Where the Stars Still Shine (6 page)

“This place is amazing!” Kat flops down beside me and squeezes a silky pink-and-gold throw pillow to her chest. “You are so lucky! I would kill to have my own
room, but instead I have to share it with an annoying nine-year-old.”

Even though the cabinets are a little shabby, the trailer is nicer than most places I’ve lived. It’s clean and all the homey touches—curtains, throw pillows, a couple of hanging houseplants, and a multicolored woven rug—make it clear that Phoebe put some thought into decorating it. She couldn’t have guessed purple is my favorite color. Unless it’s always been my favorite color and Greg remembered. With him it seems entirely possible.

“Anyway,” Kat goes on. “Callie, this is Nick Adamidis, my baseball-playing physics nerd.” The dark-haired one waves at me. “And this is his brother by another mother, Connor Madsen. He’s our token non-Greek friend.”

“Hey.” His voice is surprisingly deep for someone with such a boyish face.

“So, Callie,” Kat says. “The three of us are going to watch the original
Star Wars
trilogy back-to-back at Nick’s house tonight and Greg already gave his permission for you to join us. Wanna come?”

“I, um—” I glance at the suitcase. What’s one more day? “Sure.”

“Perfect.” Kat stands up and pushes Nick toward the door. “You two go outside and play catch or something
while I help Callie get ready. I’m pretty sure I saw a football out there.”

I look down at my red shirt. I’ve worn it every day because Phoebe has not had time to take me shopping and the only other one I own is a faded green T-shirt that bears the Girl Scouts logo with the words
Got cookies?
printed beneath it. Ancilla threw away the holey thermal I was wearing the night my mom was arrested. My red shirt has a small toothpaste stain near the hem, but maybe no one will notice if we’re watching movies. “Can’t I—”

Kat shuts the door. “We’re not really going to Nick’s house for movies. We’re going to a party. So where do you keep your clothes?”

She reaches for my brown suitcase. As she lifts it, the handle breaks, and when the case hits the floor, the latch opens, scattering my books, journal, and the green Girl Scouts T-shirt. “Oh my God, Callie, I’m so sorry.” She squats down and starts picking up the books, but my feet are rooted to the trailer floor and I want to cry.

My suitcase is broken.

“I’ll buy you a new one or fix this one or find another one on eBay,” she babbles. “Whatever you want.”

“It’s okay,” I say, even though it’s not remotely okay. That stupid old brown suitcase—the one I didn’t even want—was a link to Mom. My way back to her.

“Are you sure?” Kat is gentle with the books as she stacks them in a neat pile, with my journal on the top.

I nod and hope the stretch of my lips seems like a real smile. “I’m sure.”

“Okay, so where
do
you keep your clothes?” she asks, as she folds the T-shirt. I point to the red shirt I’m wearing and the green one in her hands.

“
That’s it?
”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, um—we really need to go shopping.” Kat pulls at her lower lip. “Okay, I have an idea. Take off your jeans.” She unbuttons the red plaid schoolgirl-style skirt she’s wearing, shimmies out of it, and then hands it to me. Besides taking coffee from strangers and oversharing about her home life, she also seems perfectly at ease standing around in her underwear. “Swap me.”

It takes longer for me to get out of my jeans. I haven’t worn a skirt since I was a little girl and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with having so much of me exposed. Still, I make the exchange. It seems easier to do this than think about my broken suitcase. I’m taller, but we’re about the same size, so her skirt fits me, and my jeans—although a little too long—fit her. She rolls up the hems.

Kat gives me the green T-shirt. “Put this on,” she says, then opens the door a crack. I hear the thump of a football being passed. “Nick, I need your socks.”

“They’re kind of busy right now,” he says. “Being on my feet and all.”

She snaps her fingers. “Socks. Now.”

By the time I get the shirt pulled over my head, Kat has Nick’s socks in her hand. They’re ankle-high white athletic-style with two green stripes around the top. She hands them to me. “Don’t worry,” she says. “He put them on clean before we came over.”

When I’m finished, Kat walks around me, surveying her fashion decisions. “You desperately need a haircut,” she says finally. My hair hangs beyond the middle of my back, a mess of snarled curls, unintentional dreadlocks, and brassy gold ends from a grown-out dye-job disguise that Mom insisted I needed. “But you look hot. In fact, I wouldn’t even do makeup. Just—” She rummages around in her purse until she unearths a Dr Pepper–flavored lip balm. “Use this. It’ll give you a hint of color.”

“Perfect,” she says, as I apply the balm. “Ready?”

“No.”

She laughs as if I’m joking and pulls me out into the backyard.

“Looking good, Cal,” Nick says, lobbing the football at Connor, who doesn’t even attempt to catch it. Instead, he stares at me with an expression I’ve seen on other faces. One that makes me want to turn around, but Kat
is gripping my hand and I can’t. “And you look mighty fine in those jeans, kitty cat.”

She kisses Nick’s cheek, then uses her thumb to rub away the shine of her lip gloss on his skin. “Let’s go.”

Greg comes out of the house and his eyebrows pull together when he sees what I’m wearing. The skirt is shorter than anything I’ve ever worn. “Do you have your phone?” he asks.

I hold it up so he can see it. I’m not sure I remember how to use it, but I have it.

“Don’t be late,” he says, and I’m sure he’s already figured out we’re not going to watch
Star Wars
movies. “Call if you need me.”

“So what do you think of Connor?” Kat asks, as we stand at the kitchen island in the largest house I’ve ever seen. It belongs to a classmate of Kat’s whose parents are out of town. Except for the Ruskins’ house, every place I’ve lived in could fit into this house, all at the same time. And nearly every window has a view of the Gulf of Mexico. She pours a generous shot of coconut rum into a blue plastic cup and tops it off with a splash of pineapple juice. The countertop is littered with half-empty liquor bottles, a variety of sodas and juices, and
blue cups like hers. And mine. Except mine contains the same beer I’ve been nursing since we got here.

“He’s—” Connor opened the car door for me when the four of us left Greg’s house and stammered that I looked pretty. Not enough information to form an opinion. “He seems nice.”

“He totally is.” Kat nods. “He’s super shy, but he
really
likes you.”

I glance up and he’s staring at me again. It’s not predatory, the way he looks at me. Nor is it the same as the other night with Alex Kosta, when the air between us felt alive. Kat is wrong. Connor doesn’t know me so he can’t
really
like me. He likes looking at my face. He likes the shape of my body. There is a difference.

“You should go talk to him,” she says, as Nick comes up with a fish-shaped tray filled with tiny plastic cups.

“Ladies, have a shot.”

Kat picks one up and sniffs it. “What is it?”

“I call it a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster,” he says. The
Hitchhiker’s Guide
reference makes me laugh. “But basically, it’s vodka, lemon juice, and sugar.”

She hands one to me and raises hers in a toast. “To Callie”—she leans in close to me and lowers her voice—“and Connor.”

I roll my eyes.

“To life, the universe, and everything,” Nick says.

The vodka makes my eyes sting, but the shot makes me feel warm inside. It makes me want to have another. A million. As many as it takes to feel this way all the time.

Nick places the fish tray of shots on the countertop and slides his arm around Kat’s waist. “Wanna go in the hot tub with me, kitty cat?”

“I didn’t bring a suit.”

He waggles his eyebrows and pretends to leer at her. “Exactly.”

She shoulder-bumps him. “Let’s go stick our feet in the pool.”

“That works.” Nick takes her hand. “And much easier to do now that I’m
not wearing socks
.”

They don’t ask me if I want to join them, and I don’t follow. I stand at the kitchen island like a stone in the middle of a stream. Party noise swirls around me. Shouts and splashes from the pool in the backyard. The bone-jarring thump of the bass from the stereo. The chattering of girls, clustered like flocks of colorful birds. Explosions from the zombie-killing video game rage on the large-screen television.

Connor breaks his gaze from the video carnage to look at me. When he notices Kat and Nick are gone, he hands the game controller to the guy sitting beside him on the couch and stands. His puppy-dog eyes ask
permission to approach. I pull my lower lip between my teeth, debating whether I’m ready for this. Except Connor mistakes it for coy approval and a shy grin spreads across his face. I take a gulp of warm beer as he makes his way through the crowded living room. Ready or not, here he comes.

“Hey.” He stands beside me. “Doing okay?”

“It’s kind of loud.”

Connor nods. “It always is.”

“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask. “Maybe go for a walk?”

Again with the grin, his teeth so white against his tanned skin. “Sure.”

He tops off my cup with fresh beer and pours one for himself. I hook my index finger around his pinkie as he leads me through the tight crowd, passing a group of girls who whisper-wonder who I am, and an older guy—one who doesn’t look as if he belongs at a party full of teenagers—tells me my ass looks fine, his cigarette breath fanning my face. It’s so noisy that I’m not even sure I heard him correctly, but when I glance back, he winks at me. My insides trembling, I press closer to Connor until we’re out of the house. The air is cooler, and it creeps beneath my hair, unsticking it from the back of my neck. Connor shifts his grip so all of his hand is holding all of mine. His palm is damp. “Is, um—is this okay?”

He doesn’t have Danny’s gift for sweet talk, or the bad-boy charm Matt possessed—he was the one before Danny—but Connor’s bashfulness is appealing. It’s non-aggressive. Safe.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

My brain rummages through my mental filing cabinet for small talk, selecting and discarding topics, as we walk down the sidewalk. Connor doesn’t say anything either, and the silence stretches unbearably long. I fill the space with sips of beer and, judging by the view from the corner of my eye, he does the same.

Three houses down, we reach a vacant lot.

“Here,” he says. “You can see the water a lot better from here.”

At the end of the grassy lot, Connor removes his blue plaid shirt and spreads it on the ground. Beneath it, he wears a plain white T-shirt.

“You can sit on it,” he says. “Kat will kill you if you ruin her skirt.”

He lowers himself beside me, his legs stretched out alongside mine. The white sliver moon is reflected in fractured pieces across the surface of the water. It’s so beautiful it makes my eyes glaze with tears. I don’t want to cry in front of Connor.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.” I wipe my face on my sleeve. It isn’t that
I wish my mom was here to see this, because somewhere along the way she lost her wonder for the world. But it’s wrong—so wrong—that I’ve never seen this before. I mean, the moon and stars are everywhere, but I don’t remember being
here
. And it’s all her fault.

“So, I was thinking—”

I press my lips against his, cutting off whatever it is he’s going to say. I’m too angry to talk. And I
don’t
want to think.

Connor’s brain eventually realizes what his lips are doing and his arms come around me. When he kisses back, his tongue tastes of beer and orange Tic Tacs, which is more pleasant than it sounds. His hands are warm and big on the back of my shirt as he holds them there. He doesn’t try to take off my clothes. Danny would have had me out of my underwear by now. Of course, Danny would have never given me his shirt to sit on and I’d have gone home with bits of grass and sand on my ass.

“Wow,” Connor says as he exhales in the space between kisses. “That was—”

“Don’t talk.” Kissing him again, I straddle his hips. His faded jeans are soft against my thighs.

His hands hang in midair for a moment, as if he’s uncertain where to put them. He decides on my lower back, right above where my T-shirt rides up, but I can
feel some of his fingers against my bare skin. Again, he doesn’t move his hands, doesn’t reach under my shirt to unhook my bra. It’s like all but his lips are frozen.

Connor baffles me. He doesn’t act like any boy I’ve ever met. I pull my mouth away from his and reach for the hem of my shirt.

“I was thinking maybe we could—” Connor’s words die an instant death as my shirt slides up over my head. His eyes flicker to my half-naked chest before he looks away. “What, um—” His gaze is fixed on something over my shoulder. Almost as if he’s talking to someone else, as if I’m not even here. “Are we—?”

My face goes hot as it hits me. I’ve read this wrong. “I thought—” How could he not want me? He’s a
boy
. This makes no sense at all. “Forget it.”