by Kyla Stone
That night, we went to bed like usual. I couldn’t sleep. My body thrummed with impatience and excitement. Finally, sleep took over anyway. Mom woke us up a little before midnight.
Still in our pajamas, we all snuck out to the car and drove several miles to a clearing next to a playground and picnic tables. We could’ve just buried the mirror in our backyard. That wasn’t Mom’s style.
The August air was hot and cloying, even at midnight. Once our eyes adjusted, we could see the dim shapes of the trees huddled at the edge of the clearing.
Mom spread out the red and white checkered blanket on the grass. Lena and I drifted back to sleep beneath the stars. Mom grabbed her shovel, dug a hole, and buried our bad-luck mirror. When she finished, she lay down on the blanket next to us, smelling like dirt and her jasmine-scented shampoo.
“There,” she said, nudging us back awake. “See that hazy band stretching across the sky? That’s the Milky Way. Look south, there’s creeping Scorpio with his long, deadly tail and brave Sagittarius with his bow.”
Her words were like a song in my ears: Delphinus, Aquila, Cygnus, Corona Borealis. “I can see it,” I said, squinting, searching for the figures Mom seemed to find so easily. An ant crawled along my arm.
Lena shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Look for a teacup shape. Follow the handle of the big dipper to that blue-white star, Spica, right above that tall pine tree. Can you see the winged maiden clutching her sheaf of wheat? That’s Virgo, your sign, Lena, the largest constellation of the Zodiac. It means you’re loyal, practical, methodical, a heart-helper. You’re always trying to help others, but you never ask for help yourself.”
“Cool,” Lena mumbled. She sounded like she was falling back asleep.
I wanted to be a winged maiden. Instead, my sign was just an ugly, nasty scorpion.
“Your element is earth, and your ruling planet is Mercury. Virgos appreciate the arts, just like Cancer, my sign.”
“What about me?” I asked, suddenly furious.
“Scorpio,” Mom said, tracing the shape in the sky. “Emotional, passionate, exciting. A force to be reckoned with. But also, obstinate, resentful, full of secrets.” She reached out and tapped my chest with a single finger. “A jealous heart.”
I felt my heart beating in the exact place my mother had touched me. How could it be jealous? Of what? I felt like I was shrinking and expanding at the same time, a thunder of anger building in my ears. “I do not.”
Before I could say anything else, Lena pointed at the brightest star in the sky. “Is that the North Star, Mom?”
Mom shook her head. “Polaris isn’t the brightest star. It’s the forty-eighth. That one you’re looking at is Sirius, the dog star. It’s the closest star to us, but it’s still eight light years away. That light you’re seeing right now? It’s eight years old.”
“Older than me,” I said. I stared up at the black velvet sky with blurry, gritty eyes. The stars were so bright, so very close. I stretched my arms, grasping to touch one.
“Then why’s the North star so famous?”
“The axis of the earth is pointed directly at it,” Mom said. “Polaris does not rise or set. It remains in nearly the same position in the sky, while the whole fleet of stars wheels around it. If you’re lost, you can use
Polaris to find your way home.”
“Awesome,” Lena breathed.
“The stars can chart your future, if you let them,” she told us. “The sky is a map to your destiny. Never forget that.”
She was always reading our horoscopes, plotting our personalities, our fates. She told us extravagant fortunes like, Your strength will conquer the world and for Lena, You will bring your dreams to life.
Lena was different. Lena had Mom’s beloved constellations etched on her skin. Lena was the artist, just like Mom. Lena was the perfect one. I didn’t have a single special thing about me.
I was right there with them, but I wasn’t. I looked up at that sky and wished on every star I could count. I tried not to blink, so I wouldn’t miss a single one. I stared until my eyes burned in their sockets. I wished my mother would love me.
She was like the stars themselves, magnificent and sparkling, blazing so bright. She seemed so close, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite reach her.
I blink rapidly. She’s gone for good. And Dad will be, too. I could never reach either of them, these planetary bodies that made up the universe of my family. We rotated around each other, never quite touching.
I can’t think these thoughts. I don’t want to remember. Even the good memories are dark and frayed around the edges.
I back out of Dad’s bedroom. I flee, slamming the front door against the scrabbling, whispery silences of that house.
18
Lux
I text Reese with trembling fingers. It’s still so damn cold. My breath puffs white in front of me while I wait for the heat to kick on. Outside, everything is still. The snow is a sloppy gray mess, the trees stark against the washed-out sky.
He texts back. Come over.
Thirty minutes later, I’m in Reese’s cramped apartment. Everything is old and shabby, but it’s clean. The table is clear, the counters scrubbed, the video games and controllers heaped in orderly stacks on the shelf below the TV. Posters of old rock bands like AC/DC, Pink Floyd, and Nirvana hang on the walls in plastic frames. Instead of couches, he has giant bean bags.
I scrunch down in a lemon-yellow bean bag, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s between my knees. He gave me a pill as soon as I walked in the door. It’s already starting to kick in.
In the kitchen behind me, the refrigerator drones. The ceiling fan over the kitchen table sputters, recycling stale air.
Reese sprawls on the bean bag next to me in shorts and a pumpkin-orange T-shirt, smoking a joint. A musky, burnt-popcorn smell fills the room. “You want some?”
“Yeah.”
Reese hands me his joint and leans over, jerking the bottle from between my legs. He takes a long swallow. The bottle is already a third empty. “Just going to town, aren’t you?”
“I need it.”
“You aren’t cranked enough already?” His voice is smooth as satin, his eyebrows scrunched in false concern. He puts the bottle on top of a neat stack of Maxim magazines on the coffee table.
I suck down the sweet, thick smoke. I need to get numb, to forget, to be obliterated. The apartment spins and buzzes around my head. Objects in the room swim in and out of focus, shrinking and enlarging like shadows on a wall.
I gesture at the weight machine in the corner behind him and the pull-up bar attached to the doorway in the hall. “Nice décor you have there.”
He flexes one skinny arm. “We all have our dreams, Princess. Mine is to be a MMA fighter someday. What about yours?”
“Not everyone has dreams.”
“Seriously?” I shrug.
He squints at me, like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
I blink at him groggily. His image keeps slipping around in my head. “What do you care?”
“Just wondering.”
“I’m dropping out.” Dropping out of school was as easy as slipping into the freezing water of Lake Michigan. It seemed impossible at first, the harsh shock of it sucking your breath from your lungs. It only took a few days before school seemed like a whole lifetime ago. Something that happened to someone else.
“You sure about that?” He takes the joint from me. “Isn’t it your senior year?”
“School’s stupid. Who needs it? I’ll just get my GED or something.” My voice sounds slow and strange in my own ears.
“You shouldn’t drop out. You’re too smart.”
I just shrug.
Reese stares at his joint, turns it between his fingers, and hands it back to me without smoking it. “You hungry? I’ve got cold pizza and beer.”
The thought of food trembles the liquid swirling in my stomach, makes me want
to vomit. I shake my head and sink further into the bean bag.
He swaggers into the kitchen. I gaze around the room, my vision swimming. I move the liquor bottle, pick up one of his magazines, and flip through it.
There’s a beautiful redhead, her hips cocked, her lips curled in a seductive smile. I want to keep her. I rip out the page, fold it up, and tuck it into the pocket of my jeans.
That strange, urgent need wriggles through me. I check my folder in my messenger bag and pull out a stiff and heavy black paper. I crease it and rip on the diagonal, forming a triangle.
I work silently, my hands moving too slow, too sluggishly. My fingers keep stumbling over each other, messing up. I manage to close and flatten the awkward diamond shape, then twist the ears and open the mouth with the tip of my fingernail.
I open the wings and shape scalloped curves on the outer edges of the wings with my fingers. By the end, I’m focusing so hard my head feels like it’s about to split open.
“Hey, is that a bird?”
“No, Sherlock. It’s a bat.”
“Aren’t bats all nasty and diseased and stuff?”
“Bats are good. They eat mosquitos. In China, they’re considered very lucky. So here, I’ve brought you some luck.”
“No one’s ever made something like this for me before.” Reese slides down in the bean bag next to me. He takes the bat and cradles it in his hands. Something changes in his face. “This is totally jacked, Princess. Can I give this to my sister?”
“You have a sister?”
“She’s eight. She’d love the crap out of this.” He’s grinning, and for once his eyes look almost awake, alive. Softened, somehow.
He puts it down carefully on the carpet next to him, then takes another drag. A thin curtain of smoke hangs over us. He leans in and kisses me, his mouth tasting like ash and pepperoni.
He doesn’t kiss like Felix. Reese’s kisses are bigger, sloppier. They don’t turn my stomach inside out. They don’t send my heart shooting into the stratosphere.
But right now, his eyes are soft. Right now, his hands are on me. His attention is on me. He wants me. He wants me and Felix doesn’t, so screw him. I don’t care about the rest.
A sweet, syrupy half-dream pulls at me. Everything warm and smoky and far away. My internal organs start to glow. I can feel them. See them in my mind’s eye, drifting apart. Glowing like jellyfish, like flashlights blinking beneath my skin. Thoughts becoming more and more slippery, slowly disconnecting from everything.
Still, darkness remains, shifting just beneath me, a shining oily black sucking at the edges of my consciousness. That bleak, desperate knowledge that tomorrow I’ll remember it all again.
But right now, tomorrow is so very far away.
19
Lux
Hours later, the high wears off. It's after ten and completely dark by the time I get home. I would’ve spent the night at Reese’s place, but he already had plans. Plans that clearly didn’t involve me.
I’ve got nowhere else to go. My phone is radio silent. No texts or calls from Eden or Simone. Fine. Let them be that way. They obviously don’t value our friendship the way I do. They’re punishing me.
They’re probably together right now, sprawled on Eden’s bed, painting their nails and gossiping about me. I bet they’re sharing a damn Twix bar and laughing their asses off. I know it.
My empty stomach clenches in pain. And hunger. I didn’t eat that pizza at Reese’s, even after the munchies set in. I stop in the kitchen and grab a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup out of the cupboard. Soup was Mom’s favorite remedy for any sickness, from colds to fevers to the flu.
Because my timing is always exquisite, Lena picks the exact same moment to make her own meal. She’s here all day, and she chooses now? Anger slithers through me. I slam the cabinet closed with a loud bang.
“Hung over?” Lena asks in a sweetly nonchalant voice. She opens the fridge and pretends to examine its contents.
“Like you care.” I jerk a bowl from the cupboard next to the fridge, standing as far away from Lena as possible.
“I do. I’d really like to know why you look so tired, seeing as you don’t appear to be attending school, don’t have a job, and don’t lift a finger around here. You’ve been home for two weeks. You don’t even do your own cat’s litter, Lux! Guess who makes sure she has food when you disappear?”
Lena’s the one who looks tired. Gray smudges rim her eyes. But that’s not my problem. She chose to come back after all this time, waltzing in like she’s gonna save the day. That’s on her. I shove my bangs out of my eyes and glare at her.
“Dad’s gotten a bunch of letters from the school. The vice-principal keeps calling and leaving messages. They’re going to expel you.”
I tense, square my shoulders. Ready for a fight. “They can’t. I’m dropping out.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s your senior year! What about college? You can’t do that.”
“Try and stop me. Can you move? I need the microwave.”
The microwave is on the counter directly across from the fridge. The small kitchen is too cramped for both appliances to be used at once.
“I’m getting sandwich stuff.” Lena grabs the bread and rummages behind the jug of orange juice for the peanut butter.
“I was here first.”
“What, are we little kids now?”
I sigh loudly. Lena grabs her food and moves out of the way. She sets out the bread for two sandwiches on the counter next to a knife and a jar of honey.
I twist the lid off the soup, dump it into the bowl, and shove it into the microwave. Every cell in my body bristles with resentment. She acts all high and mighty all the time, but she’s the one who left. She left me all alone and she didn’t come back, not until now. When it’s too late. When the damage has already been done.
“I was wondering what you did,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“What you were fighting over, with Dad. What you said to him.”
“That’s none of your damn business.”
“He’s my father, too. You causing his heart attack with your stupid recklessness counts as my business, don’t you think?” She spreads a dollop of peanut butter on each piece of bread.
“I have nothing to say to you.” I swallow hard, my voice rising against my will, cracking on the ends of my words.
“I just hope it was worth it, whatever you were fighting about. Worth breaking our father’s heart. Literally.”
I flinch, blood rushing to my head. “Why do you always have to be such a bitch about everything?” There’s no way I’m telling her a damn thing. Still, her words bring the memory to sharp relief in the center of my brain.
We were fighting. Dad and I fought about everything. Without Lena there to play peacekeeper, things fell apart. Like an abandoned city returning to the jungle state from which it came, disintegrating into ruin.
The two of us were like strangers trapped in the same house. We either ignored each other or we fought. Dad didn’t want me to go out on school nights. I did anyway. I got letters from school about my grades, detentions. He thought my clothes were “inappropriate.” He caught me smoking.
I don’t even remember what started it that night. I’d been drinking, half a bottle into the peach schnapps Simone and I convinced her older brother to get for us.
Dad had gotten all religious all of a sudden, always quoting the Bible at me. I couldn’t stand it. He was the last person in the world to be getting all high and mighty and righteous.
I was livid, my body shaking with fury. I screamed things, spat out every hateful, hurtful thing I could think of.
“What’d you fight about?” Lena squeezes honey on the bread slices.
“Something about curfew? Your skirt too short?”
I don’t respond. I’m dizzy, my ears ringing. Emotions churn and tumble in my gut.
“You get knocked up?” she asks in this vaguely condescending way that
makes me want to punch her in the throat.
The microwave timer dings. I cover my hands with a dishtowel and cradle the steaming bowl close to my chest. My fingers are quivering, my pulse a roar in my ears.
“Screw you, Lena. Where do you get off? Like you have the perfect life. Oh, wait. You ran off and abandoned us, leaving all the crap you didn’t want to mess with behind. So I guess you probably do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why don’t you go back to your perfect life? No one even wants you here.”
Her eyes narrow, the muscles in her jaw clenching. “Are you on drugs?”
I want to rake my nails across her haughty face. “Just shut up!”
“I just think it’s fair, you know, that you tell me. What you killed our father over.”
“Why can’t you ever shut up?” My fingers shake so badly, steaming broth sloshes over the lip of the bowl. I barely feel the burn. Blood surges to my brain, my thoughts tumbling, spinning and pin-balling off each other.
I remember the blazing indignation I felt that night, the rage overtaking me. I was yelling, shouting, barely coherent. I remember what I said. I wish I didn’t but I do. I remember every ugly, despicable word.
“I know what you did!” I screamed at him. “You think you got away with it, but I know!”
“Lux, stop,” he begged. He grabbed at his arm, his bloated face leached of color.
I didn’t listen. I didn’t hear, I didn’t care. I’d kept the buried secret so long inside me, it almost felt good to vomit it out. “You’re the reason Mom is dead!” I hissed, my lips pulled back over my teeth, ferocious.
“She killed herself because of you!”
I didn’t even notice what happened at first. I just kept yelling.
He slipped down against the wall. I thought he was just sitting down, but he looked funny. He was floppy and saggy, like a lopsided stuffed animal tossed aside by a tantrummy toddler.
