These Unlucky Stars

by Gillian McDunn

  I yawn, starting to feel tired now that I’m standing still. It’s been a long day. I hope the music will start again soon.

  “Will you please come to the stage—” JoJo pauses dramatically. “Miss. Annie. P. Logan!”

  I freeze.

  “Come on, Annie! Are you out there?” JoJo peers at the crowd.

  I can’t believe my ears.

  It feels like the world is spinning. Albert pats me on the back. The clapping is so loud.

  Gloria grins. “What are you waiting for, girl? Get up there and get your prize!”

  I walk on jelly legs to the stage.

  JoJo, smiling, holds up the certificate. I see my name in curving script.

  But I don’t reach for it—I’m not who they think I am. I didn’t rescue Gloria—didn’t volunteer out of the goodness of my heart. How can I accept an award that reminds me of the bad luck I bring to everyone I know?

  JoJo’s eyebrows knit together in concern. “Annie?”

  In the audience, Dad’s cheering, too. I’m not Unlucky Annie anymore. I’m not the one who made Ma leave. It’s just me. Just Annie. It’s all I ever wanted.

  But my glance catches on Gloria, who is highly visible thanks to her tricked-out wheelchair. She’s cheering for me, face in a wide-open smile.

  All summer I’ve felt a pit of guilt in my stomach. Right now I feel like I’ve fallen into a bottomless hole.

  JoJo tries to put the paper in my hand, but I pull away.

  “I can’t accept this. I’m sorry.”

  I run away into the starless night.

  CHAPTER

  35

  “Annie! Annie!”

  I hear Dad behind me, but I don’t slow down.

  He’s faster than I am, though, and it doesn’t take long for him to catch up.

  “What’s going on? Why did you run away?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, crossing my arms.

  Even in the dark, I can see the tips of his ears flame red. “Well, you’re going to!”

  I stop and look at him, shocked.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I’ll wait right here until you tell me.”

  Hot tears pop in my eyes, and I scrub them with the back of my hand. I don’t want to cry.

  He watches me silently.

  “That day when Gloria fell,” I start and then stop again. “There was a little more to that story.”

  Dad raises his eyebrows.

  I clear my throat. “Maybe someone dared me to ring her doorbell and run away.”

  Disappointment shadows Dad’s face. He shakes his head.

  I bite my lip. “I didn’t ring the doorbell—I changed my mind. But it was too late. Otto started barking, Gloria came to the door, and she fell.”

  Dad sighs. “I’m more disappointed about the lying than anything else.”

  I shake my head quickly. “I didn’t lie about it, not really.”

  Dad squints a skeptical look at me. It reminds me of the look on Faith’s face when we sat on the boulder. I need to try harder.

  “I didn’t lie,” I say slowly. “But I admit I wasn’t all that truthful, either.”

  He sighs deeply. He’s irritated, exasperated. He doesn’t understand.

  “I’m really disappointed,” he says.

  “Of course you are,” I say. “Like always.”

  Dad’s eyebrows draw together, forehead wrinkling. “Annie, I—”

  “Just once,” I say, voice shaking. “I wish I felt like you wanted me. Annie. That you weren’t sad that I wasn’t more like Ray. That you weren’t wishing this whole time that Ma had taken me with her.”

  He opens his mouth to speak, but I don’t want to hear it.

  “This summer, for the first time, I felt like you were finally proud of me,” I say. “I’m sorry it was all a lie.”

  Dad freezes. A muscle in his jaw tenses.

  I brace myself for his anger. I feel it coming. This is it—he’s finally going to boil over after all these years. He’ll say those things I’ve been so afraid to hear.

  But Dad doesn’t explode. Instead, he slumps.

  His head tilts down so far, I can’t see his face. He stays like that for a moment, rubbing his forehead again and again, right where the worry wrinkles usually are. But when he looks up, he isn’t angry. His eyes shimmer. Dad is crying.

  “Annie,” he says in a choked voice.

  He opens his arms and takes a step toward me. A memory flits across the back of my brain like a brightly colored butterfly—how I’d run to him after he came home from work, how he’d scoop me skyward.

  I pause.

  Seven years of questions float in my brain like balloons—seven years of missing Ma, of feeling like I’m on my own. I want to let those balloons go; I really do. But I don’t know how. Those balloons take up so much space inside me, there’s almost no room for anything else. Every thought of being unlucky, every question about what happened, every faded memory of Ma.

  But those balloons are empty.

  I take a step toward him. He sees me coming and meets me halfway. When he grabs me in his hug, his arms are warm and strong, just like I remember. He’s saying something against the top of my head, but I can’t make out the words. He’s crying. And he’s whispering the same thing again and again.

  “Always, Annie,” he says. “I’m always so proud of you.”

  I stretch my arms wide and hug him back.

  CHAPTER

  36

  Dad and I don’t return to the party. Instead, he takes me home. Tomorrow I’ll have a lot of explaining to do—to JoJo and The Earl, to Tyler, to Grant and Faith, to Albert and Paul, and, most of all, to Gloria. But right now, I really need my dad.

  He heads to the kitchen, saying he’ll make us some mint tea, the organic kind he keeps in a special tin. I switch on the lamp with the green glass base, the twin of the one I smashed accidentally so many years ago. After a few minutes, he returns with a mug for each of us.

  “Where’s Ray?” I ask.

  “He’ll stay at Tyler’s tonight.”

  We sit on the couch, both sipping our tea. The mint clears my head, and the honey is soothing.

  Dad clears his throat. “Where did you get the idea that I’m not proud of you?”

  I squirm. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

  “We do,” he says simply.

  I curl my fingers around the mug, letting its warmth soak into my hands. “You and Ray are the same. Ma and I are the same.”

  Dad sets down his tea. “Go on.”

  “You kind of light up around Ray. You always have things to talk about. Like running or building things or … oatmeal.”

  Dad frowns faintly. “You think your brother and I talk about oatmeal?”

  I shake my head. “You both like oatmeal is my point. I don’t. I’m always the odd one out.”

  “I see,” Dad says.

  But now that I’ve started, I don’t want to stop. “Ma always said I was born under an unlucky star. Maybe it’s true, Dad. I feel like I never get things right. Bad things happen to me all the time.”

  He sighs. I wait for him to tell me I’m wrong, but he doesn’t.

  “Sometimes I think I’m the reason Ma left,” I say. “Me and my unlucky stars.”

  “Unlucky stars,” Dad scoffs. “I wish she’d never filled your head with that.”

  I cross my arms. “At least she filled my head with something. You never talk to me. You never talk about her.”

  He nods slowly. Usually, it’s like my words bounce right off him. But now it’s as if I can see them sinking in.

  “Okay,” he says finally. “What do you want to know?”

  My eyes widen. It’s what I’ve been waiting for my whole life.

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Really,” he says.

  I better act now before this window of opportunity closes. “For starters, you could go ahead and tell me everything. What was she like? Why did she
leave?”

  He smiles. “She was beautiful. You look so much like her. She loved poetry and languages. Was learning Italian, just in case. In case of what, I always wanted to ask, but never did. She’d never let me squash a spider. Said it was bad luck.”

  I look straight down at my mug. I’m afraid if I breathe wrong, he’ll stop talking. I need him to go on.

  “Without a doubt, she was the most fascinating person I’d ever met,” he continues. “Always with her own way of doing things. Opera dinners, where we dressed up nice and listened to a recording. Or buying new foods at the grocery store, even if we didn’t know how to cook them. Like artichokes.”

  “I love artichokes,” I tell him.

  “Me too,” he says, eyes twinkling.

  “She did things in a big way,” I say.

  He nods. “Exactly.”

  We sit still like that, both wearing quiet grins. I feel closer to Dad than I have in a long time. Maybe more than I ever have.

  I’m about to say so when I realize that Dad’s smile is fading.

  “There were other things too—things that weren’t so fun.” His voice is low, more like a rumble than a whisper.

  I feel my insides shrink up. Half of me is afraid to hear it. But the other half is hungry—starving—for every tiny detail.

  The hungry half wins. “Like what?” I ask.

  His eyes turn down at the corners. “Sometimes she’d get an itch to be on the road. In the middle of the night, she’d hop in the car and drive for hours, not even leaving a note. I’d wake up in the morning, not knowing where she was.”

  I squeeze the handle of my tea mug. “She liked adventures,” I say, and I can hear the stubbornness in my voice.

  “It was scary,” Dad says. “Especially after you and Ray were born.”

  I frown, puzzled. “Why is that?”

  Dad blows out a deep breath. “The drives got longer and less predictable. One morning right after you were born, she called me from Montgomery, Alabama. You and your brother were in the backseat. Until the phone woke me, I didn’t even know you were gone.”

  I think about little Fabian and how scared Albert and Paul would be if they didn’t know where he was. When I imagine it that way, Ma’s drives don’t seem quite as fun.

  Dad taps the side of his mug with his index finger. “After I realized you were two whole states away, I broke down crying. That’s what it took for her to understand how worried I was. She finally agreed to go to the doctor.”

  I hide my face behind my tea mug. I don’t know which I find more shocking—this story, which I’ve never heard before. Or the idea of Dad breaking down in tears.

  “It took a while, but eventually she was diagnosed with something called bipolar, which is a mental illness. The best way I can describe it is that it was like she was fighting a constant battle inside her. She had a lot of highs and lows. A week being happy—so full of energy, she could barely sleep. Then a couple weeks of feeling so sad and hopeless, where she could barely get out of bed. No real pattern, no rhyme or reason. Up or down, with nothing in between.”

  Dad takes another sip of tea. “This is the thing, though: big moments—the adventures, like you said—might be fun and exciting. But real life is lived on a smaller scale. String enough of those little moments together and that’s what makes something big—a marriage. A family. A life. If you’re always chasing something grand, life can start to feel empty.”

  I turn the words over in my mind. “Is that why she left?”

  Dad sighs. “After the diagnosis, I thought everything would be okay. But staying healthy wasn’t easy. The medicine flattened her out, made her feel like she wasn’t herself. She stopped taking it.”

  There’s a frayed spot on the couch and I run my fingers over the bumpy threads. I want to ask something else, but I don’t know how Dad will react.

  “If she had kept taking her medicine, do you think she would have stayed?” I ask.

  Dad sighs. “I don’t know how to answer that. I know she loved you. And I know that a lot of the time, she was a great mom.”

  I nod. “Like the spaghetti bathtub dinners.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Those dinners were fun, but that isn’t what I mean. She had this way of understanding you and your brother—just by looking at you. It was really something.”

  I don’t know what he means. Dad glances at my face and seems to be able to read my confusion.

  “I’ll try to think of an example,” Dad says, his forehead scrunching as he remembers. “When you were a toddler, you sometimes held your breath until you passed out.”

  My eyebrows pop up. “I fainted? You never told me that.”

  The corner of his mouth turns up. “Ma looked for the pattern. She realized that it happened when you got upset. It was like your emotions were too big for your little body. So she would watch you to anticipate those reactions—she’d talk to you about your feelings, help you with them.”

  As I listen to his words, it feels like a missing piece clicking into place. I don’t remember those things happening—not exactly. But it feels right to me. It helps explain why losing Ma felt like losing a piece of myself.

  Dad sips his tea. “Do you remember the day that you got the scar on your hand?”

  “The dog walked past Ray so it could bite me,” I say. “Yet another example of my rotten luck.”

  Dad frowns. “That isn’t what happened.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “It’s not?”

  He shakes his head. “She left Ray on the picnic blanket while she showed you a patch of wild blackberries. When she looked up, a dog was barking and growling at Ray. She set you down so she could chase the dog away, but she tripped and fell. Meanwhile, you ran straight toward that dog as fast as your little legs would carry you. You jumped in front of Ray to protect him, and that’s when you got bit.”

  I almost drop my mug. That’s not the story I thought I knew. “I saved Ray? Are you sure?”

  Dad nods. “Other people saw it, too. No one could believe how brave you were. She was wracked with guilt. She couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened if the dog had attacked you, if you never recovered …” He trails off.

  My brain spins. It’s too much to take in.

  “I think it was her fear that made her go,” Dad says, voice scratching. “Fear she would do something to hurt you or Ray.”

  Tears prickle my eyes. “But it didn’t work. Her leaving hurt us, too.”

  “I know it,” he says. “But in her mind, I think she did it out of love.”

  I shake my head. It hurts to hear him say those words, even though I want them to be true.

  “Love isn’t someone who runs. Love is someone who stays,” I tell him. “If she loved me, she would be here right now.”

  His eyes turn down. “She did love you, Annie. I believe she did the best she could. Sometimes that’s all we get, even if it isn’t fair.”

  I open my mouth to talk, but then I realize he isn’t finished yet.

  He clears his throat. “I know you think I don’t understand you, and I may never understand your ideas about the stars. But it has always perplexed me that someone who has brought such joy and happiness to my life could ever think of herself as unlucky. Because, without a doubt, you and Ray have made me the luckiest man alive.”

  I take a deep breath. “She’s never coming back, is she?”

  Dad gives me a long look. “No, I don’t think so, Annie.”

  Hearing the words feels like ripping off an old scab. It’s not that I’m surprised—deep down, part of me has known that for a long time. But still, it hurts to hear Dad say it. She’s never coming back.

  Dad pats my hand awkwardly, like he doesn’t know what to do. His forehead is scrunched with worry-wrinkles, and I realize that he’s worried about me.

  “I do love you and Ray,” I say. “It’s just that I really wanted to know her, too.”

  “She was someone worth knowing,” says Dad. “I’m sor
ry you didn’t get much of a chance.”

  That’s when the tears come. I sob until I shake. I wail until I can’t make another sound. I lean sideways into my dad like I’m sure he’ll always be there.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Festivals are all fun and games until the very next day when it’s time to clean up.

  Planning is a big job, but at least it’s fun. There are pretty things to think about—like floats. Delicious things to think about—like food vendors. And logistical things to think about—like parade routes, getting the right permits, making sure everything is organized smoothly.

  But getting rid of the festival is a real mess. Especially when my eyes are barely open. If I had known Dad signed us up to help, maybe I would have tried to go to sleep earlier.

  Then again, maybe not. Talking to Dad was worth it.

  So here we are, with the glamorous job of picking up garbage on the lawn. Ray and Tyler are on the other side of the band shell, helping load tables and chairs into pickup trucks.

  “The sun is barely up,” I say.

  Dad catches my eye. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

  I look around. “Okay, fine. It’s an exaggeration.”

  “But it is early,” he admits. No one will ever describe Dad as dramatic or exaggerating, but getting him to acknowledge this feels like a victory. He’s meeting me in the middle.

  It feels different between us today. Last night, my feelings were raw. I cried so hard, my eyes felt like medium-grit sandpaper. But already some of those feelings are changing—being replaced with something that is more solid, more steady.

  We walk together in silence, picking up loose trash when we find it. My thoughts keep returning to the night before—to how I ran away. This afternoon, I’ll talk to Gloria and explain it all. I hope she’ll still be my friend after she knows the truth.

  Dad and I fill up two bags. We’re adding them to the pile when I hear someone shout.

  “Hey! Whose dog is that?”

  My thoughts turn back to the picnic in the park all those years ago—but that dog who bit my hand isn’t here. Instead, I look up and see Otto running at full speed. I’ve never once seen him move with such purpose—he’s really flying, his ears whipping behind him. Who could have ever guessed that he was made to run like this?