In the Stars

WiDo Publishing
Salt Lake City, Utah
widopublishing.com

Copyright 2013 by Whitney Boyd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written consent of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Steven Novak
Book design by Marny K. Parkin

ISBN: 978-1-937178-41-3
Library of Congress Control Number:  2013948973

Contents

Chapter One

I
have officially hit rock bottom. I push a strand of flyaway hair back behind my ear and fumble through my wallet. “I know I have my debit card in here somewhere,” I mumble through gritted teeth.

The cashier sighs and looks at the light above her register. Out of the corner of my eye I can see five or six people lined up behind me, waiting for me to finish so they can pay for their groceries and get on their way. One woman holds a wiggly baby while singing softly under her breath; another lady firmly tells her three young children that no, they can’t have the candy bars and stop asking. The man next to me mutters into his cell phone about the stupid girl ahead of him whose credit card was just declined.

I’m the stupid girl. I really am. My cheeks are on fire as my fingers fumble through the assortment of cards I’ve amassed over the years. University of Calgary alumni card. My Alberta Personal Health Card. Costco card, now expired. Driver’s license. Social Insurance Card, one that I’m not supposed to carry with me but I do anyway. Subway card with only three squares left before I qualify for a free sandwich. Manulife benefits card, no longer any use to me. Finally I see it! I pull my bank card out triumphantly and hand it to the cashier.

She swipes it, frowns, and swipes it again. “Ma’am, this card’s refused, too. Do you have any other method of payment?”

Panic rises in my chest. I never carry cash, and now I don’t have my credit card
or
my debit. My world is about to end. “Uh, well, no, I, uh, it should work,” I stammer, aware that everyone is watching me.

“Well, it’s not.” The cashier rubs her eyes and muffles a yawn with her other hand. “Why don’t you go to customer service and maybe they can help you.” The man with the cell phone nods his head emphatically at her words.

If I could sink into the floor, I would. I look at my shopping cart, now filled with the bags of food that I desperately need. I grab the nearest bag with a sudden brain wave. “What if we really quickly take a few items off my bill? I’m sure I’ll have enough then.”

The cashier wearily takes the bag I hold out and swipes the items inside, subtracting them from the tally. No more shampoo or conditioner, but maybe I can borrow some from Heather. No spaghetti or sauce, but I can eat those instant Ramen noodles for a week or two. I watch as my bags get returned. Finally I’m down to just milk, bread and a box of eggs. I even had to part with the dozen freshly baked donuts that smelled so succulent.

“All right, maybe try this again,” I suggest. I look back at the people behind me. “I am so sorry, you guys. I promise it’ll work this time.” A few shrug, some smile comfortingly but the man with the cell phone rolls his eyes and makes a grunting noise.

The cashier swipes my debit and enters the new total of just over ten dollars. She shakes her head and tries it one more time. “Look, this isn’t working. Please contact your bank or talk to customer service, but I have to help the people behind you.”

Tears prick my eyes but I force a smile. “Yes, of course. Sorry I took up so much of your time.” I stare at my cart. Should I take it to customer service or walk away, saving myself from even more humiliation?

“Excuse me, miss.” I turn around. The lady with the wiggly baby is holding out a twenty dollar bill, reaching around the man with the cell phone. “Take this. Use it to pay for your milk and bread and then you can figure out the bank stuff later.”

I am speechless. “Oh, uh, well, what?” My pride in being self-reliant melts away and I gratefully take it with trembling fingers. “Thank you.”

The woman nods. “We’ve all been there.”

“Not all of us,” says Mr. Cell Phone, every pointed word dripping with disdain.

I ignore him and hand the cashier the money. She takes it and gives me back nine fifty-seven in change. I move aside to let the man behind me get his order taken care of and make eye contact with the woman. “Thank you so much,” I say again and the tears spill over. I wipe them away, and the lady smiles. “Hope the rest of your day gets better.”

I attempt to give her back the change, but she shakes her head. I shove it in my pocket, grab my bag and the milk jug by its handle and make a beeline for the door. I have to get away from here.

Two hours later I am at home, legs and chest covered by the fluffy duvet from my bed, and sprawled on the couch. The television is on, but even though my eyes are glued to it, I’m not watching.

“What’s going on?” Josh, one of my best friends, comes in through the front door with a bang. He has become sort of a quasi-roommate lately. He doesn’t pay rent, doesn’t officially live here, but for some reason it seems like he does. I even found a toothbrush that belongs to him in a drawer in the bathroom a while ago. I wonder if he’d consider paying my rent for me? I mean, he eats all my groceries, uses my electricity and even showered here for a while when his apartment’s water main broke in the middle of January. I decide to bring it up later.

He kicks his shoes off and tosses his jacket on the pile of cardboard boxes full of household knickknacks my mom gave me that I still haven’t found a place for even though we’ve lived here for six months.

“Umph,” I grunt, not taking my eyes off the rerun of
Modern Family
that I apparently have been watching.

“Someone’s in a good mood.” He laughs and throws himself beside me on the couch. His lanky body doesn’t quite make it and I get shoved to the side as he settles in. He throws an arm around me and gives me an overly friendly hug. “No luck finding a job today?”

“No.”

“Did you try that new law firm that opened up on Macleod Trail? Just past the Tim Horton’s?”

I know he’s trying to help, but I am not in the mood. “Yes. They aren’t hiring junior associates right now.”

He leans back and removes his arm from my neck. “Sorry, man.”

“Whatever. I’ve come to accept that I will forever be a washed up lawyer who can’t find a job. Four years of my undergrad, three years of law school plus a grueling year articling, and I’m going to be working at the mall. My life is a joke.” I stare straight ahead. Eye contact will break down the wall of bitterness and put my broken heart on full display. I can’t deal with that.

Josh chuckles and shouts toward my roommate’s closed bedroom door. “You hear that, Heather? Charley’s going to be working at the mall! Maybe she can get you a discount.” He rolls his eyes and nudges me in the ribs. “You’ll get a job. You were top of your class. Just because Carter Clinton let you go, doesn’t mean that you are unable to be hired. You’ve only been looking for a month. Give it time.”

His compassion is my undoing. The tears I’ve been fighting all day let loose and I begin to sob. “I have three dollars and twenty cents in the bank! A woman who probably can’t afford diapers paid for my food today. Heather will throw me out when I can’t pay my rent and I’ll be homeless and all I wanted was some donuts and shampoo!” The last word goes up at the end, a pitiful, sobbing wail.

Josh stares at me. I’m sure he’s wondering how he got into this mess. He clears his throat, but before he can say anything, Heather steps out of her bedroom. Heather is the type of girl who makes both men and women stop and stare. She’s blonde, like me, except her hair is shinier, an almost white color. She’s taller than me too, at five eleven and usually wears heels which make her even taller. Right now she’s wearing skinny jeans and a BCBG Maxazria shirt with big, gold buttons down the front that set off her hair nicely. She walks like she’s a supermodel. Which she is, actually. Or at least as supermodelly as you can be, living in Calgary.

“What’s the big catastrophe?” She snatches a couple of tissues from the box on the counter and plops on the couch on my other side. I take the Kleenex gratefully and wipe my eyes.

“I’m a failure,” I moan. “A complete and utter failure. Ever since I broke up with Drew my life has been cursed.”

“Drew? Who’s Drew?” Josh jerks a little.

Heather raises her eyebrow with a bit of a smirk. “Really? You’re going to be pulling out the Drew card again?”

“Who’s Drew?” Josh asks again. He turns so his feet are in my lap and leans his chin on his hands. “I’ve never heard you mention him.”

“I’m serious,” I sigh, ignoring both of them. “Ever since Drew left, my life has been a mess. I can’t make a relationship last longer than six months, my hair stylist moved to California, I was fired from the best law firm in the city, and now I can only buy food if strangers give me money. I’m like Tom Hanks in that movie where my only friend is a bloody volleyball.”

“
Wilson!”
Heather and Josh shout. We watched
Cast Away
the other night. Who knew it would be such a profound and vivid picture of how crappy my life has become. You know, in an abstract, Picasso-like way.

I’m crying again. I bury my head into my duvet cover and attempt to block out the world. Heather reaches over and pulls the cover off my face. “You still haven’t explained how any of this is Drew’s fault.”

“Who’s Drew?” Josh is starting to sound like a broken record. He elbows me in the side, harder than he needed, and Heather reaches under the blanket and grabs my hand for moral support.

Okay. They win. So where do I begin?

When you have only two pennies left in the world,
buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other.
        —Chinese Proverb

Chapter Two

I
met Drew during my undergrad in Edmonton. We were in three of the same Psychology classes together at the University of Alberta, and he was perfect. Athletic, funny, tall but not too tall . . .”

“Gorgeous, too,” Heather interrupts. “Remember how I had a crush on him for about a week before he asked you out?” She looks at Josh. “Don’t worry. I bowed gracefully out of the competition after that.”

Josh smirks. “But you’ve probably been bitter about it ever since.”

Heather turns her head away from Josh. “You’re impossible. I don’t get bitter just because a guy prefers Charley over me. She’s been my best friend since we were three. I want her to find someone amazing.”

“Sure you do.” Josh turns to me again. “Back to Drew. You were in the same class . . .”

I hesitate for a moment. I had hoped he and Heather would bicker a little longer to give me time to collect my thoughts and memories. I don’t know what to say. How do I explain what Drew was to me? I glance at Heather. Her feet are propped up on our Ikea coffee table and she’s painting her nails a violent shade of red. I draw a shaky breath and continue.

“Well, he asked me out and suddenly life was amazing. Overnight I became super popular because he was on the football team and hung out with all the popular kids. People knew me, girls invited me to go shopping with them and do their hair and participate in talent shows for charity.”

“Popularity by proximity?”

“Something like that. But regardless of the reason, there were parties every weekend. I even got recruited as a Gamma Delta.”

“You were a sorority girl?” Josh asks in disbelief.

“We both were.” I motion at Heather who looks up at this. “We did all the ‘giving back’ service things and participated in rush week. It was crazy!”

Heather nods. “Not to mention we had some awesome vacations together with our sisters and the football team. Christmas break in Jasper at the Fairmont Lodge, remember?”

I giggle despite myself. “When Drew and that idiot Joel that you were going out with decided to have a competition to see who could go from the hot tub to a snowdrift and stay in it the longest.”

“And neither wanted to be the one who admitted defeat,” Heather laughs.

“Didn’t Joel have borderline frostbite after that?”

“I think so. But he was so drunk he refused to get it checked out at the hospital, so it never got treated.”

“They sound like a couple of real winners,” Josh comments. “I can’t believe you went out with a guy like that.” He smirks at Heather. “
You
I can believe, though.” Heather throws a pillow at him while I shake my head.

“It wasn’t all parties and stuff. Drew had a sensitive side too. Like the next spring when he brought me home to meet his parents on Mother’s Day. He was so sweet with her. He hugged her and said he loved her, you know, things that most guys are too macho to ever admit.”

I trail off, lost in thoughts best relived in my mind. The first time we held hands. The first time Drew kissed me, all alone outside my dorm room. I could hear Heather laughing inside with a bunch of friends and I was so nervous that someone would open the door and ruin the moment. Dancing with him in the parking lot of Walmart. It was raining, which is totally cliché, and we were soaking wet and that was when I knew I had fallen completely in love with him. Not to mention that time when Drew and I went bridge jumping in the Red Deer River. I was terrified that I would break my neck, but Drew held my hand the whole time. Such exhilaration! Such a rush! Such—

“Okay, so he was a great boyfriend. But it doesn’t make sense that you would blame all the crap in your life now on the fact that the two of you broke up five years ago. People break up all the time.” Josh’s voice cuts through my memories and I jerk out of my reverie.

“Truth,” Heather adds, going into an awkward looking yoga pose as she blows on her toe nails to dry them.

I bite my lip. They don’t understand! They have no idea the emotions swirling around in my soul right now. “He broke my heart.”

“Charley, we’ve all had our hearts broken,” Heather says. “It’s a rite of passage into the real world. Stop pretending you are the only one who has ever felt that way.”

My eyes are leaking again. “It’s not that simple. He dumped me out of the blue after we’d been going out for two years. Plus I had to pretend for months that it was amicable because we were in the same classes and working on the same projects. And all that time I watched him parade around his new girlfriends, most of whom were hotter than me. And thinner.”

“You’re hot and thin,” Josh says loyally.

“Stop trying to make me feel better,” I sniffle. “Immediately after we broke up, my grades went from A’s to A minuses.”

“That’s because you stayed in bed for a week, eating nothing but chocolate,” Heather points out. She shakes her nail polish bottle and applies another coat.

I overlook Heather’s interruption and continue. “I gained ten pounds—”

“Again, due to chocolate.”

“I broke a mirror on Friday the thirteenth.”

“Bad luck doesn’t exist. That’s all in your head.”

I plough ahead. “I never dated anymore. I didn’t get accepted to law school at Osgoode Hall; I had to go to the University of Calgary instead.”

“Still an excellent school. That’s where we met, Miss Complainer.” Josh is missing the point too.

“And now I’m an unemployed lawyer with trust issues, my car’s transmission is blown so I can’t visit my parents on weekends, and I hate my life.”

Josh and Heather exchange looks. “Sweetie?” Heather begins quietly. “You’re an incredible girl. How many people can say that by age twenty-six they already have a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology
and
a law degree? You are beautiful with that sandy hair that most of Hollywood is dying to copy. And you don’t date because you don’t
want
to date. You turn guys down at the pub all the time.”

“Not to mention you are one of the smartest lawyers I’ve ever met,” Josh adds. “And I should know; I work with a million of them.”

I wipe my eyes. “Thanks, guys.” I appreciate them trying, I really do. But I know, deep down, that Drew is the reason I’m not half the girl I want to be. Despite what my friends say, I feel like a failure.

If only he hadn’t left me.

“Want to go see a movie?” Josh stands up and stretches. Apparently wallowing time is over. “There’s that new Jennifer Garner movie that came out last week. You love those girly shows, Charley.”

“Rain check for me. I have to get to a photo op.” Heather rumples her hair and lets it fall down her neck like a waterfall. “
The
Herald
wants a picture of Miss Calgary and the mayor.” She flutters her fake eyelashes and shoots us her toothy, over-the-top pageant smile. “Sometimes it’s so hard being me.”

Josh groans. “You are unbelievable, you really are. How in the world am I friends with you?”

“Because you are secretly in love with me?”

“As if. That would be like macho G.I. Joe falling in love with a ditsy Barbie doll. Not going to happen.” Josh looks at me. “How about you, Charley? Movie?”

I shake my head. “I have three dollars to my name. I can’t afford a movie ticket.”

Josh grins. “It’s my treat. We can stop for DQ ice cream after and make it a date.”

I laugh despite myself. “Thanks for asking me on my first date in about eight months, but, for the record, it doesn’t count as a
real
date when it’s with one of your best friends.”

“Fine, it’s not a date. Whatever. Get your shoes, let’s go.” He grabs his baseball cap off the kitchen table and puts it on, covering his dusty blonde hair that never stays in place the way he wants no matter how much gel he uses. Heather disappears into her room to put on the final touches of makeup and I sit up. I wipe my eyes and drag myself off the couch.

At least now I know why my life sucks. It’s all because of the one who got away.

Maybe I can get him back.

Wouldn’t that solve all my problems?