Twinkle Little Star: A Marlow and Sage Mystery Thriller (A Nursery Rhyme Suspense Book 4)

by Lee Strauss

  The line moved and we shuffled closer to the counter. Sage would be the next to order. If I was going to ask her to help with brainstorming, I had to do it now. Strictly an academic, friend to friend invitation.

  “Have you heard of The New Scientist Innovation Award contest?”

  Sage nodded and seemed to relax at the benign subject matter. “Yeah I have. Are you entering?” She blushed and waved her hand in front of her face. “Of course you're entering!”

  “Yeah, Zed and I are going to go in together, but you know, we’re hitting a wall when it comes to,”—I finger quoted—“the great idea.”

  “I can see how that could be tough.”

  See, we were just making friendly conversation. Nothing more than that. Normal friendly chatter.

  “Would you like to grab a coffee sometime?” It came out like a sneeze. I almost snagged a napkin to wipe my verbal spittle off her shoulder.

  Her glossy pink lips fell open. “Dakota?”

  Oh man. It sounded like I’d asked her on a date! “No, I mean—” I rubbed the back of my neck feeling amazed at how awkward this had become in such a short time. “I mean to help us brainstorm for ideas for the science award. You know, fresh eyes and a new perspective.”

  Disappointment flashed over her face and it confused me. I felt like I was thirteen years old again trying to figure out the mystery of the opposite sex.

  Sage moved to the front of the line and placed her order—coffee with cream and sugar—then turned back to me. “Sure, Marlow. I’d be happy to help if I can.”

  I stood tall with relief. “Excellent. What’s your schedule like? Maybe we can coordinate a time to meet.” We opened our calendars and came up with a time two days from now at 3:00 p.m.

  She paid for her coffee and it was my turn up.

  “See you later, Mars.”

  “See ya.”

  I felt foolishly happy about my impending appointment with Sage. I almost broke out in song as I exited the coffee shop with my hot drink in hand.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sage

  Marlow had already ordered coffees and had secured a table at The Literary Café when I arrived. The place was warm and inviting with soft brown walls decorated with coffee slogans, and comfortable reading chairs were tucked in the corners with short shelves stocked with used books. Take one/leave one. I draped my jacket over the back of the chair opposite Marlow. He wasn’t wearing his fake glasses today and I had to keep myself from staring at his captivating green eyes. I scooted in, determined to be cool as a cucumber. Not going to say or do anything stupid. Marlow was my friend, that was all, but he was my friend.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said. “I owe you.”

  He waved me off. “Consider it payment for your time, and not very well paid at that.”

  “Where’s Zed?”

  Marlow hesitated, his eyes darting back and forth as they often did when he was searching for the most appropriate answer. I had the feeling he hadn’t invited Zed, and wondered briefly if maybe this was a date, but then he stretched his leg out to retrieve his phone from his front pocket.

  “He might’ve forgotten,” Marlow said. “I’ll text him.”

  We sipped our coffees at the same time and then said together, “So?” This was followed by nervous laughter.

  Marlow said, “You go.”

  “How’s Dakota?” Might as well take a stab at the elephant in the room right off the bat.

  Marlow blinked and went to push up the lenses that weren’t there and instead jabbed himself in the forehead. I pretended not to notice.

  “She’s good. Busy with studies like all of us. And her friends. She’s not the type who needs to hang on her boyfriend’s arm all the time.”

  His face reddened as if embarrassed to be talking about his girlfriend to me. I swallowed. “That’s good.”

  He deftly changed the subject. “How’s Ben?”

  “He’s good. He’s planning a trip around the world.” My fingers flew to my lips. “That’s not common knowledge. Please don’t say anything.”

  “His girlfriend doesn’t know, I gather.”

  “Not yet.”

  It was awkward keeping my eyes on Marlow in this close proximity and I allowed my gazed to drift around the store. “Do you remember the first time we met up here?”

  Marlow’s mouth curled up as he took a look around the café too. It hadn’t been the first time we had met, but it had been the first time we had talked to each other while I was sober.

  He pointed. “We sat at that table. You told me about the dreams you were having.”

  “And you pretended to not know me as well as you did.”

  Our eyes locked and it felt like the air in the café spiked ten degrees. I pulled on the collar of my sweater.

  “And now you know me,” he said.

  “I guess I do.” I wanted to reach over and take his hand. Squeeze it. Remind him that we were good together, that we’d be good together, but I didn’t. If he and Dakota broke up, it wouldn’t be because of me.

  The universe seemed to read my mind because just at that moment Dakota appeared out of nowhere. “Marlow?”

  Apparently she wasn’t aware of our brainstorming session. Marlow’s eyes widened and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Dakota, hey.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sage and I are brainstorming.”

  I quickly pulled out my laptop and opened it up. “I’m just trying to help Marlow and Zed come up with ideas for the New Scientist Award contest.”

  Dakota folded her arms across her chest. With her petite stature and pink pixie cut hair, she reminded me of an angry Tinkerbell. I actually checked to see if she was tapping a pointy-shoed foot. She narrowed her gaze on Marlow. “I would’ve brainstormed with you had you asked.”

  “Yeah, I know, just I didn’t think…”

  “You don’t think I’m smart enough?”

  “No that’s not it. Just Zed…”

  “Zed doesn’t think I’m smart enough? Where is he anyway?”

  “He’s on his way here, just running late. You know Zed.”

  Fortune was on Marlow’s side because right at that moment Zed blew in with a gust of wind. “Hey guys!”

  Dakota had to turn away from our table to see him, and Marlow used that moment to frantically wave him over. Zed’s gaze darted to me and back to Dakota, understanding flashing across his face.

  “So sorry I’m late. Hey Dakota, are you joining us?”

  “Apparently Marlow doesn’t think I’m smart enough.”

  Marlow protested. “That’s not true. Here.” He pulled out the chair next to him. “Have a seat. I honestly didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  Dakota huffed. “It’s fine. I’m here with Payton.” She motioned to a blond who was eyeing the goodies in the display. Then she bent down and gave Marlow a deep and long lasting kiss. Zed stared, but had the decency to look embarrassed.

  Dakota was sending me a message, loud and clear. Back off my guy.

  Message received. I turned to Zed and forced myself not to look back at Dakota as she wiggled away. “Should we get started?” I tried to shake this whole uncomfortable and embarrassing situation off. “What ideas have you come up with so far?”

  “I think we need to ask a few questions first,” Zed said. “What kinds of technology will improve the human condition? These are the kinds of things that win awards.”

  “How about focusing on health and improving the body?” I said.

  Marlow finally lifted his gaze from his lap and joined in. “Those are two different things. The first—restoring health—moves from a deficit to normalcy. The second moves from normalcy to a ‘superhuman’ status.”

  “Cyborg tech is always popular,” Zed said.

  “We’ve talked about this already,” Marlow said. “It’s been done to death.”

  “Yeah, but, we could develop a theory on how to effectively graft a mechanical limb to organic material.
Without the seam.”

  “Like the terminator?” Marlow said. “We don’t have the resources for that.”

  “I know. I meant providing a theory.”

  I added, “A demonstrable experiment would be more appealing to judges, I would think.”

  Zed shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “The award will likely go to something that improves the quality of human life somehow,” I said. “What about blood? Blood is life. If we can improve the blood, that would turn the judges’ head.” I noticed how I’d switched pronouns from “you” to “we”. Zed and Marlow didn’t seem to care, and I was starting to feel personally invested.

  “There are already ways to increase athletic performance by increasing red blood cell count,” Marlow said.

  “But what about the constant shortage of blood?” I thought about the up-coming blood drive being promoted on campus. “What if you could create a synthetic version?”

  Marlow and Zed both perked up at that. Marlow leaned in. “Then there would never be a shortage of blood or the needed type. It would be a lifesaving invention.”

  “Except if it’s used on healthy people to make them stronger and more fit than normal,” Zed said. “It would be easy to increase the oxygen levels, which would give athletes who were transfused with it an advantage.”

  “Like a steroid,” I said. “Synthetic blood would have to be regulated. But just because there’s an opportunity for abuse—and there always is, isn’t there?—it’s not a reason to not make the advancement.”

  “We could only provide a hypothesis,” Marlow said, “and I’m sure that’s already been done.”

  Zed finger-combed his beard. “We could design a small pressurized metal cylinder for storing synthetic blood, once it’s in production, with a valve that allows gases to be introduced into it to alter it further to improve its quality.”

  “I like it,” Marlow said with a grin. “Let’s do it.”

  “Top secret,” Zed said. “You can’t tell anyone.” He shot Marlow a meaningful look. “Not even significant others.”

  Zed placed his fist over the center of the table and Marlow rested his on top. He looked at me and nodded. I smiled as I placed my fist on the pile.

  Zed and Marlow chanted, “Boom!” and I burst out laughing, feeling truly happy for the first time in weeks.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marlow

  Zed and I have been best buds since we started school back in kindergarten. I didn't have a brother so I always looked at him as sort of my pseudo-brother. He had two younger brothers so I didn't really know what he got out of his relationship with me, except that we were both nerds with no social skills and he needed me for moral support. It was true that like-species congregated together. Zed and I were never part of the popular crowd. We never had the girls. We never got invited to parties. But we always had each other.

  That meant we shared a lot of things, including our prized possessions. When I got a new Nintendo, I shared it with Zed, mainly because I had no one else to play it with. We shared our DVDs, our games, our music, our notes from school. We shared our scientific ideas and philosophies and dreams. Not that we agreed on everything, but we always could engage in a friendly debate that would eat up several hours of a boring summer afternoon.

  But a person had limits. For example, girlfriends. I had a girlfriend and he didn’t, yet somehow he was always with me and my girlfriend. Somehow it happened that we ended up going from a duo, Zed and me, to a trio, Zed, me and Dakota. I dropped hints that maybe Dakota and I would like to be alone some of the time, but he didn’t seem to get the picture. And worse yet, Dakota didn't seem to mind his company. That bothered me in a very deep, primal level, stirring up feelings I wasn’t proud of.

  At the moment we sat on the couch in the guys lounge, Dakota in the middle, playing Zed’s Revenge—a game Zed had developed, while simultaneously discussing the bush party that all the sophomores were talking about.

  “It's going to be so much fun!” Dakota said just as she blew up my avatar.

  “Agh,” I moaned.

  Zed and Dakota high-fived and laughed.

  “You guys are picking on me!”

  “Oh, don’t be a party pooper,” Zed said.

  I reloaded my avatar.

  “Back to the subject of parties,” Dakota said, “we have to go. Everyone’s going to be there.”

  “So?” I persisted.

  “So, it’ll be fun.”

  I thumbed my way to the next level, sneaking up on Zed’s avatar. “Dakota, you know how I feel about parties.”

  She sighed. “Marlow you have to learn to be social some of the time. Eventually you'll have a job and you'll have to go to staff parties and people’s weddings.” She nudged me in the arm with her elbow and I missed my next shot.

  “Help me out here, Zed,” Dakota said over the gunfire noise.

  Ha. She’d just made a fatal tactical error. There was one thing I knew for sure and that was that Zed and I were on the same page when it came to social events. They were pitfalls for inevitable embarrassment, rejection, and endless opportunities to be the butt of other people's jokes. I could count on him to side with me.

  Then he said, “She's got a point. I mean, one of these days we do have to break out of our own little bubble and mix with the masses.”

  My jaw went slack and I couldn’t stop myself from peeling my gaze from the screen and giving Zed a lazer-of-death stare. “Are you kidding me?” I made an executive decision and paused the game.

  “Hey!” Zed and Dakota cried out in unison.

  I kept my angry gaze on Zed. “You actually want to go to this bush party?” He refused to look me in the eye, instead offered up a lazy shrug.

  "See, Marlow?" Dakota said with a note of victory in her voice. “Everyone wants to go to this party. Think of it as a networking opportunity. Even nerds and lose-”—she caught herself quickly—“high learners need to network and integrate with the world.”

  She was going to say losers. Did she really think of me as a loser? If that was what she thought of me why was she with me?

  Dakota was sensitive enough to know that I caught her faux pas. She grabbed my hand, laced her fingers through mine and kissed my knuckles. "Marlow, you know I'm crazy about you right?”

  I pushed up my glasses. “If you say so.”

  “I do say so. I just want to go to the party and I don't want to go without my boyfriend.”

  I supposed that that was reasonable. My eyes cut to Zed. He folded his arms and looked somewhat dejected. I hoped he felt like an idiot for siding with her and not standing up for me.

  "Okay. Let's go party in the bush!” I lifted my hand in a hang ten, as if I was mocking those who found parties exciting. Which I totally was.

  “Glad that’s settled,” Zed said gruffly, and restarted the game. I refocused, but from my peripheral caught sight of Wyatt Banks entering the lounge with a girl on his arm. She had long dark hair and for a split second I thought it was Sage. My heart skipped along like a rock on the water, but calmed down when I realized it wasn’t her at all. Dakota would hate it if she knew how even an “almost” sighting of Sage still effected me.

  Then I wondered if Sage would be at the bush party. Of course she would. That was the kind of thing Sage did. Those were her people. I scoffed a little to myself. Wouldn’t she be surprised to see me there! I admitted that seeing her would make going to that party more palatable.

  My mind on Sage distracted me from the game.

  “And boom!” Zed shouted. “Dude, you are out again!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  He was definitely going against his better judgement. “I don’t know. Maybe doing this after dark is a bad idea? We should wait.”

  Crystal pushed her sexy, glossy bottom lip out in her signature pout. “Fringe, I’m not afraid of the dark. Besides it’s not even that dark out yet, and it’s just a trial run.”

  Crystal had a point. This was a test. It wa
s twilight, the time of day when a casual observer would believe the setting sun had tricked their eyes, should someone accidentally see her. He sighed then handed her the activation device. He’d purposely designed it to look like a common cell phone.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll count to three with my fingers and when my thumb goes up, you press the button, got that?”

  Her beautiful eyes glistened with excitement. “Got it,” she said. His heart beat nervously before he even began to count. What if something went wrong? What if he hurt her? He was having second thoughts.

  Crystal glared at him with impatience. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m just not sure about this. It’s one thing to experiment on myself, but I don't know what I would do if something happened to you.”

  She softened. “Oh Fringe, you're so sweet. But really, I'll be fine. I just know it in my gut. I have complete confidence in your brilliance. I mean, you’re a genius! You’ve done it lots of times and you’re fine, right? If anything was amiss, you’d have seen signs of it by now, wouldn't you?”

  He wasn’t sure how to answer that. He had been feeling extra jittery these days. Along with rising anxiety levels, he suffered moments of physical clumsiness. He wasn’t sure though if these symptoms had to do with this experiment or if it was the result of social stress. It could be from too much coffee, or lack of sleep. He hadn't slept much since Crystal came into his life. That was probably it.

  “All right,” he said. “On my count. One, two, three.” His thumb snapped up and she pushed the button. Crystal Morrisette, media starlet, girl of his heart, disappeared before his very eyes. He waited thirty seconds and flipped a switch on the teleportation console and she reappeared. In one piece. He let out a breath of relief.

  Her eyes were like saucers. “Oh. My. God. That was flippin’ amazing!” She stepped across the room and laid a big, wet kiss on him. “Almost better than sex!”