Secret Star (7 page)

Yet—she had to try. She had to keep trying. For Kam.

For herself.

7

“So where were you so late?”

It was breakfast time, there was bread but no margarine, and Tess couldn't quite tell whether Daddy was in a better mood or not. He was trying to be. He was talking to her. He was keeping his voice down, keeping it light. But there was worry in his eyes.

Tess didn't exactly answer. “Daddy, I wasn't that late. You went to bed early.”

“I never heard you come in.”

“You went to sleep.” She tried to tease. “It's hard to hear anything when you're asleep. Hard to tell what time it is when the clocks don't work, either.”

He nodded, smiled, changed the subject, letting it go. They talked about the Phillies, losing again, as usual. They talked about making some pork and sauerkraut sometime if pork shanks went on sale. He kept looking at her as they talked.

She asked him to sign a blank piece of notebook paper for her because she needed a note for a field trip. He knew she was lying, she could tell he knew. But he didn't say anything. He signed it. She wrote herself an excuse and used it to get back into school that day.

After school, and after getting called to the guidance office as usual when the deficiency notices went out, she hiked to the IGA to see whether she still had a job, and she did. Butch had said she was sick. They knew she didn't have a phone. It was okay. So Tess went back to the stockroom to get to work.

Butch was there. “Hey,” he said, flashing his famous grin at her. “You notice I didn't tell them anything.”

She had expected him to be mad at her, like yesterday. But he wasn't. And she still had her job. She smiled at him.

“I'll buy you a soda over break,” he said.

She wanted to read magazines over break. There was a special issue of
Rolling Stone
all about Crux—nobody knew who this guy was and they could still write about him, like what the songs were supposed to mean, and what the name “Crux” was supposed to mean, what kind of cross, like the Christ cross or a pagan universe symbol or a tree of life or an ankh or the constellation Southern Cross or what? Or just an X, like a poor man's mark? Tess had read the article and she wanted to read it again, she wanted to memorize it. But Crux was just a dream, right? Here was a real boy saying he was going to buy her a soda. A cute boy. A popular boy.

“Sure,” she answered, even though what he'd said hadn't sounded like a question. “Thanks.”

She worked till closing that night. Then slept like a sack of potatoes, no nightmares. Was back at the IGA at eight the next morning, Saturday, and worked all day.

She looked for Kam at breaks but didn't worry when he wasn't there. He had said he was sticking around. Anyway, she had nothing to tell him yet.

Every two hours “Secret Star” came on the radio and Tess stopped whatever she was doing to listen. The song made her breathless every time. Strong words, but it was the strong, complicated rhythms that made her tingle—those, and the strong, wild voice. She'd know that voice anywhere. She played it in her head. She heard it sometimes in her dreams.

“I've got the CD,” Butch told her.

The last couple of days Butch was being so nice Tess was beginning to think maybe he really did like her. It seemed impossible, but if that wasn't it, what was going on? He had bought her a Pepsi, a Milky Way bar, an ice cream sandwich. He talked with her while they were working and during breaks. He told her things. Like her, Butch didn't have a mother. His father traveled a lot making speeches. His father expected him to go into one of the military academies after high school.

At the back of her mind, Tess had always kind of believed in the Cinderella story, all those romantic stories where the boy was bad like a wild stallion but he was good to the girl so the girl knew he really loved her, love like a miracle that changed her life. Tess's life needed help so bad, maybe Butch was her miracle. Maybe Butch was going to make her his girlfriend, make her popular. Maybe Butch was her prince.

“The Crux CD,” Butch said. “I have it.”

“You twit. I hate you.”

He took this the way she intended it, as friendly envy. “You want to hear it?”

“Nooooo.” As if he didn't know she about wet her pants every time Crux came on the radio. Butch knew she wanted to hear that Crux album worse than anything.

“I'll play it for you after work.”

She was supposed to go home. Daddy would have supper waiting. But she would have walked through razor wire to hear that CD. Tess said, “Okay.”

“I'll show you my room. I got all sorts of things you'll like.” Butch sauntered off.

Lupe was listening. When Butch was far enough away she said softly, “Tess. You know, he is the kind—I hear him talking to his friends. It is all about what he does to girls. How he scores.”

But that was just the way the popular boys tried to impress each other. “He likes to talk big,” Tess said. “He's not a bad guy, really. Don't worry. I'll be fine.”

Butch drove one of those pickups on huge wheels, Tess noted, the kind with lollipop lights and a roll bar. Instead of taking her straight to hear the CD he took her to Canadawa first and bought her a burger and fries to go at the Hot'N'Now. Then he headed out via twisty hill-country back roads, driving so fast it was hard to eat. But finally he and Tess got to his house.

Tess hadn't realized till then that Butch was rich, at least by her standards. In a fancy development, the house was big as a barn and shiny as a Cadillac. Butch's father wasn't home. Sure, Tess realized, most fathers weren't home much, not like Daddy was always home for her, but what was it like walking every day into that big barn of an empty house? Who was he supposed to talk to, the cleaning service? Butch's kid sister was home, but when she saw him coming in with a girl she went to her room and stayed there.

Butch took Tess by the hand. “In here,” he said, tugging her down a long hallway toward his bedroom.

When they got into his room he led her to the bed. Tess felt funny sitting on Butch's bed, but there was nowhere else to sit. No desk or chair, though a whole wall of the room was taken up by a monster piece of furniture holding TV and VCR and a sound system with three-foot speakers and piles of videos and CDs. No wonder he had the Crux CD—he probably bought every CD that came out. Butch didn't need a job at the IGA. Big house, big stereo, DAT deck, he had plenty of money. Tess wondered why he bothered to work at all. Maybe just so he had people to talk to and something to do.

He closed the door and put on the Crux CD and turned it up loud enough so she could hear it with her whole body.

Right from the first note Tess was gone. It didn't matter that she was sitting on Butch's bed, or that he sat down next to her and slid closer to her and started talking to her; she nodded and smiled and didn't hear a word he said. All she heard was Crux, the messages in his words and his salt-and-sugar voice and the red-and-blue rhythms of his guitar—nobody else played guitar like he did, and the music mags she read during breaks at the IGA were full of stupid articles by experts trying to figure out how he did it. His chords, his finger-picking—the whole sound of his music was different and shivery and awesome; she could have listened to him all night and day. She was drumming along with Crux, tapping out rhythms on her knees, kicking the floor, pounding on the edge of the mattress as the tempo rose. Most of the time she didn't even notice that Butch was there.

Tess wanted—something she didn't have the words to name, but she felt it when she looked at the cover of the Crux CD, a lonesome four-rayed star floating in a midnight sky that was the huge pupil of an indigo eye. She wanted—she wanted to fly or something. She wanted more than just stupid dreams, but that was all she had, dreams. One magazine at the store had had a contest for artists to come up with pictures of what they thought the secret star looked like, and some of the pictures were as if the artists knew her dreams of him. One woman painted him crucified on a guitar. Another woman showed him as a constellation dancing along with all the old Greek stuff that was supposed to be up in the sky, gods and swans and sheep and lions and bulls. Some man painted him riding a palomino horse bareback through a sunset city, blond hair blending with the horse's wild mane and the evening star rising in the tawny sky. Each artist made him look different, yet he was always perfect, always angel-beautiful, always guitar-god mountaintop take-my-breath-away—transcendent, that was the word—like his songs.

Tess wanted—hope? A life? Him? Listening to his music made her heart ache, yet whatever it was she needed, he was there, giving it to her.

When the CD stopped, though, Crux wasn't there anymore. Butch was.

All too real and solid, there he was, pressed against her with his arm around her shoulders.

“Okay, baby, my turn,” he said, and he mashed his face into hers.

“Hey!” She shoved him away. “What the—”

“C'mon, baby, you know you're crazy about me.” He tackled her with both arms, toppling her back onto the bed, and there he was on top of her, his hips heavy on hers, jamming his mouth into her face.

He was big and brawny, made of solid muscle. “Stop it!” Tess screamed at him, squirming to get free, but with his weight on top of her she could barely move. He had her arms pinned, she couldn't get her hands on him, but she could bite, and she did. Hard.

“Hey!” He flinched away.

“Get—off—me!” Once she finally got some leverage she threw him halfway across the room. He landed on his butt on the rug, and she stood over him so scorching mad she couldn't say half of what she was thinking. The—the consummate jerkhead, where did he get off thinking he could grab her like that? “You've got no right,” she panted at him.

“Bitch! You hurt me!” There was blood on his face.

“Oh, poor
baby!”
She slammed out.

She got halfway down his driveway before he came after her in the truck. “Crazy bitch, what's the matter with you?” he yelled.

“Nothing's the matter with
me.”

“Slut! Get in here!”

Oh, that made a lot of sense. She wouldn't give him what he wanted, so now she was a slut? And she was supposed to get back in his truck so he could take her somewhere and try again? Right. Sure. “Go kiss yourself,” she told him, striding along as fast as she could without running from him.

Butch called her several more names before he revved the truck and roared away. “You can bloody walk home!” he screamed at her.

She did.

It was late when she got back, but her cold dinner was still on the table and Daddy was still up, sitting in the dark living room with nothing but a burned-down candle and Ernestine for company. With his lips pressed together. “You're grounded,” he said.

Tess looked at him with no heart to try to explain. There was no such thing as a prince, she was angry at herself for ever having thought there was, and her mouth felt filthy from Butch no matter how much she scrubbed at it with her hand, her whole face felt filthy from Butch. She felt filthy all over.

Daddy was watching her for a reaction, and he seemed to see guilt in her face; his bald spot went dark and he swelled up in his chair. “You've been messing around with that bum Kamo!” he yelled. “I knew it, and I won't have it! He's not welcome here, and he's not welcome near you.”

All of a sudden Tess was nearly as furious at Daddy as she had been at Butch. She wanted to hit something, it was so frustrating, this whole nuisance of being a girl. Butch thinking he could score with her. Daddy thinking that was what she'd been doing. “For God's sake!” she screamed. “What do you think I am?”

“I don't—”

“Kamo might be my brother! You think I'd—”

“He's not your brother!”

“Like you know that!”

“I do know that. He's not your brother. He's not any relation to you.”

This was too important to shout about. “How do you know?” Tess asked, almost whispering.

Daddy's voice came down as well. “I just know. He's not related to you.”

“Daddy—”

“He's not, Tess. That's all I'm going to say.” Daddy swung around and zoomed Ernestine into his bedroom. He closed the door.

Tess blew out the candle and stood in the dark thinking, trying to figure out how much to believe. She wanted to believe whatever Daddy said—but how could she anymore? There was too much he wasn't telling her.

That night after she finally got to sleep she had the nightmare again and tried to see it through. But it got all mixed up with Butch somehow and she woke up knowing nothing except that she wanted Kam, she needed to see Kam, he was the only one she could really talk with, she had to see him, and how could she? She was grounded.

In the morning things went both better and worse than Tess expected. Better because Daddy had French toast ready when she got up, with syrup made from brown sugar. Tess knew what this meant: she was forgiven. “I was crabby last night when you came in,” he said as she sat down to eat, which meant she wasn't grounded after all and was about as close as he ever got to apologizing.

“It's all right,” Tess said, and for a moment it was.

“Had a bad day yesterday,” Daddy explained. “And it seems like you're never around anymore to help me out.”

She looked at him with her mouth full of French toast and grew aware that French toast was nothing but soggy flabby bread sweetened with sugar water. “What kind of bad day?”

“My chest hurt. I had to push on over to Millers' for help, and for a couple minutes I felt like me and Ernestine weren't going to make it.”

Tess stopped chewing and sat there staring at him.

“Just angina, the doc says. But now we got doc bills, and a whiz-bang emergency room bill, and a new kind of pill bill, and you wouldn't believe how much them suckers cost. And the Medicare don't cover all of it.”