Starstruck (17 page)

S
OMETIME LATER
—it feels like years—I open my eyes again. A ceiling greets me. I’m inside, but somewhere I don’t recognize. Everything is white. A hospital. There’s a television mounted to the wall, with some news program on; a white-haired reporter is droning on about politics.

“Hey, hon.” It’s my mom. She fluffs my pillows. “You have a bump on the head. How do you feel?”

I groan. My head throbs. I reach up to touch it and feel sand in my hairline. Everything at the bakery—the flooding, the boat with Wish—seems like a faraway memory. The bakery. “What happened to our house?”

She shrugs. “I hear it’s not very pretty. But thank goodness you’re safe.”

I remember Wish’s promise to come get me. Did he? Or was that a dream?

I scan the room, but I already know that my mom is the only person here. I think of the blinding sun making a halo around Wish’s head as he commanded it, with the black storm clouds swirling around us. I remember the entire island, save for the top of Melinda’s hotel, being underwater. That had to have been a dream. There is no way on Earth any of that could possibly have happened. “How did I get here?” I ask.

“The coast guard had you airlifted here by helicopter. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I tried,” she whispers. “The island was closed; they wouldn’t let anyone on. They said everyone had been evacuated. I tried calling you again, but when you didn’t answer, I thought you must have gotten a ride to the high school with Melinda. But then I went to the gym to look for you, and you weren’t there.… I was so worried.” She buries her face in her hands.

“I think I must have slept through the evacuation,” I say, feeling stupid. “I woke up and the water was already so high. And everyone was gone.”

She nods. “By the time I found out you weren’t there and told the police so they knew to look for you, the wind was too much. They couldn’t go, either.”

I shake my head. My vision is blurred, and maybe there’s water in my ears, because nothing makes sense. “So they called the coast guard?”

She nods. “But they couldn’t get out there right away. There was a tornado.”

Oh, so the tornado was real? I was thinking that had to have been part of the dream, too. “I remember the water coming up into the apartment. And then I tried to climb out onto the roof. And then …” I swallow, and I can still taste salt. It’s all hazy, but I clearly remember the flash of fear from losing my footing. Tumbling into the water, everything in my sight washing green-gray. Fighting to stay above the waves. “I fell in. But somehow I must have gotten onto the roof. I guess. I have no idea how.”

“Well, you’re safe now.” She plants a kiss on my forehead, I think because my Nancy Drew meanderings are getting me a little worked up. “Just rest.”

Still, the more I think about it, the more I know it’s a miracle I was able to get out of the water. “But …”

“I think you were lucky the boat came along.”

My ears prick up. “Boat? You mean Wish?”

And then he walks in, carrying a big bouquet of balloons. “Duh.”

“Oh” is all I can get out at first. I feel like I haven’t seen him in ages, because my heart starts to flutter. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see him. “Was that your dad’s boat?”

“Yeah,” he says with a smile. “It’s more like a yacht, if you ask him. And I’m going to be grounded for the rest of my life. He never lets me use the thing.”

He looks different somehow. For the first time, he’s wearing something other than that black shirt—a white crumpled tee that he probably slept in and equally wrinkled khaki shorts. He deposits the bouquet on the radiator under the window and sits beside me. “What’s up?” he asks, taking in my expression.

“Um. You got me out?” I ask.

He looks at me like I’ve grown antlers. “I said I would.”

“But there was a … tornado.”

He smirks. “I didn’t say it was easy.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Hey. That’s what friends are for, right?” He says it like he just offered me half of his Tastykake.

My mom backs toward the door. “Well. Better go check on Evie,” she says.

That’s right. Evie. Suddenly, it comes to me: Evie’s sick. “Is she …”

“She’s fine. Her fever is down,” my mom says before ducking out of the room.

Wish is sitting beside me, looking sheepish. He saved me … because he had to. He knows he’s guilty. All those suspicions must be evident on my face, because he narrows his eyes and says, “I’m sorry, Gwen. I would have told you everything if I thought you would believe me.”

“I would have believed anything you told me. You’re my best friend,” I say. “No matter what.”

“All right. I’ll tell you everything.” He looks away, takes a breath. “I lied to you.”

I brace myself, wondering which thing he said was a lie. “I’m a manly, godlike creature.” Or “I stayed with you all night in the bathroom.” Or maybe even “I don’t want to break up with you.” What? “About?”

“When I said I came back east to live closer to my dad because he wanted me back,” he says, shrugging. “You know my dad and I have never been on the best of terms. Truth is, I had to leave.”

“You had to?”

He exhales slowly. “It’s crazy.”

“Using the stars to control how people see you is crazy. But I believe you. Why did you have to leave?”

“How did you know about the Luminati?”

I’m relieved that he doesn’t deny it this time. “Christian. The guy who works at the bakery. He told me. He’s former Luminati.”

“Is he the one that you …” He scratches his head. “I guess that’s not important. I had to leave because I was in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The fevers. There were a lot of people in my school getting sick and my grandmother found out I was responsible for it. She warned me to stop but I couldn’t. And then this girl—someone I didn’t even know, from another school—died. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but some Luminati did. Her mother wanted answers and some people came forward and then suddenly there was this media storm and everyone was talking about the Luminati. It turned into this big witch hunt. My grandmother told me and my mom that we needed to leave, to get as far away from the hysteria as possible. And so we did.”

“Oh. I think that’s why Christian came here, too. I think his girlfriend might have been the one who died. But he stopped,” I say.

Wish sighs. “Good for him,” he says, his voice bitter. “I wish I could, Gwen. I wish it every day. I hate being someone I’m not.” He looks at the ground and rakes his hand through his hair. “I’ve tried to stop. I have. But I can’t. I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe you just need a little help,” I suggest.

He sighs again. “I’d hoped that I could come back here and just be the old me. Really I did. I even postponed the flight because I was thinking that would allow more time for it to wear off. But then Terra emailed me, saying that all the girls in school had seen my pictures on Facebook and thought I was so hot, and they couldn’t wait to see me. And I knew I was in trouble. I know it sounds stupid and superficial but I was afraid I’d disappoint everyone if I showed up looking like my old self. It took everything for me to get on that plane and come here. I almost didn’t.”

“But what is so bad about who you really are?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. Everything. Maybe it would have been okay if I had come here looking like a wallflower, if I had blended.”

“You were never a wallflower. Everyone always liked you.”

“But because of the pictures, everyone expected a rock star. And now everyone thinks that’s what I am. I don’t want to see the looks on their faces when they realize I’m just … me.”

“Actually, I don’t really like the rock star.”

He lets out a short laugh. “I noticed that. I think that’s the only thing that’s kept me sane.” Then he turns to me, a miserable look in his eyes. Even when he was the old Wish, I’ve never seen him look so uncertain about himself. “But I don’t think you will like what I really am. And you know, I don’t care about anyone else. I just don’t want to lose you.”

“You’re crazy,” I whisper, tears flooding my eyes. “You’re an idiot. Do you really think I care how you look?”

He shrugs. “Everybody else seems to.”

“I’m not them.” I put a hand on his arm, but he’s so warm it shocks me. I quickly pull my fingers away.

His frown deepens. “Sorry. We take on the properties of the stars. We glow. We radiate heat. My body temperature is over one hundred and ten degrees. And we pass that on to everyone around us. I guarantee you have a fever right now, too. A little one. But some people get it worse, are affected more.”

“You mean Evie?”

He nods. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. Destiny and Evie are skinny little things, so maybe that’s why.”

So I guess there’s one positive thing about the junk in my trunk. I think about what Evie said to me, about Erica and Wish at the party. She made it up. She was jealous of me, however unbelievable that may sound. I smile and sing-song, “Or maybe it’s because they have huge crushes on you.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. But big deal. They have crushes on someone who isn’t real.”

I struggle for a bit, trying to think of a way to convince him that everything lovable about him has nothing to do with his packaging. “Um. Hello? Don’t be dense. Don’t you realize how easy it is to fall in love with you? Your personality, your sweetness, your sense of humor …”

He studies me, as if to say, “Are you serious?” “I could say the same thing to you.”

I feel my cheeks reddening, but I don’t think it’s just from the fever. “Oh, please.”

“It’s true.”

“Oh.” Once I’ve remembered to breathe again, I say, “So what are you going to do now?”

He shakes his head sadly. “I want to stop, of course. I don’t know how, though. I am so sorry, Gwen. I screwed everything up. Everything. Because of my stupidity, I almost lost you. And you’re the only thing that matters to me.”

I swallow. I think about pressing the nurse’s button, because if it’s possible for someone to die of happiness, I’m almost there. “Really?”

“No, I’m lying.” His face is completely serious. Then he laughs. “Come on.”

“Where is your tattoo?” I ask.

“I’ll show you,” he says, and I hold my breath, wondering what possibly throbbing body part he might expose to me. But he stretches the neck of his T-shirt and there it is, in a nice, respectable place on his shoulder blade.

I scoot to the edge of the bed to look at it. It’s only the size of a dime and it looks like a slightly elaborate asterisk. “Oh. I can’t believe that little mark has so much power.”

“Tell me about it. I wish I could get rid of it. But people have tried to have them removed and I guess it doesn’t work.”

“I know. You could tattoo over it. It makes it less powerful.” He gives me a questioning look. “Christian told me.”

“Oh.” He looks at the mark and then starts to scratch it. “Gah. It itches like crazy. And even if I tattoo over it, it will still have power over me. I’m screwed.”

“No, you’re not. I’ll help you. We can do it together. Okay?”

He looks at me doubtfully. “We just went over this. Nothing can help me.”

“You are not screwed. You just need to know that you can do this without the stars. Because you have something better than them. Me.”

I put on my most determined face. I have no idea where I mustered the confidence for that, but it works, because he laughs, and not in a “you’ve got to be kidding” way, but in a way that says he believes that maybe I can help. “All right. How do you expect to help me?”

“Remember what you said in your email? About how you wanted to …”

He doesn’t even take the time to think it over, as if it was at the top of his mind, all this time. “Kiss you?”

“Yeah. Do you still want to?”

He nods. “Very much. Every day.”

“Oh.” I’m full-force blushing now. “Why didn’t you, then?”

“You didn’t seem interested.”

“Oh, no, I am. Just, I’ve never …” Am I really going to admit to this? I must have been hit on the head harder than I thought.

He puts a finger on my lips. “It’s okay.” I never imagined that my first kiss would take place on a hospital bed, under horrid fluorescent lighting, surrounded by beeping machines and bedpans. I always imagined stars, but screw that; I don’t like the stars very much right now. I also thought candlelight, classical music, soft tropical breezes would come into play. I also imagined that I would have just returned from a victorious whirlwind trip to
The Dr. Oz Show
, where I’d told an entire audience of jealous housewives how I’d managed to lose a hundred pounds.

I thought that I would be wearing something other than a gown with pink bunnies on it, open down the back. That I would have makeup on, and that my hair would smell of something other than seaweed and dead fish. That I would have, at the very least, brushed my teeth.

Oh, no, I think as he moves closer. No no no. “Wait, I need to, like … I just woke up. I’m disgusting. Do you have any toothpaste?”

He straightens, pretends to check his pockets. “Um. Not on me.”

“Oh.” The bathroom seems like miles away, but this is more important than a concussion or whatever is wrong with my head. This is an emergency. “Well, I can just—”

Then he grabs my hands in his own warm ones and laughs. “You’re perfect.” He puts a hand through my hair, starting at the crown and reaching to the back of my head, then gently pulls me to him, his soft lips meeting mine. I feel the heat of his skin against my clammy body, and maybe it’s enough to make steam, because everything blurs so much that I squeeze my eyes closed and just concentrate on the taste of him. It’s something even my mother’s best baked creation could never come close to. “See? You’re so sweet. Salty, actually,” he whispers.

“You’re not so bad yourself.” I can barely get out the words, since every part of me is trembling.

“You know,” he murmurs into my neck, “I think you may have just discovered the cure.”

And it only takes a minute before I am really, really glad we’re not
just
best friends.

M
ELINDA’S CORAL SUITE
has so much lace and macramé that it makes a young person age a few years just looking at it. But it’s home, for now. Amazingly, the top floor of her hotel got practically no damage, so she offered my mom, Evie, and me the best room. It’s cramped for three people, but it’s better than our other two options: the street or the Whitecap Room, in the attic. That’s Christian’s room. One morning, a week after the storm, I creep up there, and it’s stifling. Plus the ceiling is only six feet high, so it feels like living in a box.

I knock on the door and a voice calls, “Come in.” When I open it, someone is flopped on his stomach on the bed. Not Christian, though. Someone else.

“Um, I was looking for …”

He turns over. And I recognize the face. It
is
Christian. The tattoos are still there, but the dreads are gone. Instead, he has a buzz cut and looks like he’s about to join the navy. He closes a dusty old book, probably another coma-inducing literary masterpiece, and smiles a little. “Tell your boyfriend thanks for me.”

“What?” I’m too busy taking in his new look to hear him. We haven’t seen much of each other in the past week, but that’s because I’ve had so much going on. Recovering from my concussion. Sorting through the remains of the bakery. Spending nearly every other free moment with Wish, helping to cure him of his addiction to perfection. Obviously a lot of lip balm has been involved.

“I much prefer this weather.” Christian runs his hands through his bristly hair. “You like it? I’m trying something new. The clean-cut thing.”

“Oh. It’s nice.” I can see his eyes completely now, and they’re big and blue and totally intense. In fact, they’re so intense I find myself blank, trying to remember why I came up here. Oh, right. Melinda. “Melinda wants you downstairs. She needs help moving something. Something big. Like a sofa or something.”

“Ah. She needs the brawny man-help,” he says in a low, gruff voice. I expect him to begin flexing his muscles. Instead, he just gets to his feet and, ducking under the low ceiling, says, “Cool, thanks.” Then he smiles, and there’s a little shyness in the way he fidgets in front of me. “You look nice.”

I glance down. I was able to salvage some clothes from Melinda’s bag, so I’m wearing a red blouse instead of the ratty gym shorts and tee I’ve been wearing all week, while we were trying to sort through the mess in the bakery. Today’s the first day back to school, so I felt the need to take a little care with my appearance. “Thanks.”

He shrugs. “I guess things are finally working out for you and your boyfriend?”

“Yes, they are, thank you very much,” I say. I could say that it’s completely thanks to him, which it is, but I’m afraid he’ll get a big head.

I wait for the inevitable sarcastic remark, which comes a second later. He digs his hands into his pockets and says, “Too bad.”

I scowl at him.

“No, I mean …” He grins sheepishly. “We could have gone out or something. If I’d been the one to get you out, instead of that boyfriend of yours.”

I nearly gag on my tongue. Is he serious? “What?”

He takes a step toward the staircase and says, “I’m glad you’re okay now. I was worried about you.”

“Oh, well, th-th-thanks,” I stammer.

He’s staring at me like I have something in my teeth. “Wh-wh-what? You don’t believe me?”

“Honestly, no. I thought … I thought you hated me, really.”

He winks. “Maybe that’s just what I wanted you to think.”

“Oh, right. You
are
a scumbling screwfinger,” I groan, but I can’t help smiling.

He grins. “Have fun at school, beautiful,” he says, leaving me alone to listen to the creaking of the hardwood floors under his feet.

Beautiful. I repeat the word to myself once, twice, three times. This time, though, I don’t turn around to see what supermodel is standing behind me. I may even believe that he’s right, that that’s a perfect way to describe me, and has been all along.

I follow him down the stairs and go back to the Coral Suite, where Evie is standing by the window and munching on a handful of Cheerios. “I miss sticky buns so so so so much,” she groans, looking at the tiny little O’s in her hand with disdain.

“Tell me about it.” I thought I’d eaten enough white cream donuts to last me a lifetime, but it wasn’t even close.

She turns and studies me. “You’ve lost weight.”

“Really?” I ask, looking down at my body. Maybe it’s just the clothes. Or that ever since Evie got home from the hospital, she’s been super-nice to me. It’s her way of repaying me for the lie she told me about Wish and Erica, without having to come straight out and say “I’m sorry.” I can’t say I’ve paid much attention to my body recently; I just haven’t had the time. I know that not having the bakery around has made getting morning, afternoon, and evening pick-me-ups difficult, but I haven’t wanted them much. I’ve been busy with other things. I realize I haven’t even thought about weighing myself in days, which must be a new record for me.

She sighs and pushes a lace curtain back into place. Her head hangs. “My ride is here. Oh, joy.”

“Bus?” I ask.

She nods and swallows as if she has a sore throat, then fixes her dark sunglasses over her eyes.

“Wish’ll give you a ride.”

She nearly jumps into my arms. “Really?”

“Duh. Of course.”

“Yes!” She shouts, pumping her fist. She runs downstairs to tell the bus driver to begone and returns a few minutes later. “Thanks, Dough.”

“No prob,” I say.

“Rick is a turd,” she says under her breath.

“I could have told you that. In fact, I think … I seem to remember that I did,” I say.

“Whatever,” she mutters, shoving the entire handful of O’s into her mouth.

I shrug. “Well, he does have a really nice car. Who could blame you? I was kind of jealous myself.”

She swallows and gives me an “are you kidding?” look. “Of me? You are so weird, Dough.”

I hear a horn beeping outside. Wish. When we run out to his truck in the early-morning chill, he’s there, in his rumpled white T-shirt and sunglasses, chewing on his bottom lip and looking nervous. Supposedly, he’s different. I know that because when we go out together, he doesn’t turn heads like he used to. When we went to Friday’s, the waitress didn’t give him doe eyes and there was no drool glistening in the corner of her mouth. And his cell phone doesn’t ring every two seconds, like it used to. But to me, he looks perfect. He hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, he’s better than before. Can that be possible?

He pulls the front seat forward for Evie, and she’s about to climb into the back when she stops abruptly and stares at him, as if she doesn’t quite believe it’s him. She’s been too “busy” to help with the cleaning, so she hasn’t seen him in a while. “Wish?”

“It’s me,” he says, looking a little embarrassed.

“What happened to you?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. “Were you sick, too?”

“Um. Yeah. I guess,” he answers, looking at me and shrugging.

We all climb in. “Everything will be fine,” I say to him as he throws the truck into gear so roughly that the transmission squeals.

“Oh. I know,” he says. “I was just thinking.”

“Of what?”

“Whether I’d rather go to school today or eat a razor blade. I think school wins. Just by a hair.” He looks at me. “You?”

“Is it a safety razor blade?”

“No. Full razory goodness.”

“Yeah. You’re right. School.”

He thinks for a moment as we coast over the bridge. This time, the seagulls on the streetlights don’t seem to be paying us much attention. “Would you rather listen to Erica spout on about how awesome she is or lick the inside of a toilet bowl?”

“Um …” We look at each other for a moment. At the same time, we both nod and say, “Toilet bowl.”

Then we can’t stop laughing. Evie groans at us in the backseat and looks like she wishes she’d opted for the bus. “You two so belong together,” she mumbles, sinking in her seat and burying her face in her knobby knees.

We ignore her. We keep playing. The game goes on and on until the inside of the truck disappears, and once again we’re in the back of the bakery, with a stack of board games and a long, lazy summer day stretching ahead of us. It’s just me and Wish. Me and my best friend.

He fidgets with the radio buttons, unable to keep still, when we pull up to the school. I put my hand on his. It’s totally cool now, and mine feels hot against it. When we get out of the truck, Evie jogs ahead, pretending not to know us. Wish takes a big breath and looks at me. “Are you ready?”

I shrug. “For school? Never.”

He shakes his head, and for a moment I think he might just make a run for the woods and disappear. Instead, he stretches his arms out at his sides, as far as he can reach. “For Gone with the Wind.”

I laugh, spreading my arms like wings. “Oh, yeah. Always ready for that.”

“Then let’s go.”

We start across the street, and he grabs my hand. Lacing our fingers together, we race breathlessly toward the school, on the wind, like two crazy people, two kindred spirits, laughing all the way.