Second Star

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  “It’s really not your scene,” Pete protests.

  “I’m here to find a new scene, remember?” I say firmly.

  Pete opens his mouth to try to argue, but I shake my head. I’ve decided that I’m going no matter what he says, so there’s no reason for him to waste his breath.

  At sunset, I’m riding on the handlebars of Hughie’s bike; Belle and Pete share a bike beside us, and Matt rides a third on his own. They’re smiling; no one seems to find any of this out of the ordinary.

  I’m grateful for the roar of the surf, loud enough to drown out the sound of my heartbeat, pounding so hard and so fast that you’d think I was the one pushing the pedals of the bike, past houses with manicured lawns and bright white fences.

  At the edge of Brentway, we dismount our bikes. Pete leads the way behind the houses. We creep through backyards with pools and diving boards and swing sets, hiding behind trees and bushes. I wonder what my parents would do if they looked out the windows of the glass house and saw a group of kids tiptoeing past.

  When we finally reach the house, Belle’s hands work deftly on its lock, and I pretend not to notice just how proud Pete looks when the back door swings open as though the house itself were inviting us in. Belle makes a beeline for the stairs while Pete and Matt head for the kitchen.

  “Where’s she going?” I ask Pete. “I thought we were just taking food and supplies, that kind of thing.”

  Pete shrugs. “Belle likes to check out the bedrooms.”

  I don’t ask why. Maybe she likes to go through closets and try on clothes. Maybe she likes to slip between clean sheets on beds with plush mattresses and soft pillows. Maybe she likes to take hot showers, since the water in Pete’s house, I discovered earlier, is icy cold.

  Pete and Matt move through the house like cats who can see in the dark; I linger in the doorway with Hughie, who’s fussing with the panel for the alarm. I recognize it immediately; my parents have the same kind. You have sixty seconds to disarm before it automatically calls the police.

  “Hurry!” I whisper urgently.

  He shakes his head. “I know this model,” he says. “We have plenty of time.”

  “No,” I hiss. “Sixty seconds from the time we get inside.”

  “Sixty?” Hughie says. “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  “I thought it was one-eighty.” He turns from the alarm to Pete and Matt in the kitchen. “Shut it down, guys,” he says frantically, struggling to keep his voice low.

  I shove him aside. My mother used to forget the alarm code all the time. Some days, she’d forget that we had an alarm at all, and when the police showed up twenty minutes after we walked into the house she was always genuinely surprised. After the fifth time, one of them finally showed her how to disarm the alarm altogether, a secret that the manufacturer only shared with cops, he said. The next time my mother forgot the alarm code, I realized that I was pretty good at disarming the thing with my fingernail.

  Now I yank the panel off and stick my hand inside. I figure I have twenty seconds left.

  “What are you doing, Wendy?” Pete hisses at me from the kitchen. “Guys, come on, let’s go!”

  “Just wait,” I answer. “Hughie, shine the flashlight right here for me?”

  “I’m going to get Belle,” Matt whispers, and I hear his footsteps running up the stairs two at a time. But I don’t take my eyes off the panel.

  “Hughie, the flashlight, now,” I say angrily. My fingernail breaks; I try another finger instead. “Almost got it.”

  Matt is dragging Belle down the stairs.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Pete says, but I shake my head. Just one more twist and I’ll have done it.

  “Got it!” I shout triumphantly, forgetting to keep my voice low.

  “Got what?” Belle says as Pete shushes me.

  “The alarm. It’s off,” I say, grinning. Only now do I notice that my heart is pounding, my skin covered in a slick of sweat. I explain to them about the kill switch.

  “Way to go, Wendy,” Hughie says, clapping me on the back. “You sure saved my ass.”

  I grin. “No problem.”

  “Big deal,” Belle scoffs. “The poor little rich girl probably only knows how because her parents have the same one.”

  “Well, then thank goodness we’ve got the rich chick with us tonight,” Matt says, laughing.

  “All right, guys, keep it down,” Pete says. “Let’s get this thing done already.” He heads back to the kitchen, and Belle heads back up the stairs. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see rings glittering on her fingers that weren’t there when we walked in the door.

  Now my heartbeat is steady and strong, my breath deep and smooth. I feel like I’m balancing on a surfboard, having just conquered a monster wave. I follow Hughie up the stairs.

  I’ve never been inside such a big house. On the walls are paintings I’d expect to see in a museum. An enormous crystal chandelier hangs down over the center of the stairs, twinkling in the moonlight. I bet it would be beautiful with the lights on, but we don’t exactly want to draw the neighbors’ attention.

  “How much time do we have?” I whisper to Hughie.

  He shrugs. “All the time in the world, thanks to you.” He begins skipping up the stairs, his feet bouncing up and down on the thick cream-colored carpet. “Come on!”

  At the top of the stairs is a long hallway. I hear Belle laughing in one of the bedrooms. “Jackpot!” she shouts, and I wonder what she’s found.

  Hughie opens a closed door, revealing a king-size four-poster bed, covered in a plush comforter and the fluffiest pillows I’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of bed you see in a movie about princes and princesses hundreds of years ago. The kind of bed that belongs in a castle.

  And suddenly, I want nothing so much as to jump on that gorgeous, perfect bed. I rush past Hughie and leap onto the bed and begin bouncing up and down. I kick off my sandals; the comforter is satin underneath my feet, and after a few jumps I slip, tumbling down onto the pillows.

  “You okay?” Hughie asks from the doorway.

  I pop right back up. The bed smells like expensive perfume. “You gotta try this,” I say, and Hughie joins me, bouncing on the bed. I feel about eight years old. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun.

  Belle comes in, layers of gorgeous clothing draped over the T-shirt and shorts she wore to ride over here. She looks like a little kid playing dress-up. “What are you guys doing?”

  Pete pokes his head in the door in time to see me answer Belle’s question. “Working on our balance,” I say, spinning in a circle on my next jump. “It’ll come in really handy on the waves tomorrow.”

  For some reason, this sends Hughie into a fit of laughter, and he collapses into a giggling lump on the bed.

  “We’re getting ready to leave,” Belle says finally. She’s trying to look like she’s above all this silliness, but it’s obvious from the way she wears her new clothes that she’s enjoying this just as much as we are. I attempt a pirouette off the bed, but I trip and land sloppily at her feet, laughing. I can see that Belle’s struggling not to laugh, too.

  I glance back at the bed before we leave the room behind; it’s a mess. The beautiful comforter is covered in sand; the pillows are tossed haphazardly on the floor. Ever since I was a little girl, I made my bed every single morning. My parents had to beg and bribe my brothers to make their beds before school, but they never had to remind me to make mine. It feels strange to leave such a mess behind.

  I follow Pete, Belle, and Hughie down the stairs and out the front door, where Matt is waiting with our bikes in the darkness. He stuffs our lost into backpacks the boys slip on. To my surprise, Belle climbs onto Matt’s handlebars, her new clothes billowing in the wind, and Pete pulls me onto his own.

  We speed away silently, riding more slowly than we rode coming here, weighed down by all of our booty. Before we turn the corner off of Brentway, I glance back at the enormous house we just raided
. It’s so full of beautiful things that I wonder if the owners will even notice what’s missing.

  As the bicycle moves forward in the cool night air, I forget it all: how awful it feels to miss my brothers, to watch my parents’ clothes turn gray, to lie to Fiona; how much it hurt when Belle told me she and Pete were a couple, how my stomach twisted when he carried her board in from the beach for her this morning, when she leaned against him as he rode his bicycle here tonight.

  Instead I just close my eyes and let the wind rustle through my hair.

  13

  Tonight, the wind off the ocean licks the flames of the beach bonfire until I think the blaze will rise all the way up the cliffs and set fire to the houses at the top, starting with Pete’s house directly above, then traveling along the reeds to the garage. I almost laugh, thinking about the bonfire we had after graduation, the one for which we had to get special permission from the local parks department.

  Hughie and Matt show up with cases of beer; there must have been some cash lying around the house on Brentway, or maybe they swiped a forgotten credit card.

  On the other side of the fire, Belle slouches, talking to some boys whose names I don’t yet know, a necklace she stole twinkling around her neck in the firelight. I can tell it’s not actually a nice piece of jewelry, probably won’t be worth much money when they try to pawn it along with everything else they stole. But the necklace looks really pretty on her—it suits her, somehow, even though she’s wearing it with an oversize sweatshirt and flip-flops. She’s so short that the sweatshirt fits her like a minidress. It’s probably Pete’s shirt, or at least it probably used to be.

  Shivering, I step closer to the fire. From behind me, Matt hands me a beer.

  “A toast to the criminal of the hour,” he says, clinking his own bottle against mine.

  “Ha ha,” I say, taking a swig. “Very funny.”

  “What’s funny?” Matt answers. “You saved our asses back there. We owe you big-time now, Newport.”

  “Well, I’ll take my payment in free beer and surf lessons, thank you very much.”

  Matt grins. He has tan lines around his eyes just like Pete’s, from squinting in the sun. I think he must be my age, and I wonder if he ever thinks about the fact that under different circumstances he might have graduated high school this spring.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I ask. He’s wearing board shorts and a T-shirt. I’m wearing jeans and a sweater and am still covered with goose bumps.

  “Nah, cold doesn’t bother me. I head out there in January in nothing but shorts,” he says, gesturing toward the waves. “If you’re cold, I can run up and get you a blanket or something,” Matt offers, but I shake my head.

  I lower myself onto the sand, and he sits down beside me. This could be an opportunity to ask him about John and Michael, but I know I’ll have to tread carefully.

  “What’s it like surfing here in January? The waves are bigger then, huh?”

  Matt nods. “Oh yeah, they’re really something. Just you wait. If we get one of those sweet Northwest swells coming down the coast, you’re in for a treat.”

  I nod, smiling at the way Matt assumes I’ll still be here come January.

  “Did you get a nice swell this winter?” I ask.

  “Pretty good. It hit the coast up north a lot harder than it hit us here.”

  I know.

  “We still got some pretty wicked waves,” Matt continues. “I got hella worked out there.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “It can be. But Pete always makes us come in when it’s looking too gnarly.”

  “He does?”

  Matt shrugs. “I’m not the best surfer here, you know? Pete knows it. He keeps me out of the worst shit.”

  “Nice the way he looks out for everybody.”

  Matt nods.

  “Were there a lot of people around here in January? I mean, when those swells pick up, people must show up sometimes, right?”

  Matt shrugs. “Well, this place is pretty far off the beaten path. But yeah, we get some people passing through from time to time. Belle calls ’em tourists.”

  I’m sure she does, I think, though I’m pretty sure she calls me something a lot less mild. I can see her through the flames on the other side of the fire, her blond hair waving around her face.

  “Where do the tourists usually crash?” I ask. “Something tells me you don’t have any hotels in Kensington.”

  “Some of ’em stay in the empty houses up there,” he says, gesturing toward the cliffs. “Most of ’em camp out down here. Or in the parking lot, waiting on the tides, you know?”

  “Right,” I answer, nodding.

  “Course some of them end up at Jas’s house, though they pretty much stay on the other side of the beach. Pete does what he can to keep it that way. Dusters on one side, us on the other.”

  “Dusters,” I echo. I’m about to ask what that means when something clicks, and I remember the drug Pete told me about—fairy dust.

  I picture Pete building an enormous fence slicing its way down the beach and into the ocean, Pete’s crew on one side and Jas’s spaced-out customers on the other.

  “And sometimes a few kids end up on our living room floor, but only when Pete likes them.”

  “Should I consider myself privileged that I didn’t end up on the living room floor?”

  I laugh and so does Matt. “Yeah, well. We’ve had some trouble with strangers staying over in the past. You can’t blame us for being wary. Sometimes, they’re just not the right crowd, you know? We had a few kids staying with us last winter, man—I thought they were cool, but Pete ended up having to throw them out, right?”

  “Really?” I ask. I try to imagine Pete throwing anyone out of the house.

  “Yeah, they just got caught up on the wrong side of things, you know?”

  I nod. I’m getting used to the cadence of Matt’s chitchat, the way he ends almost every sentence as a question. But he doesn’t seem to mind my questions, so I keep going.

  “I guess it’s inevitable,” I agree. “But what about the kids who are just passing through—the tourists? Do you ever get to know them?” Just because Pete never met my brothers doesn’t mean that Matt didn’t. Maybe he was down here some morning when Pete was sleeping late.

  But before Matt can answer, I feel the heat of someone’s body sitting down close on my other side.

  “What are you two chatting about?” Pete asks, and I swivel around to face him. The goose bumps vanish from my skin.

  “Nothing important,” Matt answers before I can say anything, standing up and brushing the sand from his shorts. He gives Pete a short little nod and a small grin, ceding his spot beside me.

  “He didn’t have to get up,” I protest.

  “He was just being polite,” Pete says. His hazel eyes study my face intently, the crinkles of a smile playing at their corners.

  I shake my head, trying to avoid his gaze. I don’t want Pete to get the wrong idea, even though sitting this close to him reminds me of our night on the cliffs, of the way his arms felt around me. Those are the last things I want to be thinking about right now.

  “So,” Pete says, “did you have fun tonight?”

  “You mean did I have fun robbing the house of a family of innocent strangers?” I say, trying to make my voice sound steady, harsh, disapproving. Trying to mask that fact that I did, in fact, have fun.

  “Well,” Pete says, “you certainly won the boys over, that’s for sure. Hughie over there can’t stop singing your praises.”

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” I say, but I’m smiling. What a strange thing to be so proud of. “Anyway,” I add, “I don’t think it helped me earn any extra points with Belle.”

  “Give her some time,” Pete says, shrugging. “Pretty soon she’ll love you just as much as the rest of us do.”

  I laugh. “I think it’s a little early to say that anybody loves me,” I say.

  Pete cocks his head to the side. “All righ
t, maybe,” he agrees. “But it’s not too early for a pretty serious crush.”

  “Oh really?” I say, gesturing at the crew around us. “The whole gang has a crush on me?”

  “Well,” Pete says, pausing as though he’s thinking hard. “Maybe not the whole gang.”

  I look at my lap. I don’t want Pete to see the smile overtaking my face, no matter how hard I try to will my mouth into a straight line. You’re not here for him, I remind myself.

  But before I have a chance to look up, Pete’s lips brush gently across my cheek, warm and soft as morning sunshine through the fog. Without saying anything, he gets up and heads over toward the cooler they filled with beer, even though there’s no ice to keep it cold.

  I stand up and inch a few steps closer to the fire, reaching my hands out in front of me until they feel hot. Just a few more millimeters and I’d be burning myself, but I don’t back away. On the other side of the flames, Belle is doing the same thing. Suddenly, she takes off her necklace and throws it into the center of the fire, sending sparks flying everywhere. Instinctively, I take a few steps hurriedly back, but Belle holds her ground. She’s laughing, but I’m not smiling anymore.

  14

  It’s still dark when I wake up in the morning, too early for even Pete and Belle to be on the water yet. I tiptoe down the stairs, shivering in my bikini, walk out the front door, and get one of my brothers’ boards from my car.

  The board I grab this morning is John’s; it’s the smaller of the two, dark blue with bright yellow stripes running up the sides. I carry it down to the beach like I think it might break, careful not to let it bang against the wooden railing along the stairs. By the time I reach the water the sun has made its first appearance on the horizon, casting a gentle pink light on the ocean. I breathe in deeply, watching the waves crash against the sand one after another. Each time one wave recedes and another builds, it looks as though the ocean is taking in a deep breath, then blowing it out.

  I’m standing at the edge of the water, my toes soaked by the waves, the board propped up beside me, when a deep voice says, “Thought you said you weren’t a surfer.”