Of Scars and Stardust

by Andrea Hannah

  He didn’t answer, and for a second I thought the wind had swallowed up my words. But then his eyes flicked back to mine and when he looked at me, all heavy and sad again, I knew he’d heard me. “No,” he said softly, “from being Rae Buchanan’s brother.”

  I closed my eyes and swallowed, and younger Grant flashed behind my eyelids, his bike sprawled across the porch steps, wheels still spinning. The panicked look on his face in the window.

  I opened my eyes and he was still watching me, his head cocked to the side like he was reading the headlines of his newspaper. “What’s the second question?”

  Grant broke into a smile, a real one, I could tell. “Can I give you a lift home?”

  “That would be great.” And without my even trying, my face broke into a grin too, the kind with teeth and everything. A real, live grin.

  fourteen

  I stood outside of Ella’s door and tried to breathe.

  But forcing breath into my lungs pinched, like they were already filled up and sagging with lead, and my whole body was too heavy for even one more breath of air.

  When Grant drove me home yesterday, I’d tried to listen to everything he said about working in the police station, how he could go through any files he wanted, how he’d found out that Catie Spencer had gotten arrested for a DUI right out of high school. But mostly I just heard the timbre of his voice, the way it rolled over the vowels like honey smothering biscuits. And his scent made the whole car fill up with soap and wet earth. He smelled clean and dirty at the same time.

  But I did remember one thing he said to me.

  When we pulled into the driveway, Grant turned to me and shifted his seat belt. “When you go into her room, look back the furthest you can,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean that you might find clues from when you knew her when she was little, and other ones from when she was older. And then you can kind of stitch them together. That’s how most investigations work. The successful ones, at least.” He turned again and stared out the windshield. “It’s strange, but I think most people know what’s going to happen to their lives, right from the beginning.”

  I thought about what Grant had said as I touched Ella’s doorknob.

  Had I known what was going to happen to my life, right from the beginning?

  In a way, I guess I always had. I’d always told Ella that I was going to move to New York one day, that I’d have to leave her but I’d come back to visit sometimes.

  I’d kept my promise. I’d come back. She was the one who didn’t stay.

  I clutched the knob and reminded myself why I was here.

  I was here to find Ella.

  I had to start in her room.

  I sucked in a breath and pushed the door open.

  When I opened my eyes, my heart slowed and my body relaxed. I don’t know what I’d expected to find, but it definitely wasn’t anything like this.

  Paper stars and lightning bolts pinwheeled on their wires above me, just like they used to every time I’d barged through Ella’s door. Rainbow twinkle lights still slithered around the window, and Ella’s gnarled afghan still sat in a ball in the middle of her bed. It was like I’d stepped through a time warp and was magically fifteen again, like I hadn’t drunk vodka on the corners of Manhattan, like I spent my free time drawing in my sketchbook in the cornfield.

  But there were things that were different, too.

  Between the prints and drawings of dresses I’d given Ella, a bunch of new pictures had cropped up on the walls. Some of them were replicas of what I’d drawn, except with quivering lines and dress models with crooked smiles. Drawing was never Ella’s thing.

  There were other things, too. There was a map of Amble tacked to her corkboard, its edges yellow and fraying. And next to that was a photo of Ella and a boy with shaggy blond hair that curled around his ears, and eyelids that drooped over his eyes like he was sleepy. He was looking at the camera out of the corner of his eye while he kissed her temple. Ella still had the same twinkle in her eye that I remembered, but her smile was different. It wasn’t a real smile with teeth. What was left of her lips pressed together in a line, with the corners turned up just a hitch. A shiny pink scar tore across her face and crawled down her neck. My stomach lurched.

  Something pinged at the back of my brain and I remembered: Ella’s infectious giggle and mittens pressed against her lips and a boy—this boy—whispering in her ear the night of the party. The night she was attacked.

  I ran my finger over Ella’s scarred mouth. What words did she say to him about that night? What words could she say to him?

  I opened my palm and stared at the scar that cut across my own skin. We’d both got our scars from someone else: mine from Rae’s selfishness, and hers from my mistake. It always seems to work out like that, anyway; all the scars we get are because someone hurt us enough to give them to us.

  Across from Ella’s bed was another corkboard, one that I recognized from my old room. This one had a picture of a few stone-colored buildings, with block letters that read Welcome to Madison, Wisconsin! And around the postcard, Ella had pinned a dozen knitted birds just like the one she’d given me. They were all different colors—some chocolate, and some a splattering of reds and purples, and another that was black. But none of them were periwinkle.

  I turned and looked around the room. It reeked of Ella, down to the half-painted wall behind her headboard, because she’d probably changed her mind halfway through. But none of it felt any more special than it had two years ago. Everything seemed zipped up tight, like Ella’s knitted birds and faded photos would never tell me where she was.

  I left and the door clicked shut behind me.

  Grant had said to start from the beginning, but it was hard to know where the beginning was when everything orbited around you in circles.

  I moved down the hallway and hopped over the loose floorboard that always creaked. The last thing I wanted was for Dad to think I was creeping around Ella’s room looking for evidence of wolves. It’d be just one more reason for him to make a case to Mom to buy me a one-way ticket back to New York.

  I lay down on my bed and stared up at the faded ceiling. How was I supposed to find a girl who hadn’t left any clues behind? No other notes, no messages.

  There was a part of me that wondered whether Ella would have told me about her trouble with the wolves even if she could. After all, I was in New York and hadn’t been invited back to visit. But if the wolves were still watching her, hunting her, Ella would have wanted to tell someone. Or at least, someone who believed her. But Rae was missing and I was absent, and she was stuck here, alone and scared for her life.

  I sat up in bed and moved my hands over my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ell,” I choked. “I’m listening now.”

  I waited. But, of course, nothing happened. Ella was too far from Amble to hear me anymore. I smashed the heels of my palms into my eyes to force back the tears collecting there.

  When I opened my eyes, I was looking at my old jewelry box.

  Something tingled in my chest, and Ella’s face flashed in my mind. I saw her standing in front of me, breath hot and curdling in the cold, her eyes filled with moonlight. I’m gonna go through your jewelry, she’d said. And your makeup. Yeah, definitely your makeup.

  But didn’t I check my jewelry box and makeup kit the next morning? I remembered seeing all of my necklaces carefully in a row, and all of my rings propped up in their holders and just knowing, right then, that Ella had never come home.

  I pulled open the drawers anyway and looked. There was all of my old jewelry, well, most of it anyway. I recognized the dusty hole where my pearl ring used to live. That one had always been Ella’s favorite, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I found it under a rug or tucked in a drawer in her bedroom. Or maybe even on her finger now, wherever she was. I knew it was there the morn
ing after the incident.

  I pulled out the drawers again and dug through the rows of beads and silver, but I didn’t find anything there. I sighed, defeated. I stuffed the tangle of necklaces back into the bottom drawer and tried to shove it closed. The jewelry box shifted, and something purple and old poked out from beneath it. I grabbed it.

  A purple, canvas diary, with dirt smudges around the edges, stared at me.

  I blew on my hands. It felt like I was holding a handful of ice, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I curled my fingers up to my lips.

  It was a notebook. Ella’s notebook.

  And it was in my room, under my jewelry box.

  There was only one reason why Ella would have put it here. She’d wanted me to find it.

  And no one else.

  I took a deep breath and pulled my hands away from my face. My heart roared in my ears as I picked up the book and flipped it open.

  Ella’s loopy handwriting scrawled across the page. It read,

  These are The Diaries of Ella Graham: Part Two.

  fifteen

  The Diaries of Ella Graham weren’t what I was expecting.

  I thought there would be a smattering of lopsided unicorn sketches and snippets of stories about how Ella had vandalized another park bench with orange nail polish. I was expecting pages filled with heart-dotted letters and stories filled with light.

  But there were none of those things.

  I flipped through the diary, ran my fingers over the indents her glitter pen had left behind. I scanned through the pages quickly, searching for one word in particular:

  Wolves.

  I didn’t find it. I dipped into Ella’s life after my exit from Amble, entry by entry.

  The first one I read was a story about how Ella had managed to find an escape route from speech therapy at Amble’s crappy excuse for a hospital. That part made me laugh; it was so Ella. She’d mapped out a stairwell on the second floor that was usually empty and wrote about how easy it was to slip past the security station. Apparently, she’d felt like her words were clear enough now that she didn’t need therapy, but Mom and Dad disagreed. So Ella started smiling and waving cheerfully when they dropped her off and then spent her afternoons in the bead shop downtown instead.

  I flipped to a random page in the middle, dated seven months ago:

  He walked me home from therapy today. He met me outside of the outpatient center after, and he kissed me. He didn’t even flinch when he kissed the scars on my mouth. I never forget that, no matter how many times he kisses me. How lucky I am that someone will kiss me at all.

  My eyes drifted to the heavy-lidded boy on the corkboard and my heart twisted. How many other boys had winced at the idea of kissing Ella before this boy agreed to?

  Shortly after that entry came more about the boy—and I imagined pink blooming on Ella’s cheeks as she wrote about him. I turned the page to another one, from just a couple of months ago.

  They’re going to come for me, I know it. They’re going to take me. I know he’ll save me before it’s too late.

  I groaned, pressing my fingers to my temples. Guilt seeped through the cracks in my heart until I was sure I felt it shatter in my chest.

  I should have stayed in Amble, I should have fought Mom and Dad to stay by Ella’s side. But I didn’t; I couldn’t. My brain and my heart and everything in me wasn’t functioning. Leaving felt like a relief, in a way.

  I swallowed and started to flip through the rest of the entries, all of which were from the past year. From what I could tell, most of them were about this boy, about his quiet patience and his kind eyes. I kept scanning through the pages, watching the months flick by.

  Finally I reached a page titled November—just last month—

  and there were no more entries. A fat square of paper slid from the diary, into my lap.

  I unfolded it, my pulse quickening. But it was just a map, white-washed in the creases and stamped with the words Amble Public Library in the corner. I scrunched my nose. It was a map of Michigan, one Ella could have easily gotten from Dad’s atlas in the study. So why rip one off from the library?

  A tiny pinprick of red near the top of the mitten-shaped state answered my question. I bent the map toward the light. Frantic red ink stains encircled the town of Alpena.

  “What’s in Alpena?” I said, and the sound of my own voice made me jump. I blinked, taking in the dusty light streaming through my windows. How long had I been here reading?

  I shook out the diary, just in case there were any other secrets or stolen maps hiding in the creases. To my surprise, a loose sheet of paper, torn at the edges, wafted to the floor. I scooped it up and read:

  I know what happened to Sarah Dunnard.

  The same thing is going to happen to me if I

  don’t get out of here.

  And then, in hurried letters:

  He’s going to kill me.

  sixteen

  “’Ello?” Grant’s voice answered, still thick with sleep.

  “Grant,” I breathed into the phone. My hands shook so violently that the screen jiggled against my cheek.

  Something in my voice must have alerted him to the panic rumbling inside me, because I heard his mattress shift and he said, “Tell me what you found.”

  “A map,” I started. “And her diary.” Grant breathed on the other end of the conversation and I could tell he was in think-mode. I didn’t wait for him to respond. “It’s a map of Michigan, and she says something about how they’re coming for her.” I didn’t say anything else.

  “Who?” Grant asked, and all the hope inside me sank. There was a tiny part of me that had hoped he’d know, or at least suspect. That the wolves of Amble had left a trail of bloody paw prints for other people to find while I was gone.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “But the map has some town called Alpena circled. Have you heard of that place before?”

  There was a long pause, and then throat-clearing. Finally, Grant said, “Yeah. I’ve heard of it. It’s nothing special.”

  I sighed into the receiver. “I think I need more information. Can you help me?”

  Another pause. And then: “Of course. What do you need from me?”

  I forced the words out of my mouth before I lost the guts to say them. “I need access to the police records of Ella’s attack.”

  I didn’t tell Grant that I was sure Ella had slipped her diary under my jewelry box because she knew I’d come back for her, that she needed me to find her. She hadn’t given up on me, despite all the miles and minutes between us. Maybe she even remembered my promise to always keep her safe.

  I also didn’t tell him that the reason I needed to see the police records was because I was searching for the hint of wolves between the pages.

  As the engine of his truck rumbled beneath us, I glanced over at Grant in the seat next to me. Some things about him were so different now, but some things were exactly the same. As soon as I’d told him what I wanted, he’d just sat on the other end of the phone and breathed into the receiver for a minute. And then he’d said, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” without even telling me that what I was about to do was illegal, or better yet, that I was crazy.

  “So it just said, ‘They’re going to come for me’?” Grant asked, looping his fingers around the steering wheel.

  I nodded and shoved my hands into my lap. Even with mittens on, my fingers still felt thick and purple beneath the wool. It was one of those days in Amble that never seemed to warm up, not even by one degree, even when the sun looked all warm and buttery in the sky.

  Grant cleared his throat, just a low grumble like the engine of his truck, and stared through the windshield. I waited, as I always waited while Grant strung together the words he needed to say what was on his mind. Finally, he stole a quick glance at me and said, “Do you have any idea at all w
ho she’s talking about?”

  I chewed on my lip. I could’ve told him that I thought it was the wolves, come to pluck Ella from Amble the same way they’d stolen Sarah Dunnard. I could’ve told him about the note Ella gave me before I left for New York. But I didn’t say anything about wolves with jagged teeth and yellow eyes.

  I knew how crazy that would sound, talking about Rae’s stories and Amble’s folk tales like they were real.

  And I didn’t tell Grant about the “He’s going to kill me” part either. Not yet. Grant was logical, analytical. He would hear the word “he” and dismiss any possibility of it being something less than human Ella was afraid of. Grant would say “he” sounded like a person, and he’d probably be right—I mean, there was the boy, and his kisses were sprinkled throughout Ella’s diary like a fine snow.

  I sighed heavily. I just needed more evidence—something concrete that could convince Grant of the wolves’ existence—before I told him everything.

  When I looked up, Grant was staring at me, eyebrow raised.

  I blinked back at him. “What?”

  “I asked you if her diaries said anything else important. Anything that you remember.”

  I shifted my eyes to the smudges of brown cornfields whizzing by the window. “Just a story about how she escaped out the hospital’s side door whenever she didn’t feel like showing up for speech therapy.” I cleared my throat. “Pretty typical.”

  Grant nodded silently, although I was pretty sure he didn’t believe me.

  The truck engine churned as he pulled into the parking lot of the police station. My stomach clenched into a tight fist. There was only one other car in the parking lot, and it belonged to Amble’s new police chief and Dad’s old deputy, Seth Fineman.

  “There it is,” I whispered, staring at the timid gray brick of the police station. I must have looked like I was about to freak out and jump out of the truck screaming, because Grant reached over and wrapped his hand around my wrist. I gasped; not because I didn’t want it there, but because I was surprised. Even through his gloves, his hand felt warm and tingly, like that peppermint Chapstick you buy at the drug store that makes your lips sting in a good way.