She Dims the Stars

by Amber L. Johnson

  “Can I have your keys?” I reach out my hand like I’ve casually been waiting for him to wake up.

  He digs in his pocket and holds them out to me, and I take them quickly. “You might want to wake up The Beast over there. I’m sure they’ll start patrolling once the sun is up. We should get outta here.” I give a quick nod and rush as fast as I can through the sand toward his car. Given the short amount of time I have, I open the passenger door and struggle to pull my purse from beneath the seat where I had it stashed away just in case anyone looked inside the windows overnight.

  With shaking fingers, I locate the flower-printed bag and pull out my array of bottles. With precision I’ve perfected over the years, I take the tops off of them one at a time and replace them quickly before moving onto the next. Five bottles in all in the morning. The pills are all lined up along the car seat as I step around the back to grab a water bottle from the trunk, and when I turn to walk back to where the passenger door is open, Elliot is standing there, staring at my line of prescriptions.

  His eyes hold no judgment as they meet mine. “How many of those do you take?”

  I push down the fear of what he could possibly be thinking about me as I move to stand by him and then angle myself in front to scoop the pills into my hand. They all go into my mouth at once, and I have them swallowed with one gulp of water from the bottle. Facing him, I give the best smile I can manage. “Not enough to get full. We should get breakfast. Is Cline up?”

  “I got a campsite for us at Devil’s Fork, but we have to stay for a minimum of two nights. I told them two was fine.” Elliot pockets his phone as he gets back into the car. The rest stop isn’t packed, but there are enough people around that sitting in the car has kept me entertained while the boys have been doing their business.

  “I’ll pay you back for the campsite,” I say, and I mean it. I’ve never expected anything from anyone.

  Elliot smiles and starts the car, the beauty mark next to his ear raising a little in the process. “Just fill up the next tank and we’ll be even.”

  Cline rushes across the parking lot, still zipping his pants, practically tripping over himself before he launches his large body into the car. “I got tapped.”

  “What?” I turn in my seat to look at his face and he’s gone almost completely white, sweat beads trickling from beneath his stupid hat.

  “I was taking a shit and the guy next to me tapped my foot. He TAPPED MY FOOT.”

  “Maybe he just had a wide spread,” Elliot offers as he begins to reverse out of the parking lot.

  “Maybe there was a glory hole in the wall that I was unaware of. Don’t act like you don’t know about the tap at rest stops.” He slides sideways and rests his head on the pillow he has in the backseat, tipping his hat forward in the process. He’s breathing heavy, and his cheeks are bright red, but after about a full minute of silence he shrugs and pulls out his phone. “I don’t really blame him, though. I mean … look at me. I’m ridiculously good looking.”

  I start to say something, but Elliot’s hand on my knee stops me. He has a wry grin on his face and closes his eyes for a second while he shakes his head like I should just leave it. So I do. Because I trust this boy and I have no idea why.

  Devil’s Fork is, in a word, gorgeous. The campsite is small and on the water, close enough to the bathrooms that I could find them without a flashlight, but far enough away that I don’t smell them being downwind. Lake Jacosse spreads out before us, peaceful and astoundingly clear. I’m on the edge of the water, taking in how different this is from the ocean we were just staring at around six hours ago. The boys are setting up the eight man tent directly behind me, and there’s another small popup tent to my left that looks empty at the moment, leaving my mind to wonder about its inhabitants.

  “Where is this rock that your mom jumped off of?” Cline calls from his lazy stance, holding one of the rods while Elliot threads it through the loops at the base of the tent.

  I shrug and point off into the distance. “We need a way to get over there to the waterfall.” Wendy’s diary says that she snuck into the park after hours and found a group of people her age sitting around drinking and just asked if she could stay with them. They were the ones with the boat. Her entire rebellion hinged on the fact that people weren’t going to murder her.

  My once-best-friend comes to stand next to me and crosses his arm, his large frame blocking out the sunlight coming through the trees. “Do we have a boat?”

  “No.”

  “Were you planning on getting a boat?”

  “There are ways.”

  He nods in my periphery and sighs like he’s about to say something really shitty when the water at our feet begins to ripple and wave, coming in at rougher intervals, and then we hear the sound of a boat drop into a lower gear. I think we both see her at the same time. She’s golden-tan, raven haired, and wearing one of the smallest pink bikinis I’ve seen in a really long time. That’s saying something, because my bedroom has a view of one of the student apartment pools off campus.

  The wind is making her hair fly everywhere, and she lifts her sunglasses to the top of her head to secure her tresses like a headband then offers a friendly smile and wave as she continues on to the dock to our left.

  Cline is speechless as I look up at his face, suppressing the urge to reach over and close his mouth for him.

  “Did your entire life just flash before your eyes? Wedding, babies, white picket fence?” I ask and hold back a smile as he blinks his way back into reality.

  “What? No. It was more like topless, in a tent, on her back.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  His eyes meet mine and he holds my gaze as he speaks the next words so that they’ll hit me straight in the gut. “Every guy does it. Ask Elliot how many times he’s closed his eyes and pictured you naked recently.”

  I turn and walk away before he says anything else, my throat suddenly tight and stomach twisted with worry. It’s possible he’s right, but it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

  The bathroom looms before me, and I hurry inside like it’s my only safe place, some sort of dirty salvation in the woods where I can have some peace and quiet. But I know better, because no matter how far I run, I can never outrun myself. I have the loudest voice I know, even when I’m completely silent.

  The ocean’s salt is still sticking to me, and there’s sand in between my toes when I walk into one of the stalls. I stand there for a minute, trying to breathe through my nose and form a plan on how we’ll get out to the rocks so that I can jump like Wendy had. So I can feel the exhilaration of the drop into the water. She talked about the freedom of the fall, and even though I’m terrified of heights, I would do this in her honor. Just to feel a flicker of what she might have experienced.

  There’s a creak and then the sound of the main door being slammed shut. A shuffling of feet through the water on the floor alerts me to someone else in the bathroom, and just when I start to hold my breath and my heartbeat gets louder in my ears, I hear the click clack of flip flops on the floor, and I know it’s not one of the guys coming to find me. It’s another camper.

  Of course it is.

  I exhale and turn around, lifting my foot to flush the toilet so I don’t seem like some kind of weirdo, and let the commode noise die down before I reach for the door handle. There’s a huge colorful butterfly sculpture attached to the yellowed tile up by the screened windows, and I pause for a moment, wondering who would put that much effort into decorating a restroom before the sound of the other person washing their hands brings me back to reality.

  Gaining my composure, I step out and head toward the sinks when I notice that the other occupant of the bathroom is the girl from the boat. She’s got a towel wrapped around her chest, her hair thrown into a ponytail, and her sunglasses perched on top of her head again. She smiles at me from the mirror’s reflection.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey,” I say and turn th
e water on to wash nothing from my hands. When I’m done, I reach for a paper towel, but she hands me one instead.

  “September.”

  “What?” I ask, leaning back to look her over. Her cheeks are sunburnt, and her bright green eyes are a little red so I’m wondering if she’s high or if it’s the lake water.

  “I’m September. What’s your name?” She extends a slender hand my way, and I blush as I realize that she’s just being nice and that this is probably how my mom did shit back in the day. Just talked to people. It takes a few drinks for me to get this friendly. This girl is offering up her hand like she’s ready to be best friends.

  “Audrey. I saw you come by on your boat.”

  She grins. “It’s a rental. I’ve only got it for another day. Are you in the lot next to the little red tent?”

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “We’re neighbors for a couple more nights.” She turns to her reflection in the mirror again and presses the pink spots beneath her eyes. “These are gonna hurt like a bitch once the sun goes down. I probably won’t get any sleep at all.”

  “One of the guys I’m with snores like an eighty-year-old man who forgot to plug in his CPAP machine, so you probably won’t get any sleep anyway. My apologies in advance.”

  Her laugh is loud and genuine, and her smile reflects in her eyes. But the sound also bounces all along the walls, across the tile, and with it comes the sound of fluttering.

  “What the hell?” Her eyebrows draw together as she looks around. “Did you hear that?”

  “Maybe it’s a bird in the rafters?” I strain to look up into the darkened ceiling.

  “No. That wasn’t a bird.” She steps forward and pushes open one of the stalls and we both peek in to see if there’s anything there.

  “That’s weird,” I say as the door slams shut, rattling the other stalls.

  She turns to me with wide eyes. “What’s weird?”

  “There wasn’t a butterfly statue in that one.”

  “What. The. Fuck …”

  The reverberation of the doors reaches the last stall where I was standing and we hear the sound again, this time more urgent than before, and faster than a scream can leave my mouth, that thing that was in the stall with me rises and takes flight right above our heads.

  “That’s a fucking moth, Audrey!” September is screaming and it’s making the thing go crazy. It’s three feet tall, I swear, and it has no sense of personal space, because it’s flying at us intermittently as we are screaming and covering our heads.

  “I thought it was art!” I’m ducking and weaving, trying to make it to the door and she’s right behind me, slipping through old water, and Mothra is getting more agitated by the second. I reach the door, throw it open, and we both run screaming out into the open air, crouched low as the beast with wings follows us out and pivots up and over the bathhouse.

  Cline and Elliot are running full speed toward us, and I’ve never been so happy to see someone before in my entire life. Elliot has his arms out and I grab him hard, practically jumping into his arms and wrap myself like a sloth around his body.

  September is brushing dirt from her knees, and her towel has fallen away, and I watch as Cline stoops to pick it up for her. From the corner of my eye I see them make eye contact for the first time and something inside me stirs. An unraveling of rope around my heart. A thread that was knotted begins to loosen and fray.

  I press my face into Elliot’s neck and smile, squeezing him a little tighter. “That’s September. She’s our neighbor. She has a boat.”

  My laptop is plugged into a charger inside the car, and I’m trying to catch up on some lost time I should have been dedicating to the game instead of this impromptu road trip. I’m easily distracted by the camp fire and Cline’s new fascination with September. My attention also drifts to Audrey’s attempt to stay out of their way while they set up stuff for dinner.

  She hovers just out of their general vicinity, closer to the tent until one of them walks over to get something from the cooler, then she does a quick turn and finds something else to do. It’s an awkward dance that’s keeping me from concentrating on the task in my lap.

  “Audrey,” I yell to her, and she stops cold, turning to look at me like a deer caught in headlights. “Come here.” I motion for her to sit by me in the trunk and notice when her shoulders visibly relax as she makes her way across the gravel to the back of the car. The tires bounce a bit as she climbs in and folds her legs beneath her, plastering a smile on her face to hide whatever tension she just had displayed out there.

  “Are you on a deadline?” she asks, craning her neck to look at my screen.

  “Kind of. They want my first pitch soon, so I need to have something for them or else I’ll blow it before I even have a chance to show them my entire idea.”

  Her focus drifts across the fire toward Cline and September, so I close my laptop and angle to face her better. “I’ve never seen him like this before. I mean, I’ve watched him hit on girls and take them back to our place or whatever—like what happened at your party—but he’s actually talking to her. Listening and paying attention. I guess there’s a first time for everything.” I keep my tone light, hoping to get her to talk, because she’s being so quiet.

  “It’s not the first time,” she says softly, her stare unwavering.

  “No?”

  “No. I never believed in love at first sight until sixth grade. We got this new student on the first day of school and Cline got this look on his face like his entire world had just suddenly changed in the blink of an eye. She was all he talked about for a week before he got the guts to ask her out at lunch. He did it with a note, because he didn’t want to be embarrassed if she said no. Which she did.”

  Her eyes meet mine and there’s a sadness in the way her mouth is pulled so tight and how her eyes are narrowed. “She didn’t have to be such a total bitch about it, though. Showed everybody the note. Made him feel like an asshole for it. Like she was better than him.”

  “Oh.” It’s really all I can say, because we’re twenty-one now, and that kind of stuff doesn’t matter anymore in the grand scheme of things. I doubt Cline even remembers it. But Audrey’s sitting here like she’s reliving it all over again for the first time.

  “Told you I hated a girl named Kelsey once.” She smiles and shakes my shoulder roughly. “I stole her bra in P.E. She had to run a mile holding her boobs. Low key revenge for my best friend? Worth it.”

  There are suddenly so many questions I want to ask. Like, how things could be that close between the two of them and then suddenly one day they were strangers who hated each other with no reason whatsoever. Was it a misunderstanding? Why had Audrey run away in the first place?

  Before I can speak, Cline’s calling out that dinner is ready, and Audrey is out of the car holding out her hand for me to follow. So I do. The four of us sit in front of the fire with hotdogs on wires, trying to get them cooked and not burnt, but Cline keeps putting his too far into the flames, and he’s caught three consecutive wieners on fire.

  “Don’t put it in so far,” September chides him, and he makes eye contact with me, his eyes wide and mouth open like he wants to make a dirty joke and it’s killing him not to.

  I swallow my bite quickly to cut him off before he can do something stupid and say, “September is a really unique name. Did your parents name you after the month you were born?”

  The pretty brunette turns and rolls her eyes like she’s heard this a hundred times and shakes her head. Her hair is pulled back into a wild ponytail, and the fire makes the right side of her face glow bright orange as the flames pop and crackle. “I was born in July. And no, September is not the month I was conceived, either. There’s no logic to it.”

  There’s a choking sound from my left and Audrey turns her head when I look over at her. She’s wiping her mouth and covering it with her hand as her shoulders start to shake. Turning back to look at September, I note that her eyes are squin
ted in amusement.

  “My sister’s name is Thursday. Guess when she was born?” She asks, pointing her hot dog in my direction.

  “On a Thursday?” I guess.

  “On a Monday,” she answers with a laugh.

  Cline is really trying to keep it together because he likes this girl, but I can hear his voice crack when he asks the next question. “So do you only have the one sister?”

  “No, I have a brother, too.” Her face is expressionless as she waits for one of us to ask what we all want to know.

  “What month or day did they name him after?” Cline can hardly get the question out.

  “They named him Anderson. He got off easy.” She takes a bite of her food and grins. “I tried to go by my middle name for a while, Jocelyn. But then people wanted to give me a nickname, and it was Jocie, but that turned into Jockey, and eventually it was easier just to go back to being September Worley. No one wants to abbreviate that name. And even if I have to explain that my parents just like to mess with people by naming us weird names, it’s still mine, ya know?”

  “So, why are you only staying through tomorrow night? And why are you alone?” Audrey scoots closer to me so that the other girl can hear her.

  September is very serious when she answers. “I’ve come to the end of my journey. My time of Rumspringa is over and I must return home.”

  Cline’s entire wire, hot dog and all, goes directly into the fire. “Oh, my god … sorry, I’m sorry. You’re Amish? How? And you only have a few days left? You’re going back? I—you—this—“

  September breaks and starts laughing, bent over, her hand raised toward him as she waves it frantically for him to stop stuttering. “Stop! Stop. I’m kidding. Holy shit, your face. I wish you could have seen your face. Are you okay? Oh, wow. Did that freak you out?”

  He’s crestfallen as he tries to collect himself and rummages around for another hot dog and bun. “No, it didn’t freak me out.” I know for a fact it didn’t. He watches those Amish shows on TV all the time, and I’m a thousand percent sure he’s got a thing for one of the girls on there.