Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) (5 page)

She reached for
my hand. “You’re so beautiful,” she said.

“That’s my line,”
I said.

“Please don’t go…”

Her eyelids grew
heavy. After a while, she slept.

It was hard to
tell how much time passed. It seemed like a long time and not long enough. Cold
crept in, raising the hair on the back of my neck. The fire and candles went
out. I felt a presence. My gaze darted to the doorway.

Her body arched
again.

“Ruby?”

A wave of nausea
rocked me. I reached for the back of the sofa, swaying, as if on a rocking sea.
A blanket of darkness came down.

I caught a
glimpse of her dream.

Winged
creatures, like comets, streaked across the sky. There were millions of them.
The sound of humming came from the beating of their wings.

THE EARTH tilted.
Darkness opened, like a giant mouth. I woke.

“Are you okay?”
a voice said.

Devon
.

He gazed down at
me. His eyes looked strange, distant, as if I had interrupted him by waking.
Fear coiled in my belly. I tried to remember what had happened before I fell
asleep. My mind spun.

I sat up. “You’re
still here…” I licked my dry lips. I could see the porch light outside the
window and the bright electronic screen of the stereo. I recognized the feel of
the red velvet sofa and its smell, like my mother, tinged with Shalimar
perfume.

“How long have I
been out?” I said.

“Not long.”

I glanced
around, wondering why the candles were no longer lit. There was a cold draft in
the room. I turned to the fireplace. “The fire’s out.” I checked my watch. It was
barely past midnight. I stared at the second hand. How could so little time
have passed?

I scooted
further back, pressing into the sofa cushions. My gaze slid to my panties on
the floor and I remembered. A shiver raked down my spine. I pressed my knees
together.

“Why don’t you
lie down,” his voice was low and hypnotic. He took my grandmother’s afghan from
the back of the sofa. I let him put it over my lap, though I eyed him
suspiciously.

His eyes were
almond shaped and dark brown, almost black, the same color as his hair that
curled at the nape of his neck. His face was chiseled, his lips full. He had
the kind of beauty you could only imagine. He was my Heathcliff. Of course I
must have seen him before. Where?

He looked
nothing like Laurence Olivier who played Heathcliff in my grandmother’s
favorite movie. When I was a girl she used to take me to the Gothic Revival
downtown. I was so young but the films transported me to another time where I
wished I could live.

I thought of the
pills hidden in my dresser. I had stopped taking them because they made me feel
numb, but without them the line between fantasy and reality blurred.

“What happened
to the fire?” I said.

“Wind came down
the chimney and put it out,” his eyes caressed me. “Why don’t you relax? I’ll
start the fire again.”

Soon, the room
was warm and candles flickered once more. He brought a pillow, and put my feet
in his lap. His hands rested lightly on my legs, covered by the afghan.

I wanted him to
run his hand up my thigh, to do what he had done before. I sucked in my breath,
remembering the hot burst of pleasure. But he seemed disinterested now.

My head began to
ache.

“Did you have a
dream?” he said.

I felt like he
wanted me to reveal some secret part of myself. Ugh, he reminded me of Dr. Ess.
“No…” It bugged me that he was so handsome. Dr. Ess had course skin and a
doughy face, at least.

“I think you’ve
been playing a trick on me,” I said. (I felt at a disadvantage, and I didn’t
like it.)

“Really?”

“We must know
each other. From a long time ago.”
Like when I was twelve and first read
Wuthering Heights.
“I can’t remember but I think you do.”

“No,” he said. “You’re
wrong.”

Something bitter
gnawed inside me. “How old are you?” I thought his age might give me a clue.

His eyes
shifted. “We’ve never met before, Ruby. I wish we had.”

And now, when I
didn’t want him to, his hand was on my leg. I tried to brace myself against his
touch but it was like willing the world to stop spinning.

He moved slowly
upward.

I closed my eyes
and fell back on the pillow.

The most obscene
images filled my mind. I reached for him, lifting my hips but he had already
pulled away. I recalled how in the car, he wouldn’t kiss me. My chest
tightened. Tears burned behind my closed lids.

I kept my eyes
closed. “Please go,” I whispered. I turned on my side and curled into the fetal
position.

Cold rushed in
when he drew away. His footsteps retreated. When he closed the door, the sound
rang out, like a shot.

Something caved
inside me.

HER NEIGHBORHOOD
was quiet. I stood by the gate, thinking how different it was from China Town
where sirens wailed and neon signs flashed all night.

I lived in the
heart of the red light district, in an abandoned brick building reeking of
faded glamour. When I’d taken a board off one of the upper windows, I found a
stained glass rose in its center. The ceilings were vaulted. Looking up from
the dusty marbled foyer, you could see the night sky through a round window at
the top.

There had been a
bed in one of the rooms, still made up. I’d taken off the moldy bedding and put
on new. The mattress was saggy and the bed creaked. In the dusty loft, I found
a haggard sofa under a moth eaten sheet.

Sometimes I sat
on the sofa, looking out the window at nothing much.

At first, no one
seemed to notice I was there. I’d replaced the locks on all the doors and came
and went through the tunnel. I didn’t have electricity. (I showered at a health
spa uptown, where no one ever questioned my membership. I took in quite a few
of the luxuries there.)

Eventually, the
police showed up. I’d been sleeping but woke to the sound of a lock breaking. I
listened to them downstairs, talking about ‘the squatter.’ I pulled on my jeans
and boots, a ratty Fisherman’s sweater and went out the window.

I jumped off the
fire escape, landing silently in the alley.

Luckily, it had
been winter and the light was thin. The sky was bullet gray. Still, I grew
weak, waiting for the police to leave.

A woman came out
to put something in the dumpster. She wore a shorty silk robe and furry
slippers. Her thighs blushed from the cold. She smiled at me. I wanted to call
her over but she was a neighbor, so I turned and started walking the twenty
blocks to the other side of the tunnel.

Later that
night, after hooking up with a couple of cheerleaders at a frat party, I
wandered around the superstore, looking at electronics. I felt I knew how to
use them, the same way I’d known my name was Devon Slaughter. Or had been.

I had once
been a person.

I came away with
a couple of burner phones and a pocket computer. I winked at the Rent-A-Cop on
my way out. After I penetrated the files at City Hall and established myself as
the legal owner of 1975 Irving Street, my life got boring again. Having
supernatural abilities and women throwing themselves at me, like I was James
Bond, was a big fat zero in my book.

I was worse off
than Tristessa, the junkie. At least she was the epitome of sadness. I was a
black hole.

I gazed at Ruby’s
house. Candlelight shone in the window.

I thought of her
antiques and all those records, the fact that she didn’t carry a cell phone,
even just for emergencies. People passed by me all the time, and I got nothing
from them when they were plugged into their gadgets. They were numb. I wondered
if Ruby’s disdain of technology made her more alive.

I stole back
inside her house.

She was curled
up on the sofa. She’d begged me to kiss her. She had such soft skin.

I wasn’t
repulsed by kissing. I
wanted
to kiss her.

I leaned down
and breathed in her sweet scent, before brushing the lobe of her ear with my
lips.

And then I went
around the house, touching her things.

I found a dress
on the floor in her bathroom. She wasn’t very tidy, though her shoes were lined
up in the closet upstairs, and her make-up in the medicine cabinet was
carefully arranged with the labels facing out.

She had seven
different shades of mascara from midnight blue to charcoal. A single bottle of
aspirin had only a few tablets left.

The nail polish
on her vanity was grouped by color—reds, blues, and black.

There was a series
of oil paintings in the hall, featuring a blonde with a face like Ruby’s; all
soft contours, poochy lips, big sad eyes. Her mother?

In her bedroom,
the wallpaper was printed with crimson roses. I ran my fingers over the raised
edges, marveling at how bright the world was becoming before my eyes, like a
Technicolor movie.

Ah, her bed. It
sprawled, strewn with big white lacy pillows. The alarm clock on her nightstand
had a dial radio. On her other nightstand, I discovered two pink cubes of dice.
She’d rolled snake eyes.

The brush on her
dresser was full of red hairs. I found her lingerie in the top drawer. It was
soft, like her skin. My fingers struck something hard, a plastic bottle
containing Lexapro, which sounded like a piece of gym equipment. The bottle was
full.

I put everything
back the way I’d found it.

Downstairs, I
looked through her records. Bands like
Radiohead
,
Violent Femmes
and
Smashing Pumpkins
reminded me of the girl again, the one with long
legs. Dark images, like ghosts played across my mind.

I sat on the
sofa and watched Ruby sleep, until it started to get light outside.

ALONE IN my
classroom, during lunch, I kept reliving Devon’s touch.

I felt fluttery
and excited and tormented all at once. He was leading me on. Toying with me,
just like Henry. Did all men behave this way? Or was there something about me
that attracted the wrong type?

I wondered if
Devon knew I was a virgin. It embarrassed me to be so inexperienced. I had no
excuse, such as saving myself for marriage. I wanted to have sex in the worst
way. Wanting it and not knowing how to get it made me feel like there was one
more thing inherently wrong with me. I should see Dr. Ess, I thought. I’d
rescheduled my regular appointment with him so many times; I’d managed to avoid
him for almost five months.

The day seemed
grueling, though nothing out of the ordinary happened. Outside, the sky was
gray. At last, the final bell rang, though I still had the workshop girls and
my last Adult Literacy class before Georgie took over. I had to pull myself
together.

“Miss Rain!”
Chastity said. “Your eyes are
all
red!”

“Your face too!”
Charity said.

They had
arranged their desks in a circle. The other girls contemplated me suspiciously,
especially Scarlet Rose.

I changed the
subject. “I’ve decided it’s time to start our diaries.” I went to my desk and
took nine black booklets from my valise. The diaries were a secret size, small
enough to hide quickly.

I gave one to
each girl. “Write whatever comes into your head. Whatever you dream about,
whatever scares you or makes you want to laugh or cry or scream. If your own
life doesn’t inspire you, write a story, the story you would love to read but
no one ever wrote before.”

“So what we
write in our diaries doesn’t have to be true?” Scarlet said.

“Absolutely not.
No rules. Did you hear me? Break every single rule you ever learned about
writing.”

A few of the
girls giggled. “Even what we learn in Miss Hartly’s class?”

“
Especially
what you learn there,” I said.

“Are you going
to keep a diary too?”

“Are you
kidding? I wouldn’t miss it. At the end of the week, we’ll trade diaries with
someone else.”

The room grew
quiet.

“Why?” Scarlet
said, finally. Her violet eyes were accusing.

“We are entering
into a sacred covenant with each other,” I said.

“Why do we have
to let other people read our diaries?” she insisted.

“Because that’s
the point,” I said.

“To have someone
read our most private inner thoughts?” she was full of scorn.

“To have someone
read what you write,” I told her.

I
dismissed
the workshop early.
The girls were eager to start their diaries. I went
to the window and scanned the parking lot for Georgie’s car. But she hadn’t
come to school today. I worried it was because of what I’d done.

And then I saw
Henry’s red Jeep pulling out of the lot. My pulse quickened. Was he
rendezvousing with Georgie? On one hand, I hoped he would be there to console
Georgie about what had happened to her car. A perfectly executed kiss might be
just what Georgie needed. On the other hand, I hated them both.

I took books out
of my valise, placing one on each desk. Each book was different, chosen from my
personal collection. They were gifts for my Adult Literacy class. I hoped they
would remember me.

I decided to
brave the teacher’s lounge and found it empty. I brewed coffee and spread
almond butter on apple slice number four. It would be nice if Georgie and Henry
just disappeared into the sunset, I thought. Really, that would be the best for
all concerned.

The more I
thought about it, the better I felt about scratching such an ugly mark on
Georgie’s Mini. It might be the story she and Henry told their grandchildren
about how they fell in love.

The door opened
and loud, excited voices broke the quiet. There were three of them. Georgie’s
friends. “Oh, it’s
you
,” the short curvy blonde who taught Geometry eyed
my pink blouse and her lip curled. She opened her eyes wide, as if to say,
oops,
look what you made me do
. Her wavy hair had an illusion of softness. Her
curls were big and appeared loose but when she moved her head, the curls stayed
in place. She reminded me of the Muppet, Miss Piggy.

“Ew, what are
you eating?” the P.E. teacher—a tall, muscular brunette—glared at me. “What
is
that?” she pointed to the blob of almond butter on my apple slice. “Cat poop?”

She was no
Pinocchio, despite the long nose. Alligators also had long snouts. I envisioned
her lying on a beach somewhere and casually eating people. If you opened her
up, you would find watches and jewelry and human teeth.

Miss Piggy said,
“FYI, it’s called shit on a shingle.”

They all
snickered and seemed to crowd the lounge. They whispered and laughed and rolled
their eyes and teased and flirted and huddled together. It didn’t matter who
you were, if you weren’t them, you were nobody. It was just like high school.
It
was
high school. But I was a teacher now. It was supposed to be
different. We were all grown-ups, weren't we?

A horrifying
thought occurred to me. Was life high school?
No matter how old you got,
wherever you went, you could never leave? Like the
Hotel California
?

I put away my
dinner.

It was the
librarian, Ms. Wong, who pulled out a chair and sat across from me. She had
silky black hair tied in a ponytail. She liked to play nice which made me
nervous.

“We were talking
about tonight,” Wong said. “We’re having a girl’s night out. Though it’s pretty
much the norm, lately. Maybe what we need is a
boy’s
night out,” her
laugh was silvery. “You should come.”

The P.E. teacher
groaned. “Oh God,” she muttered.

“It’s Georgie’s
birthday,” Wong ignored her friend. “She's thirty, you know. The last one of us
to cross the threshold. Her birthday was actually yesterday but we wanted to
wait for the weekend.”

Yesterday?
I
had vandalized Georgie’s car on her birthday? What a present.
Exactly what
she deserves
.
I forced myself to feel guilty, thinking I should
definitely make an appointment with Dr. Ess.

“We’re going to
meet at the pub and go bar hopping,” Wong went on; as if she had no clue
Georgie hated me. “Know of any cool bars?”

I could feel
them judging me. “Well, if you like alternative rock,” I said, with an air of
importance. “There’s a bar down on the boardwalk. Live music every night.” I
figured they wouldn’t know alternative rock if
The Black Keys
showed up
on their door step.

I zipped my
valise. “Probably not your scene,” I said.

P.E.’s canny
reptilian eyes zoomed in on me. “Why do you wheel that suitcase all around?”
she said.

“Don’t,” Wong
warned.

But she was an
alligator with a bloody stump. “It’s ridiculous,” she said. “Is it part of your
costume or something?”

“Costume? You
are
so
rude,” Wong said.

“No really. What’s
with the Kool-Aid dye job? And the suitcase?”

Miss Piggy
snorted.

I dragged my
valise off the table. The tantalizing smell of freshly brewed coffee followed
me to the door. I hadn’t even got a cup.

“Wait,” Wong
cried. “What’s the name of the bar?”

Now they would
invade my favorite bar. All because I’d wanted to show off. And a worse thought
occurred to me. What if one of them set their sights on Devon? I envisioned
Georgie falling into Devon’s arms and how they would dance in front of me, how
he would dip her low for a kiss.

I felt so
screwed up. Why did I tell Devon to leave last night? As I walked down the
hallway, a wheel on my valise squeaked, shredding my last nerve. When I rounded
the corner, I stopped. Someone waited outside my classroom door.

Georgie.
In a red polka dot dress, a binder
tucked under her arm. Red flooded my vision. I rushed toward her, the wheels of
my valise whirring. “Can I
help
you?” I said. “Is there some reason you’re
here?”

She acted
startled, clutching her binder to her chest. “Stroop wants me to sit in
tonight. Didn’t you get my e-mail? What is wrong with you?” she managed to
sound insulted. “I’m just doing my job. It’s not my fault you’re a troglodyte.”

Something inside
me gathered force. “Your job? You’re taking over
my
job. And my parking
space, my
life. You’re a terrible person
and I bet you’re a
terrible teacher too,” I bit off each word. “You should…” I jabbed her in the
chest with my finger. “Go fuck yourself.”

There was a
gasp. Then a terrible silence.

In slow motion,
like a horror movie, Georgie’s binder fell to the floor. Papers scattered. She
snatched a handful of my hair and yanked. Pain seared my scalp but I wrenched
free. I rose up on tip-toe to gouge at her eyes. She ducked. I got her ear. I
twisted.

“Aaaaahhhh…” she
pushed me. Hard.

I slipped on
papers, scrambling to catch my balance. I landed on my butt.

Georgie’s red
face bobbed above me. She bent down and got so close, a spray of saliva misted
my cheek. “I’m going into that classroom. And I’m watching every move you make,
Miss
Rain.”

* * *

My limbs were
jelly.

I straightened
my skirt. Georgie gathered papers, bending over. I checked my watch. Seven
minutes. I tried to breathe slowly. I grasped my valise and headed for my
classroom, while her back was turned.

“Hey,” she said
sharply, but she was too late.

I shut the door
and locked it.

“Ruby?” she
knocked and jiggled the handle.

I slid down the
wall. Black spots swam in my vision. I hugged my knees. My whole body was going
numb.

“I’ll be back,”
Georgie said. “And this door better be open.”

I waited. After
I thought she was gone, I stood up.

Taking quick
ragged breaths, I opened drawers I never used. I found pens and CDs with
cracked cases, ink cartridges, a peppermint candy without a wrapper,
crumbs
.
The bottom drawer contained computer paper. I tore open a package and folded a
piece of paper to breathe into, like a paper bag.

I thought of my
mother’s Valium, how she’d break a pill and give me half and how great I felt
afterwards, like nothing bad could ever happen. Why didn’t my shrink give me
Valium?

I concentrated
on breathing.
In. Out.
As my heart rate slowed, my eyelids got heavy. I
saw a burst of white light, felt the earth drop out from under me. I was
hurtling through darkness.

I tried to open
my eyes. A scream died in my throat. The paper flew out of my hand. I watched
it flutter to the floor.

Someone knocked.
I froze.

The knock came
again, harder. Georgie? Or a student? I checked my watch. Not even a whole
minute had passed.

I opened my
compact and fixed my make-up, wiping away the smudges under my eyes. After
putting on fresh lipstick, a strange calm came over me. When I opened the door,
I found three of my students waiting outside.

I looked up and
down the hall and didn’t see Georgie.

I waited by the
door, as students straggled in. There were five so far. “Sit at a desk that has
a book on it,” I told them.

When I got to
seven students and still no Georgie, my pulse soared. Just two more students to
go. But I rarely had perfect attendance. If they weren’t all safely accounted
for inside, I couldn’t lock the door, in case someone came late.

I checked my
watch. One and half minutes past the hour.

I knew I was
asking for trouble but I closed my eyes and gave a silent prayer.
Please
God, let me give my last class in peace. Without Georgie. I hate her. No,
scratch that. Sorry, I don’t hate anyone.
A lump formed in my throat. I
heard Dr. Ess in my head, “You are not a victim.”

I took a deep
breath and opened the door wider.

“I was hoping to
see everyone tonight,” I said, glancing at the two empty desks.
Looking for
Alaska
, by John Green and Stephen King’s
Joyland
hadn’t been taken.
I cleared my throat. There was a sound behind me. I turned to see the last two
students coming through the door.

There is a
God
.

I ushered them
inside, as if into a bomb shelter with the sky already exploding. I turned the
lock, feeling guilty. But not guilty enough.

“Does everyone
like their books?” I said. “Each of you has a copy of one of my favorite books.
Which brings me to tonight’s topic.” I went to my valise and took out my
battered copy of
Wuthering Heights
. I showed it to them. I asked a woman
in front to read the title.