She Dims the Stars

by Amber L. Johnson

  He’s freaking out, and I can tell his fight or flight reflexes are starting to kick in, so I press down on his lap even harder to ground him there. And then I kiss him. My heart is racing, fluttering upward and getting lodged somewhere in my throat. I know I’ve kissed him before, but there were drinks involved. And money. This is just kindness, or something, on my part, but he’s not giving me anything to work with, and it’s making it a thousand times harder to pull this off.

  I pull away and lean into his ear, nip his lobe, and whisper, “Kiss me back, or she won’t buy it.”

  “Ohhhh.” It’s an exhale and then his hands are on my back pressing me closer, his lips finding mine. I don’t think he means to, but his hips raise a bit and I have to push back against him because I can feel the table lift up a little. It settles down with an audible screech, but he’s not paying attention, because he’s figured out that I’ll let him put his tongue in my mouth and he’s really, really into it.

  I bite the tip of his tongue gently and he pulls back a bit to make eye contact. He’s red-cheeked and breathing heavy, and my lips feel five times bigger than they did before. I stare at the beauty marks on the side of his face while I find my sense of gravity again. My hands are in his dark hair and I’m … yeah… I’m pretty sure his hands found their way up the back of my shirt. His hands are big. Shit.

  “So … did you need more time to look over the menu? Or …”

  I turn to look over my shoulder at the waitress who has her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. It’s not like she hasn’t seen worse. But I have a brief thought that maybe we put on a pretty damn good show. And that means we got the job done. My pelvis rubs against Elliot’s jeans, and I hear him make a strangled noise.

  I pretend to be embarrassed “Sorry. I think maybe we’ll just get ours to go.” I climb off his lap and make eye contact with the super blonde who is definitely staring. Without a thought, I rattle off an order like I know what my man wants.

  The waitress smiles and reaches for the menus, but Elliot hesitates. His menu is now in his lap, and he shakes his head quickly. “I’ll keep this for a minute, if you don’t mind. There’s a puzzle on the back I wanted to look at.”

  We’ve been in his apartment for ten minutes, and he still hasn’t spoken. He’s eaten everything and refuses to look directly at me.

  “I was trying to help you out, okay? I had no idea you’d get all weird about it.” I have to break the silence or else I’ll lose it. It should be noted that I also did not know he’d get a hard-on from the ordeal, either. I’d say that wasn’t my fault, but let’s be real.

  “Are you really that upset that she broke up with you? Did you love her or something? Were you planning on popping the question?”

  “No.” He finally manages to look at me, though his gaze only lingers briefly. He clears his throat, and I see him clench his jaw once before he drops his fork and shoves his plate away with a sigh. “It’s not like that. I’m mad that she broke up with me before we went to Ireland because it was supposed to be part of this project that I’m working on over the summer. It’s why Cline and I kept the apartment instead of going back home. So, yeah, I wanted to go away for vacation, and I wanted to get the stuff for my project. I’m not hung up on her.”

  I point at the front of his pants and grin. “Well, that was obvious.”

  “Shut up!” It’s the first bit of a smile I’ve seen from him since the diner. “You were, like, on it. You’d be offended if I didn’t have a reaction. Be honest.”

  “I mean, I guess so?” This time we both laugh, and it feels like the tension is finally leaving the room. The weight on my chest is starting to dissolve a little. I always have such good intentions.

  I take a moment to look around his place. The apartment is small. It’s a two bedroom, and the living space is maybe a total of seven hundred square feet. I counted twelve steps to cross his threshold into the kitchen and another three to get to the couch. I haven’t gotten a full view of his bedroom, but the door is cracked, and I can make out a couple of piles of clothes on the floor and a whole bunch of wires coming from everywhere.

  My immediate instinct is to ask if I can help him clean his shit up but I tamp it down. Too soon.

  Instead, I wander back into the kitchen and start opening cabinets. Three of them are stocked with nothing but cereal. A few different kinds, but there are at least three boxes of Lucky Charms staring me in the face, and it makes me grin.

  “I’m the reason Cline got fat, you know,” I say with a laugh.

  Elliot turns and regards me warily, his gaze untrusting.

  “It’s true. His mom used to be this psycho, all-organic, holistic, no-sugar Nazi. So whenever he would come over to my house, I’d let him have whatever he wanted. You should have seen his face the first time he had an oatmeal cream pie. It was like he’d found religion. And then I gave him a soda … which didn’t end well. I can’t go into too many details, but apparently he went home and trashed his room. Wrote all over his walls. Jumped on his bed until it broke.”

  “What the actual hell?” Elliot appears to be genuinely concerned.

  “I know! Caffeine, man. I told her he must have had an allergic reaction to one of her muffins.” A laugh bubbles up in my throat at the memory of his mom dumping three trays of muffins in the trash while we watched from across the street. “She never made flax seed pomegranate gluten-free baked goods again.”

  He rises to his feet and leans over the back of the couch to look me over. Like, truly look me over. The way he was doing with the people on the street. “You’re a little crazy, you know that?”

  My heart accelerates at his words, and I force a smile. “That’s probably why I’m majoring in Psychology. I have a theory that people either go into Psychology to find out what’s wrong with someone they love or with themselves. So …” The confession causes my cheeks to burn, and I scramble to change the subject. “What’s yours?”

  “Game design. That’s why I’m pissed Kelsey-Chelsea did what she did. I have this opportunity to present a game mock-up to this company after the summer. One of the characters was going to be based on her, and we were going to Ireland to get her family backstory to help flesh out her role.”

  I lean on the kitchen counter and purse my lips. “She’s some side part you had written in as the love interest or something? Because God forbid you make her the main heroine in your game. Did she just not have a tragic enough back story?”

  The moment the words leave my mouth, Cline’s bedroom door flings open and he steps into the room, staring at me but speaking to Elliot. I feel like it’s the first time he’s looked at me— really looked at me and seen me— in years. And my stomach instantly begins to tighten and sour.

  “You need a tragic backstory, Elliot? Look no further. No one has a sadder story than this girl right here. Isn’t that right, Byrdie?”

  I’m glued to the spot, struck mute under his words.

  Elliot moves closer, but I don’t acknowledge him. “Dude. I thought you were out,” he says.

  Cline shakes his head and angles against the counter, facing me just a few inches away. “Forget your ex and her fake stories about having an uncle who was a count in a town that no one’s actually heard of. This is your real story.”

  Elliot makes a move like he’s going to say something, but I hold up a hand to stop him. I knew at some point I would have to talk to Cline about everything. I just didn’t think it would be like this. But if he needs an audience to make himself feel better, I can give him the satisfaction.

  “He’s right.” I rip my gaze away from Cline’s face and stare directly at the boy I’ve only recently come to know and like a little bit. Maybe I trust him. Maybe I’ve completely lost my mind. Either way …”You want a tragic story for your game? I’m totally your girl. Cline knows all about it. He was there for almost all of it.”

  It’s the almost part that Cline never understood. It’s the missing parts he’s not aware of, because I’ve nev
er been able to tell him. How do you explain to the person who has known you the longest that they know absolutely nothing about you at all? That he only knows what everyone else knows, and that it’s absolute bullshit. Just surface.

  I hold Elliot’s gaze as I say what Cline wants to hear. What he’s known his entire life to be true. I introduce myself as the girl he knew all those years ago. ”My name is Audrey Byrd. Better known around my hometown as the Coma Baby of 1994. The one who killed her mom at birth.” I extend a shaking hand as my heart begins to hammer mercilessly inside my chest. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  They say it takes a village to raise a child. In my case, it took the entire town of Bertram Falls to come to my father's, excuse me, Patrick’s rescue and raise the little girl who was born to a dead mother and a grieving father who had no idea what he was doing. I assume, from what I’ve been told, he was barely keeping it together. As he did not have that motherly bond that most babies are afforded at birth, the transition at home was less than ideal.

  The women of the town took over our home with almost round-the-clock care as my father grieved and tried to process his new role in life. The older I’ve gotten, the more I wonder why he didn’t just give me up. I wouldn’t have blamed him. Especially knowing what I do now. But perhaps when your front door is overrun with local news cameras and filled with the good intentions of local church women, cooking home baked meals, you can’t reveal the truth.

  You can’t admit that you don’t want this baby that has ruined your entire life.

  He did a really good job of faking it. I’ll give him that.

  Whenever I think about my childhood, my home, I always remember it being busy and my house being full. There was never a quiet moment unless it was at night, and even then I was usually trying to sneak out of my window and across the lawn to get to Cline’s and engage him in some kind of trouble.

  We’d camp in the backyard or swim out at the lake house on the weekends when our parents would agree to it. He was my very best friend—my partner in crime—from the moment I could steal his toys in the sandbox. I knew everything about him, and the same could be said the other way around. We had no secrets.

  There was even a time when we’d planned a sort of Parent Trap type of thing where we were going to try and get his mom and Patrick together so we could be brother and sister. But it didn’t work.

  I never used to believe in fairytales or evil stepmothers until Patrick met my step-Mom, Miranda. I would tell Cline how weird it was for me when they started dating. He knew exactly how uncomfortable it became in my house when Miranda moved in. Our little bubble, this world I had known where everyone in town was welcomed with open arms inside our home, suddenly became a place where no one was allowed to enter.

  I was eleven when she first appeared, all tight skirts and high buns that pulled her already small eyes even smaller. Her features, tiny as they were, were severe, and her eyes seemed to always be judging me. She never looked at me with anything other than disdain, as if I were a stain on her really expensive cardigan that she just couldn’t get out.

  Patrick’s face, though long and thin, had once held an openness to it beneath his light blond hair and thin framed glasses. If eyes could be kind, his were. At least, for a while. It’s truly amazing how stress can change the entire landscape of a face. How concern can bury itself into the corners of a person’s mouth or eyes and etch its way into their skin until their soft lines become hard and they stop looking approachable.

  Maybe I assumed that’s where the changes started to come from in myself. Once they got married, it was hard to even get close to the man I once called my dad. Miranda and her couple’s retreats. Miranda and her yoga for two. Dinners with clients and cruises that did not include me.

  That’s when everything started, I think. My therapist once asked me to pinpoint the first time I could remember doing something that I would consider “weird.” I’d always had a thing for numbers. Counting steps. Counting the letters in words. I never even gave it a second thought.

  When you’re younger, you kind of think it’s badass that you know exactly how many steps there are from your door to your best friend’s lawn. Almost like you’re a spy. Or some kind of math genius. At least it was like that for me. It was just who I was.

  Who I am.

  But after Patrick married Miranda, something shifted and everything became so intense. I think everyone blamed it on hormones. Like, how messed up is it that a girl gets her period and suddenly people are looking at her like it’s perfectly okay for her to be exhibiting these behaviors that anyone else would be concerned about? But instead, Miranda was all, “Nah. She just needs some Midol.”

  Midol does not treat sadness of the magnitude that I began to experience. It does not take away the types of thoughts that began to surface in my mind as I was pushed farther and farther out of Patrick’s orbit. I know what she told him. She would say that I was a teenager and that I was alienating myself, but it wasn’t true.

  I tried. I really did. I wondered if the things I was feeling were the same my mom had felt. And I wished that she had been there to talk to. I knew nothing about her. My grandmother had little to nothing to do with us. She made no small secret that she blamed me for her daughter’s death. I blamed myself, too, eventually. Why wouldn’t I? What else could have caused a perfectly healthy woman to just … coma out and die like that?

  I was poison.

  Miranda didn’t even have to say anything after a while. I just knew. I was the reason for every bad thing in my family’s life. Hell, for all I knew, I was the reason for every bad thing, ever. It wriggled its way into my brain, and I tried to fight it. The deepening darkness that started to surround me. Like I owed it to the entire town that had tried so hard to keep me alive for so many years.

  Then it happened. I remember, clear as day, no matter how many times I’ve tried to push it away or how many times I’ve spoken with a specialist, the memory is so fresh it makes my chest physically ache.

  Me, fifteen years old, sitting at the lunch table, holding a drink in my right hand and clenching my left. I don’t exactly remember what I was looking at—probably nothing, because all I could think about was what Miranda had said about my hair before I had left the house. It was a dig, as usual. My self-esteem was in the shitter, and I’d started to count how long I could press my fingernails into my palm before it became unbearable, when I heard his voice through the haze surrounding my thoughts.

  “Jesus, Byrdie. Do you not have a medium setting?”

  Cline was leaning over the table, his ever fattening arms braced heavily on the wobbling fixture. I remember he was eating a candy bar and that his left front tooth was caked in chocolate.

  The thick fog around my head seemed to settle over my eyes for a second, and I blinked it away, the soda can shaking a little as I turned to look straight at him. “What?”

  He licked the food from his teeth and made a motion toward me, causing the rest of the people at our table to turn. “You’re either up here”—he raised his hand above his head—“or down here.” He pretended to bend down and place his palm on the floor. “Are you never just … normal? The fuck is wrong with you anymore?”

  I don’t know if it’s because he finally noticed and called me out, or what it was, but having all those eyes on me as he said it sent a flood of panic, unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my life, rushing up through my sternum and into my esophagus. Tears sprang to my eyes, and my throat began to close. I swear, to this day, I could hear my heart beating inside my own ears, and instead of giving a sarcastic comeback, instead of telling him to go to hell and throwing food at him, I stood up really fast and ran out of the cafeteria, in tears.

  The entire walk home, I practiced what I was going to say. I had questions and I needed my dad. I wanted to sit down face to face and ask him everything I’d ever wanted to know. I no longer cared if it hurt him to answer. Memories of my mom shouldn’t have been things kept hidden and pla
ced in dark boxes in my grandmother’s house. I should have been able to know her. But I knew nothing. She was kind and sweet and had died too soon. These are the only things I had been told, and I mostly knew them because Cline’s mom would tell me anytime I got the nerve to ask.

  I’d had an entire conversation with my father in my head by the time I reached my front door, sweating and trembling with anticipation of what was to come. Patrick Byrd worked from home, but Miranda did not, so imagine my surprise when I heard them arguing in the living room as I walked into the foyer. I wanted to call out and let them know I was home. Wanted to announce my presence somehow. But the yelling rendered me mute.

  “I can’t have this conversation again, Miranda. You knew coming into this marriage that there would be no children.”

  Her voice was shrill and hateful in response. “No one in this town knows that you’re sterile. We can use a surrogate.”

  “No.”

  There was a shuffling sound like something was being pushed. Maybe the couch. Maybe Patrick. I can’t be sure, because my eyes were squeezed tight.

  “You haven’t had a problem raising another man’s child for the last fifteen years. Why would it be an issue now?”

  That darkness, that feeling of desperation I’d been fighting for so long, hit me in the chest like a physical blow, and it took every last ounce of strength in my body not to hit the floor in a crumpled heap.

  I’m not proud of what happened after, but that was the day Byrdie ceased to exist.

  Or, at least, it was the day I tried to make her disappear.

  It feels like all the air in the room has been sucked out with a vacuum. Cline is staring at Audrey with the most intense expression, and I’m trying to decipher if it’s betrayal or disappointment. Like what she’s just divulged came out of her so easily. She’s just admitted to having one of the saddest origins I’ve ever heard of, and yet she’s standing here, holding my hand and shaking it like we’re making a business wager of some kind.