Starlight

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Saiph wrinkles his forehead, a confused look twisting up his face. “What do you mean it wasn’t that good? I thought it was—”

  I elbow him in the ribs and motion for him to be quiet. Now isn’t the time for one of his “don’t sell yourself short” speeches. Besides, it’s not like he read it. He doesn’t get to tell me it wasn’t awful.

  “Mine was okay,” Charlotte says. “Toby liked it. At least, he said he did. And it almost made it to the next round.” She squeezes her thumb and forefinger together to show me just how close it was. “If they could have let one more person in, it would have been me.”

  I feel sick. It should have been her. If not for the judges feeling sorry for me, she would have had my place. I open my mouth to tell her the truth, that I not only ruined the play for her, but screwed up the poetry contest, too. But all that comes out is a hoarse croak.

  Then the bell rings and she hurries down the hall before I have a chance to say anything.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Will you go to the dance with me?”

  Toby springs this on me as I come out of the girls’ bathroom before English. Saiph already went into the classroom to sit down, so me and Toby are alone. I look around, like I think he might be talking to someone else.

  “I know it’s really short notice,” he says, kind of a pleading tone in his voice.

  No kidding. The dance is this weekend. I’d given up on getting a date. And, okay, maybe I was hoping no one would ask me, so then Saiph would have to take me, in order to grant my wish. I know he doesn’t want to go with me, but a girl can dream, right?

  “Because,” Toby goes on, pausing to adjust his glasses, “you’re not going—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I asked Charlotte. Because, well…” He scratches his head and looks away. “You and Saiph, you seem really close, even if he is from Canada and everything. So I asked Charlotte if she knew if you were going, and if you and Saiph were, uh, well, you know.” He doesn’t want to say that he thinks Saiph and I are a couple. “But you’re not. Going to the dance, I mean.” He swallows and I notice his cheeks are red.

  I like Toby. And if he’d asked a couple weeks ago? I would have been thrilled. If a guy had asked me then, I would have been jumping up and down and screaming. But right now, all I can think is that I wish Saiph and I were a couple. I wish he’d said yes when I asked him to the dance, or that he’d asked me. I could have pretended I resented it, because not only did my wish-granter have to give me my first kiss, but he had to take me to the dance, too. But really I would have been happy. It would have been the best thing in the world, and maybe I’d borrow a little money from Mom so I could still get that dress, and everything would be perfect.

  Toby gives me a tentative smile. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s short notice, and I don’t know if you have a dress or anything, but you’re pretty cool, and it would be fun.”

  Cool. I wish. Of course, the only reason I seem cool is because Toby is a nervous wreck, pouring his heart out and asking me to the dance, and I’m just standing here, thinking about someone else. A month ago, I would have screamed yes, yes, yes! I would have freaked out. But I also wasn’t the girl who would have gotten the lead in a play or tackled Nichole Hamilton or stepped up and answered all the questions in math. I wasn’t so cool back then.

  “So, will you go with me?”

  I don’t think Toby’s exhaled since he bombarded me with the question. I appreciate his effort, but he’s not the guy I want to go with. Then again, Saiph already turned me down. He made it pretty clear it’s not going to happen. So I guess there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go to the dance. It’s what I wished for, after all.

  “I’ll go,” I tell him. “It’ll be fun.”

  Toby’s whole face lights up. He stands a little taller. We stand there awkwardly for a moment. Then he says, “I guess I’ll see you in class,” and runs off.

  I let all this sink in. Toby thinks I’m cool, and I have a date for the dance. My mouth curves into a smile, even though, deep down, this isn’t what I wanted. When I turn to go to class, Saiph is standing right around the corner.

  The smile drains from my lips. I feel really dirty, like I just betrayed him all over again. Like we are together and he just caught me cheating on him. I wonder how much he heard.

  His mouth is a thin line and his forehead wrinkles. His eyes don’t look so blue, more like a dull gray. He sighs and brings his hands together like a genie. “Looks like your wish will be granted after all.”

  ***

  Nichole pulls up to my drive-thru on Monday evening, looking more smug than ever. She twirls a lock of curled blond hair around one finger. She’s got her robot posse with her, too. Don’t think I don’t notice the way they point and giggle at me, because I do. Just like always.

  Saiph’s at home, playing Monopoly with my mom, but I kind of wish he was here. Maybe he could sic a dragon on Nichole this time, and I have a feeling she wouldn’t come out of it as victorious as I did. I can just see her bailing out of her car and running screaming through the drive-thru lane. Then she’d slip and fall in her high heels, and the dragon would overtake her and light her hair on fire.

  “Hey, Earth to Speck.” Nichole snaps her fingers at me, waking me up from my daydream. She looks upset, and I realize I’m smiling. That must really get on her nerves, seeing someone like me looking happy and not like I want to kill myself, especially now that she ruined the play for me.

  “That’s three thirty-nine,” I say, holding out my hand for the cash.

  Nichole gives me a five, her lower lip jutting out in confusion. “As I was saying, Speck”—she lowers her voice and makes it sound breathy, like she’s coming onto me—“will you go to the dance with me?”

  The whole car cracks up, but, personally, I don’t think she pulled it off. “No.” That’s what I say, to Nichole Hamilton, who thinks she’s making fun of me. A casual no, like I don’t even care. Which I’m realizing I don’t. Anyone who throws that big of a tantrum over not getting the lead in a play is hard to take seriously.

  I reach out to give her her change, then “accidentally” drop the quarters. They land on the ground beside her car. “Can’t you do anything right?” Nichole growls as she opens her door and leans out to get the change.

  Yes, Nichole. Yes, I can. While she’s scrounging in the dirt for her change, I dump a cup of ice down her back. “Oops!” I do a fake gasp—I’m getting better at this acting stuff—and pretend like I’m innocent. “How clumsy of me.”

  Nichole screams and sits straight up, forgetting the quarters. Her face is red, but whether it’s from rage or embarrassment, I can’t tell. “I can’t believe you did that!” she shrieks, arching her back and trying to shake the ice chunks loose from her shirt.

  Her friends are trying not to laugh, but they’re having trouble holding it back.

  “It was an accident! You don’t think I’d do that on purpose, do you? To you?” I bat my eyelashes, savoring the look on Nichole’s face as she hears her own words used against her. I wonder if anyone’s ever paid her back before. “Let me start over, with more ice this time.”

  She glares at me, then puts her foot to the pedal and speeds off without waiting for her drink.

  That’s nine million for the universe, one for Adrienne Speck.

  ***

  The next day at lunch, my stomach is so jumpy, I actually wonder if I might throw up. Today is the day we’re hosting the regional poetry contest, and my poem is one of the entries posted around the lunchroom. There are a lot of kids from other schools here. It’s a big deal, and everyone’s invited to vote on all the poems. Each person gets five votes. There are probably, like, fifty entries here, spanning four schools.

  I know I thought I didn’t want to be in this contest, and it’s the most nerve-wracking thing ever, having my work posted where everyone can see and vote on it, but it’s kind of exhilarating, too. I catch myself hoping, just a
teeny bit, that even if my poem only got in out of pity, maybe it actually has a chance of winning. As if the entire school laughing in my face when they heard my poem wasn’t enough for me. I have to go for the gold—district-wide embarrassment. I should have learned my lesson, but it’s hard not to wonder how many votes I’ll get with all these other entrants wandering around, hoping they’ll win. After all, if they can dream a little bit, why can’t I?

  Because my poem sucks, that’s why. I was the laughingstock of the school for two months to prove it.

  “Let’s go look!” Charlotte says, tugging on my arm.

  Charlotte’s a good friend. I told her Toby asked me to the dance. She kind of went numb and mumbled, “Oh, uh huh,” a couple times and didn’t want to talk about it. I’m pretty sure that’s because she likes Toby. She didn’t come out and say it, but she didn’t have to. And then Toby had to go and ask her about me. That had to suck. Boys can be so dense sometimes. I tried to tell Charlotte that Toby and I are only going to the dance as friends.

  Charlotte just raised a skeptical eyebrow and asked me how Saiph was taking it. I have to admit, I didn’t have an answer to that.

  “This is so exciting!” Charlotte says, practically dragging me across the lunchroom.

  Saiph runs up ahead and gets to my poem first. I see him start reading. Then he frowns. He looks confused and then angry.

  I think I really am going to be sick or have a heart attack or something. Saiph hates my poem. I knew it wasn’t anything special, but if even Saiph, my best friend, thinks it’s the worst thing he’s ever read, then it must be pretty awful. The kind of awful you burn any hard copies of and delete from your computer. This copy on the wall is the last one in existence, and I’m ready to tear it up and flush it down the toilet before anyone else has to look at it.

  I rush over to Saiph, my arm ready to rip the poem off the wall. I picture myself in a movie, leaping for the paper in slow motion, my voice all deep and slow as I scream, “Noooooo!” really dramatically. But that’s not what happens at all, even without the slow motion. Because when I get there, I see what’s wrong. It’s not my poem. I put a hand over my heart in relief. Then I take a closer look.

  “That bitch,” Charlotte says.

  I look at the poem. It’s not mine—it’s just nonsense. Not even nonsense that could still be taken as “artistic.” I look down at the name and title underneath it. Adrienne Speck, The Hollow. Yep, that’s where my entry should be. Instead of my poem, it says:

  one pineApple soDa crap.

  youRs elephant table dIsEase

  miNi toes ballooN hEat

  fiSh Under liCK cowS

  The not so cleverly placed capital letters spell out, Adrienne sucks. And that’s only the first verse. Fortunately, I’m interrupted before I have a chance to find out what comes next.

  “Hey, Speck.” I recognize Nichole’s voice without having to turn around. “I just love the improvements you made.”

  “This isn’t funny, Nichole.” I grind my teeth together so hard, I think some of them might crumble and fall out.

  She shrugs. “It’s not my problem you don’t like your own work.”

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Grady,” Charlotte says, then disappears into the crowded lunchroom, leaving me and Saiph alone with Nichole.

  Nichole inspects her fingernails. She nods towards Saiph. “I’m sure your little boyfriend will take pity on you and vote for it. Oh, that’s right.” She thumps herself on the head, like she’s a big idiot. “Silly me, I forgot. You don’t actually go to this school. Exchange students don’t get a vote.”

  Saiph steps forward, ready to chew her out for me, but I hold my arm in front of him. This is my fight. “You’ve never made anything, Nichole. All you do is put people down. Anybody can do that. And even if nobody likes my poems, at least I’ve done something. What did you ever do? Besides be a complete and total bitch?”

  “Whatever. It wouldn’t have won anyway.” Nichole flips her hair, then storms off before any teachers get here.

  Charlotte comes back, dragging Mrs. Grady by the wrist. Mrs. Grady’s bewildered, not understanding what’s going on, until I point to the wall.

  “That’s not your poem,” she says.

  “No, it’s not.”

  Mrs. Grady shakes her head, upset at whoever did this, as if we don’t all know. “They should be ashamed of themselves! Vandalizing a great work like that.”

  “Please, Mrs. Grady. You don’t have to say things like that.” Mrs. Grady, the spreader of false hope. I don’t need any today, thanks.

  “Oh, but they should be ashamed! Well,” she holds out her hand, expecting something from me, “give me another copy, and I’ll put it up. There’s still a good ten minutes left. Don’t give up now!”

  “Don’t you have one?” I ask. “Doesn’t the school have an extra copy?”

  “We only have the copy you gave us, and, obviously, it has been tampered with.” She suddenly puts her hands on her hips and gives me a dirty look, like she would if I didn’t do my homework. “Adrienne, do you mean to tell me you don’t keep copies of your work? When I was your age, I was a fanatic about it, and we didn’t have computers and the internet to make backups on back then. I had to type out every copy myself. I used to give my best friend copies to keep at her house, in case mine burned down, and—”

  “That’s great, Mrs. Grady. I know about backing stuff up. I…” I can’t bring myself to tell her and everyone else that I was so ashamed of my poem—the one I’m trying so desperately to get up on the wall—that I destroyed every copy I had. “I sort of lost it.”

  Her shoulders sag. “Didn’t you at least email it to yourself at some point? Hmm? We can run down to my office and print out a copy. We can still get back in time.”

  “I…” I shake my head. I feel really guilty right about now, and I’m not even sure why. It was my poem. It was mine to throw away if I wanted. I shouldn’t care that I feel like I’ve let everyone down. And now it’s too late. I can’t even reread my poem to decide if I really hate it or not. It’s gone forever, and it’s all my fault.

  And that’s when I hear Saiph’s voice, coming from the stage. I hadn’t noticed him slip away, but now he’s up there, in front of everyone. He has a microphone—I don’t know if he borrowed it or magicked it up—and a piece of paper in his hand. It’s hard to tell from here, but the paper looks a little crumpled.

  A lump forms in my throat. That can’t be the last copy, the one I crumpled up and threw away, can it? I mean, it kind of has to be, but… how did he get it?

  “A friend of mine wrote this,” Saiph says, his voice echoing through the room. Everyone watches him as he takes his glasses off and tucks them in his jacket pocket. He might look like a dork, but he’s so confident that nobody seems to care. “It was supposed to be up on the wall with the others, but instead, I’m reading it.” He makes it sound like a treat, like we’re all really lucky it didn’t end up where it was supposed to be, because now we get to hear his voice. Saiph snaps his fingers and the lights go out, except for a spotlight right on him. The whole lunchroom goes quiet.

  Saiph stands up tall and straight, and for the most part he looks at the audience, only glancing down occasionally at the paper, like he has it memorized. Like he’s read it a hundred times before.

  He reads in a clear voice:

  “So much emptiness,

  Like it grows on trees.

  Hollowing them out until they’re nothing but bone skeletons

  For somebody else to live in.”

  He pauses in all the right places, and he doesn’t hurry through any of it. There’s so much emotion in his voice, so much sadness that I could believe he was the loneliest person in the world. You wouldn’t think, watching this cool, confident person up on stage, that he could ever be lonely and sad, just like everybody else. Just like me. But his voice brings tears to my eyes, and the audience is still. They were laughing really hard by this point when I read it.

&nb
sp; Saiph goes on, building up the next part, then dropping his voice to a hushed whisper:

  “Like hollow logs in swamps, filling with ooze.

  People get lost there and never come back.

  I watched my life get empty, get vacant,

  And then sink into the muck.

  “I am suffocating in emptiness.

  I am rotting from the inside out.

  I am nothing, just a hollow place,

  For somebody else to live in.”

  When Saiph finishes, he’s on his knees, and the crowd is silent. There are a couple of tense moments where nothing happens. I don’t even breathe. I think everyone’s waiting to see if Saiph’s performance is really over. He snaps his fingers, and the lights go on, and, suddenly, everyone breaks out of their trance and starts clapping, including me. The whole school’s whistling and cheering for Saiph. And for my poem. It’s like they don’t realize they heard it before, and that last time, when I read it, scared and quiet and way too fast, they couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Vote for Adrienne Speck,” Saiph says, then hops down off the stage. Lots of people are crowding around him, but I push past them and throw my arms around him without thinking. He hugs me back. He’s warm and he smells like sugar and I can feel his heart beating against mine and I don’t ever want to let him go. But I do. I yank the only surviving copy of my poem out of his hands. I was right—it’s the copy I tore in half and threw away. There’s a seam in the middle, where he stuck it back together again, only with magic instead of tape. I recognize the way I tried to scribble out all the words. I guess he didn’t have any trouble reading it.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask.

  “Your garbage.” He winks at me. “I told you you’d thank me later.”

  Chapter Twenty-five