Chasing Stars

by Siler, Mercedes

  “And just because I say I might not come back doesn’t mean I’ll never see you again. I’m the one who’s been telling you to come with me,” I explain. I hold up my hand with a smile. “But no pressure.”

  She shakes her head. “Shut up.”

  I look at my phone as it starts ringing. The caller ID says it’s Marc so I defer the call and put it back in my sweatshirt pocket. I know why he’s calling and I don’t want to hear it.

  It starts ringing again immediately.

  He probably won’t stop until I answer.

  “Who is it?”

  “Marc,” I answer her. “He’s probably making sure you’re okay and that I’m not going to go on a murderous rampage.” I put the phone to my ear.

  “Ares,” Marc’s dad voice comes across, “I know what’s going on. I know you’re not going to do anything stupid because you’re not stupid because I raised you to be smart. Hear me?”

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  I hang up and put my phone back in my pocket.

  She looks at me, confused. “Should I be worried?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want you to worry about anything.”

  She looks at me a long time. “Okay. You can take me to the police station. I’m going to tell them what he said and did and it was because of what my mom told him. Okay? They’ll probably have to take a DNA sample from you, too, just in case.”

  I nod. “Sounds good to me.”

  “But I don’t want you going after him and getting into trouble.”

  “I won’t get into trouble.”

  “I have to apologize to your mom for yelling at her.”

  I shrug. “She loves you lots.”

  “I love her lots too.” She stands, dusting her butt off and helping me. “Okay. Let’s get this over with so things can go back to normal.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Ares

  I park the Honda a block away from the coffee shop and take my helmet off. My hair is in two braids and my bloodlust has taken over my entire body. I walk to the café and grab the door but before I can open it Marc has materialized from nowhere to grab me first. I feel my eyes flash into a murderous glare.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? This is his place of business.”

  He attacked her in her sleep so, yeah, I’m sure.

  “Okay. Then you’re gonna take my lead, okay? Don’t worry, you can take what’s yours, I’m just going to keep you out of trouble. Let’s do this.”

  He walks in and I’m forced to follow, curious.

  The guy is behind the counter flirting with one of his employees. I know it’s him because he has a fat lip, scratches on his neck, and a knot above his temple. I wonder what he told everyone about how he got it.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I have this rush of pride that my pretty girl did that to him and all she got was a bruise on her mouth. Remembering the bruise makes me want to make him bleed. Remembering he put his shit on her makes me want to kill him.

  Marc orders coffee and when his order comes he walks to the bar to get it and gets his attention. “Hey, man, Noah, right? You got a minute?” he asks, beckoning and motioning him outside. The guy looks at him with his stupid cock face and follows us outside and to the little alley next to the store.

  “What’s goin’ on? Is this about the car?” he asks, squirrely.

  “No, motherfucker, this is about the girl you tried to fuck with last night.” Marc gives me a signal.

  I take a breath of pure giddiness. Marc’s letting me do this. Fuck yes.

  I grab him and slam him into the wall, looking into his weaselly face. I slam him again, the red fury getting in the way of my vision. All I see is her crying and throwing up and how small and scared she looked as they led her away at the police station to get the sample of this piece of shit’s DNA from her. I hate him and I want him to hurt like she’s been hurt and I’ve been hurt….

  “Remember what I said,” Marc says, grabbing me as I try to kick him. I get one good kick in before Marc gets ahold of me and walks me away, tears stinging my eyes.

  This is why I never want to have kids. Because I like this feeling.

  Marc waits for me to get my helmet on and get on my bike and now he walks to his truck two spaces behind and takes off, me following. Marc waves as I turn off to go to the diner to pick her up and I wave back.

  My hands are still shaking with adrenaline and I want to put it somewhere.

  I pull into the parking lot and cruise by the window slow and see her smile widely, beaming at me. I wave and she waves back and mouths to me she’ll be done in a minute.

  She’s the most beautiful woman.

  I park and take my helmet off to wait. I tilt my head and feel the cold fall on my cheeks.

  Her fingers slide along my jaw and throat. I open my eyes slowly and pull her onto my lap, her warmth seeping into me immediately. I close my eyes and tilt my head again as she kisses my throat and neck and collarbone. I hold her tight, my arms encircling her.

  “Do you think you can sneak in and sleep with me? I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Yes.” I kiss her neck and her cheek.

  “Let’s go.” She gets onto the back and puts the spare helmet on.

  ✽✽✽

  I wake up to twinges of pain in my hip and look around, disoriented. There’s faint grayness coming in through the window. I move my hands over her warm body and sink into contentedness.

  But my hip still hurts.

  I try to sleep through it but it won’t work.

  I scoot her off me gently.

  She sighs in her sleep and snuggles against me.

  I kiss her softly, covering her with her blanket.

  I’m going to come back from New York. When I do, we’re going to have our own place.

  I make my way out of the bed, stepping into my sweats, and slip out the door silently. I make my way to the kitchen. Marc is leaning against the counter, drinking his coffee with his luggage by his feet, getting ready to leave for his new jobsite in Montana.

  “While she’s staying with us I don’t want you sleeping together under my roof, okay? Your mama would flip her lid if she found out,” he warns.

  I know. It was necessary.

  “Is she okay?”

  I nod.

  “And you?”

  I take a deep breath. I want to talk to him. I want to speak, to tell him about things and tell him how much I love him and want him to be my real dad and how sometimes I call him Dad in my head, but I open my mouth and my vocal cords are paralyzed.

  He’s watching me fight with myself, pensive, wanting so bad to hear me talk.

  I close my mouth and leave to get dressed. I pull my running shoes on and go running in the rain.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Nikki

  I’ve been borrowing Persephone’s clothes the past couple of days so I wouldn’t have to go home, but I need my things.

  Natalie is gone on her photography trip and Marc has gone to a jobsite in Montana.

  Ares is leaving in days. He tells me he loves me and he cares but I’m still completely retarded by life to believe him and I still have my mom and Dexter.

  I haven’t seen her since I left. I know the cops would have gotten her statement and everything. Last time we fought she stabbed me. I don’t know what’s going to happen this time. The most important thing is to not let her kill me and to keep Dexter safe.

  But I don’t think she’d kill me. She needs me.

  We’re eating lunch before going to the house.

  “What’s the matter with you guys? You look like your favorite pair of pants got holes in their crotches,” Persephone says and Dexter laughs.

  It’s not like that. I could fix that. This is not fixable.

  Ares looks out the restaurant window. He taps my foot and points.

  There are deer in the parking lot and he knows I like to see them.

&
nbsp; I smile, not able to get the sadness completely out of my face.

  “Can I ride in the trunk seat?” Dexter asks Ares, hopping around him as we walk to the car. Ares nods and opens the trunk, moving sports equipment and art supplies to make the seat out.

  Persephone runs back to the restaurant, hand over her mouth and stomach. If she wasn’t such a ninny she probably could have done the whole track team too.

  He frowns. “What’s going on?”

  I shrug. “She’s been complaining about feeling sick.

  “She’d tell you if she was knocked up, right?”

  “I don’t know. But if you think a girl is pregnant every time she feels sick, you’re going to die of paranoia. And I’m sure she’d handle it the way she wanted to handle it if she was.”

  “Where’d Persephone go?” Dexter asks, turning around.

  “She had to pee,” I answer, not wanting to make a big deal. “I want you to stay in the car while I run in to get stuff, okay? No matter what happens, do not come in.”

  “Yeah. I ain’t goin’ in there. I wouldn’t go in for a thousand dollars.”

  “What about two thousand?” Ares asks. “Double your money, right there.”

  “No. Maybe five thousand,” he concedes.

  Persephone slides into the backseat and closes the door. “I think I must have eaten something bad. Do any of you guys feel sick?” she asks.

  We all shake our heads and Ares drives to my house, playing the radio loud.

  I pause before gathering enough courage to go.

  I don’t want her to cut my face or my hair.

  She’ll try to do something to ruin me forever so no one will want me and I’ll want to die. She wants to break me.

  I have to go though. There are important things in there that I need to get. I have to say goodbye to her. No matter how hurtful she is, she’s my mother and I need to end it.

  “You okay? Do you need someone to come with you?” Ares asks, concerned.

  “Yeah, can you come and stay right outside? Just in case?”

  “You know, you can buy new stuff,” he says, quiet.

  I put on my waitress smile. “Yeah, but my lucky undies are in there. I can’t get lucky without them. I can’t be without for long.” I look at the house, filled with dread, while he scowls at me. “Okay. I’m going in.”

  “If she made those little cake things I want one,” Dexter says.

  “Me too,” Persephone says, head in the corner and eyes closed.

  “She makes that when she likes me. I don’t think she likes me right now.” I smile, trying to be brave. I get out and walk up, Ares following. I put my key in the door. “Stay here and don’t believe anything she says.”

  The door opens and my mother looks me over with one eyebrow up. “What are you doing here, shalava?” she asks, sinister.

  “I came to get my stuff. Dexter and I are leaving.”

  Tears fill her eyes. “They’ll make you leave. They’ll find out you’ve seduced their golden boy. They won’t let you stay. They’ll see who you are. The mother won’t let you stay, especially when she thinks the boy won’t be enough for you and you’ll move on to the real man of the house.”

  “I’m only staying there until I find my feet. You hurt me too much this time. I can’t let you hurt me anymore. I’m too old.” I push past her to get into the house. The windows are open and it looks relatively clean. It smells fresh.

  “Please. How is that hurting you?”

  I look at her, eyebrows up. “You’re completely insane.”

  “It’s not like it would have been your very first time, myshka.” She lifts a shoulder in an innocent shrug while tears run down her cheeks.

  “But I didn’t want it. I don’t want any of that. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting.”

  “Shluha vokzal naja!” Her face twists into a tearful snarl. She follows me to my bedroom. “I saw you that night. You try to blame me for your own indecencies, but I do nothing. You come in with those bedroom eyes, inviting him to your room in the middle of the night! You little sooka! I saw the way you flirted with him. You are disgusting.”

  I pull the locked box out of the closet. It’s where I have all the paperwork on Dex’s dad and medical and police reports. For the last nine years I’ve been living in this bubble thinking that no matter what happens, Dexter is better off where I can see him. His father is a rapist. His mother is insane. I’ve been so afraid that if I let him out of my sight that he will turn into a monster too. If I gave him up, that he would turn his back on me because I gave up. I didn’t care enough. And even if I did try, who would have believed me? Why would my dad leave me with her if he believed the things she’s done? I couldn’t give up on Dexter like my dad gave up on me.

  My stomach drops.

  My dress is lying out on my bed, every beautifully designed, hand stitched beaded and laced piece of it. “What did you do to my dress?” I ask, touching it, my heart racing.

  “I didn’t do anything to your precious dress,” she snarls. “You ruined my life! You don’t want me to ever be happy! He left because of you. He was too disgusted looking at you after you threw yourself at him!”

  My fingers shake as I inspect my dress. It looks fine. She hasn’t done anything to it and that makes sense because she knows if she ruined it I would have more reason to hate her and leave her forever and I would. She’s just trying to tell me she could destroy everything I love if she wanted to. And the fact that I understand that now makes me stronger.

  She starts weeping as I put it back in the dress bag carefully. “I gave birth to you. You are my little mouse. Annika, you are my best and only friend. Please don’t leave me. I can’t be alone!” she cries.

  I ignore her and put the dress back in the bag. My stomach is churning with anxiety. This is usually what gets me. Everything is fine as long as I can be mad at her.

  “I’ll die! Everyone else has left me but you. You have to stay. Please, Annika! You wouldn’t leave me to die alone? Like my Nikko? Please! I am sick. I do things wrong. But please don’t leave me.”

  “I can’t stay. You are toxic and dangerous to me and to Dexter.” I pack up my lockbox. These two things are the most important.

  “But you’ll come back. You ran away when you were a little girl but you missed me. You couldn’t live without me, remember? You came back.”

  “I came back because you promised that if I ran away from my dad who was taking care of me and came back to live with you, that you wouldn’t hurt me again and you’d never touch Dexter.” I shake my head, packing the last of my important things and brushing past her to Dex’s room. “You told me that if I lied about things, if I said things about him, that you would love me and you would never hurt me again. You told me you would never touch Dexter.”

  “I haven’t touched him.” She follows me, wringing her hands.

  “But you’ve hurt me, mama.” Tears sting my eyes as I look at her, begging with my eyes for her to see.

  “What’s the difference? If you can lie on your back for the boy, you can lie on your back for any man.”

  “No, mama!” I shake my head and a sound comes out of my body, a frustrated growl mixed with heartbreak after heartbreak.

  She looks me over with pity. “You’ll see. It won’t work for you and the boy either. You think you’ll get him to keep you by having a sweet little baby. But you’ll see. His mother will never let you ruin his life with your trash and he’ll leave you for one of his own kind like your father did to me. You think I’m crazy but who’s really crazy, myshka, when you’re doing everything I’ve already done?”

  Tears fall down my cheeks. It’s too much to fight. I’m so tired. I just want to put my stuff down and cry myself to sleep.

  “And after all that, he left anyway. You took him away from me.”

  “I didn’t take anyone away from you,” I fight through the exhaustion and pull clothes out of drawers that are falling apart, and shirts off hangers.


  She cries and grabs at me, falling to the floor in a heap of dramatics as I shake her off.

  “Stay. I need you. I can take care of you. We can have a good life, just you and me! They can have the boy. I’ll give him to them, just stay, myshka. You’re my everything.”

  I pull my shirt back up onto my shoulder and look at her desperate and terrified eyes. She’s my mother. Sometimes she kissed my skinned knees. Sometimes she took me to eat ice cream. She has laughed at my jokes and thought I was amazing. This is the dangerous part. “If you can say the truth, then I’ll know that you won’t hurt me again. Tell me why my father left, mama?” I look at her, feeling the horrible betraying hope in the bottom of my heart that she’ll come through for me, that she’ll shake it off and be what she’s supposed to be. “Tell me why he left and took me with him.”

  She looks far away, trying to fight through her confused mind, tears streaming down her face like mine.

  “Tell me.” My chest hurts. My chin trembles. I can see her telling the truth. I can see myself hugging her, crying with joy.

  “When you were a baby, every time he tried to look at me you cried and he would go to you and pick you up.”

  I shake my head, devastated. “That’s what babies do, mama. And that’s what dads are supposed to do.” I hold her cold dry hands, trying to find light in her eyes. “I did nothing wrong. You know that. Tell me the real story.” My heart already knows but I can’t let it go.

  She grits her teeth, her eyes moving wildly, she pulls her hands away and stands. “You’re a fool if you think he’ll stay with you. Even if you give him a child. He and his mother will take it away from you and love it and leave you to die. Especially when they find out about your abomination.” She picks up a Transformer and throws it at me.

  It’s hopeless. She’s hopeless. She always says this. But Dexter is not my child. I know he’s not. I saw her belly grow with him. I was there while she screamed and cut herself because my dad was gone. I called an ambulance when she went into labor. “Dexter is not my child, mama!” I scream at her, blocking the things she’s throwing at me. “There is no way that child is mine. Do you know how I know you’re crazy? It would have been impossible for my tiny eleven year old body to support another life! So shut up!”