Chasing Stars

by Siler, Mercedes

  The lady who took care of me is his wife now.

  “I don’t know things about you. I know things that have happened to you and in your life,” he says.

  “That’s a nice way of putting it.” I close my eyes, so comfortable with him.

  He rubs my back and holds my sleepy body as tightly as he can, breathing me in. “Come with me,” he whispers, petting me to the verge of sleep. “I don’t think I’ll be able to call home, just hearing your voice and not being able to touch you.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Ares

  I stopped talking when I was five years old and just started school. The school kept testing me for different disabilities. They made me go to the speech pathologist and the school psychologist. They would ask Persephone why I didn’t talk and she never gave them a straight answer. I only started talking to anyone besides her and my mom after the divorce and remarriage and moving. Most kids would figure out I didn’t talk and then would pretend I wasn’t there.

  When we first moved and met Nikki, it never seemed to bother her. She never let me hide. My sister hated it, but Nikki never cared and never stopped, and she got used to it. And that was exciting to me. No matter how invisible I was to everyone else, I wasn’t to Nikki.

  And now I know she was having a super shit time and she went out of her way to see me for who I was. It makes me appreciate her beauty even more.

  I pop a Tylenol PM and wait for it to take effect, getting comfortable in the corner of my airplane seat, headphones in place.

  The first time I ever jerked off was to the thought of her boobs. And when I got to see them for the first time it was better than every fantasy I ever had. She had been changing in my sister’s room after we went swimming in the stream. The door was open a little because she was the only one in the house. Persephone was outside arguing with Jimmy on the phone. When she saw me standing there looking at her she didn’t cover herself up, she just stood there letting me see her until she turned away. I remember how pink her cheeks were and how her eyes looked. I left for a build with Marc the next day. I thought about her every second of every day. I filled a sketchbook with drawings of the curves of her breasts and her smile and her sad, brave eyes, the lines of her collarbones and the tendrils of her hair. After a month and a half I fell off a beam and broke my collarbone and got sent home. When she saw me she told me I shouldn’t have been thinking about her so hard, I could have broken my neck and been no use to her at all.

  That’s when everything changed between us, I think.

  I sit straight and lean forward, thinking.

  I’ve never been in love with anyone else.

  I flip through my sketch book to a sketch of her sitting on the roots of the tree, feeling intense loneliness. She’s looking at the water and her face is serene with a sad edge and I love how I captured her look.

  I sit back and close my eyes, waiting for the pills to take effect.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Nikki

  My windows have black lace curtains. They’re one of the first things I ever made for myself. The lady that my dad married taught me to sew while I was in New York with them and I never stopped. My curtains have been up since then. They look like if I touched them they’d turn to dust. That’s what I’m looking at with my swollen, stinging eyes while I lie in my bed, the old as fuck tattered black lace curtains against the cold gray sky outside.

  My eyes are so swollen it hurts to open them.

  I told Natalie I’m looking through things and cleaning so it can be sold but I tried the first day and it didn’t work. I figured I would start in her room but I opened the door and the smell of her made me gag. So I cry until I fall asleep and wake myself screaming. I see her stab herself over and over, the cuts like overflowing red rivers down her arms. I see bubbles of blood and the look of shock and horror in her eyes. Sometimes it’s her, sometimes it’s me or Dexter or Ares.

  Sometimes they’re the babies dancing at Ares’ show.

  Sometimes it’s my baby that she’s stabbing as she rips it away from me.

  I hold my pillow to my mouth and scream.

  It hurts to breathe. It hurts to get out of bed. It hurts to smile or laugh. I hold it together at work, lying, lying, lying I’m okay, and at home with Natalie and Dexter and Marc I lie, lie, lie I’m feeling better and stronger.

  Usually my eyes don’t get this swollen. Usually I just scream but today is different. My heart hurts and I don’t want to go back to Natalie’s because the thought of lying to her makes me want to die. I just want to lie here and never get up. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to know. I just want to stay in this spot until somebody finds my body when it’s too late and I turn to dust at their touch.

  I wonder if that’s how my mother felt when she locked herself in her room, tranquilizing herself into oblivion. It makes me sick that she was right. She was right she was right she was right.

  Natalie started making me pick up Dexter from school and taking him with me. The first couple of days I tried to be normal and we packed the rest of his clothes and some of his toys and things to take to his new house with his new family and it hurt so bad, I haven’t been able to sleep.

  Yesterday he brought Jacob over to play outside so I got to sneak away.

  He brought him today too.

  I can’t breathe.

  I have been lying here staring out the window for hours not breathing.

  I should be watching Dex. I shouldn’t be doing this while the kids are running the streets.

  I’m going to get caught and then I’ll have nothing. I’ll be crazy like her with no one. I’m alone and everything sucks.

  I am stuck in this spot, trapped.

  I have less than what I started with.

  I thought I had finally been allowed to breathe for the first time in my life. I thought it was my new beginning. I bled, I was new. And then it stopped. I thought I was going to get a chance to live. But now if I let myself breathe even one breath I have lost everything. I will truly have nothing. And I’m not even making sense in my own brain.

  There’s a bloodcurdling scream that might be one of the kids but I don’t have the will to move.

  I close my eyes, hoping it was just a figment of my imagination so I can just stay here.

  “Nikki! Come quick! He got hit by a car!” Jacob comes in screaming.

  Dread curdles in my belly.

  I jump out of the bed and run after him. My mind is numb but my body is breaking. If there’s blood and torn flesh I’m going to die. I’m going to fall down and die because I’ve seen too much and I failed. I failed my baby boy. The only reason I had to keep going.

  The sun is gone but there’s just enough light to see some guy with an old, red, Chevy pickup truck holding onto Dexter as he kicks and screams against him, trying to get to Turtle who is lying dead and twisted in the street. It’s more death than I ever thought I would be able to bear, but I’m so relieved it’s not my baby brother.

  I turn to Jacob and push his little kid body. He falls in the wet grass with the most confused look on his face. My insides are shaking with rage. “Turtle is a girl, you idiot!” I storm over to the guy holding Dexter. “What the hell is going on?” I scream at him through tears. He probably thinks I’m bonkers.

  I probably look just like her.

  Neighbors come out of their houses.

  “Listen, lady, it was an accident! I almost hit this kid! He was playin’ in the Goddamn street! It was him or the cat. I figured there’d be less paperwork for the cat!”

  “Let go of me you fucking murderer!” Dexter screams like I’ve never heard him scream before. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” he shrieks.

  “I believe him and I’m not going to let him go until you assure me he’s not gonna kill me,” the guy says.

  I take a hold of Dexter and sit with him in the soft, wet grass, wrapping my arms and legs around him as he cries hysterically and I’m hit with waves of panic-inducing
nausea. The guy is looking at us like we’re both crazy. The lady who used to watch Dexter when he was a baby comes over. “Their mother died not too long ago,” she explains to the guy.

  It explains everything.

  “I’m sorry. It was him or the cat,” he insists, soft, hands palm up.

  Somebody picks Turtle up in a shovel and another digs a hole to bury her. They put dirt on top of her and it opens up this black hole of pain in my chest, the dirt covering her.

  The guy leaves and the neighbors tell us they’re sorry and retreat to their homes. Jacob’s mom gets Jacob, giving me black looks. She’s a bitch and her kid’s an idiot who doesn’t know the difference between a boy and a girl cat.

  Natalie pulls up in her big truck. Porch lights are coming on in the twilight and I’m freezing. She puts her parking lights on and gets out, Marc behind her. She comes over. “Sandy called,” she says. She walks over to Sandy’s house and they hug and Natalie comes back. “Let’s go home,” she says.

  We don’t move.

  I can’t move. I don’t have the will.

  They hunker in the grass with us. Natalie takes one of each of our hands and mine lies limp. “This is your worst day, okay? It will get better.”

  Dexter moves from my lap to put his arms around Natalie’s neck and she embraces him like a mother.

  The hollow aloneness is too much to bear but I do. The sensation of nothingness should scare the hell out of me.

  Am I going to feel like this forever?

  I want to be normal.

  “Listen, Nikki, this house has too many ghosts. If you need to be alone and scream or cry or hit things, you can do it at our house. You can lie in bed and cry at our house. I don’t want you to come here to hide anymore,” Marc lectures.

  Next time I have money I’ll send Jacob’s mom some flowers and a card with money in it, thanking her for helping with Dexter and sorry for putting her out.

  Marc looks at my face. I have this feeling like he’s looking at me like a cowboy looking at a fellow cowboy, knowing I don’t know if I have the grit to make it. “Got it?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “How about home, a bath, and a nice glass of wine?” Natalie asks, standing with Dexter.

  I stand. Maybe I don’t have any more tears left. The numbness is there but the hollow feeling is gone. It was the adrenaline, thinking my little brother was dead too.

  We go home and I move my stuff from Persephone’s room to mine and leave the glass of wine Natalie poured me and take the bottle to the bathtub instead, guzzling it down before sticking my fingers down my throat to throw it up.

  Next month is Persephone’s birthday.

  The day after is mine.

  We’ll all be twenty and I’m alone without a friendly face.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Nikki

  It’s noon and I just got up, and only because I have to work the three to twelve shift at the diner.

  Natalie serves me fresh coffee and coffee cake. I haven’t been able to eat anything and my clothes aren’t as tight except for over my poochy tummy, but the coffee cake is good and makes me feel better so I eat it all.

  She gives me another piece. “How are you doing?” She’s worried about me.

  I shrug, my mouth too full to say anything.

  “Do you need to talk?”

  I shake my head. I don’t have the energy.

  “How has Miss Persephone been?”

  I shrug again. “I haven’t been out much. Trying to work hard to get my hours back at the diner. I had lunch with her the other day. She was quiet.”

  “Hmm.”

  “She said you talked to Ares. How is he?” It’s the only thing I’ve heard about him. He hasn’t called or texted. I’m so numb with everything else I’ve hardly had time to be devastated about it. Mostly just at night when I’m lying in bed alone and staring out the window while I can’t sleep, lonely.

  Her face lights up. “He’s doing well. He’s been busy working. He said he doesn’t like the city at all and everyone asks him Indian questions. He said everybody talks a lot. And everyone is loud and has an opinion. He asked about you and Dexter.” She purses her lips. She smiles. “Next time I talk to him I’ll tell him you need to eat more and stop sleeping so much.”

  He can ask about me to his mom and he can’t send me a Goddamn text?

  “He has a new friend named Emma. I guess she’s from Connecticut and has been showing him around and stuff, taking him to galleries. She’s an artist too.” She smiles happily. “And she’s not blonde like all the other girls. I asked.” She grins. “I’m glad he’s making friends. I just hope he’s being a good boy. I don’t want him to fall in love and stay out there.”

  The coffee cake bounces in my stomach with a sickening jolt.

  He met someone he can go to galleries with.

  I force a good-natured smile. “Tell him I said I’m happy for him.”

  “I hope it’s not a big enough thing to keep him from coming home.”

  Tears spring to my eyes. “Yeah.” I down my coffee like a shot, my fingers tingling with death. “Thanks for breakfast. I have to get ready for work.”

  I get undressed and into the shower. I cover my mouth and scream muffled screams into my hand, biting into my skin until bruises bloom. I think about taking a big knife and pushing it into my belly. Or running my scissors along my thighs and watching the blood run down my legs. But I know it wouldn’t take the pain away. And then I’d have to figure out how to hide them before work.

  The tears haven’t run out.

  ✽✽✽

  Her name keeps running over and over in my brain. Emma Emma Emma Emma Emma. She’s not blonde, I asked. She’s an artist too.

  I bite my cheeks to keep from falling apart. I want to scream and die. I see him looking at her with love in his simmering eyes. I torture myself with seeing them having steamy hot sex, doing all the things to Emma he did to me.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe Emma isn’t a slut like I am. He can tell his mom about Emma.

  Persephone comes in for coffee. “I broke up with the bassist. He wanted me to pay for lunch. I can’t believe this is happening. I am so over men. Next time one of them comes to talk to me I’m going to kill it.”

  Killing sounds like a great idea.

  “Maybe I’ll try the lesbian thing.”

  “Good luck with that.” I sigh, moving along the line filling coffee cups.

  I get home at twelve fifteen and reheat dinner Natalie left for me. It’s so good it’s hard not to eat. I sit at the bar and eat it all, feeling like I’m going to puke.

  I plunk myself to my room and get naked, looking at myself in the mirror.

  Am I forgettable? Is Emma prettier? Does she give better head?

  I try to tell myself I don’t care because Emma’s a stupid trick and maybe she doesn’t put out at all and Ares is stupid for buying into the whole non-slut thing. Emma is a very non-slut name. Nikki is a very slut name. She couldn’t give better head because she probably won’t give it with her dainty little prude mouth.

  I pull pajamas on and crawl into bed, letting my fingers crawl across my belly. It’s the only place that isn’t completely numb. It’s heavy and alive with movement and it makes me want to shoot myself in the heart. Sometimes I watch myself do it, pain like a starburst spreading through my chest.

  At least now I know. Once you hit absolute rock bottom there’s only ever three options, right?

  Chapter Forty

  Ares

  Bob sits back and looks at his team. They make subtle positive murmurs and gestures amongst themselves as they look over my portfolio and I can’t believe it. I’m over the moon with excitement and disbelief.

  Bob comes back to lean on the table. “We like your portfolio. It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Bob and his team stand and I stand with them, shaking hands. Bob winks. “Ares, we’ll be in t
ouch,” he says, shaking my hand in the lobby.

  “Thank you, sir. I look forward to it.” I ride the elevator downstairs. I walk, grin on my face, out the main door to the street. I look around. I was half expecting to come out and be home and be able to walk into the woods to the stream.

  There’s a bunch of concrete here. No earth.

  Even their parks feel contrived.

  I tuck myself into an alcove, carefully because I don’t want to get mugged, if that’s a thing anymore. I pull out my phone and go to Nikki’s number. I look at it, seeing her smile and her sparkle. Every part of her body. Thinking about her knees makes me shiver. I want her so bad it’s not worth thinking about. I want her here with me. I want to see her face like it was when I sold those two paintings at Thomas’ show. I want to see her pride in me. I look at her number and can’t dial because it hurts. I want to see her face, not hear her voice. I want her arms around me.

  I put my phone away and rub my eyes. I’m homesick and lonely. I want to go home. I want the woods back.

  I make my way back to my dorm and lie face down on my bed, in my pillow.

  ✽✽✽

  “I can’t believe you were such a badass,” Emma says. We’re sitting on the floor in front of the TV in my dorm. There’s a football game on and her mouth is full of pizza and it’s gross because it’s everywhere. She tears little pieces off of the big slice and pops them in her mouth.

  Her hair is dyed black and she always wears it in two little buns. She wears black eyeliner so heavy I can barely see her eyes. Today she’s wearing a ratty old sweatshirt with holes in the cuffs for her thumbs. And the hood is up. She started hanging out with me when she found out I was roommates with Sebastian, because she’s totally in love with his skinny, hot, German girlfriend.

  “Yeah. I can’t believe it either. This is a career making commission.”