Chasing Stars
By Mercedes Siler
No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
© 2015 Mercedes Siler
All rights reserved.
Dedication
For the women brave enough to love other mother’s children.
Thank you to all of my adoptive mothers.
Chapter One
Nikki
When I came home from work at the diner my mom was in the kitchen tearing through the drawers and cabinets, looking for any leftover booze or pills. I locked myself in my room and took two anxiety pills instead of just one.
It’s safer now that she’s locked herself in her own room, singing along to sad music she strums on her old guitar.
The house is dark with afternoon shadow. The curtains are all drawn and there’s always a musty smell, like sleep, no matter how much incense I burn or how often I wash and clean. It’s hopeless.
The TV is on in my little brother’s room. The volume is so low it’s a quiet murmur.
I make my way back there, stepping over clothes, books, toys, and a backpack, that lead like breadcrumbs to his room. I sit on the edge of his bed and look at his little shadow watching TV. “Hey, what’d you eat for dinner?” I whisper.
He looks at me, his eyes adjusting. He squints and nods and looks back at the TV.
“What’d you eat?” I laugh, ruffling his hair and looking him over. He’s a scrawny little nine-year-old. He doesn’t look much like our mom and me.
He flinches away, ticklish. “A mayonnaise sandwich.”
“No meat?” I return his little kid smile.
He shakes his head. “I was going to eat a bologna sandwich but I smelled it and it smelled bad.”
Oh my God. “Did you throw it away?”
“I fed it to Turtle. She liked it.”
I look at the ugly tortoiseshell cat curled by his feet. She would like bad bologna. I scratch her head.
“I need a dollar for lunch tomorrow. And two dollars to pay back Jacob. I borrowed money from him.”
I hate this.
I don’t have it all together. He’s been going to school for five years and I still don’t remember to give him lunch money when he needs it. I dig my wallet out of my purse and count out money for him. “One for lunch, two to pay Jacob back, and the rest should last ‘til Wednesday night when I get paid again. I’ll put money on your lunch account at school. Next time let me know before you run out of money.” I kiss his forehead.
“I tried to call you when I got home but the phone’s off again.”
Oh my God. “Okay. I’ll deal with it.” My cell phone buzzes and I pull it out of my purse. It’s my best friend Persephone. She’s back from her dad’s house and wants me to come over. “Want to come with me to Persephone’s?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to miss my shows.”
I hate leaving him. But I also want to be nineteen. I want to be able to go to my best friend’s house and shoot the shit. It makes my stomach churn. It’s why I have anxiety pills.
“Or,” he raises his eyebrows, “you can take me over to Jacob’s house so I can spend the night. Then I can watch TV with him.”
That sounds like a better idea.
We get ready and skirt the area around her room on the way out. I grab some double cheeseburgers on the way so he can share with his friend, and after letting him off, I make my way back to Persephone’s.
The walls and curtains in my best friend’s room have been the same since we were kids. We were thirteen and begged her mom, Natalie, to let us decorate her room ourselves. We bought paint that was the color of a brown paper bag, and Sharpies. We painted while Natalie babysat my little brother. He was just a baby then and my mom wouldn’t do anything for him. When we were done painting, we drew flowers and dragons, castles and unicorns. The curtains were one of my first solo sewing projects and they’re a little wonky at the bottom. Lately whenever Persephone starts going on and on about her horrible life, I find myself staring at the uneven stitches, the puckered fabric.
Which is what I’m doing now.
“Nikki! Are you even listening to me?”
She’s standing there, hands on hips, daring me to say I wasn’t. Her long black hair is in two braids down her back. She’s lean and tall like her twin brother, Ares. I am not. And right now my wavy hair is pushed back with combs because I just can’t let the pinup look go. I really don’t know what she was talking about except that it was probably negative, it’s always something negative.
“What is going on with you?” Persephone asks, her eyebrows furrowed.
I’ve been listening to her go on and on about her mom and step-dad since I got here and the anti-anxiety medicine is hitting me real hard. She literally just got back from her dad’s house and she’s already starting back in on them again. Her twin brother, Ares, came back with his long hair chopped off and extra brooding eyes. She came back even more self-absorbed. And I am trying my hardest to keep myself together. “I’m fine. I’m just really hungry. I didn’t eat because I thought we were going out.” I look at the stitches again, finding a comfortable peace in the way they look.
“Are you high?”
I could be high. “I’m just tired. I still have two jobs. You’ve been gone all summer but my life has stayed the same.”
She rolls her eyes and gets back to unpacking. “Well, I have to unpack still and I’m broke.”
I roll my eyes back and stand, straightening my shorts and grabbing my thrift store purse. “Bye, then.”
“Bye.”
I leave the room and close the door behind me harder than I had planned. Natalie and her husband Marc aren’t home and the house isn’t as friendly with just Persephone. It’s gloomy and dark, shadows everywhere as dusk falls.
I almost run into Ares at the front door as he reaches for the doorknob, flashing a glimpse of his strong, sinewy forearm.
I look up at his expressionless face as he looks down at me, paused. I give him my best waitress smile. “Hey, sailor. Didn’t see you there.” I think he got bigger over the summer. I’ve seen it happen before, like the summer we were all fourteen and he came back towering over us, but this is a different bigger. He has a manly presence and smell to him. Nineteen looks great on him.
He rolls his eyes like his sister and makes his exit, putting his hair into short braids and rubber banding them at the nap of his neck, a sketch pad hanging out of the back pocket of his low-slung jeans. I follow him like a zombie curious about the taste of his flesh.
He looks back at me and keeps walking, down the familiar trail to the stream along the woods in the lot next to his house. Everything glows green as I follow him, chatting about my summer. Only the superficial stuff like the lipstick I’m in love with and this guy that gave me a fifty dollar tip the other day and didn’t even ask for my number. And about Robert, the flirty guy that’s in love with Persephone but not past flirting with me. Robert wants me to go-go dance at one of his clubs. “What do you think? He says they make a lot of money and dancing is my thing, you know? How many people can say they get paid good money for doing their thing?” I know I’m rambling but I can’t stop.
And I run into his back.
He grabs me, putting his hand over my mouth as I resist the urge to fight and bite him, and run away, only because I know he won’t hurt me.
He looks into
my eyes and shushes me, turning my head so I can see the deer and her fawn on the trail ahead of us. He pulls me down into a crouch and releases my mouth, my heart pounding in my chest, and we watch the deer together in silence while I sneak glances at his hands. I know him well enough to know that the black stains around and under his nails are charcoal. He sketched a picture of me and Persephone sitting under that tree a couple of summers ago. Persephone made fun of him the whole time and he still made her as gorgeous as she is.
The deer walk away and we rise.
I go to sit under the tree and he skips rocks until Persephone texts me and tells me to tell Ares to take us out to dinner. “Persephone told me to tell you to take us out to dinner.”
He cuts his eyes across to me.
I shrug. “Nothing ever really changes, right? Even with short hair you’re still you, Persephone is still Persephone.”
“And you’re still you.”
“Yep. I’m still me.”
Ugh.
Chapter Two
Ares
“Why were you such a jerk to her?” Nikki asks, more serious than I’ve seen her in a long time.
I give a half-hearted shrug, looking across the table at her. My twin sister just stormed out of the diner after I made insinuations about her sex-life and the randomness of it. Jimmy was here within five minutes of her stepping outside so I really think it was a well-orchestrated exit. I just played her game a little too well. She was trying to embarrass me by bragging about how I couldn’t kill a deer while we were hunting at our dad’s house, so I fought back. I can’t stand it when she teases me about the things I believe in like we’re still kids. Especially around Nikki.
Before, when they had their friends and I had mine, it wasn’t as much of a problem. But now we’re here, and friends are there, and this is how it ends – me driving because Persephone wants food and Nikki doesn’t want to be a bother but she doesn’t want to go home and I want to know why.
Nikki shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Whatever.” She sighs and looks at her uneaten food. “Why didn’t you shoot the deer?”
I sit straighter and frown, touching the ends of my hair. Being stuck at my dad’s house over the summer, being around the asshole I hope I never become, it gave me a lot to think about. Persephone guilt-tripped me into going by saying it might be the last time we really get to spend together. I would have declined like every other summer since I was sixteen if it hadn’t worked. He’s everything I don’t want to be and the whole time I was there brought back bad memories.
But in the end, a sense of peace came over me. I’m still mad and I still hate my dad, but my life is mine to live. So I cut my hair in front of the bathroom mirror, as a symbol to be rid of the past, starting fresh.
“I guess,” I begin, “it was because it wasn’t trying to bite my leg off. It was just standing there with its frightened doe eyes and I wasn’t hungry,” I explain, honest.
She raises a perfectly flirty eyebrow. “We should hang out sometime. We obviously don’t need Persephone.”
I look at her, sweat breaking out on my skin and I don’t say anything.
She shields herself like she thinks my silence is pure rejection. “Wow,” she says. “I have no idea what came over me.” She looks away.
“Yeah, well, let’s go find my sister.” I wish I could have just agreed.
She sighs and eats a French fry. “Go ahead. I’ll make it to my car eventually. I don’t want to go home right away.”
Her eyes are dark brown and doe-like. Her hair is a beautiful shade of mahogany and long, pinned back in combs like a pinup. “Why not?”
“Why not what?” She dips a French fry in ketchup.
“Why don’t you want to go home?”
She shrugs, braving her aloneness, picking at her food. “You know that sleepy smell in a dark room that makes you want to cry? When it feels like you’ll never get out of there alive? That’s my life.” She looks away to hide her sadness and smiles. “Look at that little kid.”
I look to where she’s looking, overwhelmed with her words. There’s a baby with ice cream all over his face.
“Were you the sort of kid that got ice cream all over your face?” she asks.
I sit back. “Probably – if Persephone was at all involved.” I smile a half smile.
“See? You’re totally cute now, when you’re talking and not scowling like usual.” She puts on a fake scowly face, which is really adorable.
I let myself smile all the way across. It feels good, but also makes me shy. I look into her eyes and let it go a little too long and she ducks her head with a secret smile. “So, Ares, how have you been lately?”
“Fine.” My speech is beginning to constrict from the shyness but I’m fighting it. I don’t want it to keep us from talking.
“What are your plans now that you’re back?”
“Work construction with Marc, and at The Grind. And school. Like always. I applied for an artist grant I probably won’t get. But if I do get it, I will be going to New York for six months.” I breathe carefully. I am really hoping it happens. I have some pieces in mind for the showing I would do if I got the grant, all based on this last summer we spent at my dad’s.
My mom knows one of the people behind the scenes but I wouldn’t let her try to pull strings. Every day I don’t get an email from them I regret it, though. Especially since construction is hot and sweaty, and the foreman for this building is a bigoted asshole who hates me.
“Yeah?” she asks and looks at me with interest.
I nod. It’s a chance to work with an agent and have curated shows with other up-and-coming artists. All while taking classes at the art school.
“You have parents who love you and take care of you; why are you working so hard?”
“Isn’t the idea to grow up, work hard and move on?”
“Will you move out with Persephone?”
God, no. I raise an eyebrow and give another half-smile. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
She moves her feet toward me under the table, between my open feet, and it makes my heart race. Shit. “Because I think the idea of moving out is to be free from oppression, right?” I look around the diner, all the people and families and couples…and us. I look back at her, my heart racing at her nearness. “Are you going to move out with Persephone?” My life hinges on this answer. Yes and maybe she’s not more than I thought she was; no and the world is unknown to me.
She shakes her head. “I have to take care of Dexter. I’m the only thing he has.” She’s quiet, looking at her food. She sighs and pulls her feet back and sits cross-legged in the booth.
“Why? What’s wrong with your mom?” We’ve all known her home-life was bad, but not exactly why, and she never brings it up. This is huge. She’s telling me what she hasn’t told anyone. Not my sister or mother.
“Who knows? All I know is that I have to take care of Dexter. I have to get him to adulthood.” Her eyes fill with tears.
She always brings him when she sleeps over. Always has. I’ve never been in her house even though we’ve known her and she’s been best friends with my sister since we were eleven. When it was time to go back-to-school shopping she’d come with us and have a wad of cash. She’d buy Dexter’s clothes too. She’s always kind of been on this different plane while pretending really well that she’s still on ours. She’s my sister’s best friend, which makes me think she has to be just like her.
I don’t know which is right, logic or my heart.
The whole time I was at my dad’s house I kept painting pictures of her in my mind. It’s not a good idea to have feelings for her. I could be leaving. And my sister would hate it. And Nikki needs my sister’s friendship. And my mother. She’s so much a part of my world if things didn’t work out it wouldn’t be good. It would kill her to lose them because of me. “If my mom wasn’t a good person, I’d want to get away from her.”
She looks at me quickly, quizzical. “Wou
ld you?”
“I think so.”
“Or maybe you’d hope every day when you woke up that things would be different today.” She frowns and looks away, toward the little kid again. “I never got ice cream all over my face.”
I frown at the quick change of subject but go with it. “Why not?”
She looks at me, sad and old at just nineteen. “I knew where my mouth was.” She grins with tear-sparkly eyes and I fall in love with her.
Chapter Three
Nikki
My cell rings. It’s Persephone.
“Yo.” I scan the kids streaming out of the community center for Dexter. It’s the last day of the summer school program he’s in so I didn’t have to worry about him while I was at work. I’m waiting for him in my crappy, ten-year-old car and the rest of the kids are going to their parents’ vans and SUV’s.
“Hey! Guess what!”
I grin at her excitement. She’s like a little kid. “What?” Dexter walks toward my stupid old car with a pack of rowdy boys. I watch him walk. I worry about him because in a few years they’re going to be trouble and I won’t know what to do. All he has is me and his friends and we’re not that good of influences.
“Ares got his ass beat today at work! He got in a fight with this asshole fat guy everybody hates!”
My smile drops off my face. “Is he okay?” I hold my stomach as it spasms with pain.
“Yeah…I guess. I didn’t think about it. My mom and Marc are with him at the hospital. Come over and keep me company.”
It’s been a while since he got in a fight. The last time was when he beat up Jimmy after he cheated on Persephone the first time. He’s quiet but he has a temper. Tenth grade was pretty rough, but after that he joined track and started running. I thought it fixed him.
I look at the clock as Dex climbs in. “I have to be at work at six.”
“Which work?”
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