ — so stinkin’ cute!” Cute, but a complete fan-

tasy, conjured up because my last name just happened to fit so

perfectly in the title.
The Star and the Moon
. Cute words with no

meaning. Everyone saw the moon, that unofficial ringleader of the

sky. And it was pretty clear, especially tonight, that in the orbit of

this particular star, no one could see me at all.

My world couldn’t be farther away from his if I lived on

Neptune. Too bad my last name wasn’t Space Particle No One

Notices. That would have been much closer to the truth.

I slipped out the side door of the kitchen, the cool air of the

darkening Tahoe evening hitting my face, and followed the side

stairs down to the lawn. Someone had lit lanterns, and they had

just started to dot the velvety grass like stars, glimmering in the

approaching twilight. I made my way down to the lake, my bare

feet moving gingerly over the pebbles of the beach.

A lone figure stood at the dock.

Parker.

He smoked a cigarette, one hand holding the neck of a Corona,

and gazed out over where the moon was just beginning to rise

beyond the distant mountains.

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He turned when he heard my creaky steps on the dock, flicked

his cigarette guiltily into the lake.

“You know, some fish is going to die now because of that,” I

said, only half joking.

“I’ll add that to my list of moral offenses.”

I motioned toward the house. “You don’t like the party?” The

air chilled my arms, rippling them with gooseflesh. I should have

brought my sweater out here.

He took a swallow of beer. “It’s Adam’s thing. I’m getting a bit

old for all of that. I’m like a grandfather in there.” He wore a sim-

ple pale linen jacket over his T-shirt and jeans, and suddenly, he

slipped it off and wrapped it around my shoulders, all the while

navigating the half-empty beer bottle.

I huddled into its softness, its smell something like cut grass,

green, but with the lingering cling of cigarettes. “Thanks, Gramps.”

A smile twitched his mouth. “You all right, love?”

I sighed, studying the water glowing in the evening light. The

lake shimmered with ripples of indigo that matched the sky.

Everything was darkening, shifting with twilight’s rosy glaze. If I

owned this house, I’d never leave. I’d sit here every day and watch

the different shades of light tinge the lake all its kaleidoscopic

colors. Adam’s friend, the guy who owned this, probably spent a

couple of weeks a year here, tops. I frowned at the thought, and

Parker mistook it for annoyance.

“Don’t pay too much attention to Adam in these sorts of envi-

ronments. He’s got his own role to play.” He drained his beer,

seemed like he might toss the bottle, glanced at me, and set it on

the dock.

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“Obviously, I don’t know him at all.” Sending those words into

the cool of the night air freed something in me, and I felt myself

smiling. Of course I didn’t know Adam Jakes. He was a
movie star
.

Our time together was nothing.

I was such an idiot.

Parker rocked back and forth on his heels and toes, following the

natural movement of the dock. He gave me a smile almost apologetic

in its edges. “Don’t take it personally. Adam is whoever he needs to

be for the room he’s in. He’s an actor. He wears a lot of masks.”

“That’s hard for me, I guess.” I pushed some wind-tossed hair

from my eyes. “I’m kind of what-you-see-is-what-you-get.”

Parker grinned. “Yes, yes, you are.”

It felt like a compliment. I pointed up toward the house. “You

know, Ashayla Wimm’s here.”

Parker’s smile vanished. “Here now?”

“Yeah.”

Swearing, he lit another cigarette, keeping the flame of his

lighter protected from the wind off the lake. “That’s just what I

need. Ashayla and her free publicity advice talking Adam into

another stunt like the one he pulled in January.”

I shivered, only this time it wasn’t because of the wind. “Stunt?”

Parker caught his mistake too late. “Oh bugger. That . . . that’s

not . . . I shouldn’t have said that.” He blew smoke into the wind.

His words rolled through me like thunder, low, distant, but

changing the air. “The car, the drugs, that redhead — that was a

stunt? His rehab, too?” I swallowed hard. “None of that was true?”

“True?” Parker rol ed the word around his mouth like a too-large

wad of gum. Then his face softened, and he gave me a faint smile.

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“You’re such a sweet kid — sorry if that sounds condescending,

love.” He tapped ash over the lake. “But the truth is kind of relative.”

“Is it?” Why wasn’t I surprised? It was like what Alien Drake

said about the way we controlled the image we projected to the

world. Adam had an image he needed to control. The last year was

clearly part of a manufactured plan, some sort of crafting of a bad

boy who would later repent. Like Scrooge, like Scott. Even the

movie was part of it.
None of this can be accidental
, he’d said that day

in the garden.

I was part of that dumb public they jerked around like puppets.

Feeling sick, I asked, “Did he actually go to rehab? Just tell me

that. I mean, isn’t that why the movie got pushed back?” All that

talk about rehab, about his need for a break, how much he related

it to what I was going through with my dancing, with my brother.

Was that just for show?

Parker rubbed a hand through his hair. “It’s not what you

think; it’s not completely fabricated. He was a right mess. Utterly

exhausted.”

“So he thought it would be better for people to see him as a

drug-riddled bad boy than as
tired
?” The dock gave a bigger rock

beneath our feet, and we both leaned to steady ourselves. His beer

bottle tipped, rolled into the lake. Sorry, fish.

Parker seemed to shrink beside me, and it struck me that he

didn’t have as much control as he pretended that he did. He crafted

his own sort of reality out of the fantastical world of Adam Jakes.

He tried to explain. “When he crashed that car, well, people just

assumed things. And we let them. And we added on. That was

Ashayla’s brilliant suggestion.” When he saw the disappointment

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ripple across my face, he sighed. “Hey, I work for the guy. I’m in

the Adam Jakes business. He’s a brand, Carter. He needed some

time off, to clear his head, and it was the only thing that wouldn’t

get him sued by the studio for screwing up the shooting schedule.”

“Rehab?”

“Yeah. Have to protect the brand.”

“Wow.” I thought about all those people who had delayed their

schedules, the hassle of turning summer into Christmas, all so

Adam could craft some sort of comeback story. My head throbbed.

“Come on, don’t look at me like that.” Parker stubbed his ciga-

rette out on his loafer. “He’s a good kid, Carter, but he’s a kid. A

kid with too many people worshipping him and too much money,

and he didn’t even know if he wanted to do this anymore. It’s a

total cliché, but it’s just the way it is.” I noticed, this time, he didn’t

flick the butt into the lake.

“You’re such liars,” I whispered, looking up toward the house.

“I’m going to find Adam.” A chill moved through me, separate

from the wind off the lake. “I can’t do this anymore, either.”

Parker shook his head. “Not now, Carter. Talk to him later.”

“I want to talk to him now.” The periwinkle light of the lake,

the sky, the pale stars emerging, became elastic, like the world

was a deck of cards reshuffling. I moved toward the small ramp

leading off the dock and onto the beach.

“Wait!” Parker called after me. “Let’s talk about next steps,

how to best play this. You’re just reacting right now.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m done. I’m out.”

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I found Adam leaning against a window frame, laughing at

something a red-haired guy was saying, the party reflected in the

glass behind them. Ashayla Wimm was nowhere in sight.

“Hey, stranger, where you been?” He flashed me an easy smile,

lazy, pliable.

It was like I was finally seeing him for real, like someone had

scrubbed off his flashy shine and left him dull. “I’m leaving,” I told

him. “Could we please find someone to take me home?” The party

droned around me, churning. Dizzy, I put a hand on a nearby chair

to steady myself.

His smile faltered. “Hey, don’t leave. Are you okay?” He

squinted at me through bleary eyes. “You don’t look okay.”

The crowd around us stilled a bit; I could feel them lean in,

listening, waiting. I wasn’t interested in giving them a show. I’d

had enough shows to last me a lifetime. “I’ll be outside waiting for

a car.” I hurried through the room, the music pressing in on me,

the crush of people parting against me like waves.

Adam fol owed me outside onto the wide front porch. No one was

out there. Why would they be, when Adam Jakes, movie star,

was inside where they could pretend to be a part of his spectacular

world?

He grabbed my arm. “Wait, what just happened?”

I whirled on him, yanking my arm away. “Do you ever just get

sick of lying to people?”

“What?”

“I know about you, okay? I know you didn’t go to rehab, that

you didn’t do any of those horrible things. You’re not some bad boy

on the path of recovery — you’re just a liar who uses people.”

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Genuine fear seized his features, seemed to sober him up. “Wait,

what? Who told you that? Did Ashayla say something to you?”

“Not that you’d notice, but I wasn’t exactly hanging out with

Ashayla Wimm.”

“Then who?”

“It doesn’t matter. Is it true?”

His expression, even shadowed, answered for him. He reached

out for me again, but I moved away down the short steps and onto

the curve of the circular driveway. It was warmer out here than

by the lake, but I still shivered in my shirt, my bare feet cool on the

cement. I’d left my shoes somewhere back at the party. “I’d like

Mik to take me home. I already told Parker, but I’ll tell you, too.

I’m done, Adam. I’ll do whatever press release or whatever, but

I’m out. We’re finished with whatever this is we’ve been doing.”

He took a couple of steps toward me. “Give me a chance to

explain.”

I couldn’t look at him. “I just want to go home.”

“Please don’t go,” he pleaded, sounding young and scared. “You

have to understand, I’m just playing the part the world wants me to

play. All of this, it’s just what people expect. It’s part of the game.”

I stared out at the gates to this incredible house, the gates that

kept everyone out, granting only a select few, a
lucky
few, the

chance at whatever it was the world inside promised them. And

here I was, inside them, and all I wanted was to leave. I forced

myself to look at him, the movie star, standing in a dark driveway,

asking me to stay.

It wasn’t enough. I took a step closer and said quietly, “I have a

brother who is ruining his life because of his addiction. And it’s just

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a plot point for you, a game, as you say, some sort of show so you can

eventually look a certain way to a bunch of strangers. Why do you

think you don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else?”

He ran a hand through that great hair of his and somehow it

managed to look even better than it had before. He thought about

it for a second, then shrugged. “Because I don’t.”

He was right. He didn’t. When the world was in constant orbit

around you, you got to make all the rules. “Must be nice.”

His eyes, tired and sad, caught the light of the nearby porch

lamp. “It’s my job, Carter. I need things to
look
a certain way. I

don’t have a choice.”

I shook my head. “I don’t care who you are, you always have a

choice. And you don’t need it. You
love
it. You crave all the atten-

tion, and you go after it even if it means creating huge lies. I mean,

come on, Adam, is there anything in your life that’s actually real?”

His eyes were like individual moons as he took a step toward me.

“How I feel about you is real. I know I feel real when I’m with you.”

His words seemed genuine and I wanted to believe him, but I

pul ed from somewhere deep that let me fight them, that fought

wanting to wrap myself in the warm curve of his arms. This guy

sold lies to millions of people. What stopped him from lying to one

girl in the shadowed curve of a driveway? Especially if it meant pro-

tecting his image. “If this were one of your movies, that might work.

I guess it might be enough. It might even be true. But this is my life,

not some final scene, and the thing is — I don’t believe you.”