We Will Change Our Stars

by Nicole Thorn

  I didn’t care much what I looked like. If I looked like hell, most of the guys at bars would leave me alone, and that always seemed like a bonus. It was that I didn’t want to look bad in front of Zander, and I hated the sideways looks people had given him. Callie’s mom had been friendly, but I saw the thought go through her head.

  Zander’s arm snapped out, and the visor went up with a neat little move that nearly broke it off. I sank back into my seat, looking at my lap. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  His jaw worked, and he cranked his head from one side to the other. “Not your fault.” His voice sounded tight as he spoke. I wiggled around in my seat some more, and futzed with the hem of my dress.

  “He never really hit me before,” I said for reasons unknown.

  Zander’s hand tightened on the wheel. I knew there were lines I shouldn’t have been crossing, but crossed them anyway. “It doesn’t matter,” Zander grumbled. “He hit you today, and that’s what matters.”

  “I’m not defending him or anything,” I continued.

  “It sounds like you’re defending him.”

  “Well, I’m not,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m just trying to talk to you, Zander.”

  Some of the tension went out of him. He pulled over on the side of the road, and turned the engine off. The cold from outside immediately started to creep inside, but I ignored it, because Zander and I had stopped, and kind of paid attention to each other without being hostile. It felt like an improvement over the last couple of weeks.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I’m so fucking mad at him. I shouldn’t be this mad, but I am. I want him to suffer for what he did, Jasmine. Do you get that? Do you get how much I want him to be in pain for daring to hurt you?”

  I bit my lip, and responded as honestly as I could. “No. I don’t get that. The only time I’ve ever been violent was when someone was hurting Jasper or Juniper. I didn’t really have friends before you and Kizzy, and no one hurt you, Zander. Kizzy had been hurt, but those people were taken care of. I don’t get it, Zander, but that doesn’t mean I blame you. I don’t need to understand how angry you are to understand why.”

  He stared at me, his hands balled into fists in his lap. “I like that you don’t get it.”

  I sighed. “Is this one of the reasons you won’t let me go to town on you?” I asked. “Because you can be as arrogant as you want, but I’m pretty sure I could bring you to your knees, too.”

  He laughed reluctantly. “Maybe. I didn’t realize until today that this rage wasn’t normal.”

  “A day of revelations,” I muttered. “I didn’t realize that my father didn’t love me until today either. Or that maybe I shouldn’t forgive him for how he raised us.” I frowned over what he said for a little bit. “You can’t go kill him. I know that you want to, but . . . He never hit me before today. Not like this, anyway. There was some shoving, or spankings, but he never hit me.”

  Zander’s eyes changed again, getting darker. “He did plenty of other things to deserve it, Jasmine. I knew about that photo album.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. I tried to hide it with a smile, but it felt off. I dropped it when Zander looked pained, and just stared at my knees. “How did you know?” I asked. “Kizzy?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t want to bring it up before you were prepared to tell me,” he explained. “When you mentioned it earlier, it just reminded me of all those pictures. You get that that is a cruel, inhuman thing to do, right? I’ve lived in some bad homes, but even that shocks me.”

  I frowned at him. “It wasn’t that bad. We didn’t really have to look at the pictures. Only when he was disappointed in us. He wanted to remind us that he was a forgiving person.” Even as I said the words, I could feel how wrong they sounded. I rubbed my eyes. “Can we forget that I said that?”

  “No,” Zander said. “Maybe you can, but I can’t forget that.”

  I shifted around in my seat, thinking. “You know, we moved the day we turned eighteen. All three of us. It’s when the accounts with all our money were available to us. We only had two outfits apiece, and nothing else. We didn’t know how to drive, we had barely graduated from high school, because we were all home schooled. We had no social skills, no idea how to live on our own, and no way to get anywhere, and we still moved out the day we turned eighteen. Right into a motel room. The first one we found, because we had no idea what else to do.”

  “Kizzy and I moved into the apartment the second we could too,” Zander said. “I loved it, the freedom of it. She was terrified until she started getting comfortable there. Then she never wanted to leave, and I never made her leave. I never did anything but let her stay exactly as she is.”

  “She wasn’t ready to heal,” I told him. “Or try to heal, anyway. I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with all of this, but I am sure that there is no other option at this point. Dad didn’t give me another option.” I looked away from Zander, playing with the hem of my skirt, thinking.

  “We stayed in the motel for months, until we found the house,” I finally said. “We had to figure a lot out from that motel room. Juniper took control of the important stuff, because she needed to. It was the only way she could keep sane in an environment that could change at any moment. She figured out how to work the bank account, got us our cards, she’s the one that went house shopping, she’s the one who did all of it, while Jasper and I were trying to figure other things out.

  “Jasper, mostly, was trying to learn how to deal with all the whispering.”

  “Whispering?” Zander asked.

  “It’s how he interprets his visions. He gets them off objects, and they whisper. The louder they are, the more they have to say. He had to learn how to block it out. He was also the first one to figure out how to drive. It was a nice, solitary thing for him. Where nothing was there to poke at his thoughts. And me? I learned to be social.”

  Zander’s hands cranked down on the steering wheel again.

  “It was so much, Zander. I went walking, and it was all so much. I’d hardly ever left my house before that, and all of the sudden there were people everywhere. They were all over the place. They kept bumping into me, or I kept bumping into them. I don’t even know. There were stores filled with noise, cars honking everywhere, smells, and conversations. It was almost impossible to escape all the activity.

  “But I liked it too,” I said. “I liked it because it was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think. Those first few weeks, all I could think was that we were stupid for trying this. If we were smart, we’d go back to Dad, because he’d take care of us, and all he wanted in return was some information, and some money. That wasn’t so bad, really.

  “Then I ran into Marc.”

  His hands tightened even more. I bit my lip, wondering if I should’ve stopped talking. Part of me wanted Zander to know, but the rest of me worried that he’d get angry. I didn’t like his anger, because I wanted him to love me as much as I loved him. “He was nice,” I said, in a small voice. Apparently, I thought it more important that he know all of me than to have him love me.

  “He took me to a park, where it was quiet, but still noisy,” I explained. “He was a little older than me, and he had some beer. He offered me some, and I took it. I was eighteen, and overwhelmed. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I wouldn’t have done something that stupid now. He could have put anything in that beer. I’m lucky that he didn’t. I was a lightweight compared to him too,” I said, smiling.

  Zander did not smile.

  “It was nice,” I said. “Feeling like everything was going to be okay. That’s how the beer made me feel. Like everything would be perfectly fine. It was nice being out, and talking with people. It was nice not dealing with the visions, or my father, for once. To just be Jasmine, sitting on a bench, drinking with a nice guy.”

  I stopped there, knowing that I had pushed Zander’s control to its limits. He didn’t
need to know the rest of that particular story, especially when he seemed so close to losing it all the time. Nothing bad had happened . . . I just didn’t think he’d see it that way for some reason.

  We sat in silence for another five minutes, watching a couple of cars drive past us, the wind rocking our vehicle. I broke the silence. “I’m not telling you this so that you’ll understand, and approve, because I’m not that stupid. I’m telling you so you’ll understand what worked for me. What helped me keep sane when everything around me felt insane.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not a good thing, Jasmine. If the only thing keeping you sane is alcohol, that’s not a good thing.”

  “I know you think I’m an alcoholic—”

  “You are,” he said. “Look at everything you just said. You are an alcoholic, Jasmine.” His words came out harshly, and his tone didn’t sound much better. It would have hurt so much, if I hadn’t been able to see the look in his eyes. To see the pain there. It kept me from lashing out at him.

  “But, I’m not,” I said as if he hadn’t spoken. “And . . . going to the bars doesn’t really work for me anymore. I still like drinking, and I like going out, and I’ll keep doing it, but . . . ”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I just think about you. The entire time I’m there, I’d rather be at home with you.”

  He stayed quiet for several minutes. Zander released the steering wheel, and leaned back in his chair. His hands pressed against his face, and he took several deep breaths. “That’s . . . incredible to hear. It means nothing.”

  I flinched. “Ouch.”

  “No, no,” he said, turning to me. “I believe you. We just can’t do this, Jasmine. We cannot do this. We’re so broken, and only one of us gets how badly we are broken, and it isn’t you.”

  I frowned. “I’m not broken, Zander.”

  He gave me the saddest smile I had ever seen. “You’ve just proven my point. You’ve accepted some of the things you were hiding from before. Like how terrible your father is. How messed up your siblings are. But you are still so blind to yourself. You’re still hiding from so many things. I’m not going to help you hide from them, like I did with Kizzy. I can’t do that to another person.”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Hold them back. She could have gotten better so much sooner, if I had just stopped coddling her. If I stopped protecting her from herself, then maybe she wouldn’t have suffered for so long.”

  “Zander . . . ” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. If you hadn’t done exactly what you did, then she probably would have felt all alone, and that’s a terrible feeling. She was already feeling so terrible, so why add to it?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe that, Jasmine. Look how happy she is now.”

  “She’s not all better, though,” I said.

  “But she’s happy,” he said. “You could be happy too, if I let you figure things out, then you could be happy, and have something real.”

  “So, you don’t want to be with me because you’re worried that I’m fooling myself into thinking I’m all better, and that I want you, but it’s all a lie, and I don’t really know who I am, or what I want?”

  He started to protest, but quickly found that he couldn’t. He grimaced, and then said, “Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m worried about. I don’t want to take advantage of you, Jasmine.”

  I grinned, widely. “Zander, what makes you think you’d be taking advantage, first of all? Second of all, maybe you should turn all those worries right back onto yourself, and see how many of them are actually for you, and not me.” I unbuckled my seatbelt, while he thought about that.

  “I don’t think that’s the problem. And it would be taking advantage. If we were together because you were confused, and I knew you were confused, then it’d be taking advantage. You’d hate me when you came to your senses, and I’d rather you be angry with me now, then hate me later.”

  I blinked at him. “Sweetie, if people being confused equates taking advantage, then I’m not sure there’s a person on this planet who hasn’t done it at some point. People make mistakes. That doesn’t mean that the person they made them with is at fault. It doesn’t mean that anyone is at fault. Shit happens, honey.”

  He sighed. “But it would still be a mistake. I don’t want to be a mistake with you, Jasmine. Do you want me to be a mistake?”

  I laughed. “The one thing I’m certain of, even if you aren’t, is that you would be anything but a mistake.” He grew quiet for a few seconds more, while I thought. Now that I understood the problem a little better, I could work with it. I just had to convince Zander that I wasn’t as much of a disaster as he seemed to think.

  It shouldn’t be too hard. Yeah, okay, I drank a little more than I should sometimes, but I was twenty-one. We all drink a little more than we should. As for not knowing who I was, that sounded like pure silliness. I was a seer who could see the future, with two siblings born at the same time. I didn’t need to learn anything about myself.

  Zander shook his head. “We should get back to the house, before everyone starts to wonder what we’re doing.”

  I shrugged, “Juniper could just peek in on us any time she wants. It’s not like they’ll worry.” I smiled at that. She wouldn’t look in on me unless she had no other options. He didn’t need to know that.

  “Besides,” I said. “I’m not ready to go home.” With that, I shimmied out of my underwear that had the Bat Signal on it. I dropped the article of clothing into Zander’s lap. He stared at it with a look of utter agony on his face. His hands still on the steering wheel, like he had forgotten what he had been about to do, or say. Or think. Who he was. I appreciated the look a great deal.

  When he turned his eyes back to me, they shifted to a much darker shade than they had been a moment before. I smiled at him as I leaned forward in my seat, getting my face closer to his. “Yes, Zander?” I asked.

  He didn’t say or do anything. I figured he fought with himself, fought to keep his hands on the steering wheel, and off me and whatever clothing we had in the car. It wasn’t the most graceful movement, but I managed to get from my seat to his, moving his hand so that I straddled him. My back almost touched the steering wheel, thanks to his long legs.

  I leaned in, and pressed my lips against his chin. The tiniest bit of shock went through him. He tilted his head back, and stared at me. “Jasmine,” he said, and his voice sounded rough, and wonderful at the same time.

  “Yes?”

  He closed his eyes, and his jaw worked.

  I leaned in, and this time my mouth went to his lips, and I ran my tongue along the seam. Zander groaned, parting them just enough for me to slip inside him. He tasted yummy, and I took my opportunity to make him understand that we had two badasses in the car. His hands found my hips, and his fingers pressed in tight.

  I inched forward, until I sat fully in his lap. He felt happy to have me there. The seam of his jeans, and the way he pressed against them made me happy to be there as well. I buried my face against his neck, pressing my lip against warm skin, and loving the way he shuddered against me.

  Zander moved up, just slightly, pressing our bodies together more firmly. A groan slipped out of my mouth, so I went back to kissing him. I let my teeth sink into his lower lip, and pulled against the warm flesh.

  He held my hips so tightly that I felt sure I couldn’t get away even if I wanted to, and I certainly didn’t. His hands ran down my sides, brushing along my bare legs. Teasing both of us when we knew what he really wanted to do.

  I tugged on his shirt, pushing my hand underneath, and feeling all the planes of his stomach and chest. I dragged my nails down his skin to see how Zander would react, and his hips jerked against mine, pushing that hard length right against me. I nipped at his lip a little harder, almost hard enough to draw blood.

  Zander didn’t mind in the least. He responded by kissing me all the harder. His fingers slipped under the skirt of my dress, resting
on the insides of my thighs, brushing along the skin. Teasing me. I rotated my hips, grinding against him, pressing his jeans against the both of us.

  His fingers curled along my legs, so that I could feel the warmth almost where I wanted it. So close, and teasing me, teasing me, teasing me. I supposed I deserved it for dropping my underwear into his lap on the side of the road, but it still wasn’t kind of him.

  My dress pushed up around my hips without me noticing how it got there. His finger brushed against my stomach, and then lower. Lower. I dropped my face into the crook of his neck so that I could drag my teeth along his skin. Zander shuddered, clearly liking that. So, I did it again. This time while moving against his lap, and fingers at the same time. Teasing the both of us.

  They barely touched me, and that seemed like a crime. I said so, and Zander laughed, moving his hand so that he cupped me, the heel of his palm pressing down against—

  The house didn’t look like much from the outside. Abandoned would be a kind way of describing it, but something didn’t look quite right about it either. There was an order to an abandoned house. The feel of it. The eerie way it made your nerves creep. It fell apart in a way that made sense.

  This house didn’t. It had one broken and filthy window, but another fairly clean one, and didn’t even have cracks along the surface. The porch looked clear of debris, but somehow looked weathered, dirty, and had several cracked places. The yard didn’t have too many weeds, yet the ivy spilled down around the front of the house, in an unkempt manner.

  Most people who drove past this house wouldn’t give it a second glance. They wouldn’t notice that the dilapidation looked wrong. I noticed though, because I noticed everything. From the address, which still looked perfectly visible, to the neat little shoes sitting by the door. To the stone animals lined up along the sides of the house. To the woman standing in the center of the living room, offering some creature money if it would just kill me, my siblings, and Callie. I noticed it all.