Secret Star (2 page)

She made herself look at him sitting across from her—just an ordinary going-bald middle-aged guy, aside from the strong arms and shoulders due to wrestling with Ernestine. He had brownish hair turning gray, what was left of it. Brownish eyes flecked with gray like the hair. Extra chin. Extra pounds around the middle from eating dough and eggs instead of decent food. He didn't look a thing like her.

But he was still her Daddy. The one person in the world who cared about her. She would never say a word to him about the stranger boy with his scarred face and his one eye and his black eye patch and his wild black hair. Daddy had enough to worry about.

“Tess.” He had noticed her looking at him, and he was smiling back at her. “Hey. You, me, chicken pot pie—it doesn't get any better than this.” Making fun of the beer ad.

Suddenly everything was all right. She grinned and started drumming her fingers on the edge of the table.

“All right! It does get better. Give us some music, Tess!”

She grabbed a spoon and got the basic frame going, eight quick steady beats to a bar, on her water glass. Inside the frame her other hand and both her big work-booted feet played around with the twos and fours, thumping out boogie-rock tempo on the floor, the table, the plastic scrub bucket, the big old tins with cereal boxes crammed into them so ants wouldn't get the corn flakes. Her arms and legs were reaching and pumping and whacking in all directions, her butt started rocking on the chair, and Daddy was bouncing around like she was. There they sat like a pair of nuts, both chair-dancing, Tess and her Daddy.

It didn't get any better than this.

Tess's bed was a studio couch somebody had wanted to get rid of, narrow and lumpy. Usually she lay and let her mind drift until she got comfortable enough to sleep, but that night she went to sleep right away because she didn't want to think.

The next thing she knew she was dreaming about the damn disappearing walls. They were just her bedroom walls, which was what made it so scary, because it was almost as if she were still awake and lying there looking at the Far Side poster Daddy had got her last Christmas and her Def Leppard poster with the one-armed drummer and her endangered species poster from school, but—nothing had happened, yet Tess knew to the marrow of her scared bones that just beyond the faded blue paint the worst thing in the world was on the prowl. It was walled in and it knew her name was Rojahin, it was going to get out and it was going to get her—and then the walls were starting to move. They rippled. They turned thin, like a curtain, and soon she would see the—thing she wasn't supposed to see, she didn't want to see—

She had to wake up, she had to wake up! She woke up.

Then she lay in her bed in the dark thinking
damn
. It had been awhile since she'd had one of her stupid nightmares—why had they started up again? But it didn't matter. Tess knew what to do. She stretched, then settled down with her hands behind her head, reaching for the metal studio couch frame, and she tapped, doing flams and paradiddles, getting a rhythm going. And she hummed along with it. The music started cooking inside her head, and once that happened she was safe. Her music was what kept her sane, kept her from thinking too much about things. About anything.

The next day instead of hiking home from school Tess hiked to the IGA at Hinkles Corner to see if she could get a job. And she lucked out—some woman who wrapped produce had quit in a huff that day. Tess filled out some forms and lied about her age, said she was sixteen, so she could work more hours. She was big enough; they believed her. A woman named Jonna showed her the stockroom and her locker and told her she could start the next day, Saturday.

When she walked out the back door from the stockroom, feeling slightly dazed, there in the gravelly delivery lot stood the stranger boy, headband and homemade eye patch and all, waiting for her by the Dumpster.

Tess wasn't afraid of him this time, just heartily annoyed to see him there because things had been going so well for a minute. She strode up to him. “You've been watching me!” she accused, leaning close to his scarred face. “Following me.”

“Only because I have to.” His voice stayed soft and low.

“I told you to let me alone.”

He lifted his left hand in a kind of appeal, and she noticed something: that hand was stiff and almost useless, as if it had been mangled. “Look, Tess,” he said, gently for such a hard-looking person, “I was stupid, I spooked you. Let me explain why I'm here. Please.”

She was indeed spooked, but for reasons he didn't know. She knew this Rojahin thing was trouble—she just knew it. Because of the way she couldn't remember. Because of the way Daddy's face went gray. She didn't want to mess with it.

She glared. “I'm late getting home.” This was true, and she had a good four-mile hike ahead of her, and from Hinkles Corner it seemed all uphill. The frame houses hung onto hillsides so steep people parked their cars at the bottom, down by the gas station and catalog store and video rental and the IGA. And the rusted railroad line and the creek.

Tess turned uphill and started trudging. But the dark-haired stranger walked along beside her, and when she strode faster so did he.

“Look,” he said, “Tess, for starters, I never introduced myself. My name's Kamo. Kamo Rojahin. Pleased to meet you.” He stuck his right hand toward her.

She rolled her eyes, but then she went ahead and shook his hand. Okay, something about him made her think he might not have a permanent address, but it wasn't like he smelled bad. His hair had a shine to it, even though it looked wild as a black pony's mane in the wind. His clothes were nice enough—plain jeans, plain faded-blue pocket tee, cleaner than hers. He didn't look like he had head lice or fleas. But Tess made her handshake quick and halfhearted and kept walking.

“I'm looking for my father,” he said, businesslike, “and I'm here because your name's Rojahin, like mine.”

How did he know? He must have tracked her down through courthouse papers. “It's not,” she said. “It's just the name on my birth certificate.”

“Okay. But you got to admit it's not a real common name. I'm wondering if we're related some way.”

She stopped walking and turned to face him. Hinkles Corner was not exactly a metropolis, and they had reached the edge of it. Tess was ready to turn off the road and cut across country, and she didn't want to walk any farther with this Kamo Rojahin person by her side. What the hell kind of name was Kamo anyway? And who the hell was he? He didn't look a thing like her. She was as pale as a person can get, and he was dark. She could have played fullback for Penn State, and he was slim and lithe. He was crazy if he thought they were related.

Although—there was something alike about the shape of their faces. Straight brows. Square jaws. Chins that meant business. And something—Tess couldn't quite say what—some glimmer in his one good eye that reminded her of a shadow she had sometimes seen in her own mirror.

“Where are you from?” Tess demanded.

He looked back at her quietly with the old stony hills rising behind him and the low evening light flashing off his black hair and battered face. “Nowhere. I mean, lots of places.”

Was he a runaway or something? A fugitive? A criminal?

Tess couldn't place him. He seemed too old to be as young as he looked, and he seemed like a drifter yet something about him felt solid, and she couldn't get past the way he talked, though she couldn't have explained what it was about the way he talked that stopped her. Hard-voiced, she said, “How do I know your name's what you say it is? How do I know you're not some kind of con artist?”

Kamo took a minute to answer, thinking, though his scarred face did not move. “You don't,” he said finally. “You don't know a thing about me.”

She gave him a look that expressed her opinion, and maybe he got the message, because when she walked away he stood by the road and watched her go.

3

Tess went to her first day of work not expecting much except a paycheck. Certainly not expecting her heart to turn inside out.

Then she heard “Secret Star.”

She hadn't dared to hope there would be real radio. In the front of the store where the customers were they played watered-down music like in the dentist's office. But in the back, where Tess was, in the stockroom—radio. Real radio, classic rock and the latest hits—for Tess it was as if she'd been reunited with a best friend, with a long-lost brother, with the mother who used to sing her to sleep at night. Her heart felt hot. They were playing mostly standard music, stuff she already knew, but now she listened in a trance. Barely heard people talking as she wrapped radishes. It had been so long—

When the first steel-blue guitar notes rang out, she forgot all about radishes and stood with the price gun in her hand pointing toward the sky. Then the singer's voice made her gasp. A voice of flint and moonlight. It began deep in his chest and rose like a hawk on the wind as Tess stood listening with her mouth hanging open, barely breathing.

In the sin-bin city

you can't see far

In the shadows

the bad pose

bullets fly

sirens cry

the blood flows

blows stun

children sob for pity

children cry for pity—

But out past the pollution

out beyond the fear

out beyond the shadows

shines a secret star

It was kind of like poetry, because the words mattered, they drove the song. But it wasn't just the words, because this dude could sing—oh, Mama, could he sing, with grit and gut but never just screaming out the lyrics—there was pain, but he got beyond it and turned it into real music. His whole sound was stony real. He was by himself, no band, no fake violins in the background, not even a drum machine—it was naked, the way he used his guitar for percussion, and Tess the drummer felt chills just listening. Among all the slick synthesized oh-baby-baby let's-have-sex garbage on the top 40, this guy stood out like a lonesome bright star in a black-plastic sky.

“Who is that?” Tess blurted out.

The white-coated people in the back of the IGA looked at her.

“Singing! On the radio!” she yelled as if they were the ones acting weird. “Who is it?”

“Where you been, in a cave?” asked a high-school boy working across from her.

“Nobody knows,” said the woman who ran the stockroom.

“Huh?”

“Nobody knows.”

“It's a big honkin' hairy mystery,” the boy said.

The woman said, “He's the secret star.”

And the song hawk-swooped on, crying straight to Tess's heart:

In this dirty world

you can't see far

but you gotta believe

there's a secret star...

Tess had not been in a cave, just home with no electricity, no radio—but she had heard kids in school talking about some secret star thing. Hadn't paid any attention. Just another fad, like designer jeans or the latest fashion model. If they liked it, she wouldn't.

In a way she had been wrong. And in a way she had been right. The other kids liked it, but she had been struck by lightning, she was riding a golden eagle, she was falling into a great white light. She stood listening to the last few bars as if she were tuned in to angels on high, and the boy across the table from her stood watching her. He grinned. “All the girls are hot for the secret star.” Teasing.

“He don't call himself that,” said the stockroom woman. “He don't mean the song that way.” She was middle-aged and sad-eyed and she seemed to understand. “It's the deejays call him that.”

Sure enough, the deejay was yammering. “Waaal, paint me green and call me Gumby! Six weeks at number one and no concerts, no video, no pretty face, and that's about as alternative as it comes—it's not supposed to be able to be done, dudes! Hey, didja hear the latest rumor? This guy is supposed to be a captain in the Marines, that's why he won't come forward, he's afraid they'll think he's gay. Ha-ha! Hey, do you believe that? I don't believe that. I like the one where he's supposed to be Jim Morrison's ghost. Whoo—ee! Keep it right here, people. Coming up—”

Tess stopped listening. She tuned out. Didn't want anything to steal the sound of that song from her mind.

“He calls himself Crux,” the gentle-eyed woman said. Tess looked blank, so she said it again. “The secret star calls himself Crux.”

“It's a gimmick,” said the boy, slapping paper tape around bunches of bananas. Tess knew who he was from school; everybody knew who he was. His name was Butch. He was an athlete, good-looking, with muscles and a cute grin. He was one of the popular boys. Tess had never spoken to him, because why would he want to talk to her? She wasn't cute. No boy would ever like her. But here he was talking to her about “Secret Star.”

He said, “It's hype. Take a stupid song, make a big mystery out of it, and people go crazy, and somebody's raking in a pile of money.”

He didn't understand. That was okay; Tess didn't expect everybody to understand about “Secret Star.” How could they? It was a mystery song, a miracle song, a fusion of rap and rock and a throwback to folk at the same time, all melted together with a little bit of country and so much soul it made her want to dance naked in the rain, which was pretty radical considering that she didn't know how to dance and she hated rain. Hype? No. What Tess heard was stone-bone real music, the kind only a real musician can deliver. Whatever was making this singer hide behind his song had nothing to do with making a pile of money. Tess didn't know how to say this to Butch, but she knew it for a fact, like knowing the sky is high.

Kamo knocked during supper. Tess looked up and saw who was standing outside and made her face freeze to show nothing. “Come in,” Daddy called without even looking up, but Kamo didn't come in. He stood outside and spoke through the ripped plastic that was supposed to be covering the screen door, talking straight to Daddy.