Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) (10 page)

When I opened
it, my heart thudded in my chest. My grandmother had packed clothes that were
far too glamorous for a twelve year old mental patient. I guess she thought it
would cheer me up to wear a silk scarf or a pair of patent leather shoes, a
Chanel dress.

She never
traveled again, after I got out of the sanitarium. She stayed home to take care
of me, making sure I followed my prescribed schedule, imbibed the proper
medication and ate balanced meals.

I pushed the
clothes aside, looking for a tear in the lining of the suitcase. A memory
loomed in the far recesses of my mind. Why had I pushed it away?

I found the
tear. It wasn’t very big. My fingers hit one side of the case. Nothing. Maybe I
had dreamed it. I swept my hand across to the other side and my fingers brushed
the fragile edge of a thin piece of paper.

It was small,
cut from a newspaper. I didn’t look at it, but held it curled in my hand.

I got in bed,
under the covers. My mother’s perfume wafted up from her dress and enveloped
me. Already, I was starting to cry. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

The light in the
attic turned gray.

I allowed myself
to picture her, as I remembered her. She was tall and thin with a haunted look
in her eyes. She had white blonde hair, like a flame. She used to sit by the
window and stare out.

Her name was
Zadie.

She said she had
to find him before it was too late. No one ever came to visit her.

One morning, she
wasn’t sitting in her chair by the window. I got a funny feeling, like when I
used to wake up in the middle of the night to find my mother had gone out and
left me alone.

I went to Zadie’s
room and ran into a nurse just leaving. I asked where Zadie was. The nurse said
she left.

“Did he come to
get her?” I said.

“No, dear,” the
nurse pulled the door shut. “No one came.”

I pretended to
leave but as soon as the hall was clear, I tried Zadie’s door. It wasn’t
locked.

I saw a pink
plastic lunch box on a cramped little desk in the corner. I thought Zadie must
have left it. She favored pink, which was my favorite color too. All her things
looked like they were from a thrift store.

I opened the box
and found a newspaper clipping inside.

Now, I sat up in
bed and unfurled the paper. There was a black and white picture.
Of Devon
.
My eyes scanned the words with disbelief.

On the
evening of July 7, Devon Slaughter passed away at Hospital Metrapolitano in
Managua, Nicaragua. He was 29 years old. He was the only child of Erin Morgan
and Devon Ames Slaughter.

Devon was a
doctor of philosophy and taught at Hawthorn College before leaving to travel
and volunteer in Central America. A celebration of his life will be held at
seven p.m. on Sunday at the Episcopal Parish of St. Barnabas. Donations in his
name can be made to Doctors Without Borders.

MY HEAD throbbed
like I had a hangover. I opened one eye. The dark swirled around like fog until
my sight adjusted. I recognized the color of twilight coming through a crack in
the curtains.

I was hugging a
soft pillow.

I shot up out of
bed. My gaze sought the corners of the room. Where were my boots?
Damn
.
I felt disoriented, though I seemed to be back to normal, more or less, aside
from the dull ache behind my eyes.

I sat on the
edge of the bed and glanced down and buttoned my jeans.
Oh, man.
Zadie.
What a fucked up night. Is that what it took to remember?

Did I want to
remember? It was like being dealt another losing hand. Same shit, different
day.

I pulled on my
boots. I liked to be ready for a quick exit, no matter what. Under normal
circumstances, my shoes stayed on. A
sloe
(slow)
screw up against the
wall
wasn’t just a drink to me.

I ran my fingers
through my hair and listened, hearing what at first I thought were mice
scampering across the floor above. When I honed in, I realized it was the sound
of crying.

So that’s where
Ruby had gone. She
did
cry a lot.

Why was she
crying? Her rampant emotions had excited me, at first. And now they stirred
something deeper, what I’d been searching for when I watched those old movies—my
humanity.

At the end of
the hall, I saw a door cracked open. I went to it and found a narrow stairway.
When I went up, my head brushed the ceiling.

Ruby heard me. I
caught her sudden stillness, before her little footsteps scurried. When I
reached the top of the stairs, my gaze fell on what looked to be discarded
clothes. I followed the trail and found her hiding behind a red screen.

“Ruby?” I
expected her to come out. I thought it must be some kind of game. Or maybe she
had been doing something embarrassing and her first instinct was to hide.

She was crouched
on the floor, wearing a white gown. The folds fanned out around her. She stared
up at me with huge black-smeared eyes. Her long red hair was disheveled, as if
she had been tearing at it. Her gown looked like something a little girl would
put on for dress-up.

I wondered why
her hands were behind her back. “What are you doing?” I said.

“Go
away
,”
she hissed.

Had I hurt her
feelings? Last night couldn’t have been much fun for her. But seeing her
huddled in the strange dress, her hair wild, her eyes ravaged, I was afraid it
might be something worse, something I should have seen coming. I thought of the
full bottle of Lexapro in her dresser. Which brought me to: What exactly is
wrong with her?

She stood up,
keeping her back to the wall.

“What’s in your
hand?” I said.

When I stepped
around the screen, she bared her teeth and brandished a knife.

“Whoa. Hey. Take
it easy…”

I wasn’t worried
about myself. She couldn’t hurt me if she tried and it looked like she might. I
was afraid for her, already envisioning a bloody accident. Though it was small,
the knife appeared sharp. “Ruby, what’s wrong? Are you mad at me?”

Her lips were
pale, trembling. “You’re not real,” she said. A sob wrenched from her throat.
She held the knife higher. “Stay away from me, I’m warning you.
Please
.”

“Okay,” I said. “I
will. Just give me the knife.”

“You think I’m
stupid?”

I stared into
her eyes and she stared back. Time slowed.

She tore her
gaze away. “Oh,
God
,” she said. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t
hap
pen-
ing
…”
the knife dropped on the floor and she put her palms over her ears.

WHAT WAS the
truth?

I saw his dark
eyes go to the knife. Or I
imagined
it. My hand shot out, quick as
lightning, like I was a ninja on a movie screen. The handle was cool and
smooth. The knife was real.
I
was real.

Devon was not.

He was born of
my mind, fully formed (walking and talking and
kissing
), like Athena
sprouted from the head of Zeus. I brought him to life from the pages of an
obituary. I was inside a horror movie and I had no one but myself to blame. I couldn’t
remember why I had stopped taking my pills. It seemed as if I had been cocky,
like calling Dr. Ess a shrink and laughing.

I didn’t want to
end up like my mother.

“Ruby, come on.
Just give me the knife,” he sounded alarmed and even annoyed. Who did he think
he was? A strange sound escaped my lips, a high careening giggle. My own
fantasy had the nerve to tell me what to do.

Fury gripped me.

Curling my
fingers tighter around the knife, I stood up and squared my shoulders. Devon’s
face loomed above me, like Georgie’s had; only Devon’s was inhuman, perfect, so
as to steal your heart with a single glance.

I forced myself
to meet his gaze. His eyes were inscrutable. “Ruby. Give me the knife.”

My heart
fluttered. I looked away. If I could conjure him out of thin air, I could make
him disappear. But I didn’t want him to go away.

Images flashed
through my mind, faster than I could grasp. Other people had seen him. What had
Wong said about him?
Hot, as in dangerous
. And Henry shook his hand. He’d
made Georgie’s polka-dot dress twirl on the dance floor.

“Ruby,” his
voice was low and seductive. “Look at me.”

I imagined him
reaching for the knife again. I lunged back and pointed it at him. His eyebrows
drew together. He licked his bottom lip and I saw the white edge of his teeth.
I felt dizzy. “Let me see you bleed,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to cut
you.”

Something
flashed in his eyes. I held his gaze, unyielding.

“Why?” he said.

I blinked. I
would not cry. I was done with crying. I was going back on my meds tomorrow. I
heard my grandmother’s voice in my head, “The road to hell is paved with good
intentions.”

“What’s wrong
with you?” he whispered.

I started to
quiver. “Please,” I said. “Please just…let me cut you. On your arm. I—I have to
see if you’re real…”

The silence was
unbearable. I lowered the knife.

“I could hurt
you, Ruby. I don’t want to. But I do it all the time…things I don’t want to do.”

What if he wasn’t
a delusion?

For the first
time, I felt the real danger of him. My heart raced. It was an insane idea, and
yet it was the only answer (aside from waking up in a padded room).
He is a
monster
.

“I want to see,”
I whispered. “I want to see what you’re made of…”

He grabbed the
knife. I stood there, empty-handed. The room tilted. He wouldn’t give me this
one thing. He didn’t trust me. He would rather hurt me.

But he said, “
I’ll
do it.”

He held out his
arm and studied it, like he was a doctor. I wanted to kiss the smooth underside
of his wrist. He made the cut across his vein. Blood spurted, red and thick. He
tossed the knife. It skittered across the floor. “Keep watching,” he said, when
my eyes darted to his face. The wound closed up, like magic. It reminded me of
3D movies, where volcanoes spewed fire and mountains collapsed into the sea.

I sank to my
knees and wrapped my arms around his waist.

“Don’t, Ruby.”

“I don’t
care
,”
I said. “I don’t care…”

He pulled me up
by my arms. Gold light slanted through the long windows.

“I want to make
love,” I said.

“Make love?”

“Whatever you
call it. Right now. Before you leave me.”

“Why would I
leave you?”

“Everyone
leaves. And I forced you to show me something you didn’t want to. Something
personal.”
Something tragic
.

There was a
long, deafening quiet.

“What am I going
to do with you?” he said.

* * *

He carried me to
the bed and I clung to him like I was Scarlett O’Hara. He laid me on the
rumpled covers and moved away. I heard him taking off his boots and my heart
hammered. I was tense and waiting, but for once my mind was quiet, emptied of
everything except him.

He straddled me,
lacing his fingers through mine. I thought he would kiss me but he looked into
my eyes. I didn’t want him to look at me. I just wanted to feel him. I wanted
the rest of the world to disappear.

“I know you’re a
virgin,” he said, finally. “It’s going to hurt.”

“How do you know
I’m a virgin?”

He smiled.

“I want it to
hurt,” I said.

He got off me.

I sat up,
confused, until he began to undress, peeling off his T-shirt and sliding his
jeans down past his hips. His body was chiseled in the dusky light. My mouth went
dry as my eyes crept below his waist. I was suddenly, completely terrified. “Should
I undress too?”

“Come here,” he
said.

I stood in front
of him. My gaze landed on his chest. I’d never seen a naked man, though I’d
seen Javier without his shirt a few times. Javier was hairy. Devon wasn’t. His
skin was smooth, almost burnished.

I reached out
and touched the muscles on his stomach. I sucked in my breath. A few dark hairs
made a silky trail and my hand moved down.

Without warning,
he grabbed the front of my bodice and yanked. My mother’s wedding dress
slithered to the floor. Cool air rushed over my skin.

He laughed.

A giddy feeling
rose up inside me.

“Now these,” he
slipped a finger inside my panties. There was the sound of tearing. Blood
pounded in my ears.

He was carrying
me again. Arranging me on the bed. I became aware of small details, the
dampness on the sheets, the salty taste of his skin, my own slick sweat, the
slow hard beat of his heart.

I stopped
breathing.

His open mouth
was on my throat. I felt his teeth scrape my skin. And then he was inside me.
The pain was sharp.

His breath
deepened. He slid out, back in. I swelled and tightened around him.

There was only
his movement, his breath in my ear, the slow friction, sweat pooling between my
breasts. My body went slack.

His hair was on
my lips, filling my mouth and I saw a red glow outside the window as the sun
fell low in the sky.