Where the Stars Still Shine (26 page)

“Do you expect me to forget she exists?” I’m shouting and it occurs to me that the neighbors might hear, but I don’t care. “Like I’m just supposed to swap her out for another parent. Right or wrong, she was my everything, Greg. Not
you
. And now you act as if you’re some kind of savior, but you know what? I’ve been saving myself my whole goddamn life.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” I lie. “It doesn’t mean anything at all.”

He looks at me for a long moment and I know he doesn’t believe me.

“So maybe I’m not the savior, but I’m sure as hell not the villain. Obviously I’m not keeping you and your mother apart. When I brought you home, we made a deal that if you wanted to leave, I’d let you go.” He gestures at the trailer door, his voice low. Controlled. More awful than yelling. “If life is so much better out there with her, don’t let me stop you.”

Through the screen I can hear the incessant cricket song that’s become a lullaby over the past couple of months. I don’t know why I tell the lies I tell, especially when I don’t mean them. What I mean to say is
Greg, I love you. Please don’t let me go
. But I’m afraid to say it, so I just watch as he walks out of the trailer.

“Dinner is at seven.” There’s acid in his tone, and I wonder if it burns his mouth as much as it does my heart. “If you feel like joining us.”

“I don’t.”

Greg and Phoebe are setting up folding tables end-to-end in the backyard to accommodate what quickly becomes a celebration. Cheers erupt like fireworks each time someone new arrives. People laugh. Glasses clink. And somehow the food—including the mashed potatoes I never finished learning to make—seems to multiply in an almost biblical way. When Kat comes around the corner with her parents and little sister, I want to go out and see her, but shame binds me in place.

These people love me. I know this. They loved me when there wasn’t even a me around to love, but I wonder if I’ll ever really belong to them. Or if they’ll ever feel as if they belong to me.

Maybe it’s time to go.

I take my guitar from its case and unstring the low E so I can remove the rubber-banded bundle of money that is my life’s savings. It’s not much—a couple hundred dollars—but it’s more than I’ve ever had.

Greg’s laugh drifts across the yard and I feel empty inside, as if my heart has been scooped out. I read somewhere that heartache triggers the same part of the brain that responds to physical pain, creating the same
sensations. It hurts to think about leaving my dad. Alex. All of them. And I’m so confused.

“Callie?”

Kat’s on her tiptoes at my window with her nose, lips, and palms flattened against the screen. I can’t hold back a smile and my heart shifts back into place. “Permission to come aboard?” she asks.

“Yeah, sure.”

I hide the money in my pillowcase and set aside the guitar as she enters the Airstream. Kat flops down on the bed beside me, threading her fingers between mine, and the scent of her flowery perfume wraps around me like a comfortable blanket. When her head rests against my shoulder, her personal space invasion is complete. It doesn’t bother me so much anymore. Not at all, really.

“I bet you’re going to miss this old trailer.” Her words rattle me, making me feel as if she can see straight through to my intentions.

“What?”

“Well, knowing Greg, your room at the new house is probably amazing,” she says. “But you have to admit that living in an Airstream has been pretty damn cool.”

I blow out a silent breath of relief. “Definitely.”

“So, um, how was your date?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Kat squeezes my hand. “Completely.”

I edit out the nightmare about Frank, but tell her everything else, including my fight with Greg. Including the fact that my mom is still somewhere in town. “She’s waiting for me, so we can leave.”

“But you’re staying, right?” Tears fill her eyes and my resolve crumbles.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Please, don’t go.”

“I don’t belong here, Kat.”

“You’re wrong. Just look.” She grabs my hand and pulls me into the main part of the trailer, gesturing at nothing and everything all at once.

My laptop is propped open on the table with the GED book beside it, the orange-slashed pages held open by the highlighter that did the slashing. My growing collection of books is lined up alphabetically on the shelf above the refrigerator, and taped to the fridge door is a drawing Tucker made of a stick-figure girl—you can tell she’s a girl by her triangle skirt—with tons of squiggles radiating from her head. Me, and my hair. Hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed is a snapshot of Kat and me, wearing our Tarpon Sponge Supply Co. T-shirts on my first day of work. And the last thing I see every night before I go to bed, pointing down at me with its gnarly fingers, is the sponge from Alex.

“Before you got here, the Airstream was a storage
shed for Christmas decorations, but you’ve made it your
home
. You’re trying to convince yourself you don’t belong so you don’t hurt your mom,” she says. “But if you leave … Callie, you’re going to break Greg’s heart again.”

“No matter what I do, one of them gets hurt.”

“So maybe you need to stop thinking about
their
feelings and decide what’s best for
you
,” Kat says. “What do
you
want, Callie?”

She hugs me as if this is good-bye, and I cling to her, wishing I didn’t have to make a decision at all.

Kat and I are selling dive-tour tickets out in front of the shop the next morning when my grandma’s car pulls up alongside the curb with Alex’s mother in the passenger seat. Kat lights up and runs into the street to hug Yiayoúla, who gives me a pointed look from over Kat’s shoulder. As if she knows I don’t want to take up my role in this performance. I step forward to open Evgenia’s door.

“I didn’t know you were coming today,” Kat chatters as Yiayoúla pops the trunk. “Let me help you with that wheelchair.”

Alex’s mom babbles something at me as I help her from the car. She pats my hand, which makes me think she’s saying something nice, and I smile at her vacant
face. It must be terrible to be trapped inside her uncooperative body, knowing what she wants but unable to vocalize it. Evgenia shuffles forward just enough for my grandma to position the chair behind her. The disease has progressed since I last saw her, and it makes me think maybe Yiayoúla is right. Alex needs to see his mom.

He comes through the side door of the shop wearing his traditional Greek costume and it steals my breath away. Until the smile I know is meant for me slips away, replaced by a flash of anger in his eyes as they meet mine. His smile returns as he crouches in front of the wheelchair to Evgenia’s level.

“Hey, Ma.” His voice is low and tender, and he’s so good that I almost believe him when he tells her it’s nice to see her. Her hands tremble as she reaches out to touch his face, and her words are nothing more than a tangle of sounds. The whiteboard is on her lap, but he seems to understand without her writing it down. “
S’agapó, ki ego, mamá
.”

I love you, too, Mom.

Yiayoúla gives my elbow a squeeze that telegraphs her hope. I should feel happy about this, but I don’t. Alex is hurting, and it’s my fault. I try to catch his eye as he stands, desperate for him to know how sorry I am for my part in this, but he doesn’t even look at me.

“It’s not every day I have such a special guest,” he
says, leading the way up the ramp to the boat. At the top, he scoops Evgenia into his arms. She looks so small and fragile as he gently places her on a bench in the shadiest part of the boat. “You get the seat of honor.”

Yiayoúla takes her place beside her friend as I wheel the chair back down the ramp, where Kat is waiting.

“What the hell is going on?” she whispers.

I fill her in quickly as the rest of the passengers board the boat.

“God, Callie, this is a train wreck,” she says. “Alex looks miserable, but Mrs. Kosta’s condition is going downhill so fast. Yiayoúla Georgia has a point. He might be pissed now, but not as much as he’ll be with himself if he doesn’t get a chance to say good-bye.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

“I’ll do it,” Kat says.

“What?”

“I don’t have anything to lose,” she says. “I’ll take the blame. I’ll tell him I was in on it instead of you.”

She runs up the ramp before I can protest and slides onto the bench beside Yiayoúla as the boat swings away from the dock. Kat’s willingness to sacrifice herself is probably more than I deserve, but when Alex looks back at me there’s no relief, only hardness, in his eyes—and I know letting her take the blame has made a bad thing worse.

Waiting in the gift shop is torture, and when I fail to ask a customer if she wants to try on the T-shirt she holds indecisively against her chest, Theo shoos me out like a stray dock cat. “Go. Take your break.”

The lump in my throat makes eating impossible. Instead, I keep watch from my favorite bench until the tour boat returns to the dock. Kat disembarks first, running down the ramp to fetch the wheelchair. Once Evgenia is back on solid ground, Alex heads in my direction. His eyebrows are storm clouds. He stops just a few feet away from where I sit, but the space between us feels immeasurable.

“I know you did this.” His voice is quiet, but his finger spears the air in angry jabs. “You had no business, Callie. Of all people,
you
—I trusted
you
.”

He gave me his secret and I gave him mine in return, yet he’s the only one of us who kept it safe. There is no excuse that will fix this. “I’m sorry.”

The same mouth that kissed me and helped erase the pain Frank inflicted twists into a sneer and he shakes his head. “Save it. I’m done.”

“Alex, please—” My vision blurs as he walks away. Kat rushes past him, but he doesn’t acknowledge her, either.

“I tried.” She rummages through the pocket of her shorts and produces a balled-up tissue, dabbing my
face. I watch as Alex lifts his mother into the passenger seat of his truck, and my whole body aches for him. “I swear, Callie. I told him it was all my idea, but he didn’t believe me.”

I brush her hand aside, the attention too much. I can’t breathe and Yiayoúla is bearing down fast, and I don’t want to talk to her at all. “I have to go.”

Threading my way through tourists and cars, I take off down Dodecanese, waiting for my feet to settle into the familiar rhythm of running away. Instead, I’m winded by the time I reach Hope Street and I have to slow to a walk to catch my breath. Tarpon Springs has changed me.

Once on Hope, I see something I’ve never noticed before. Tucked between two houses is a tiny white brick church. Beside the driveway, a sign written in both English and Greek says it’s the Saint Michael Shrine. Unprepared to go home and unwilling to go back to the docks, I make my way up the walk. Up the steps. Inside.

The walls are hung with gold-trimmed icons of saints I don’t recognize, and the scent of incense clings to the air. From a table beside the door I pick up a pamphlet, which explains that the shrine was built in thanksgiving by a woman whose son was healed of a mysterious illness after praying to Saint Michael Taxiarchis. Michael the Archangel. People have made pilgrimages over the
years to pray for healing. For miracles. Keeping the pamphlet will cost me a dollar, so I put it back with the others and take a seat in a little wooden pew.

“I don’t know how to pray.” I feel stupid talking to a room of flickering red votive candles and stained-glass windows. “But everything’s a mess and I don’t know how to set it right. I need some kind of sign. Or a miracle. Whatever you’ve got, I’ll take it.”

I sit there, wondering if I’d recognize a sign if I saw one, but nothing changes. No one comes in. None of the statues move, or weep, or tell me what to do. My pocket vibrates with each new incoming text, but they’re not from Saint Michael and I don’t feel like talking to anyone else. I give the archangel one more minute to conjure up a miracle before I leave, stuffing my unspent lunch money in the donation box hanging on the wall beside the door.

The driveway is empty when I reach Ada Street, and there’s no one inside the house as I rummage through the hall closet, looking for a suitcase. I find a red one—larger and nicer than my old tweed bag—that belongs to Phoebe. It bothers me to steal it, but I do, filling it with the things I can’t bear to leave behind: the computer, my favorite books, the picture of me and Kat, Tucker’s drawing, the finger sponge. I can almost hear my mom laughing at me for not packing clothes. It feels
just like before. Packing for another town. Another thrift store. Another me.

Except now I’m not sure I know how to leave
this
me behind.

I pull the wad of money from the bottom of my pillowcase and use a bungee cord from the storage shed to strap my guitar to the suitcase. It’s heavy and the little wheels aren’t as smooth as I’ve always imagined them to be, but I manage to wobble my way to the bookstore downtown.

“Hey!” Ariel greets me as I walk in the door. Then she takes in my puffy-from-crying eyes and the rolling monstrosity behind me. “What’s going on? Are you leaving?”