The Chaos of Stars (13 page)

I fall back, feeling like the altar has punched a hole in my chest. Of course they don’t need me to last forever. My mother has a baby every twenty years. A new one to train up in the ways of worshipping herself and her family.

We’re not children. We’re power sources.

Screaming, I stand and kick the altar. It doesn’t move. I brace myself against the wall and kick against it as hard as I can, and it slowly leans until gravity takes over and it crashes to the ground, breaking into three pieces.

I sniffle, wipe my eyes. An inky darkness, like oil and fog, seeps out of the broken pieces, getting bigger, wider, darker. It oozes toward the door, toward where my mother waits on the other side, asking if she can come in.

“Mom?” I whisper, all my anger frozen into fear.

She doesn’t answer.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“Take my son,” begged Nephthys, voice a whisper, eyes down. “Shield him from the wrath of Osiris.”

Isis looked at the boy, the son of her husband and her sister. She looked at her sister. She held out her arms.

Anubis was the son of Osiris. Isis protected him the way Nephthys couldn’t, then sent him to the underworld to take a place by his father’s side. She found him an inheritance, a role, a domain to be a god in.

But she wanted more for Horus. Horus would have the crown of all Egypt.

Maybe she used up all of her maternal energy on him, because the rest of us just got dead cats in jars.

“THIS IS THE MOST STRAIGHTFORWARDLY
named restaurant I have ever seen.” I stare up at the sign declaring we are about to eat at Extraordinary Desserts. There’s a funky, bright brushed-metal latticework glamming up the outside of the one-story building, and I already love the look of the place. It’s day two of my Official Friendship with Ry. I think these things should always be declared officially. It makes it much less complicated when he invites me to go get food. Friends do that, and I know we’re friends. No reason to overthink.

“It’s not false advertising,” Ry says. We walk in through a huge black door and are greeted by display cases of the desserts, which, floods, look extraordinary.

I lean over the glass. Even the names of the desserts taste like sugar in my mouth. Flower petals adorn the most beautiful plates of food I’ve ever seen. Some even have gold-flake accents. I will spend my entire daily allowance here. “I want everything.”

“Bread pudding,” Ry says.

I raise an eyebrow, dubious. “Bread pudding. We’re staring at rows of cheesecake and chocolate and fruit tarts and cake, and you want to eat bread . . . mixed with pudding.”

Ry nods. “Trust me. We’ll get a few other things, but once you’ve had the bread pudding, you won’t ever want anything else here.”

I don’t trust him on that at all. We sit down outside and order. I get a pot of tea, the afternoon chill from the clouds barely enough to justify it.

“How do you feel about Indian food?” Ry asks, toying with his napkin. He’s wearing a heather-gray tee today, and I like it but I prefer him in blue.

I mean, I have no preferences. I don’t care what he wears. Just the aesthetics, that’s all. “I’m game for anything. I grew up on about five different meals rotated on an eternal basis, so this is all good.”

“You’re lucky we’re friends.” His dimple is the exclamation mark to his cocky grin.

I shake my head, but I smile, too. “I could find restaurants by myself. I do know how to use the internet.”

“Ah, but you never would have ordered bread pudding. You need me.”

I drum my fingers on the table, then snap. “I almost forgot! Here.” I pull out my black messenger bag. “I needed to pick up a new notebook with graph paper, and I noticed your notebook was almost full, so I . . .” I trail off, holding out a deep-blue, leather-bound notebook. Well, journal, really. Nicer than the one I’d seen him using, but this was so beautiful and when I saw the color I thought instantly of Ry.

“Seriously?” His face lights up, so honestly delighted that I want to laugh. Something flutters in my stomach, and I hope it simply means I’m hungry.

“I’m enabling your antisocial tendencies.” In part it’s an I’m-sorry gift, though I’d never say so out loud. I realized yesterday that he didn’t laugh at me when I said my passion was interior design, but I had been kind of a jerk about his writing. I actually like it about him, like that he has such a bizarre focus and pastime.

He takes the book, flipping through the pages, fingering them gently. “I’m not feeling very antisocial today,” he says.

Neither am I. The waitress comes, and I drown my flutters in herbal tea. And then bread pudding, which is warm and soft, with just the right balance of rich dark chocolate and cool, sweet cream.

Ry laughs, because he doesn’t even have to ask me if I like it. I’ve already eaten the whole thing and am plotting the soonest moment I can come back for another.

“So,” Tyler says, leaning in conspiratorially while Michelle finishes a phone call next to us. “You and Ry have been spending a lot of time together the last couple days.”

“Mmm,” I answer.

“How’s that going?” She waggles her eyebrows in undisguised glee.

“I am more likely to end up romantically involved with his cat than him.”

The glee falls off her face. “You—what? Gosh, if I’d known you had a thing for long-haired Persians, I’d have set you up with my family’s landlord.”

I snort and shove her shoulder. “Seriously. Ry and I are friends. That’s it.”

“Ooookay. Sure. If you say so. Speaking of friends, what are you doing this weekend? I’m thinking a movie marathon. As long as snuggling up on a couch in a dim room next to Ry for hours on end won’t interfere with this whole
friends
thing you’re rocking . . .”

“Not an issue. But maybe invite your landlord, too, since he’s clearly more my type.”

Tyler jumps in surprise as Michelle lets out an explosive swearing tirade next to me. That much foulness coming out of her tiny body never ceases to amuse me, especially because it so rarely happens.

“The insurers won’t let us set up the pieces until the night before the exhibit opens. They want everything to stay in the high-security storage center until the last possible moment. How are we supposed to get everything ready when we can’t even place the artifacts?”

Huffing, she stomps up the stairs toward the wing we’re going to be using. I haven’t seen it yet.

Really, though, I can’t blame them for being paranoid about security. The poor guard is still in intensive care in the hospital; he’s on several organ-donor lists. They have no idea what happened to him, which makes it all way creepier. And I’m grateful that Michelle was too nervous to give my mother specifics on the attempted robbery, otherwise I’m pretty sure I’d be on the next flight back to Cairo. It had nothing to do with me, anyway.

Besides, it’s hard to feel threatened here in the daytime, the cheerful, bright warmth pushing out the memory of June gloom and everything else dark or dreary.

The nights are another matter. But sunshine! I will focus on that.

The sunshine I’m focusing on barely makes it into the room Michelle opens. Even I am at a loss as to how they thought this would ever work. It’s not really a room so much as a massive hallway. It’s got tremendously high ceilings, 3.7 meters I’d guess, but it’s only about 2.5 meters wide, stretching two-thirds the entire length of the building.

Half of a wall has the remnants of some ill-begotten mural celebrating Central American indigenous cultures, and the rest of the walls are all splotchy white. A tiny row of windows lined up near the ceiling on the right side lets in a dusty trickle of natural light.

Her rage gone as if it never existed, Michelle studies the room as though her efficient, business-oriented gaze could whip it into shape by sheer force of will. “I still think we should disassemble one of the other exhibits and store it in here. Use a main room.”

“I am not disassembling that gigantic tree of evolution,” Tyler says, setting down a broom and leaning against the wall.

Michelle nods. “You’re probably right. We should have all the other exhibits open to avoid bottlenecking this one.” She gestures to a wall. “We can continue the color scheme from the Egypt wing—greens and purples and maybe a mural, then—”

“For the love of these idiot gods, anything but that.”

Michelle and Tyler both look at me, shocked. I shrug apologetically. “Didn’t mean to say that out loud. No offense, but the Egypt room needs an update. Let’s think of something new.”

Raising an eyebrow, Michelle smiles. “So, what should we do?”

I look down the length of the room and then close my eyes. An image of my father’s hall pops unbidden into my mind: the carved stone, the patterns, the murals, Ammit in her eternal watch, his low throne at the end. The weight of age and the gravity of death.

No.

The Nile, then? A green-blue floor, the walls yellow and lined with rushes. A breeze, the ripe-but-comforting scent of things wet too long. Still not quite right. Not enough sun in the room. Maybe if we could install heat lamps to leave the air dry and baking, but somehow I doubt that’ll fly.

Behind the darkness of my eyelids, lights trace lazy patterns as always, and I’m reminded of my stars. I cringe back from the idea because it would bring too much of my home here. But no. I’m over that. I will reclaim that idea. I’m going to remake my past so it can’t hurt me anymore. Just like the nursery I’ll do for Deena. I can remove the pain from these things instead of carrying it with me forever.

“Got it!” I open my eyes, the plans for the room spinning out in front of my vision, already replacing this sad space. “Stars.”

“Stars?” Tyler stands up straight, frowning.

“Stars. So much of ancient Egypt was focused on life outside of this one—our dreams, our souls, our deaths, the afterlife. They knew more about astronomy than any other culture at the time, always looking forward and backward and outward. So we paint the room pure black, and—no, we don’t even have to do that.”

I wander up and down, looking for outlets, studying the ceiling. “Here’s what we’ll need: huge sheets of plywood. It’ll bring the walls in a few inches on either side, but we can afford to lose the space. And lowering the ceiling a bit will help with the effect. The windows need to be blocked entirely. We paint the plywood all black and drill holes for LED lights. I can map out the star charts. My mother’s pieces will be staggered throughout, along the walls and in the middle, lit from beneath and by their own pedestals, so that they stand out in the middle of eternity.”

Michelle looks at the room with narrowed eyes. “It sounds complicated. And expensive.”

“It’ll only be the cost of materials, and we can do them cheap.”

“What about the time? We don’t have much. I’ll have to get it approved before you can start, and it might take a week or two for clearance.”

“I can do it. I know I can do it.” I bite my lip, hoping she’ll agree. Now that I’ve decided what the room should be, doing anything else will be a disappointment.

Finally, she nods. “Okay. Prove what you can do. And if you do a good job, I might be able to let you redecorate some of our older exhibits that you seem to think need updates.”

“Thank you!” I say, already racing with adrenaline and ready to work. I will own this room. I will own my past. I will own my future.

“Isadora!”

“Mother!” I sit straight up in bed, heart racing. This isn’t the tomb, or my bed, or my home.

Deena stands in my doorway, hand on her nearly nonexistent hip. I swear, that baby is taking over her entire small frame. How she doesn’t split open down the middle is a mystery to me. “Your friend’s here.”

“My friend?” I run my fingers through my hair, which is sticking out at crazy angles all over my head. “Tyler?”

“The boy?” She leans into the room conspiratorially. “The incredibly, ridiculously hot boy?”

I slap my forehead and flop back down. “What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

“Floods, who gets up before noon on a day when they don’t have anything going on?” I couldn’t sleep in the first few days, my well-trained internal alarm jolting me awake immediately. So I’ve started staying up as late as physically possible to force my body into needing the extra sleep in the morning. Who knew being lazy was such hard work?

“He’s already in the room priming. He’s been here for over an hour, told me not to wake you. I figured it had been long enough.”

With a growl I throw back the covers and stomp down the hall to the nursery.

Ry’s in a light-blue T-shirt and worn-out jeans. Three-quarters of the room is already primed, and music plays softly from an iPod dock in the corner. When I demanded that Ry pay me back for advising him on his travesty of a bedroom, I hadn’t expected him to take me up on it willingly—or quickly.