by Mimi Cross
But suddenly I realize how late it is. And although it’s a Saturday night and my curfew is rarely enforced, in some strange realignment of the planets, my parents are both home tonight.
“Crap.”
“What is it?” Cal asks.
“Your car’s about to turn into a pumpkin.”
“Oh yeah? What about your gown?”
“Shredded rags.”
“Shredded rags?” We’re pulling onto Route 36, but despite that, Cal looks over at me. “Sounds okay.”
Then he puts a hand on my knee.
He’s perfect. We’re perfect together, but even though I’ve imagined him touching me, now that he is, I—
“You’ve got really bright eyes,” I blurt.
“Bright?”
“Bright. Like stars.”
“Wow, thanks, you mean, star stars?”
My cheeks heat, yet still I start to say yes— but the word gets snatched away by the night as Cal rolls down his window, tilting his head to the side now, so he can see out and up to the sky.
“Any stars up there?” he calls over the wind and the road noise.
Then he stops looking for stars and glances at me. The rushing air whips his hair around.
“You said your mom never tells you she loves you, that she doesn’t know you.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you think it would mean something if someone else said it?”
“Said what?” The wind gusts around my ears. Cal’s driving too fast.
“I love you.” He glances over at me again with those dark-yet-somehow-bright eyes, his words hanging between us, swaying in the wind.
I think of this afternoon, how I’m so much more prepared for my concert now, because of him. I think of the warm palm, cool fingertip feel of his hand as he pulled me from my chair, and how at dinner, he cared enough to listen to me talk about my mom. And all of a sudden I want to tell him, want to say, “Yes, the stars are out tonight. They’re in your eyes. And—I love you, too.”
But I can’t say that. It would be weird. We’ve never even really kissed—I can’t just say “I love you,” the way he did. Plus, he doesn’t mean it—he’s only asking me a question.
Still, for a second, I know I’ve cheated him, cheated us. I’m playing by the rules, but sometimes, like Cal said, you’ve got to break the rules. We’re musicians. Artists. Should we live by the same rules as everyone else? We’re alive, shouldn’t we be able to make our own rules?
“Cate!” Cal shouts above the wind. “Did you see that? Did you see that shooting star?”
We’re on Chapel now, with its white fences running along one side of the road. The car dips down into the hollow and my stomach drops. And I so wish I’d said it—at least the part about the stars being in his eyes. But I don’t have the courage. I can’t even bring myself to tell him to close the window, even though I’m cold, because it seems really . . . unadventurous. I should tell him, though, that he’s driving way too fast.
“Damn.” Cal jerks the wheel of the Volvo and adrenaline shoots through me. The upturned tail of a deer is a white blur, vanishing into the miles of woods that run along the opposite side of the road. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
But it’s not, because now another deer leaps out of the woods, onto the road—
“Another one,” Cal shouts. “Another shooting star—”
“Cal!” Somehow my voice is both a whisper and a scream.
Then we’re sliding— fast and slow at the same time.
Wide as a wall, a massive oak tree looms up in front of us.
This can’t happen. I’m just getting it.
My whole life is trapped in my throat.
Cal yanks the wheel—
GLASS
CATE
Gravity
fails
Sound detonates
Smashed
stars (Stars!)!
all over me
All
over.
PART II: FALL
NIGHT
DAVID
The invasive spotlight at the back of the house hasn’t registered my presence. Standing in the dark, I look up at the starred sky.
So bright tonight, the stars seem close enough to touch. Then I blink, and they’re back where they belong—distant and definitely out of reach.
The pool lights are on. The water glows green. Its surface is both inviting and alien.
Just as I’m considering stripping off my clothes and slipping in, my father appears in silhouette at the back door. As he steps outside, the sensor kicks on. Light shoots across the yard like a flash flood, spotlighting him as he strides in my direction.
If this were a race, fast as the light is, it would lose.
The sharp and startling sound of the screen door snapping shut seems to be lagging behind as well. I only hear it as my father stops short at my side, creating the illusion that his arrival is accompanied by the sound of a slap. Also, he doesn’t stop quite short enough. The same height as me, the same width—he is in my personal space. He means to be.
Inwardly, I berate myself for not telling him, for taking the coward’s way.
He squints in the glare of the artificial light that has extinguished the stars in the space of a breath and, all at once, seems bright enough to supply a road crew with enough illumination to build a highway at midnight. The light is as intrusive as the blinding bulb of an inquisitorial lamp, and my father seems to realize this, because now he shifts suddenly so that the white glare pierces my eyes instead of his.
“I spoke with Dean Thomas today.” His voice comes from behind his teeth.
Even though I knew what this was going to be about, my supper turns to stone in my stomach. Despite that, for a fleeting moment I have the urge to ask if Dean Thomas is still in Gryffindor, or if he’s gone over to Hufflepuff, where I’d always believed he belonged. But my father wouldn’t get the joke, and in this case, Dean isn’t a first name.
My father’s talking about the head of St. Lawrence, where I was to go on a full scholarship next fall. St. Lawrence, the college of his choice. St. Lawrence, his alma mater. The same institution of higher learning I recently phoned to say I would not be arriving at next September as planned. No, not because of the injuries I sustained on the trip, but because—
I’m sorry, it’s just not a fit for me.
I’m not a fit for me.
This last thought is an epiphany, flares in my brain now, like the sudden burst of sensor light that blew the night apart. A projectile pyrotechnic I can feel in my body, this urgent revelation is a fuse flashing color, flashing warning red behind my eyes.
“Did you hear what I said, David? I spoke with Dean Thomas today!”
Stunned as I am, I’m well trained, so other than saying, “Yes, sir, I heard you,” I hold my tongue.
He, however, does not. His abusive words fall like lashes.
“Are you really that much of an idiot? Can you possibly be so stupid?”
Without answering his questions, I take a step back. I need to think.
But there’s no time. It happens fast.
Out of the darkness, his fist hits me hard in the face.
Like that, I’m on the ground. I feel with my fingers. My lower lip is split, near the corner. The bruises I can hide, but this—as a child he bullied me, and in the last year or so he’s shaken me, shoved me. He’s punched me in the arm, the stomach, the kidneys.
But he has never made me bleed.
Now he yanks me to my feet—one blow, two—and takes me down again.
Standing over me, he runs a hand back through his hair, as though knocking me to the ground is simply a form of exercise for him. I want to shout up at him, “Right! Way to keep yourself in shape. The shape of the bastard you are.”
But I can’t. My brain has shut off. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’m shaking. This is a new low—or maybe just a different variety of low. Whatever it is, it
’s confusing. Scary.
So instead of saying anything, I climb to my feet, one hand on the back of my head, feeling the lump already rising from where I hit the ground. I’m breathing hard.
So is my father. The white light behind him renders him a dark form, eyes glinting with a challenge.
For a brief moment I’m tempted to rise to it, to take a swing at him. But this is just one of a million thoughts tumbling through my head, part of a landslide, an avalanche. He’s changed the rules of engagement. I need to get my balance on this shifting ground.
My sense of humor recovers first. I consider offering him a Gatorade. Next I consider asking if he could wait a while before he uses me as a punching bag again because I’m still healing. Finally, I consider stealing one of his precious cars. But I’m not sure what I’d do once I was behind the wheel, and that scares me more than he does.
My father’s neck muscles stand out, taut cords above a white collar, red tie. He narrows his eyes—always a sign. There’s more where that came from, boy. So again, I remain silent while he studies me with a critical eye, the way he does after he’s pushed me around, making sure he hasn’t roughed me up to the point where someone will notice.
His eyes widen slightly when his gaze falls on my lip—
Then he laughs, buddy-punches me in the arm. “Better put some ice on that, then go to your room. Wouldn’t want your sisters to know what a clumsy young man you are, would we?”
As familiar as everything is—the yard, the glow-stick green of the pool—it’s all strange and surreal.
This time, my silence is a problem.
My father’s chest seems to expand as he takes a step toward me. “Would we?” he repeats softly. He is an animal, coiled.
Head throbbing, lower lip numb. I swallow. Taste blood.
“No, sir.” My heart is kicking in my chest. No.
ANTISEPTIC
CATE
“I need to get out,” I scream, feet kicking toward the doors at the back of the ambulance.
Next to me, a young man wearing a white jacket gets a needle ready.
“I don’t think so,” an older man on the other side of me says to him. His hair is gray, his skin papery. He’s also wearing a white jacket. Now he adds, “Not yet.”
“But she’s hysterical,” protests the one with the needle.
He can’t be much older than me. He’s just a boy, a boy with a sharp-looking needle.
“Keep that away from me! I’m fine. Where’s Cal? Where’s the boy who was driving?”
“You don’t want that in her if she goes into shock.”
“I’m not going to go into shock,” I shout. “He’s bleeding, the driver, you left him!”
“Did someone call her folks?” the older one asks. I may as well not exist.
“They called the number on her cell that said ‘Home,’” Needle Boy says. “No answer.”
“Turn around!” My voice twines with the sound of the siren. “You’ve got the wrong person!” I tug at the straps holding me securely to the gurney. “Listen to me. The driver. The boy who was in the car, where you found me?” Only, I don’t remember them finding me, don’t remember what happened, except—
Cal. His face. Blood.
Who are these guys?
I must have said it out loud, because the old man replies, “Emergency medical technicians.”
“Volunteers,” says the kid.
“I know that,” I snarl. I’m very close to freaking out. It’s a new feeling. A scary feeling. Twisting this way and that, I whimper, “These straps are too tight.”
“Miss, you need to try and relax. We’re almost at the hospital.”
My stomach spins sickeningly.
Cal is in another ambulance. That’s what it is. He’s safe; he’ll be fine.
The ambulance finally stops. When Needle Boy opens the door, I smell the ocean, salty and feral. We’re at Monmouth Medical by the beach.
As soon as the older EMT unstraps me, I jump out of the back of the ambulance.
“Hey!” the younger guy shouts. “Hold on. You need to be checked—”
But I run toward the red letters that read “EMERGENCY” and hit a button beside the doors. Nothing happens. The EMTs’ voices carry over to me as I jab the button, again and again. I no longer smell the sea. I smell my own sweat. The odor is unfamiliar, strangely bitter. The smell of fear.
“Let her go. You did your job. She’s here.”
“But that car was totaled.” The young guy’s voice is tight with anxiety. “She might—”
“None of the blood on that girl belongs to her,” the older man says. “Trust me, you can’t help her. No one in there’s gonna make a difference, either. I’ve been doing this a long time. She knows what happened. Just can’t face it. And when she does . . . nobody’ll be able to take away that hurt. No medicine for it. Not on this earth.”
The goddamn doors finally slide open. My nostrils fill with the scent of antiseptic and air-conditioning, with citrus and alcohol—
I shake myself awake.
OAK
CATE
The rhythmic words form themselves.
The trio of girls circles the tree that brushes the sky that buckles my knees.
Buckles them so badly I can scarcely stand. I lean on my bike.
It took only a few minutes to ride here, because the tree—this massive oak with so many objects already pinned and nailed to it that it appears positively festive—is not far from my house. In fact, it is horribly close, less than a half mile away.
Finally, I’ve come, but now, I’m stuck. Stranded on the other side of Chapel, unable to make it across the street to where the tree stands firmly rooted, unmoving and majestic.
I stare at the ring of half-burned candles round the foot of the tree, stare at the girls, and stare at the tree itself. The tree that stands in front of me, yet also lies across my heart where it fell with the sound of ripping metal.
This is the tree that totaled the car that killed the boy that Cate loved. That Cate was too stupid to tell that she loved, too scared and too worried to say that she loved.
“The House That Jack Built,” that’s the nursery rhyme, the singsong cadence eerily skipping through my head.
The three girls step slowly round the tree. They wear identical navy blazers with crests on the pockets and short plaid skirts. They must be friends of Cal’s. Good friends or school friends, I’ll never know. I’ll never know if Cal studied with them, or kissed them, or took them on unexpected musical journeys in search of their voices—but they’re searching now, or at least it looks that way. And I want to tell them they will not find Cal Woods here. I want to tell them their pilgrimage is misguided.
Cal is dead. Not gone. Not missing. Dead. I need to face it. But I can’t.
I’m sorry. We’re closing storybook land early today. The house that Jack built has been obliterated. We will reopen never. Have a happy ever after!
Mother Goose. Motherfucker. This tree is alive, and Cal is dead.
The girls crane long, graceful necks. Bend at their hips to read the letters and cards that cover the tree like wrapping paper. Daisy chains twine round the rough bark, potted mums sit among the tree’s twisty roots. One of the girls gives me a little wave. My stomach lurches, and I want to scream, “It’s too late—he’s gone. You won’t find him. You won’t see him or hear him play ever again. He was beside me and then he was just blood, just gone.”
He’d looked at me. He’d looked at me and said, “Another one! Another shooting star—”
Then the world exploded.
Now he’s dead because of me, because I wouldn’t open my mouth and say “Slow down.”
Two simple words.
Cal Woods. Cal.
I want to rip the bark from the tree. Wear it like a shroud.
The Killing Tree. Cars drive by it, not knowing, one after the other. Each car preceded by the sound of an engine, followed by a shush. There is no scream. No tearing meta
l. No crash, even though all the cars seem to be going too fast.
It seems wrong, to just ride right up to the towering oak, so finally, I throw my bike down on somebody’s lawn. The back wheel is still spinning when I cross over and stand in the tree’s shadow.
I hadn’t realized just how much stuff is nailed to it—I swing my gaze away. It catches on the long white wooden horse fence running parallel to the road.
“Rest in Paradise. We will love you forever.”
My fingers fly to my mouth. Words cover the flat white boards of the fence.
“We will never forget you.”
“Cal, I wish I hadn’t been so angry with you. If you were here, I’d take those words back.”
“Watch over us, Cal, we won’t forget you, man. You were my best friend.”
“Cal, this isn’t fair. You were the best boy with the prettiest eyes ever, xxoo, Lisa.”
“Man this sucks. We miss you! MC.”
“Cal, you were my best friend. I wish we could go back to the beach and talk for hours the way we used to. Love you forever, friend. Stevo.”
“Cal, I didn’t know you, but my son did. I hope you two are playing guitar in heaven. Mr. Z.”
A lump forms in my throat, a flimsy dam that bursts as the last message blurs before my eyes:
“Stay Lifted Up.”
Sobbing, I turn away— but there is the tree itself.
It’s covered with photographs the weather is already ruining and cut flowers—wrapped in cellophane, tied with ribbon—that are dying. A plastic rosary that looks like it might glow in the dark hangs from a nail. There’s a hammer near the base of the tree, along with a whole bag of rusty nails, left for anyone else who wants to hang something on the already crowded memorial.
Circling the tree, I find more photos safely tucked into clear plastic bags. My legs quiver.
A pair of sneakers, a hoodie from Sutton Prep, empty cigarette packs—two of them. Did Cal smoke? I’d never seen him smoking, never smelled cigarettes on him, but . . . my eyes flicker back to the fence. How can there be so many things about Cal I didn’t know?