Steering the Stars (21 page)

       Eventually, we came to a large man-made lake that cut diagonally through the park. At the edge, we veered to the right and followed the bank up a sloping grass hill to where a stone bridge arched out over the cloudy blue water.

       “Wow,” I said, leaning into the rail and taking a deep breath of air into my lungs.

       Joel smiled at me. “I know. This is one of my favorite places in the city.”

       “I can see why,” I said honestly. “It’s like something out of a watercolor painting.”

       “I like to come here on Saturdays and stand at this bridge and watch everyone enjoying their day off. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining or snowing or sweltering hot in the summer, the park is always packed. And being here is like being in a whole other London.”

        “You’re right.” I sighed. “It’s like Narnia.” He laughed then he gestured outward with his hands. “They call this The Serpentine.”

      
“
The boat?” I asked, following his gaze to where a sleek-looking rowboat was skimming over the surface of the water. A line of rowers wearing matching skin-tight uniforms was nestled in the center of the boat. Their arms and oars moved together as though they were one.

       Joel shook his head. “No, I meant that the lake is called The Serpentine. And that part of it—” he said as he pointed across to the other side of the bridge, “—is The Long Water.”

      
“
Oh.”

       Joel tucked his forearms into his chest and rested on the railing. “There’s a swim club that uses The Serpentine for practice. And every year on Christmas morning, they have a 100-yard race. It’s crazy to watch,” he told me. “My stepdad is a member and he’s done it three or four times.”

       “On Christmas?” I balked, just thinking about jumping into the water. It looked cold already and it was only October. “Isn’t it a little cold to go swimming in December?”

       He eyed me. “Colder than a polar bear’s ass.”

       We both chuckled.

        “You know,” I said, taking a breath and tilting my head to the side. “Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a polar bear’s ass.”

       His lip curled and one eyebrow went up. “You have?”

       “I have,” I said seriously. “And, you know, with all that fur, a polar bear’s ass might not be so cold after all. It’s probably pretty toasty actually. Especially when you take into account global warming.”

       Joel’s dubious look morphed into full-on laughter.

       I smiled and turned back to the lake. An old man in a dark hat was feeding the ducks, his gloved hands tossing out torn-off bits of bread. Sheltered beneath a tartan umbrella, a couple strolled one of the paths near the water’s edge hand-in-hand. On the opposite bank, two kids were throwing a ball to an energetic brown terrier.

       We stayed like that for a few minutes, just watching the afternoon slip away from us.

       After a while, Joel nudged my arm and said, “I definitely prefer you smiling.”

       I bit my lip, trying to think of what to say. I settled on, “Thank you.”

       “For what?”

       “For everything,” I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I feel awful about ruining our plans.”

       “Hannah, don’t be sorry,” he said, looking at me with a careful expression. “You didn’t ruin anything.”

       “Oh, really?”

       “Really.”

       “So, we weren’t supposed to see a movie today?”

       Joel moved his head to one side. “I never cared about the movie.”

       It took me a second to digest that. Did he mean what I thought he meant?

     
 
“The park is better anyway,” he said. “So I should be thanking your sister. She did us a favor.”

       I made a scoffing sound. “Whatever. She pissed me off so much.”

       Still angled over the railing, he threaded his fingers together and chuckled. “I could tell.”

       I winced. “Could you hear us?”

       Joel bowed his head a little which I took to mean
yes
.

       “She’s not normally like that,” I said quickly. Then I thought better of it. “
Actually
, I don’t know what she’s normally like because I don’t even know her. I was an idiot for thinking we could make a relationship out of nothing.”

       “Hannah, don’t say that. She’s your sister.”

      
“
It really doesn’t feel like it,” I complained. “I barely know her.”

       He stared at me for a long while before speaking. In the distance, a duck quacked, punctuating the silence. “You said you have a brother back home?”

       “Yeah.”

       “And, do you guys ever fight?”

       I snorted. “Are you kidding? Henry and I live to fight.”

       He looked at me pointedly. “Well?”

       “I see where you’re going with this, but Henry is my
brother
brother
.”
I sighed and lowered my voice. “Everything is different with Felicity.”

       “But maybe it shouldn’t be different,” he said. Maybe a fight with your sister is a step in the right direction.”

       I laughed.

        “Now that’s a nice sound.” His eyes moved over my face in a way that made me feel wild and out of sorts.

       I was still laughing. “I try.”

       “Hannah...” he said softly and his gaze paused at the corners of my mouth. My heart thudded. “You know I like you, don’t you?”

       A breeze was coming at me. It smelled like rain and moist earth and it messed my hair around my face but I didn’t bother to push the strands aside. Let them whip against my eyeballs. Let them stick to my lips. Moving even one muscle meant the possibility of breaking this perfect moment. “I didn’t… or I wasn’t sure,” I said. “You stopped talking to me.”

       “That was me being an ass.”

       
“
But, why?”

       “I didn’t want—” He stopped and closed his eyes briefly
.“
That night—the way you acted—I just figured you needed some time to figure out everything with your boyfriend back home.”

       “I told you. It’s over with Owen.”

       He blew out a breath, like that was the answer he’d been waiting to hear. The one he was afraid he wouldn’t get. “I didn’t want to be your reason or your rebound. Do you understand what I’m saying? I just wanted you to be sure. Sure about everything.”

       “I
am
sure.”

       He didn’t say anything right away but he did give me a faint smile and then he lifted one hand and caught the hair that was in my eyes and pushed it back. His fingertips brushed gently against my skin. “Good.”

       I trembled. “Good?”

       Joel’s finger moved from my cheek to the back of my neck. His palm pressed into my skin and his thumb gently traced the shell of my ear.

     
 
My heart went crazy then. It wanted more. More of
this.

       Closing my eyes, I exhaled and leaned in toward Joel until my forehead was resting against his chin. Like he’d been waiting for this, his arms slipped over me so that our bodies were touching all the way from our thighs to our necks. The air around us was chilly, but the space we made together spiked fever hot.

       I could feel everything—the press of his chest against mine, the slope of his hip bones beneath the fabric of his jeans, and the metallic scrape of his belt buckle against my bare stomach.

       An involuntary breath shuddered out of me.

       “Is this okay?” he asked.

       Unable to speak, I nodded. It was more than okay. It was perfect.

       Very slowly, Joel slid his hands across my arms. He touched the star pendant that laid flat against my chest, and then he cupped my face and pulled me closer until our mouths were barely touching. His breath moved in warm puffs over my skin.

       And then he kissed me.   

       The first touch of his lips spun through me like a tornado touching down from the sky. I tasted wind and rain and clouds. Then his tongue found mine and my heart crashed down to earth. My whole body shook from the intensity of it and I couldn’t help but think,
So this is what all the great writers are talking about.

       “Hannah?” he asked in a worried whisper.

       I’d never been kissed like that and I didn’t want to lose the momentum. So I grabbed Joel’s shoulders and I held on. “I’m not—don’t stop.
Please.
”

       His mouth made a delicate trail from my earlobe to my eyelids. His fingers danced across my jaw. He pressed his lips to the tip of my nose and then he reclaimed my mouth.

       I was gone. So gone that I had no idea how we stayed like that. Below us, an endless cycle of cool, dark water pushed under the bridge. And above us, distended grey clouds slipped across the domed sky.

       Eventually, reluctantly, we both pulled back.

       Joel still held my face in his hands. I saw that his eyes were bright and shiny and he was smiling.

       I grinned back.

       “I have an idea,” he said. “It’s not a movie but it has a one hundred percent success rate in making this day even better.”

       It took a moment to find my voice. “One hundred percent? Those are some high numbers.”

       He leaned down and his lips found my ears. “Because the plan is failsafe.”

       “Okay…” I laughed, shivering and feeling the soft fabric of his sweater against my cheek. “What is it?”

       “Ice cream.”

       “Ice cream?”

       “Yep,” he confirmed. “With a flake.”

       “What’s a flake? It sounds like something you feed to a fish.”

       He laughed. “No, it’s a chocolate bar.”

       “I’m listening...”

       He pressed a kiss to my hair and swung his arm over me. It was heavy and solid on my shoulders. Like everything about this moment, I wanted to hold on to the feel of it forever.

       “This way,” he said, leading me across the bridge. “Hyde Park connects to Kensington Gardens and that’s where they have the best ice cream.”

       “With a flake,” I reminded him, blinking up at the sky.  
 

“Try it again,” Mrs. Cobb suggested. She made a rolling motion with her hands. “Take a deep breath Caroline.”

       I looked down and squeezed my eyes shut. Why wasn’t I getting this? I didn’t want to let everyone down, but we’d been rehearsing for a while now and it was time to face the facts: I was not meant to shine. The spotlight was not the place for Caroline McKain. That much was glaringly obvious.

     
 
“Do you need to look over the lines again?” Miles asked and pulled a sheet of paper from the back pocket of his brown dress pants. We were in the middle of a partial dress rehearsal and aside from an archaic suit that smelled like mothballs, he was wearing a wig and glasses.

      
 
“It’s not...” I paused long enough to suck in a lungful of air. I knew that the entire cast was watching us and I could imagine what they were thinking. Me flubbing my part was becoming a running joke. “It’s not that I don’t know the lines. I know them backward and forward and probably diagonally too. I can sing
The Rain in Spain
in my sleep. At home, I get everything perfect, but once I’m on stage with you, my mind just—”

       The play, the scenes, the songs… all of it was running on a tiresome loop through my head. I was so exhausted and defeated, I wanted to drop to the stage and scream at bright lights.

       I had told everyone in the beginning that playing Eliza was too much for me to handle. But
nooooo.
No one had listened and look where that had gotten us. Opening night was less than a month away and each practice was turning into a bigger failure than the last.

       “So the problem isn’t memorization?” Mrs. Cobb asked, looking me up and down.

       “N-no,” I said, getting more and more flustered.

       The problem wasn’t memorization. The problem was that when I was on stage like this, everything got out of whack and shaky. My heart started to clack around my body. My head started to pound. Even my vision went foggy.

       “When I’m up here, all of the lines and the choreography are bouncing against the side of my skull,” I told her. “It comes my turn and I draw a complete and total blank. I end up standing here like a brainless zombie. Actually, watching a zombie on stage would probably be more interesting than watching me stutter my way through a scene.”

     
 
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” she said and gave my shoulders a soft motherly squeeze. “This is a classic case of stage fright and I think with a few breathing and imagery exercises, we can get you past this.”

       Breathing and imagery exercises?

       “Let’s try it again. This time, I want to see Miles enter from stage left.” She pointed as she made her way down the stage steps out toward where the audience would sit. “Caroline, remember to breathe and relax your body. Forget about the audience and anyone watching. Maybe try to visualize yourself in a meadow surrounded by daffodils. There’s a soft breeze moving through your hair. The air smells sweet, like the first day of summer.”

       Was she being serious?

       “Got that?” Miles asked with a half-smile on his face.

       “Um, yeah. I’ll try it,” I said skeptically.

        “Great!” she shouted back. “Let’s take it from the top! Cassie, cue the music please!”

       As predicted, the meadow thing didn’t work and the rest of practice was embarrassing and horrible. I knew that despite what Mrs. Cobb thought, the rest of the cast and crew were quickly zooming past understanding to frustration and annoyance. Of course knowing that did nothing to calm my already-frazzled nerves.

        Loverly voice or not, I was obviously the wrong choice for this role and at this point, quitting seemed like the best option. Mrs. Cobb would be disappointed and my grade would take a nosedive, but wasn’t stepping aside actually doing everyone else a favor?

     
 
“You okay?” Henry asked on our way home.

     
 
“Not really. I suck.”

       “You don’t suck.”

     
 
“Except I do.”

       He glanced my way. “Caroline…”

       It was a Wednesday, just five days after our “sleepover” and something between Henry and I had definitely shifted. We hadn’t talked about it and it was nothing I could put my finger on. Still, it was there…

       “I keep messing up my lines,” I grumbled. “I think the best thing to do for everyone involved is to walk away.”

       “You can’t quit after you’ve already put so much work in,” he said. “Plus, you have the time to get it right. Opening night is—”

       “Only a few weeks away,” I interjected. “And I’m the only one up there who still needs to reference the script.”

       He shook his head. “But everyone else has done this before.”

       “Does that matter?”

       “Of course it matters. A month ago you were worried about throwing up on stage. I’d call this progress.”

       I sighed. “That’s nice of you to say but I’m not used to…
failing.
”

       “You aren’t failing.”

       “That’s what it feels like.”

       After a moment, he said, “Look, if it’ll make you feel better, I can help you.”

       I turned in my seat. “How?”

       Henry’s shoulders moved. “We’ll run lines together or whatever works. I can read for Professor Higgins and whoever else you need me to.”

       I was sure my jaw was hanging. “You’d do that for me?”

       “Of course I would. Especially if we can include pizza somehow.”

       I giggled. “I-uh… don’t remember pizza in the script.”

       “Artistic license?”

       I laughed some more. “You know, now that you mention food...”

       “You’re hungry?” he asked.

       “Starved.”

       “Good,” he said with a sharp smile. “Because I am too. Let’s grab a pizza from Joe’s then we can go back to my place.”

       “Sounds like a plan.”

       Joe’s Pizzeria was always packed, and tonight was no exception. There were some faces I recognized from school and a bunch I didn’t. We ordered a large with pepperoni, mushrooms and peppers, then we waited in two chairs in the lounge area for about a half hour. It was like a long time for pizza, but Libby Park wasn’t exactly chock-full of options and a pie from Joe’s was worth it.

       While we waited, a few seniors came over to talk to Henry. I got the distinct feeling they were wondering what he was doing here with me. I tried not to care about that but truthfully, I felt all sorts of awkward. To try and cover up my unease, I let my eyes wander around the restaurant. A copper-haired guy in a letterman jacket standing at the front of the line caught my eye.

       I’d recognize that head anywhere. Even from the back.

       Quietly excusing myself, I walked over and tapped the guy on the shoulder. “Owen?”

     
 
He turned around and I watched his face collapse.

       What was that all about? I didn’t need a fireworks display or a band to start playing but I at least thought he’d be happy to see me.

       Owen Kilgore had been one of my best friends since the first grade. We grew up together. We learned to tie our shoes at the same time and we caught fireflies in jars in the summers and traded insults on the playground and taught each other how to make mud pies. Not to mention that he was Hannah’s boyfriend.

      
 
“Hi, Care. It’s great to see you,” he said even though it obviously was not great to see me.

       I hugged him, which he returned with one arm.

       Feeling awkward, I stepped back and decided to start over. Maybe he was just missing Hannah and I reminded him of her? That would make sense.

       “So, Owen, how have you been? We haven’t talked in so long.”

       “Yeah, I know.”

       “I meant to call you a million times but things got busy and one thing led to another.” I took a quick breath before blathering on. “I got the lead in the musical. Insane right? So I’ve been super busy with rehearsals. Not that you haven’t been busy with lacrosse and your new school. How’s that going, by the way?”

       “It’s good,” he answered simply.

       I gave him a minute to elaborate and when he didn’t, I said, “Have you talked to Hannah today?”

       He shook his head and looked away. “Nope.”

       “Oh, well… squash practice, you know?” I laughed thinking he’d join in, but Owen never even cracked a smile.

       “She’s busy with her new friends and writing,” I offered helpfully.

       He still wouldn’t look at me and I was getting the distinct impression that Owen wanted to be anywhere but here. A fact that was confirmed when the girls at the register called out his pickup order.             

       He grabbed the pizza box. “Hey, Care, I’ve got to run. See you around though.”

       What the heck? Maybe I really did smell? I was going to have to do a discreet pit-test before Henry and I were back at his place. Luckily I knew where Hannah kept her extra toiletries for emergencies like this

       “Owen… wait!” I called out, following him out of the restaurant. “What’s going on?”

       Owen stopped walking and let out a heavy sigh. “What do you mean?”

       “You’re acting… I don’t know. Really weird.”

       “I’m not acting,” he muttered to himself.

       “What?”

       He started walking away. “Just...just ask Hannah. Okay?”

       Not about to chase after him a second time, I reentered Joe’s and plunked down in the chair next to Henry.

       “Was that Owen?” Henry asked.

        “Yeah.”

       “Everything all right?”

        “Yeah…” I started uncertainly. Something was definitely going on in Owen’s life but I wasn’t sure what it was. His new school? Lacrosse? Or maybe it was his dad?

       The last thought made my stomach tighten. Owen’s dad had always struggled with alcoholism, but for the past couple of years he’d been clean and in a program.

        “Things felt off,” I told Henry. “It was like… like he didn’t want to talk to me. I’m worried about him. What if something’s happened with his dad?”

       “You could ask Jellybean,” Henry suggested. “She might know something you don’t.”

        “Maybe.” It would make sense that she would know more about Owen’s life than I would. A long time ago we were on equal footing—The Three Musketeers of Libby Park—but now Hannah was Owen’s girlfriend.

        “You know, Owen could have just been in a hurry.”

        “Maybe,” I repeated. But I didn’t really believe that.

****

Henry and I stuffed our faces with pizza and ran lines for about an hour before he declared that I had nothing to worry about and that it was all in my head and offered to drive me home. I said I would walk and he said I was crazy and we went back and forth for a while until he told me that if I didn’t get in the car, he would pick me up and carry me home.