Falling Stars (Thompson Sisters)

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  “Sean, you’re not broken.”

  “Then stop talking to me like I am! I do understand. I understand that you’re messing up my relationship with my best friend.”

  I exhaled, loudly. Then I started walking again. Then I replied. “She doesn’t love me anymore because I hurt her, Sean. I got jealous and acted like an idiot. I broke her heart.”

  Sean was silent. For several minutes, the only sound was our footsteps on the gravel of the shoulder and the occasional gust of wind blowing through the scrub on either side. My mind kept turning back to that night, two weeks into the tour, when I looked up and saw her disappointed face. The night when I’d been so fucking angry with her because all she wanted to do was hang out with Preston. The night when she turned around and walked out without a word. The only words I could think of were forgive me. And I didn’t say them, even though I felt them.

  Apparently Sean had been mulling over my words too, because one moment I was walking and the next I was sitting on my ass beside the road, and the split second in between, I was being knocked down by Sean’s fist. I didn’t even see it coming. A little cloud of dust rose around me.

  “What the fuck, Sean?”

  He stood above me, pointing a finger from his shaking fist. “You hurt her? What did you do?!”

  I was too busy holding my hand over my now bleeding nose to answer him.

  “What did you do?” he repeated.

  “I kissed a groupie.”

  Sean let out a cry. Then he kicked gravel at me.

  “Fuck!” I muttered.

  He stood there, shaking, looking down at me with contempt and disappointment. He kicked rocks and dust at me one more time, then turned and walked away.

  I slumped. Of course there was more to the story than that. There always was. But did the more to the story really matter? I didn’t think so.

  So I scrambled to my feet and tried to catch up with my brother, who’d already moved far down the road.

  Little Bastard (Julia)

  I don’t know how far they had to go to get the gas, but it took forever. Carrie and I sat on the hood of the car, and despite the fact that we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, I was as relaxed as I’d been in a very long time. Carrie and I didn’t see each other often and it was great to get a chance to catch up. Whatever the circumstances.

  So we spent the morning chatting. Laughing. I told her the story of Preston and Crank and our screwed up tour, and the first word out of my sister’s mouth was “Fucker.” Because that’s what sisters are for. For the first time in two months, I felt a release of stress; a lack of pressure. I felt light and happy. I laughed. I’d been doing precious little laughing lately.

  Sometimes you just have to laugh.

  Anyway, a couple hours later, I guess, a truck pulled off the road just ahead of us, and Crank and Sean climbed out of the back. It was instantly obvious that something was wrong. Sean was stiff…well, stiffer than usual. He wouldn’t look at Crank, and he walked back toward the car without a pause.

  Crank came behind him. He looked tired and his nose was swollen and red like he’d been punched. My first reaction was to ask him what was wrong; I didn’t like seeing him unhappy. My second reaction was to tell him to go fuck off.

  I pondered my options and decided on a middle ground. I sat down in the driver’s seat, without a word, while he poured the gas into the tank. Carrie got in the front seat beside me, which meant the guys could just suck it up in the back.

  Crank raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word; he just climbed in the back seat and I cranked the engine and swung the car into a wide U-turn, raising a cloud of dust.

  Fifteen minutes later, I pulled to a stop next to the gas pumps. “This is the station that was closed last night?” I asked.

  Crank nodded. He climbed out, his back straight and angry, and pumped the gas. We all got coffee and snacks, used the restroom, and brushed our teeth, which made it a long stop, but finally, at near enough to eleven in the morning, we were on the road and on our way.

  “You came from that direction?” I asked, pointing. “From the highway?”

  Crank nodded. I put the car in gear and took off, staying at a careful 55 mph, unlike my maniac boyfriend who religiously stayed 25 miles above the limit.

  “I’ve been wanting to get my hands on that sound system,” Carrie said, leaning forward and turning on the stereo. She quickly scanned through the stations, finally settling on a Top 40 mix that would have Crank seething. Beyonce and Jay-Z came on the radio singing Crazy in Love.

  “Um…” Crank winced as he spoke.

  “I love this song!” Carrie shouted, a grin on her face. I winked at her and she smiled and started to shake her shoulders with the music.

  “Is that really—” Crank started to say again.

  I reached over and turned the radio up and started singing along.

  A glance in the rearview mirror showed an irritated Crank leaning against the sidewall, clutching a pillow on top of this head. Sean ignored the music, steadily reading his book about the top tourist sites in America.

  Carrie raised her arms in the air, throwing her head back and singing along. Her long neck and thin arms were exposed, her skin pale, almost white. My breath caught for just a second watching my baby sister, finally on her way to college, as a smile spread across her face.

  She gave me a sly look when the song switched to 50 Cent. That was well beyond my taste too, but what the hell. I started beating my hands on the wheel as she tapped on the dashboard, and we both burst into laughter.

  If I could have frozen that moment with my sister, I would have.

  As it was, we just kept rolling. Two minutes later, I saw the entrance to the highway.

  Crank leaned in between the front seats. “I promise to be nice. Can I drive?”

  I raised an eyebrow and looked at Carrie. She shrugged. I shrugged back, then pulled the car over. Crank launched himself over the side, landing in the gravel beside the car. Carrie started to stir, but I shook my head and climbed into the back seat.

  “May I?” Crank asked Carrie politely as he climbed in the driver’s seat. He gestured to the stereo; I tried to stifle a smirk.

  “Be my guest!” she said, grinning.

  Thirty seconds later, the sounds of Natasha Atlas’s Lelsama filled the car. Hard not to dance along with that one. And honestly I wasn’t even sure what the point of all my anger and needling of Crank was. My emotions shifted suddenly from the elation I’d felt goofing off with Carrie to abrupt sadness. I loved Crank. Whenever I thought of the night I saw that kiss, I felt a gaping hole in my chest that I didn’t think I had enough tears to fill. The wave of…grief—yes, it was grief—hit me so suddenly all I could do was curl up, my head on the pillow, and close my eyes.

  I felt the car moving underneath me as Crank pulled out again, but I kept my eyes tightly closed. Sean was next to me in the back seat, but busy reading. Thank God. I didn’t want him to talk to me right now.

  I didn’t want to feel this way. I didn’t want to be sad anymore. I didn’t want to feel this aching, dull pain in my chest every time I looked at Crank, but I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t know how to stop the tears and I didn’t know how to stop the pain.

  “You really should consider slowing down,” Sean said. “Can I tell you something? Did you know that the Transport Research Library reports that for every kilometer per hour increase in speed, the accident risk increases three percent?”

  “I know you’re pissing me off,” Crank replied.

  “Not just that,” Sean continued. “At higher speeds, injury is much more severe. When collision speed increases, the amount of kinetic energy acting on the body increases until the risk of severe injury or fatality becomes even more acute.”

  “What the fuck, Sean?”

  “I think he’s trying to say you’re making him nervous by driving so fast, Crank,” Carrie commented in a calm, temporizing tone.

  Crank didn’t answer, b
ut I felt the Mustang slow a little. And then I felt even more confused, because it shouldn’t have taken my sister saying something to get Crank to watch out for his brother. That always came naturally. Lately I felt like I didn’t even know him.

  Whatever. I needed to stop worrying about it. I needed to stop thinking about it.

  “Um… Crank? What is that?” Carrie’s voice was sharp, anxious, and my eyes snapped open.

  “What’s what?” he retorted.

  Carrie didn’t respond in words. Her sudden scream was piercing; terror shot down my spine. I sat up, just as Crank yelled, at the top of his lungs, “Oh, holy flying Jesus, what the fuck?”

  The car swerved as Crank let out another shout and Carrie shrieked.

  “Please try to maintain control of the car!” Sean shouted.

  “Carrie, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  Her face was pale, her mouth open and eyes wide. She crammed herself as tight against the door of the car as she could possibly go, and pointed.

  My eyes followed her finger to the impossible sight of a gigantic, hairy, enormous spider crawling up the face of the center console. Crank continued to scream, the car weaving all over the place. Tires screeched behind us somewhere, and then I heard the sound of a siren.

  “Crank, stop the car!” I screamed.

  “Really, all of this is unnecessary…” Sean said, his voice level and calm.

  He was the only one calm, because Crank yanked the steering wheel over as he braked suddenly, pulling the car into a sickening skid down the emergency lane. All of us, the spider probably included, screamed at the top of our lungs as the car skidded to a stop.

  Half a breath later, Carrie, Crank and I jumped over the sides out of the car only to find ourselves faced with a police car screeching to a stop behind us.

  When the cop saw all of us pouring out of the car, he popped his car door open and shouted, “Everybody on the ground!”

  Carrie screamed again, because the police officer, who saw all of us jumping out of the car like clowns, or gang bangers maybe, drew his weapon.

  I dove to the ground. So did Crank and Carrie.

  Everything went silent. Except for Sean, who was still in the car, and held the wriggling, six-inch diameter spider up in the air. He held it firmly by its thorax, and the various appendages waved and wriggled in a nightmarish display.

  “I told you all, don’t worry, it’s not a tarantula.”

  The cop went pale. “What the—what? Put that thing…”

  Sean smiled. “It’s okay. This is a Calisoga spider. It’s often mistaken for a tarantula, but his venom isn’t dangerous to humans. He will bite, though.”

  “Sean, for God’s sake,” Crank said.

  The cop put his pistol away. “Son, can you step out of the car and put that…spider…um….”

  “Yes, sir,” Sean replied.

  Everyone waited in silence. Sean opened the door and got out of the car, still holding the spider in his left hand.

  “Can I see that?” the police officer asked.

  Crank stirred, and the cop said, “You stay right where you are.”

  Crank froze.

  The police officer walked over to Sean. “That’s some spider.”

  “He crawled out from under the dashboard.”

  “That why you all were all over the road?”

  “Yes,” Sean affirmed. “Plus, my brother’s a terrible driver. He was speeding before, but I convinced him to slow down. Did you know the likelihood of an accident increases three percent for every additional kilometer per hour?”

  “That sounds serious,” the police officer agreed. “You sure this little guy ain’t poisonous?” He poked a finger at the spider, who waved its legs aggressively. I shuddered.

  “He isn’t. But his bite will hurt.”

  “How do you know it’s a him?”

  “Educated guess,” Sean replied. “You can’t be one hundred percent sure. But this one, if you look here…” He pointed at the spider’s…stomach?

  Carrie looked up. “Can I see?”

  I shuddered again.

  The cop shrugged. “Come on,” he said and Carrie got up, brushing dust off her front as she approached Sean and the cop.

  “Right here on his abdomen,” Sean continued, pointing, “you can see apiandrous fusillade.”

  “The what?” the cop said.

  “It’s um…kind of a silk-spinning gland,” Carrie supplied, which caused the cop to do a double take that she had a clue what Sean was talking about.

  “Male spiders have an extra set on their abdomen. Or at least…most do,” Sean explained.

  “It’s hard to tell without a female to compare it to,” Carrie responded. “People mistake the gender of spiders all the time.”

  “It’s true,” Sean told the cop, who stared at them both incredulously. “Even experts sometimes can’t tell if a spider is male or female.”

  I looked up and met Crank’s eyes. The cop hadn’t told us to get up, and I wasn’t going to without permission. Crank looked over to Sean and Carrie, then back to me.

  He grinned. I did too. Who else in the world but our siblings would have known that?

  “Well,” the cop said, “I guess if that little bastard had crawled up between my legs I’d have been driving all over the place too. I’m gonna let y’all go with a warning. But slow down and be careful.”

  Don’t be snarky (Crank)

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked.

  Julia was in the front passenger seat, peering at her map. She’d marked a big black circle with a Sharpie showing our destination, back a million miles and almost as many hours ago when she was planning this road trip.

  She looked at the map, then back up at the gate. Her face looked frustrated and confused.

  Thirty minutes before, we’d passed a billboard welcoming us to town.

  SEMINOLE

  Gaines County

  #1 OIL PRODUCER

  #1 COTTON PRODUCER

  #1 PEANUT PRODUCER

  #1 PEOPLE ANYWHERE

  The sign was clear enough. The residents of Seminole, Texas, thought they had everything going for them. The left side of the sign even boasted a twenty-foot high number 1, extending well past the top of the billboard. Not far past the sign, we passed an old, rusted-out hulk of a 1960 Plymouth Valiant. Weeds and scrub grass grew out the rear windows of the car, which was a mottled mix of grey primer and brown rust.

  The road into town was bordered on both sides by scrawny bushes, scrub grass and dirt all the way to the horizon. For a while, the only sign of human habitation was the power and telephone lines which ran from pole to pole down the left side of the increasingly narrow road. No stripes adorned the cracked and buckled pavement, and in some places soil and sand covered part of the road.

  Julia stared at the gate beside the road, her face worried. Then she looked back at the map.

  “This must be the wrong place,” Carrie said. “Are you sure we’re in America?”

  Sean offered up some helpful information, as usual. “Actually, even though 85 percent of Americans live in cities or suburbs, more than 90 percent of the land area is rural. This is far more typical than Boston or San Francisco, for instance.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is…it,” Julia said, her voice trailing off.

  It was a parcel of land that looked close to the size of South Boston, scattered with undergrowth, a mountain of discarded and rotting tires covering the ground to the left of the deeply rutted gravel driveway. On the right, several abandoned vehicles sat rusting in the sun. A dirty and rusted white trailer sat almost on the horizon at the end of the long driveway.

  “I guess we just go on in,” Julia said doubtfully.

  I shrugged and turned into the driveway. The car immediately bumped in a deep rut.

  “Can I tell you something?” Sean spoke quickly. “In most states, the Castle Doctrine says that the person inside that trailer can’t be prosecuted if they shoot al
l of us.”

  Carrie raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “It’s true,” he said. “In 1992, it even happened in Louisiana. A sixteen-year-old boy was shot and killed because he knocked on the wrong door looking for a Halloween party.”

  Oh, for Christ’s sake. “Sean, knock it off,” I reprimanded.

  “Nobody’s going to shoot at us,” Julia assured us. “We’re at the right place. I’m sure of it.”

  She didn’t look sure at all.

  “Is that true?” Carrie asked Sean.

  “His name was Yoshihiro Hattori. He was a Japanese exchange student and got lost and knocked on the wrong door.”

  Carrie sighed sadly. “That’s horrible.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sean said. “Julia’s sure this is the right place.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Carrie didn’t look happy at all. The car hit another deep rut, bouncing us all in our seats and probably doing irreparable harm to my car.

  “It might help if you don’t drive into the deepest holes.” Julia stating the obvious was clearly designed to help me stay calm.

  “Thanks, sweetheart!” I replied, forcing myself to maintain a grin.

  “I’m just saying…” she began.

  “Don’t.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and looked off to the horizon.

  “Who exactly is it we’re going to see?” Sean asked.

  “Barry Lewis,” Julia said.

  “He was her bodyguard,” I explained.

  “Don’t be snarky,” she countered. “He was the only real parent Carrie and I had when we were in Belgium.”

  Of course I knew that. Julia had talked about Barry Lewis a lot, so much so that I actually felt a little envious of him. During her father’s tour as a Senior Chief Muckety-muck for NATO in the early nineties, a security detail was assigned to the entire family. It seemed a little crazy, but true enough. I guess if I was that important of a guy, I’d want to make sure my family was protected, too.

  I hadn’t met Barry Lewis yet, but I’d never clear my mind of the vision she’d described. A lonely girl, eleven years old, with parents too busy to spend time with her, tagging along behind her Marine Corps bodyguard as he worked on his classic cars in the embassy garage. Before we met, Julia was the loneliest person in the world.