Falling Stars

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  Mrs. Thompson turned to Julia only after she’d chastened her next eldest daughter. She spoke in a breezy, almost friendly tone. “Julia, I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been at my wits’ end with worry this summer. You must tell me everything.”

  Okay, that was just weird. Really weird. Julia has nightmares about her mother and here she was being super friendly.

  Whatever. I followed them into the dining room, preceded by Andrea and Alexandra and flanked by the twins, my own little honor guard. Carrie was just putting a plate on the dining table when we walked in. It was already set with plates adorned by dainty little sandwiches cut into triangles. I eyeballed the sandwiches. Turkey and Swiss? I thought about my stomach for a second, trying to decide if I’d be able to manage eating, and decided that yes, I would.

  When we walked in, Carrie’s eyes went to Sean. They’d met, briefly, at the after party the night before. Just before I got arrested. Now, Carrie saw Sean, then looked away, her cheeks going a little red.

  That was odd. Had he said something obnoxious to her? Because it couldn’t be…

  Now that I thought about it, I took a good look at my brother. He was Carrie’s height, two inches over six feet, and had spent a lot of the last nine months working out. At first I’d thought it was weird, until I realized his workout regimen was designed to deter the bullies at his high school. He’d developed powerful muscles in his chest and arms; I wouldn’t want to tangle with him. His hair, cropped short, framed blue eyes. He looked…not like I thought of him. He looked like a young man. Sean was my little brother. When I looked at him, I saw meltdowns. I saw struggles with basic interactions with other people. I saw the boy who wept after the assholes at his school stuffed his favorite hat down the toilet.

  Apparently Carrie saw something else.

  Andrea held back when we came in the room, but the twins ran for the table. Jessica, who had the same brown hair and green eyes as Alex, stopped at a sharp word from her mother. But Sarah…black hair, light blue eyes, all expressive attitude, climbed right up into her chair and grabbed a sandwich.

  At the sight of Sarah suddenly gobbling forbidden food, Andrea and Jessica froze. Carrie’s eyes darted back and forth between Sarah and her mother, and Julia just shook her head.

  “Young lady!” Mrs. Thompson shouted loud enough to shatter windows.

  Sean lifted his hands to his ears as if to block out the sound, and Sarah shouted back, “Hungry!” and stuffed the sandwich into her mouth.

  Let me tell you something. Back in the day I used to go with Wheezy and Gearhead and Lenny and hang out in the cemetery and get wasted, and sometimes we’d get high on whatever we could afford. It was all fun and games, and when the cops came around we’d run like hell through the gravestones and out into the neighborhood, cutting between houses and gardens to get away. Half the fun was outwitting the cops. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, one time I was running through the gravestones and it had rained the night before, so the ground was slick. I felt my feet slip out from under me and I went sliding along, then slammed into a wall. It knocked the air out of me, which was no big deal, and almost got me caught, which was. But then I heard the cop behind me slide, and he didn’t make a nice soft thump like I did. He hit something with a loud crack and cried out.

  Aw, shit, I thought. See, maybe I was trouble, but my dad was a cop. And that guy was probably somebody’s dad. Suddenly it had stopped being a game. I ducked my head around the gravestone, and there he was. A Cambridge cop, and worse, one I knew. Officer Brandon McCaffrey. Yeah, I knew him. He knew my dad. It was all one big incestuous family. And from the look on his face, Officer McCaffrey was in a world of pain.

  I couldn’t leave him. So I slid back around the gravestone and said, “Shit. Let me call for help.”

  Bad idea. See, I didn’t think. Officer McCaffrey had a radio and was perfectly capable of calling for help. He had a nightstick too, and he was pretty good at using it. From a supine position in incredible pain from a broken ankle, he still managed to clip me right on the temple with said nightstick, knocking me out. McCaffrey spent the rest of the winter working behind a desk. I spent two nights in the hospital and two weeks in jail.

  And the icy, murderous expression on his face right before he knocked me cold? That was the expression Adelina Thompson had on her face when she started walking toward Sarah, who had at that point consumed the entire triangle of sandwich.

  You can’t really blame her. Sarah was being intentionally defiant. And then it got worse. Because when Adelina started for her, Sarah jumped onto the table and ran for dear life. Her little feet knocked over a plate with a sandwich, then a pitcher of milk—seriously, who puts milk in a pitcher?—and then they were moving faster than her body and she started to slide on the table in the spilled milk, straight toward Carrie, whose eyes had widened.

  “Young lady!” Adelina screamed.

  Sean, who had thus far only managed to mortally offend one of Julia’s parents, decided it was time to start on the other one. With a full-throated roar, he shouted, “Let’s all start screaming!”

  Jessica and Andrea both burst into tears, and an astonished Adelina forgot all about Sarah, who made her getaway by sliding down the length of the table until she slammed into Carrie at the end. Carrie swung her to the floor and Sarah ran out the door. Adelina stared at Sean, slack-jawed, and I said, “Sean, stop!”

  Julia raced to Sean and she did something I’d never seen anyone but our mother do successfully. She put her hands on both of his shoulders and looked him eye to eye as best she could, given that he was nearly a foot taller than her. “Sean. Calm. Down.” Her voice was firm, calm, and loving; hearing it brought tears to my eyes, because lately all I’d heard from her were the strained voices of stress, anger and sadness.

  Sean took a breath and closed his eyes. Silence fell.

  Talk to me (Julia)

  I surveyed the chaos of Sarah’s departure for about five seconds. A mixture of milk and mustard was smeared from the center of the dinner table down to the end, an impressionist painting by an eccentric artist with primary colors and a brush made of Keds. The pattern continued on the floor and right out the door of the dining room.

  Sean had taken a deep breath and stopped shouting. My mother, however, was just about to get started again, and she didn’t know that anything she did now would just make things worse. Crank looked hungover and irritable, so he wasn’t going to help solve anything.

  “Mother, I think we should just skip lunch at this point. I’ll go up and help Carrie finish packing. Sean and Crank, do you think you can get the car ready for Carrie’s stuff?”

  I raised my eyebrows as I looked at Crank, hoping against hope he’d catch my drift. It wouldn’t take the two of them any time at all, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to separate my mother and Sean before one of them said something unforgivable.

  Crank nodded and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Come on, Sean,” he said, and the two of them headed back down the stairs.

  My mother looked at me, alarm on her face. “Julia, what—”

  I held a palm up. “Mother…just… Stop. Don’t ask.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth to say something which would undoubtedly be awful.

  “Please, Mother. It’s fine. Let me help clean up in here, okay?”

  She gave me a dismissive look. “No. You go with Carrie. Everyone…out!”

  I didn’t need to hear that twice. I left right on Carrie’s heels, both of us light years behind the younger girls, who had managed to vanish without a trace. And that was no wonder, really. I tried to run away from our mother any chance I could.

  I hadn’t been in Carrie’s room since Christmas, but it looked much the same. A huge black poster showed a green planet, apparently sticking its tongue out, if planets could have tongues, with the reminder “DON’T PANIC” printed in large, friendly letters. Her bookshelves were doubled and tripled up, books stacked sideways and in cra
zy directions. The desk was clear; a close inspection would turn up certain items and keepsakes missing. Her closet, hanging open, was nearly empty. She was obviously ready to leave.

  She only had two suitcases, but one of them was very large.

  “I just need to get a couple last things in here,” she said.

  “Take your time,” I murmured. I leaned against the window, looking to Cabrillo Street below. Crank and Sean had the trunk of the Mustang open and were pulling things out. I glanced at the trunk, then Carrie’s suitcases. We should be okay.

  “What’s going on with you and Crank?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She tugged on the zipper to one of her suitcases, trying her hardest to get it closed. It was resisting her. I walked over and held the suitcase still.

  “Don’t try to snow me, Julia.”

  I shrugged. “We’ve… It…” I closed my eyes because I didn’t know how to say it.

  She stopped with the suitcase. “Julia? Talk to me.”

  I shook my head. “We’ve just… It’s been awful. The tour.” To my horror, I felt my throat closing. Tears, unwanted, unwarranted, out of control, were clawing their way out. I forced them back.

  “What’s been awful?” she asked.

  I didn’t know where to begin. It had started with a stupid argument really. Crank had gotten pissed one day when he saw me talking with Preston Reeve. I found myself shaking my head. “I’ll… It’s complicated. Really complicated. I’ll tell you later, okay? Right now let’s just get going.”

  She nodded her head. “All right. But we’re talking before this is all over, okay?”

  We got her suitcases closed and headed downstairs to say our goodbyes and load up the car. I’d managed to avoid voicing the one thing I truly didn’t want to say, the thing that would ruin our trip and break my heart, which was I didn’t think I could stay with Crank anymore and that this trip was going to be our goodbye.

  I can’t hear you (Julia)

  “Are you insane?”

  I wouldn’t have asked the question, but Crank had taken a left turn going the wrong way down a one-way street, prompting horns from the wall of cars rushing at us down the extremely steep hill and screams from the back seat. The screams didn’t stop as Crank shouted, “Oh, fuck me!” and put the car into reverse, backing partly onto Geary Boulevard and partly onto the sidewalk. We did, however, come to an instant stop when he hit a telephone pole with the rear bumper.

  Crank took a slow breath, then looked over at me. “Sorry.”

  “Are you sober? Enough to make this drive?” My heart was thumping. I knew my tone was harsh. I sounded like my mother.

  I’d never been so scared in my life.

  “Yeah, I just… This city… Christ…”

  Carrie, sitting behind Crank, leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay… it’s a confusing city. If you go straight here, then take a right on Van Ness, that’ll get us there, okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got this. Thanks.”

  Sean, behind me, said, “I’m not so sure. The residual effects of alcohol can last for days in some circumstances, and Crank isn’t that stable to begin with.”

  “Knock it off, Sean!” Crank’s voice was strained, but he also sounded so much like his dad, Jack, that I almost did a double take. Irritation on his face, he put the car in drive and pulled back into traffic, this time going in the correct direction.

  I leaned my elbow on the window frame, trying not to look. Trying not to think. Too much thinking took me right back down into the swirling disaster this entire summer has been, so I stared out the window as Crank drove us up I-80 and the Bay Bridge. It was easier not to fight about it anymore. It was easier to not think about it, especially to not think about how afraid I was. Afraid I was going to lose him. Afraid I wasn’t.

  All I had to do was close my eyes and think about the after party in Dallas to see disaster after disaster. Crank’s sudden, inexplicable jealousy. How the groupies screamed his name. The pained, sad expression on his face and how he turned away from me. All I had to do was close my eyes to see his hand on that blonde girl’s ass.

  Holding back tears, I stared off to the side. The girders of the Bay Bridge passed us by, waves and whitecaps far below. To the south, over the bay, I could see clouds in the distance, dark clouds. They looked like rain and I hoped we weren’t headed into a storm. I’d had enough storms this year.

  I glanced back over my shoulder. Sean was leaning back in his seat, staring up at the upper level of the bridge above us. He had a nervous expression on his face. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was squeezed as far away from Carrie as he could possibly get and still remain inside the vehicle. He’d gotten really upset last night when the photographers ambushed us on the way out of the party; upset enough that Crank lost it and punched the photographer and got himself arrested.

  Sean and Carrie had seemed to hit it off at the party, but now he looked like he was trying to crawl out of the car to get away from her. For her part, she was looking out over the opposite side of the bridge, arms crossed over her chest, a frown on her face. Her hair was blowing all over the place.

  “Carrie?” I called.

  She looked over at me, an expression of annoyance on her face. “You okay?” I asked.

  In a jerky motion, she widened her eyes and crossed them, shrugged her shoulders and threw her arms out to the side as if she were saying, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “What?” I asked.

  She tapped her ears, then leaned close. “I can’t hear you!” she shouted. “It’s loud back here with the top down!”

  She leaned close to Sean, who looked like he was going to jump out of the car. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could see her lips move. He nodded, then said something in response. She laughed. Nice. At least they could stand each other.

  I looked back out across the bay as we drove on. Every once in a while I’d glance back, and at one point I saw Sean and Carrie poring over his tourist attraction book. Crank and I didn’t speak. The dark grey clouds rolled over us, and Crank pulled over to put the top up.

  We drove on in the rain.

  Just a little (Crank)

  “You’re turning too early,” Sean said.

  “Yeah, I know,” I replied. “But I need to get gas, or this is going to be a very short trip.” It was two o’clock in the morning and I needed to find a place to get gas, and a hotel, in that order. Julia was curled up against the passenger side door and as far as I could tell Carrie was asleep in the back seat. Neither of them had spoken in hours… Julia because she was still pissed at me and Carrie in silent sympathy with her elder sister.

  So here we were, at two in the morning, headed south on I-5 in southern California, the gas gauge on empty. The sign before the exit said GAS FOOD LODGING EXIT 242, so it couldn’t be far, but as I pulled off the exit, I panicked a little. Warm air blew over me, and all I could see in the darkness was sand, scrub, and flat darkness for miles. I’d stopped hours before, after the rain stopped, to put the top down.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  “I think you should get back on the highway,” Sean said. His voice had an edge of anxiety.

  “It’s fine, Sean. You saw the sign, it said gas and food and stuff. We probably just need to go a little ways.”

  In the darkness, the night was hushed, the only sound the quiet thrum of the Mustang’s engine and the wind blowing through the scrub. No other cars passed.

  I could get back on the highway and hope to make it to the next exit and hope it had gas.

  I could turn to the left or right on this two-lane road in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere and trust it would take me somewhere.

  I could wake Julia, because she had the map, and she could tell me where the hell we were.

  I sighed and closed my eyes. I turned left, because that was the general direction of Texas, and began to drive.

  “I’ve got a bad f
eeling about this,” Sean said.

  “Relax, Sean.”

  And so I drove. And drove. And drove some more. The road continued, straight, between empty fields that appeared to have nothing cultivated but dust and scrub brush. And twenty-two very long minutes later, I finally saw light on the horizon ahead of us. Bright light. It had to be a gas station, or a town, or something.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and sped up a little. Slowly, the light grew brighter and brighter and finally resolved itself, high above the scrub and sand—a 76 sign. I rolled into the parking lot fueled by fumes and optimism and immediately saw the problem.

  The lights inside and underneath the shelter were all turned off. The station was closed.

  I groaned. “Really?” I muttered. Maybe the pumps were still on. I turned off the car; in the dead quiet of the night I could hear the faint ticking of the engine in the heat. Julia stirred a little and I really didn’t want to wake her up, so I got out and stepped over to the pump. It was turned off too.

  I wanted to cry out, “It’s not my fault!”

  Instead, I opened the car and slid back in.

  Julia shifted position, and in the warmest voice she’d spoken to me in three weeks said, “Hmmmmm… everything okay?”

  I leaned close and whispered, “It’s all good, babe. Just getting gas.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she muttered, still asleep.

  “Where are you going now?” Sean asked in his usual near-megaphone.

  “Shhhhh,” I hissed. I cranked the car and pulled out of the gas station. “We’ll just go on to the next station. One has to be open.”

  “I don’t think…”

  “Give it a rest, Sean.”

  It couldn’t be that far to another gas station. It couldn’t. I mean, seriously, what did the people who lived around here do? We’d just get to the next major intersection or whatever and get some gas there. I kept thinking that as hard as I could, because I was going about sixty, ten minutes later, when I felt the engine shudder. Once. Twice. Then we were coasting, near silently, running down the straight highway on nothing but momentum. The highlights dimmed slightly as the engine cut out.