One Starry Knight: A Scifi Alien Love Story (The Starry Knight Saga Book 1)

by Carrie Lynn Thomas

  I shake my head. “I work tonight. At the diner, and then at your moms. See you then?”

  Disappointment flickers in his eyes. “We shouldn’t talk about this there.”

  “Adam, is this the only plan you have?” Deep breath. Zane’s words are on memory-repeat in my head.

  He doesn’t answer. He’s quiet, too quiet.

  “Adam?”

  “Yes.” The light in his face fades. “But it’s going to work. You’ll see.”

  “I better go.”

  “No.” He grabs my hand. “It’s going to work, you’ll see. This is going to work.” His voice softens and his fingers weave with mine. My skin sparks and tingles. My heart drums. He leans into me, his fingers cupping my cheek, his lips brushing mine. And I’m hungry for him. So hungry.

  I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him closer, deeper. My heart is thunder, his skin is lightening, our kiss the rain. I love him. I can’t lose him.

  He pulls away from me and tears slip from my eyes. He catches one on his fingertip and kisses my cheeks and nose. “I love you,” he whispers.

  “I gotta go or I’ll be late.”

  He releases me, and I open the door and stumble out of the car. I turn to grab my backpack and he waves. “I’ll see you after school.” The car pulls away from the curb and I turn to the school. Brianna stands with her friends, her mouth gaping.

  I smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I hear the whispers by third period.

  Slut. Whore. Tramp.

  The whispers are nothing new. But the names are. Brianna saw us kissing, and she’s not happy. I keep my head down. Stay out of the way. Become invisible. But the voices become louder and soon they are giggling, pointing, taunting.

  I slip into the first floor girls’ bathroom before lunch, hoping to avoid the rumors until I can escape to my locker bay. But I nearly walk into Brianna who is huddled with her groupies in front of the mirror. They fill up the space with their matching streaked hairstyles, skinny jeans, and brand name graphic tees.

  “Hi Sage,” she says icily. Her friends move, circling me, surrounding me. I am trapped. I clutch my books to my chest and back into the sinks. Brianna tosses her streaked blond hair behind her shoulder and smacks her bubble gum pink lips.

  “Hey. It’s Star Harbor’s number two hooker. Number one being your mom, of course.” The bathroom erupts in titters and more hair tossing. It amazes me how many girls want to be like her, from their hair to their clothes to the stuck-up plastic smiles on their faces. They remind me of Barbie dolls, flashy outside, hollow inside.

  Brianna plants her hands on her hips, and she steps closer. “Your mom’s slept with the whole town and you’re trying to catch up with her.” More laughter. I shake my head. The sink counter presses against my upper thighs. Can’t go backwards. Can’t go forwards. I’m stuck.

  “Can I just get by, please?” I step sideways trying to squeeze through a gap between two dark-haired, over-tanned sophomores. Like magnets they snap together pushing me back towards Brianna.

  “Yeah, I’m not done yet.” Brianna curves her mouth and angles her body like she’s a movie star on the red carpet. She steps forward, tapping a painted sandaled toe against the gray bathroom tile. Her eyes scan the group, her eyebrows arch, her eyelids flutter. She whirls to me and tosses back her head, her hair bouncing off her shoulders. “Everybody saw you leave with Lucas yesterday,” she says. “And then you show up today with Adam.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “Wrong. Adam and Lucas are my business.” She chews gum, snapping it hard in her mouth and leans into me.

  “Whatever,” I say, holding back the angry words. I don’t want to get into this with her. Not here. Not now. Definitely, not today. I want to be alone in my locker bay daydreaming about Adam. “Are we done here?”

  “Ha, no.” She laughs and the girls around her laugh with her. She circles the room again, waving her hands in the air, shaking her hips. She’s like nails on a chalkboard and my blood begins to scream. “If you want Lucas, fine. He’s my sloppy seconds anyways.”

  The bathroom giggles and snickers.

  “I’m leaving.” I’m about to push through the crowd when she wraps her hand around my wrist and digs her nails into my flesh.

  “Not yet.” She presses her face into mine, our noses nearly touching. Her breath smells like strawberries and coconut. “Adam is mine.”

  She releases my arm and I rub marks from my skin. “I think that’s up to him.”

  Her lower lip pushes forward, and she wrinkles her nose. She looks down at my neck, and her hand shoots out, her fingers curling around my locket. Her manicured red fingernail plays with the clasp. My heart rattles as a memory slices through my thoughts. My first week in Star Harbor, Brianna sat next to me at lunch every day that week. She was kind, helpful, and sweet. It was on Tuesday that she noticed my locket.

  She had held it, like she’s holding it now. And she had listened while I told her about my dad’s last words and his death and the emptiness. When I was done, she hugged me and said, “That really sucks.”

  But there is none of that kindness left in her eyes now, and she drops the locket from her fingers and smirks. “I can’t believe you still have this ugly thing.” She laughs and turns to her friends. “Sage’s dad gave it to her before he died. Or rather before he killed all those people. He probably flew that plane into the mountain on purpose. Couldn’t take your mother and her whoring ways.”

  Oh god, I want to kill her.

  I want to dig my fingers into her eyes and claw out her eyeballs with my nails. I want to scratch out her throat and rip out her tongue and—

  “Stay away from Adam. This little friendship of yours is over, got that?” She’s in my face again. “I mean it. I will make your life a living hell.”

  Her eyes are wide and unblinking. She tightens her lip and wiggles her nose.

  I laugh.

  A loud, freeing, unstoppable laugh. I giggle and guffaw and grin. Make my life a living hell. Too funny and too late. I slide to the floor, resting my head against the bottom of the counter. Brianna’s stares open-mouthed, her arc of mirror images behind her echoing her shock.

  Wild fear lurks in their eyes, and I can almost hear their new whispers.

  Crazy. Psycho. Nuts.

  But I don’t care. I’m laughing and right now, it feels good.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “So I hear you had some sort of mental breakdown?” Lucas hovers over where I sit in the locker bays.

  “Is that the latest?” A giggle escapes. My stomach is still sore.

  “Hey, do you want to get out of here? We could go to my house and play video games.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, I flunked two tests this morning and didn’t do so well on my English paper,” he says and his faces breaks into a grin. “From the sounds of it, your day’s not going much better.”

  “Okay.” It’s been a long time since Lucas and I had played video games, but it’s something that used to be familiar and normal and it lightens my heart. We sneak down the steps, dodging two teachers and the assistant principal before emerging into the warm afternoon sun. I break into a run in the parking lot, laughing and skipping and dancing my way to Lucas’s truck.

  His house is a brick ranch three blocks into town. It’s been the same for as long as I’ve known him. The kitchen is faded yellow and green with pictures of roosters on the wall, and a bowl of dusty plastic fruit on the table. The living room is all browns with tired couches and old carpet. A broken cuckoo clock hangs above a brick fireplace. I follow him down the hallway to his room. The brown shag carpet, light blue walls, and superhero posters make me smile. This room is still Lucas. His bed is unmade, and he hastily throws his comforter over the top and kicks a pile of dirty clothes into the closet. “Sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t planning for this.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like you cared before anyways,” I say.
It was a joke with us for years. Adam and Lucas. Ying and yang. In Adam’s room, the bed was made, clothes put away, the floor clean. Lucas’s was usually cluttered and required an intricate dance to maneuver around the baseball cards, sports equipment, and matchbox cars scattered across the floor.

  “So what do you want to play? Minecraft? Fortnite?”

  “Don’t you remember what my favorite is?”

  He grins. “Mario Kart it is.” He takes the large leather green bean bag a few feet in front of the TV and tosses me a controller.

  I haven’t played video games in a year, so Lucas kicks my butt at least ten times, before I finally gain enough control over my racing car on the screen to beat him. But I don’t care. I’m laughing, gut deep laughing, and for a moment, I forget. His phone buzzes, and he pauses the video game to look at the screen.

  “I gotta get this,” he says, rising from the floor. “Be back in a sec.” He disappears from the room and my eyes are drawn to the bulletin board over his desk. It’s covered with pictures, some familiar and some not so much. A younger Lucas with his brother, Jake. A twelve-year-old Lucas with me and Adam. Lucas playing football. Lucas with some other friends. Lucas with Brianna. Lots of Lucas with Brianna. They’re there at a school dance and a party and at the lake. Her smile is everywhere.

  “She’s really not that bad,” he says from behind me.

  “You really like her, don’t you?”

  He glances at the picture of them at the dance, him in a tux and her in a silver dress. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “Even after the way she dumped you in front of the whole school?”

  Lucas’s cheeks redden, and I regret my question. The week before Christmas, Brianna had called Lucas a loser before breaking up with him at the start of third period. I sat two seats behind Lucas and spent the entire hour watching his ears burn.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Forget I brought it up.”

  “No, it’s okay. I probably deserved that.”

  “I doubt that. Brianna can be a bitch.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “But that’s not what I meant. Sage, you know how much I regret the way I treated you. If I could go back—”

  “Don’t worry about. It’s over.” I swallow hard. But is it? Staring at the pictures all over Lucas’s bulletin board stirs a burning ache in me. He’s my sloppy seconds anyways. Lucas picked her over me. Picked Brianna over our friendship?

  “Still, it was wrong…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I look away from pictures. Lucas’s watching me with a sad expression. I glance back at the pictures, my eyes trailing to the one of us with Adam. Lucas’s eyes follow mine.

  “Are you ever going to trust me enough to tell me what’s going on with him?” he asks.

  “What? Adam? Didn’t you talk to him?”

  “Yeah, but we haven’t had a chance to talk about it. He’s always with you. And maybe this is going to sound crazy,” he says. “But I think there’s something not normal about Adam’s dad.”

  Ice cubes slide down my spine. “Wh-what do you mean?”

  He moves to his desk, digging through papers until he pulls out what looks like a photocopied black and white grainy photo of a group of men in suits. He points to the one on the end, the one who looks like Laris.

  The one who is Laris.

  “This.” His fingers tremble as they hold the picture out. “It’s Adam’s dad, right?”

  “Yeah, so?” I take the picture from him.

  “This is a clipping from a newspaper.” He pauses. “The paper was from 1922.” I swallow warm air and it blazes down my throat.

  “Maybe it’s an ancestor of some sort. Or somebody who looks like him.”

  “I thought of that,” he says. “But I saw this.” He holds up another picture, a glossy magazine photo from last month.

  “See this guy next to him.” He points to a bulky, blond-haired man standing behind Laris. “He’s in the other picture too.”

  I find him in the 1922 photo, standing behind Laris. Same size, same hair. They could have been taken on the same day.

  “What are the odds of two identical ancestors ending up in the same picture eighty years apart?” My fingers grow slippery with sweat and my hands shake. Lucas watches me with understanding in his eyes. “You know something, don’t you? This has something to do with what’s been going on between the two of you.”

  “No.” I shake my head fast. Too fast.

  “What is it? Please,” he puts his hands on my shoulders. “You can tell me, really. You can trust me on this.”

  “Can I?” I spit the words out. “Right, how long is this nice Lucas gonna last—until next week when Brianna suddenly has a change of heart? Then it’ll be bye-bye Sage again. And who knows who you tell all my secrets to? I bet you and Brianna laughed over me all the time.”

  “No.” Shock blares across his face. “It was never like that.”

  “I should go.”

  “No. Don’t. Please stay.”

  “I can’t.” I push the paper back to him.

  “Keep it,” he says. “Keep it. It’s not important. I can drive you home…or back to school. Wherever you want to go.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Let me drive,” he says. “I swear, I won’t say another word.”

  I hesitate and nod.

  He keeps his promise during the drive and doesn’t say a word. Not about the picture or Brianna or Adam. But when I open the door to climb out, he turns to me. “I am your friend, no matter how it’s been the past few months. I’m on your side.”

  I watch him pull away and disappear into the trees that line the road back to town. My side?

  There is no my side.

  Chapter Forty

  “Where were you this afternoon? I came to pick you up from school.” Adam leans over Stella’s desk where I’m working. He’s wearing a gray t-shirt that says KNIGHT across it in huge block letters.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I left a little early.”

  “Why?”

  “Crappy day.” My fingers tap the keyboard as I reply to a reservation request. He hovers over me, his gaze pushing into my skin, warming my blood, jarring my heart.

  “How much longer until you’re done?”

  I glance at the clock. “I don’t know. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “Good,” he says. He walks around the desk and wraps his arms around my shoulders. “I need you to go with me somewhere afterwards. Okay?”

  My skin buzzes under his fingers, and I want to lean back in the chair until our lips meet, but he leaves a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll be back,” he says before disappearing from the office.

  I exhale. It’s a moment before the heat fades in me, before I can go back to concentrating on my job. I open an inquiry in the e-mail folder wondering if there are cabins available next weekend. When I bring up the calendar, I spot Brianna’s name. Her party, for Adam. I could erase it. Delete her name. Fill it in with some new stranger. My fingers itch and burn as I click on her entry. Her voice is in my head, standing over me, telling me over and over again, Adam’s mine, Adam’s mine, Adam’s mine.

  Just a few keystrokes.

  “Hey,” Adam says and I jump. “Are you done yet?”

  “It hasn’t even been fifteen minutes.” But I close out the computer screen and turn to Adam. A pile of towels fill his arms. “Where are we going?”

  “Swimming,” he says.

  I raise an eyebrow. “Swimming…where?”

  “Uh, the lake,” he says. “Where else?”

  “We can’t go swimming in the lake.”

  “Why not?” Adam’s raises and eyebrow. “Are you afraid?”

  “It’s freezing. And one trip in the lake a year is more than enough for me. I’ve already been in there twice.”

  “Oh come on,” he says. “Don’t be a wimp.” He leans around the chair and tickles me.

  Giggling, I slap at his hands until he steps back from the chair. “Okay stop, but I’m only wad
ing in to my knees.”

  “Whatever,” he winks and pulls me from my chair. His arm curls around my waist, and he leans in and for a moment, I stop breathing. He’s going to kiss me. I close my eyes and inhale the warmth of his breath. His lips are so close…and then his fingers are on me, tickling me again. My eyes fly open to his laughing face.

  “I’ll get you for this,” I say and he tears from the room, me chasing after him. It’s like it’s always been, us running through the office and the parking lot to the beach.

  I tackle him before the shoreline, and we fall into a giggling pile. He tries to drag me in the water, but I hold up a hand and slip out of my shoes and roll up my jeans first. The first step into the icy water burns my skin and I shudder. Adam’s hands encircle my waist and pull me further in.

  “Hey,” I laugh. We’re going deeper, my jeans are wet and beginning to sag. The cold clings to my skin, numbing my legs and my feet and my toes. He pulls me into his arms, and his lips are on mine. Explosions of heat rip through me and we spin. The lake, the cold, the water fades away and we’re cocooned in the blue light. I drink him in, warm and sweet. The ground shakes beneath us and he falls back from my arms. There are rocks beneath my feet, and I wobble to keep my balance. The lake and the shore surround us, only not the shore I know. We’re standing on a stone path jutting into the water beneath jagged cliffs. And high above us, growing out of a rock, is a crooked tree.

  Adam doubles over into a coughing fit, and I rub my hand along his back.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, and he closes it again. Trickles of sweat spring from his face. White light explodes around us followed by a shadow standing over us. It’s a man, burly and wide with blond hair and a familiar face.

  He is the man in Lucas’s newspaper photo.

  Lightning strikes inside of me. Everything is not moving and moving too fast. The man shakes his head and leans over Adam. He clamps a hand on Adam’s shoulder and reaches for me. I try to step back, but his fingers are too strong. They grip my flesh hard creating marks. I want to scream, but before I can, we are engulfed in hot white light.