Steering the Stars (7 page)

       As I wandered out of the classroom, I considered the possibilities. Maybe I could run away. Or perhaps I could still get that spot in Marine Biology. Because, all things considered, researching the mating habits of squid didn’t sound so terrible anymore.

Ava flashed me a death glare before leaving the changing room.

       “She’s a real charmer,” I muttered, shaking my head in bewilderment. Was her thong chafing her ass or did she really dislike me that much. And
why
? What had I ever done to her?

       Tillie made a pained face. “She’s really not that bad.”

       I lifted an eyebrow.

       “Really,” she insisted. “We’ve been schoolmates since primary school. Ava is a touch cold until you get to know her. But she does warm up.”

       “I guess I’ll take your word for it.” I was unconvinced.

       We were getting dressed in a brightly-lit changing room that reeked of old sweat and chlorine. There were long benches in the middle of the space. Along the walls were sinks and mirrors and metal shelves to store your things. The cement floor was covered with worn blue rubber mats lined up end to end. A half wall stood on the other side of the sinks and I guessed that beyond it I would find toilets and showers.

       Mr. Hammond had been true to his word and had found me a uniform to play in this afternoon. He had even located a pair of shoes for me. They were about a size and a half too big, but if I tied the laces tight enough, I figured they could work.

       “I think she’s threatened by you.”

       “She’s threatened by
me
?” I didn’t even try to mask the surprise in my voice.

       “Sure she is. We all read your essay and knew that you’d won the writing contest because it was in a letter that got sent to all of us over the summer.” She shrugged. “Ava has always considered herself the best of the best and you being here is a reminder that maybe that she’s not.”

       “Huh.”

     
 
“Also, she went through a difficult break-up at the end of last term. She was positively gutted. Fit bloke, but if you ask me, he’d always seemed dodgy. Turns out he was on the pull with a girl who lives over in Ealing.”

       “On the pull?”

       Tillie looked up. She hadn’t put on her shirt yet and the skin on her stomach was the whitest skin I’d ever seen. “You know?” She wiggled her eyebrows.  

       “Okay, got it,” I said, yanking the flat-fronted skirt up over my hips and sliding the v-necked shirt over my head. The shirt was made out of a stretchy powder blue fabric and the skirt was a jarring yellow-gold color. Like the shoes, both items were too big for me. “Well, the fit ones are usually the jerks, right?”

       “All the ones I’ve known have been wankers,” Tillie agreed. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

       That was the burning question, wasn’t it? Did I have a boyfriend?

       “Yeah,” I said.

       She propped her foot on one of the benches and started to tie her shoes. “And what’s his story?”

       I’d been trying not to think about Owen because whenever I did, the muscles in my chest pulled tight, stretching until I could feel a kind of pressure in my lungs. It wasn’t necessarily that I got sad or depressed when I thought about him. It was just that everything felt screwy and I couldn’t deal with it.

       It had been a week since I’d been in London and in all that time he hadn’t emailed me or called me back. The way we left things had been so raw. So unfinished.

       I understood his position. He’d put everything on the line and I’d frozen up. He was hurt. He was upset. He needed a break from me. From
us
. That all made sense and maybe deep down, a small part of me was relieved. Maybe I was secretly glad that he was the one to say it, not me.

       But I didn’t really know where that left us.

      Were we or weren’t we a couple?

       Every morning I checked my Facebook account to see if he’d changed our relationship status, but it was the same. There in the sidebar of my profile, it still stated
in a relationship with Owen Kilgore
. Did that mean anything or was it like makeup? Only there to mask the blemishes.

       “Let me guess—he’s fit and a wanker?”

       I realized that I’d been staring off into space for way too long. “No! He’s not. Well, I mean, he is fit or hot or whatever you call it. In his own way,” I said, pulling my fingers through my hair and releasing a shallow breath. “His name is Owen and we were friends when we were younger and then we became more than friends.”

       Tillie’s soft brown eyes closed with appreciation. “That sounds romantic. I’m over the moon for childhood love stories.”

       “I guess so,” I said carefully. “We were best friends first… me, him, and Caroline—I think I told you about her earlier.”

       “The redhead?”

       I smiled despite myself. “Yeah. So, anyway, we were all inseparable and we even called ourselves The Three Musketeers, but a few summers ago things changed. Owen and I started dating.”

       “A few years is a long time. He doesn’t miss you?”

       I swallowed uneasily.
A few years is a long time.
That was the echo of what he’d told me the day I’d left.
If you can’t say it now, you’ll never be able to.

       “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I guess he misses me, but he knows how much I want to be a writer and how important this program is to me.”

       “But?”

       I paused, hunting for the right words. “The truth is that Owen doesn’t really like change. He’s more into predictability and comfort.”

       She dropped her foot to the ground and gathered her hair in a tight ponytail. “That’s rubbish. Change is good for you.”

       “That’s what they say, isn’t it?” I asked, rolling the waistband of my skirt over so it would stay in place. Then I turned to face my reflection in a foggy mirror.

       Oh. My. God.

       For real, the squash uniform was worse than my school uniform.

       I looked up and down. Then back up. “I am a stranger in a strange land.”

      
“
What was that?”

      
“
Oh, nothing,” I said, bending over to fold my school clothes and arrange them on the bench next to my bag. “I was just thinking that in this uniform, I look a lot like an ice cream cone.”

       She laughed and shook her head. “You’re hilarious. I’m glad that you’re here.”

       I smiled and put on my best southern drawl. “Oh, ain’t no thang.”

       My first instincts this morning had been right; Tillie Hoover was turning out to be my best chance at having a real friend at Warriner. She seemed genuinely thrilled to have me around and not only escorted me to almost all of my classes, she also invited me to eat with her friends. For this, I could overlook the fact that I watched her eat a ham sandwich with a knife and fork during lunch.

       When we were finished getting ready, I followed Tillie through a swinging door, down a domed hallway to where the squash courts were located.

       I still couldn’t believe I was doing this.

       SQUASH.

       Of all the sports in all the world...

       I thought about what Caroline’s reaction to this new development might be and I laughed to myself.

       “What is it?” Tillie asked.

       “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about home.” I shook my head dismissively. “But don’t worry—now I’m getting into the squash mindset.”

       She laughed and stepped in with the others.

       By a quick count, I saw that fifteen of us had gathered into a loose circle for practice that afternoon. Aside from Tillie, I recognized quite a few faces. There was the floppy-haired kid who had eaten at the end of our lunch table. Tillie had introduced me to him but I couldn’t quite remember… Reagan? Reese? Ugh, why was I so terrible with names? There was a girl with long wavy brown hair and a beaky nose who I’d had my last class with. She gave a half-wave when we made eye contact.

       And, of course, standing stiffly at the front of the group with a racquet in her hand, was Ava Cameron.

       Mr. Hammond arrived five minutes later looking the part of a yachter in white shorts and a snug-fitting white collared shirt. I had to wonder how many of the girls (or guys for that matter) had showed up for the love of squash and how many had come for the love of him.

       His green eyes danced as he paced in front of the wall of the squash courts, explaining the basics of the game for us noobs. He touched on equipment and the scoring system, excitedly telling us about services and rallies, then broke us into groups to play short matches. The player to garner three points the fastest would be declared the winner.

       There were slightly different balls for the different skill levels. Unsurprisingly, I wound up in the blue-dot group—the lowest of the low.

       The first person I played against was a muscular girl with dark hair that she wore pulled back into a tight bun.

      
“
Patrice, not Patricia,” is how she brusquely introduced herself before the first serve.

       Okay then
.

       Squash, I’d learned from a covert search on my phone during one of the breaks and from listening to Mr. Hammond gush, was basically the ancestor of racquetball. Two players stood on the same side of a court and took turns whacking a bouncy black ball against a wall. Sounds simple, right?

       Not so much.

       As it turns out, squash is a sport with a lot of nuance. Drop shots, trickle boasts, nick shots, and Mizukis were just a few of the moves I would supposedly have to master over the next few months. And, despite what she had claimed at the beginning of practice, Patrice, not Patricia, knew exactly what she was doing with a racquet. Blue-dot group my ass.

       Somewhere behind me, I heard Tillie cheering me on as I stumbled around in my too-big shoes, but it was pointless.

     
 
I was awkward.

       I was sweaty.

       I was an embarrassment to womankind everywhere.

       The only good thing about being horrendous was that I lost my games quickly and was able to sit out the remaining time and watch the others play.

       After we’d moved through a complete cycle and each person had played everyone in his or her skill group, Mr. Hammond put us in pairs to practice simple volleying techniques. By a stroke of luck, I was matched with the floppy-haired kid from lunch whose name turned out to be Ruben.

       Five minutes into the volley session, I cupped my hand over my mouth and whispered, “Do you think I’m being punished for an offense I committed in a previous life?”

      
“
Probably,” Ruben answered with the hint of a smile.

       “It’s like the tenth circle of hell in here.”

       He nodded solemnly. “Dante omitted the part about squash. It was too graphic and horrific for the general population.”

       Happy to find a like-minded soul, I laughed. “So why are you here?”

       “I suspect the same reason you are.”