Catch a Falling Star

by Culbertson, Kim

  My world couldn’t be farther away from his if I lived on Neptune. Too bad my last name wasn’t Space Particle No One Notices. That would have been much closer to the truth.

  I slipped out the side door of the kitchen, the cool air of the darkening Tahoe evening hitting my face, and followed the side stairs down to the lawn. Someone had lit lanterns, and they had just started to dot the velvety grass like stars, glimmering in the approaching twilight. I made my way down to the lake, my bare feet moving gingerly over the pebbles of the beach.

  A lone figure stood at the dock.

  Parker.

  He smoked a cigarette, one hand holding the neck of a Corona, and gazed out over where the moon was just beginning to rise beyond the distant mountains.

  He turned when he heard my creaky steps on the dock, flicked his cigarette guiltily into the lake.

  “You know, some fish is going to die now because of that,” I said, only half joking.

  “I’ll add that to my list of moral offenses.”

  I motioned toward the house. “You don’t like the party?” The air chilled my arms, rippling them with gooseflesh. I should have brought my sweater out here.

  He took a swallow of beer. “It’s Adam’s thing. I’m getting a bit old for all of that. I’m like a grandfather in there.” He wore a simple pale linen jacket over his T-shirt and jeans, and suddenly, he slipped it off and wrapped it around my shoulders, all the while navigating the half-empty beer bottle.

  I huddled into its softness, its smell something like cut grass, green, but with the lingering cling of cigarettes. “Thanks, Gramps.”

  A smile twitched his mouth. “You all right, love?”

  I sighed, studying the water glowing in the evening light. The lake shimmered with ripples of indigo that matched the sky. Everything was darkening, shifting with twilight’s rosy glaze. If I owned this house, I’d never leave. I’d sit here every day and watch the different shades of light tinge the lake all its kaleidoscopic colors. Adam’s friend, the guy who owned this, probably spent a couple of weeks a year here, tops. I frowned at the thought, and Parker mistook it for annoyance.

  “Don’t pay too much attention to Adam in these sorts of environments. He’s got his own role to play.” He drained his beer, seemed like he might toss the bottle, glanced at me, and set it on the dock.

  “Obviously, I don’t know him at all.” Sending those words into the cool of the night air freed something in me, and I felt myself smiling. Of course I didn’t know Adam Jakes. He was a movie star. Our time together was nothing.

  I was such an idiot.

  Parker rocked back and forth on his heels and toes, following the natural movement of the dock. He gave me a smile almost apologetic in its edges. “Don’t take it personally. Adam is whoever he needs to be for the room he’s in. He’s an actor. He wears a lot of masks.”

  “That’s hard for me, I guess.” I pushed some wind-tossed hair from my eyes. “I’m kind of what-you-see-is-what-you-get.”

  Parker grinned. “Yes, yes, you are.”

  It felt like a compliment. I pointed up toward the house. “You know, Ashayla Wimm’s here.”

  Parker’s smile vanished. “Here now?”

  “Yeah.”

  Swearing, he lit another cigarette, keeping the flame of his lighter protected from the wind off the lake. “That’s just what I need. Ashayla and her free publicity advice talking Adam into another stunt like the one he pulled in January.”

  I shivered, only this time it wasn’t because of the wind. “Stunt?”

  Parker caught his mistake too late. “Oh bugger. That … that’s not … I shouldn’t have said that.” He blew smoke into the wind.

  His words rolled through me like thunder, low, distant, but changing the air. “The car, the drugs, that redhead — that was a stunt? His rehab, too?” I swallowed hard. “None of that was true?”

  “True?” Parker rolled the word around his mouth like a too-large wad of gum. Then his face softened, and he gave me a faint smile. “You’re such a sweet kid — sorry if that sounds condescending, love.” He tapped ash over the lake. “But the truth is kind of relative.”

  “Is it?” Why wasn’t I surprised? It was like what Alien Drake said about the way we controlled the image we projected to the world. Adam had an image he needed to control. The last year was clearly part of a manufactured plan, some sort of crafting of a bad boy who would later repent. Like Scrooge, like Scott. Even the movie was part of it. None of this can be accidental, he’d said that day in the garden.

  I was part of that dumb public they jerked around like puppets. Feeling sick, I asked, “Did he actually go to rehab? Just tell me that. I mean, isn’t that why the movie got pushed back?” All that talk about rehab, about his need for a break, how much he related it to what I was going through with my dancing, with my brother. Was that just for show?

  Parker rubbed a hand through his hair. “It’s not what you think; it’s not completely fabricated. He was a right mess. Utterly exhausted.”

  “So he thought it would be better for people to see him as a drug-riddled bad boy than as tired?” The dock gave a bigger rock beneath our feet, and we both leaned to steady ourselves. His beer bottle tipped, rolled into the lake. Sorry, fish.

  Parker seemed to shrink beside me, and it struck me that he didn’t have as much control as he pretended that he did. He crafted his own sort of reality out of the fantastical world of Adam Jakes. He tried to explain. “When he crashed that car, well, people just assumed things. And we let them. And we added on. That was Ashayla’s brilliant suggestion.” When he saw the disappointment ripple across my face, he sighed. “Hey, I work for the guy. I’m in the Adam Jakes business. He’s a brand, Carter. He needed some time off, to clear his head, and it was the only thing that wouldn’t get him sued by the studio for screwing up the shooting schedule.”

  “Rehab?”

  “Yeah. Have to protect the brand.”

  “Wow.” I thought about all those people who had delayed their schedules, the hassle of turning summer into Christmas, all so Adam could craft some sort of comeback story. My head throbbed.

  “Come on, don’t look at me like that.” Parker stubbed his cigarette out on his loafer. “He’s a good kid, Carter, but he’s a kid. A kid with too many people worshipping him and too much money, and he didn’t even know if he wanted to do this anymore. It’s a total cliché, but it’s just the way it is.” I noticed, this time, he didn’t flick the butt into the lake.

  “You’re such liars,” I whispered, looking up toward the house. “I’m going to find Adam.” A chill moved through me, separate from the wind off the lake. “I can’t do this anymore, either.”

  Parker shook his head. “Not now, Carter. Talk to him later.”

  “I want to talk to him now.” The periwinkle light of the lake, the sky, the pale stars emerging, became elastic, like the world was a deck of cards reshuffling. I moved toward the small ramp leading off the dock and onto the beach.

  “Wait!” Parker called after me. “Let’s talk about next steps, how to best play this. You’re just reacting right now.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m done. I’m out.”

  I found Adam leaning against a window frame, laughing at something a red-haired guy was saying, the party reflected in the glass behind them. Ashayla Wimm was nowhere in sight.

  “Hey, stranger, where you been?” He flashed me an easy smile, lazy, pliable.

  It was like I was finally seeing him for real, like someone had scrubbed off his flashy shine and left him dull. “I’m leaving,” I told him. “Could we please find someone to take me home?” The party droned around me, churning. Dizzy, I put a hand on a nearby chair to steady myself.

  His smile faltered. “Hey, don’t leave. Are you okay?” He squinted at me through bleary eyes. “You don’t look okay.”

  The crowd around us stilled a bit; I could feel them lean in, listening, waiting. I wasn’t interested in giving them a sho
w. I’d had enough shows to last me a lifetime. “I’ll be outside waiting for a car.” I hurried through the room, the music pressing in on me, the crush of people parting against me like waves.

  Adam followed me outside onto the wide front porch. No one was out there. Why would they be, when Adam Jakes, movie star, was inside where they could pretend to be a part of his spectacular world?

  He grabbed my arm. “Wait, what just happened?”

  I whirled on him, yanking my arm away. “Do you ever just get sick of lying to people?”

  “What?”

  “I know about you, okay? I know you didn’t go to rehab, that you didn’t do any of those horrible things. You’re not some bad boy on the path of recovery — you’re just a liar who uses people.”

  Genuine fear seized his features, seemed to sober him up. “Wait, what? Who told you that? Did Ashayla say something to you?”

  “Not that you’d notice, but I wasn’t exactly hanging out with Ashayla Wimm.”

  “Then who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Is it true?”

  His expression, even shadowed, answered for him. He reached out for me again, but I moved away down the short steps and onto the curve of the circular driveway. It was warmer out here than by the lake, but I still shivered in my shirt, my bare feet cool on the cement. I’d left my shoes somewhere back at the party. “I’d like Mik to take me home. I already told Parker, but I’ll tell you, too. I’m done, Adam. I’ll do whatever press release or whatever, but I’m out. We’re finished with whatever this is we’ve been doing.”

  He took a couple of steps toward me. “Give me a chance to explain.”

  I couldn’t look at him. “I just want to go home.”

  “Please don’t go,” he pleaded, sounding young and scared. “You have to understand, I’m just playing the part the world wants me to play. All of this, it’s just what people expect. It’s part of the game.”

  I stared out at the gates to this incredible house, the gates that kept everyone out, granting only a select few, a lucky few, the chance at whatever it was the world inside promised them. And here I was, inside them, and all I wanted was to leave. I forced myself to look at him, the movie star, standing in a dark driveway, asking me to stay.

  It wasn’t enough. I took a step closer and said quietly, “I have a brother who is ruining his life because of his addiction. And it’s just a plot point for you, a game, as you say, some sort of show so you can eventually look a certain way to a bunch of strangers. Why do you think you don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else?”

  He ran a hand through that great hair of his and somehow it managed to look even better than it had before. He thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “Because I don’t.”

  He was right. He didn’t. When the world was in constant orbit around you, you got to make all the rules. “Must be nice.”

  His eyes, tired and sad, caught the light of the nearby porch lamp. “It’s my job, Carter. I need things to look a certain way. I don’t have a choice.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t care who you are, you always have a choice. And you don’t need it. You love it. You crave all the attention, and you go after it even if it means creating huge lies. I mean, come on, Adam, is there anything in your life that’s actually real?”

  His eyes were like individual moons as he took a step toward me. “How I feel about you is real. I know I feel real when I’m with you.”

  His words seemed genuine and I wanted to believe him, but I pulled from somewhere deep that let me fight them, that fought wanting to wrap myself in the warm curve of his arms. This guy sold lies to millions of people. What stopped him from lying to one girl in the shadowed curve of a driveway? Especially if it meant protecting his image. “If this were one of your movies, that might work. I guess it might be enough. It might even be true. But this is my life, not some final scene, and the thing is — I don’t believe you.”

  Deflated, Adam looked up at the night sky, the stars dull tonight and shrouded in cloud cover. Finally, he said, “I’ll have Mik take you home.”

  it was late when Mik dropped me off in front of my house after our silent ride home from Tahoe. As he drove away, I could see the shadow figures of Chloe and Alien Drake sitting on the roof of Drake’s house. My stomach seized, realizing I was supposed to be there with them tonight. I hadn’t even texted them to tell them I was in Tahoe.

  Climbing the ladder, I called up to them. “You have room for one more up there?”

  Chloe’s head appeared over the side. “We’re mad at you.”

  I stopped my ascent. “I know, I’m sorry.”

  She offered me her hand, her face softening as she helped me up onto the roof. “You look terrible. Cute dress, though. Nice parrots.”

  “You can have it.”

  Her eyes widened. “Seriously? Thanks!”

  Alien Drake frowned at me from where he sat, eating peanuts. “Chlo’s right. What happened to you? Why does your face look so blotchy?”

  I had cried most of the way home, Mik stealthily handing me tissues, as I stared out into the dark at the passing trees. “Adam and I just broke up.”

  “You broke up?” Chloe’s face paled in the moonlight. “How is that possible?! You’re in People this week! Look at you two! You’re adorable.” She held up a magazine, a shot of Adam and me sitting outside Little Eats eating a grilled cheese sandwich on its cover. The caption read:

  CITY MOUSE,

  COUNTRY MOUSE

  Adam Jakes dines

  with small-town love.

  Seeing Chloe’s face, my body flooded with guilt. What a hypocrite I was. An hour ago, I’d stood there outside the Tahoe house and called Adam a liar when, throughout all of this, I’d constructed my own spectacular prism of lies.

  Alien Drake stood and moved to take down the telescope. “I think it’s for the best.”

  Chloe sat down, tossing the magazine onto the quilt beside her. “Of course you do.”

  “You did the right thing, Carter,” he assured me.

  Chloe groaned. “You’re just saying that because you’re sick of her picking him over us. But it’s Adam Jakes. And he picked Carter. He picked her.”

  I couldn’t do it anymore. Collapsing onto the quilt, the sky heavy with stars above me, I knew I couldn’t lie to them anymore. “He didn’t pick me at all; his manager did.”

  Chloe’s head tilted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  I pulled my legs into my chest. “It wasn’t real. None of it was real.”

  Alien Drake zipped a pocket closed on the telescope bag, then took a seat next to me. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

  They listened intently while I told them, Chloe holding my hand, Alien Drake asking questions. I told them everything, sending my story out into the night, the crickets and stars providing a sort of force field around us. I was scared of how angry they’d be. That maybe they’d never speak to me again. My heart broke all over again seeing their faces darken as I talked. But then their looks softened as they heard me out. “The dumb thing,” I said, not crying anymore, feeling numb, the moment dreamlike, “is that I really started to think we could have something real. How stupid is that?”

  I waited for them to yell at me, to tell me that I was a horrible person, that I’d betrayed them, knowing I deserved whatever they tossed my way.

  Instead, Chloe squeezed my hand, her eyes glossy. “The whole thing sounds awful, Carter. I can’t believe you tried to do this without us.”

  Her understanding washed over me. “I’m so sorry. But I promised them I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “And you were trying to help John, as always,” Alien Drake said softly.

  Chloe’s eyes lit up. “Maybe Adam feels as bad as you do. Maybe you should try talking to him.”

  Alien Drake rolled his eyes. “Geez, Chloe, did you not just hear what she said? The guy’s a total fraud.”

  Chloe’s face crumbled. “I can’t believe this wh
ole thing wasn’t real. I mean, Adam Jakes picking you, it just made it seem like, well, he could have picked any of us.”

  Alien Drake let out a snort. “Hello! I’m actually sitting right here.”

  She shook her head, biting her lip. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean me. I didn’t mean he could have picked me specifically.” She looked across me, catching Alien Drake’s eye. “And I wouldn’t want him to, I swear. It’s just that for these few weeks, our world hasn’t seemed quite so … so little.” We laughed at her choice of words. We’d grown up here, laughing at but also loving our Little-ness. Still, Chloe was right; it was sometimes very small, and Adam Jakes had brought something bigger here for a few weeks, had widened our skies.

  I glanced between them, each of them at my side like they always were. “I’m not going to ask you guys not to tell anyone. I don’t feel right about that. Only I kind of hope you won’t.”

  Chloe slapped my bare arm.

  “Ouch!” I rubbed at it.

  “We would never tell if you didn’t want us to,” she said, her eyes wide. “We’re your friends.”

  “Thank you, guys.” Leaning into them under the stars, I knew I would rather have a few people love me for who I really was than millions of people adore me for who they thought I was.

  Just one of the many ways I was different from Adam Jakes, one of the many reasons why he and I were never meant to be.

  Early the next afternoon, I met with Parker one last time in the garden of The Hotel on Main. Minutes before, we’d stood on the porch, issuing a statement to the press, my sunglasses dark saucers over my face. I ended things, we explained, because I just couldn’t find my place in Adam’s world. It wasn’t Adam, I told them. He’d tried. I just couldn’t find the midpoint in our worlds. There’d been flashes and questions and then, after a few minutes, Parker had led me inside, past Bonnie’s sympathetic face, into the garden in back.