Made of Stars (12 page)

The surrounding buildings have likely shielded it, so it’s stayed upright a little better, enough that we can actually head upstairs, watching for any broken steps. This time, Hunter manages to prod Rachael into tagging along. She cringes the whole way up, clinging to Hunter’s arm, and I’m worried they’re both going to drop right through the floor because she won’t let him go.

On the roof, we have a picture-perfect view of the island around us. Granted, it’s dark, so we only have the vague outline of trees and buildings here and there, lined with snow, and the glistening of the ocean. Maybe we’ll be able to see one of the New Year’s fireworks shows on the mainland in the distance.

We’re miles away from existence, and it’s so beautiful.

Hunter

There aren’t words to describe it. The island is desolate, lonely, eerie, but it has an ethereal charm to it. Hauntingly beautiful in its solitude.

Chance and Ash agree, but Rachael obviously does not. All night, she’s given me strained smiles when she catches me looking. Tired sighs and weary scowls when she thinks I’m not. But what can I do? Since our argument on Christmas, I’ve really tried spending time with Rachael and Rachael alone. We’ve gone to a few movies, shopping, sightseeing.

It’s been the most
boring
couple of days since I returned to Dad’s.

Even last night, I grudgingly gave her the option to stay home with me, and she insisted she wanted to give it a try.
Brave the crazy adventures of the Jacksons and their fearless leader, Chance.
Her exact words, even. But the tone of her voice when she said Chance’s name was enough to tell me things aren’t as okay as we’re both trying to pretend they are.

Now that we’re here, I can tell she’s not enjoying it. She greets everything on the island with a look of wary disdain, as though she’s better than this place, like touching anything or taking a risk for once in her life might result in her untimely demise. I only manage to talk her into coming into the red building (Chance told the truth about coming here before; color me surprised) because: “We’re going to eat on the roof if it’s steady enough.” In other words, she can come along, or she can ring in the New Year all by herself.

Rachael takes a step back, eyes the structure with her mouth drawn tight, but reluctantly allows me to pull her inside. How can she not love this? The view is stunning. The smell of the ocean and the feel of the salt-tinged air every time a breeze happens by. It’s the perfect way to spend New Year’s, and Rachael seems determined to not enjoy a second of it.

“This is our castle,” Chance says as he stands at the edge of the rooftop, too close to the ledge for comfort. “This is our kingdom. How fucking amazing is it?”

“Pretty fucking amazing,” Ash and I say together.

Rachael stares down at her shoes. “I thought we were going to eat? It’s almost midnight.”

I glance at my phone. It’s 11:50, yep. “Where’s the cooler?”

“I thought Rachael had it,” Ash says.

“I left it downstairs. It was too heavy for me to drag up here by myself.”

I give Chance’s jacket sleeve a tug to draw him away from his self-induced trance as he gazes out over the island. “Come on, your highness. Your loyal subjects are hungry.”

Chance swivels around and latches onto my arm, grinning like this is the best thing he’s heard all evening. We leave the girls behind and pick our way back down the rickety staircase. When I spot the cooler just outside the door, I heave a sigh of relief. “Still there.”

“Where the hell would it have gone? The island spirits sleep on holidays, you know.” He hefts up one handle while I grab the other. It isn’t heavy, really—more awkward and ungainly to maneuver. We didn’t pack anything in ice; it’s cold enough outside, so why would we need to? It was more a precaution to keep everything dry rather than cold.

“Five minutes to midnight,” I announce as we head up to the second floor. “Let’s get a move on or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Oh!” Chance stumbles, his side of the cooler going down. “My legs. My poor, poor legs. I don’t think I can walk another step. All that rowing has crippled me.” He sinks to the floor, the back of a hand pressed to his forehead.

I laugh and set my end down, too. “Come on. Seriously. We only have a few minutes.”

Chance’s expression sobers. “Until what?”

“Until midnight, genius.”

“And at midnight, what’s the ritual? You’re supposed to kiss the person you want to be with the next year or something?” He studies me, and I can’t make my voice cooperate, so I only stare back. Chance
hmm
s. “In that case…I’m right where I want to be.”

I’m not laughing anymore. In fact, every one of my gut instincts is telling me I ought to be dashing up those stairs right now, cooler be damned. I should be there with Rachael.

So why am I still standing here, staring at him dumbly like I have no idea what he’s talking about? Like we haven’t been dancing around something neither of us has named ever since we came back into each other’s lives?

No, longer than that. Even back when we were kids. When he kissed me. When he slept in my bed and I’d wake up to his hand on my chest, his head on my shoulder. On Christmas, when his lips brushed my jaw in that little intimate way, like it was a secret just for us.

My throat is dry. This big, empty, decaying room feels too small for the two of us and everything we have not said or done.

“We should go…”

Chance gets to his feet and steps not over the cooler, but onto it, putting him several inches taller than me. My eyes are level with his chest. His hands brace against my shoulders. This is something I need to run from. And I can’t. I can’t, I can’t.

Chance asks, “What time is it?”

It takes everything for me to pull out my phone so we can both see the screen. It’s 11:59. Chance nods.

“Acceptable,” he says, prodding my face to look up at him.

Then he kisses me.

I saw it coming. I knew it would happen. Yet I’m stunned into silence, into stillness, with any capability I ever had of rational thought right out the door. His mouth is soft and his lips are salty from the ocean air, and even if they’re cold, his tongue is warm, and a hundred thousand memories of summers long past come rushing back all at once.

Chance, with a broken arm, trying to wade around in the creek while keeping his cast above water, until I scooped him up and let him ride on my shoulders.

The three of us dressing up, makeup and all, to perform plays for Dad.

Lying out beneath the stars while Chance recites stories we’ve heard a hundred times and still love.

Chance, going on about how his parents are rich, how they love him, how he has plans to attend a fancy college in Greece—or London, or Rome, or Japan—after high school.

Chance, pointing out the constellation of Draco and telling me,
Dragons don’t kidnap princesses or set fire to villages. They’re noble. Honorable. Worshipped, in many countries. Dragons protect.

I think of the constellation on his back while my hand touches it through his shirt, and I wonder if he had that in mind when he got it. Dragons protect. Something secret and hidden to protect him when he needed it most, because nothing else could.

Then I hear something overhead. A laugh. A shout. Whooping and hollering and
Happy New Year
and I remember the world isn’t about Chance and me. There’s a girl upstairs I should be kissing at midnight. Not this boy, who keeps his secrets locked away so carefully, who lies about stupid, little things just because he can, and who breaks my heart every time he does.

I jerk away, not knowing if I’m more horrified with him for kissing me, or me for kissing back, even if only for a moment.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I manage, taking two, three, four steps away. “Why did you… I have a
girlfriend
.”

Chance’s expression darkens. “Oh, please.”

“I
do
.” My voice cracks.

“You aren’t in love with her.”

“You don’t know that!”

He crosses his arms and hops off the cooler. “Are you?”

I open my mouth. Close it again. Rachael is someone I care about. Someone I’d never want to hurt. On Christmas, it dawned on me just how badly my lack of
trying
had been hurting her, so I was putting forth the effort. Trying to reconnect. Trying to rediscover what it was that made me decide I wanted to date Rachael to begin with.

Or did I never want to, and I’ve gotten tired of pretending?

“It’s none of your business, Chance. Either way, I’m still her boyfriend, and I’m not going to—”

He cuts me off with a sharp, bitter laugh. “You’re a shitty boyfriend, is what you are. Pretending to care more than you do when you’re secretly pining after someone else.”

God, I want to hit him. “I’ve worked really,
really
hard for this relationship. I’m not going to screw it up now.”

“Why, though?” He drops his arms to his sides, gesturing around us. “That’s what I want to know. Is it because she’s pretty? Good in bed?
Why
are you so eager to keep this going?”

“Because it’s
normal
,” I snap. “Okay? It’s fucking
normal
because everything else in my life has been so
not
normal. Do you have any idea how weird it is to explain half the things that have gone on in my life? The fact I’ve got a half sister my exact age because my dad cheated on my mom and had a one-night stand? How that little family arrangement has worked out all these years? Why I act like the head of the household at home, because Mom and Boyfriend Bob are too busy drinking and being wrapped up in themselves?”

I’ve hated it. I hate being at home with Mom. It isn’t that she doesn’t love me; it’s that she feels she’s paid her dues to the world and shouldn’t have to
do
anything anymore. On the rare occasions I made friends, I never had them over to the house because Mom always found it appropriate to share with them our family history. She would introduce Boyfriend Bob and make sure to confirm,
Oh, he’s not Hunter’s real dad… His real dad is a lying cheat.

And just because she and Boyfriend Bob aren’t
angry
drunks doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. They’re still drunks. Mom still wakes me up at all hours of the night to chat my ear off, then kicks me out of bed early because she’s too hungover to make breakfast or go to the store.

“Or how about when people ask me why I’ve never had a girlfriend before I started seeing Rachael?” I continue. “Up until I met her, Mom and Bob would hound me about never having an interest in girls. Because I kept thinking—”

No. That’s where I stop myself. Before I say something I’ll regret. Something I can’t take back. Rachael and Ash are going to come looking for us, and I don’t want to be found standing here like this, in the heat of an argument.

Chance is watching me with a subdued sort of expression, as though none of this surprises him. Which pisses me off further. Don’t I get to keep any secrets from him? He has a million, so why can’t I have a few? Yet he looks at me as though he can see under my skin, see every muscle and bone and exposed nerve that makes me tick, and it’s not fair. “Hunter, I—”

I hold up a hand. “Don’t. Whatever you’re going to say, just…don’t.”

Chance draws in a deep breath. He picks up the handle for the cooler. I almost tell him to stop standing there and
say something
, except I just told him to stop talking, so that isn’t going to work. Instead, I snatch the other handle, and we carry the cooler up the stairs in silence while I try to lick away the taste of him on my mouth.

Back on the roof, Chance drops the cooler immediately, leaving me to cart it the rest of the way over to the girls. Ash spins around to face us, smiling. The brief, questioning flicker across her features tells me she knows something is wrong, but when she mouths,
You okay?
I only nod and flip open the cooler lid to dig out a soda.

“Thought you two got lost,” Rachael says. She startles me by looping her arms around my neck and planting a firm, warm kiss against my mouth. She’s never kissed me in public before. Though I would have thought she’d be annoyed I wasn’t here when the clock struck twelve.

I wish she’d waited, at least until Chance and Ash weren’t looking. Because Chance has the most wounded, bitter glint to his eyes, and when I awkwardly kiss Rachael back, all I can picture is Chance stepping onto that cooler and me realizing what he was about to do.

But I don’t pull away from Rachael. Maybe because I know it took her a lot to be able to do this in front of others. Or because I’m trying to prove a point to Chance—and myself.
This
is normal.
This
is where I belong. I may not be in love with Rachael, but I trust her to be honest. Isn’t that what matters most?

Once the excitement of the New Year has ebbed, we dig into our food then stretch out on our backs to stare at the sky. I’ve never had as clear a view of the stars as we do here. There are no trees in the way like at Dad’s house. No smog and pollution. Just us, the ocean, and billions upon billions of stars. When Chance begins telling us his stories about the constellations, when he looks in my direction, I swear every one of those stars is reflected in his eyes.

“It’s so lonely,” Rachael murmurs from beside me.

This statement breaks Chance out of his trancelike storytelling state, his gaze sharpening as it snaps to Rachael. “What does that mean?”

She sits up. “It’s just, I mean, they’re so beautiful, but they’re so far away. Isn’t it lonely to think how big the universe is and how displaced we are from it?”

Chance’s stare could burn a hole through metal. I should say something about the look he’s giving her—as if she’s ruining everything—but I haven’t spoken a word to him since we got back up here, and I don’t intend to change that.

He says, “If that’s how you think, then you’re looking at it all wrong.”

Of course she’s wrong. Everyone who doesn’t agree with Chance is wrong, aren’t they?