The Secrets of Lost Stones

by Melissa Payne

  “Well, we’re asking now, so . . .” Jess tried to imitate the shopkeeper’s singsong voice. “Girls’ shopping trip!”

  “Woo-hoo! That’s right!” came Savanah’s voice from behind the stack of clothes at the counter.

  Star pushed a strand of hair behind one ear and gave Jess a small smile. “Girls’ shopping trip!” she said softly, and turned to the rack of jeans, replacing the black ones and pulling out a cute pair of acid washed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  STAR

  For the third morning in a row, Star awoke buried in the folds of a thick comforter, in a room with a door that closed and locked.

  Yesterday with Jess had been nice. Jess was a private person, and at times she seemed wound pretty tight, but she was also kind in a guarded way. Star tried to resent her for constantly looking for a reason to make her leave, but in her heart she really couldn’t blame her. Besides, Star sensed that Jess hid something painful. Her life had made her an expert on recognizing that in others.

  And yesterday when Jess collapsed in the kitchen, her cry had been horrible—empty and so sad. Star recognized that sound too.

  She pulled the covers under her chin, letting her feet search for pockets of coolness in the warmth of the bed. If this were a foster home, she would’ve already been looking for a way out. She wiggled deeper into the bed and pulled the comforter up until it covered her head. The truth was that she liked it here, and the feeling scared her. The air beneath the covers grew thick and hot, and she flung the comforter away, taking in sips of cool air.

  A quick knock rattled her bedroom door. “Star?” called Jess.

  “I’m getting up,” she said, and reached for the bag of clothes from their consignment shop trip. She rifled through the bag, settling on a pair of acid-washed jeans and the dancing bears tie-dye shirt from Ebee.

  “Can I come in?”

  Star gripped the doorknob and hesitated. Jess had been open about her desire to call social services. Was today the day she’d win that battle with Lucy?

  The door rattled with another knock. “Star?”

  She opened the door. “Yeah?”

  Jess knelt in the doorway, tying up the laces of a pair of athletic shoes. She wore loose black yoga pants and a long-sleeved apple-green top, her hair pulled back in her normally too-tight ponytail. She looked up at Star, frowning. “We went shopping yesterday so you wouldn’t have to wear the same thing every day.”

  With the mention of their shopping trip, Star breathed out. Jess hadn’t come here to send her away. At least not yet. She looked down at her shirt. “Well, Aunt Jess, it’s a hard habit to break, I suppose. Besides, I like these little bears—they’re so cute.”

  Jess rose to her feet and crossed her arms. “Just Jess works fine.”

  “Got it. Just Jess it is!”

  Jess’s mouth twisted into a bemused expression. “You are such a smart-ass.”

  She grinned. “I’m a teenager. It’s our natural state.”

  Jess stepped away from the door and leaned over to touch her toes, stretching her hamstrings. “So, listen. I want to go for a walk around the lake. Now that this crappy mountain winter is finally coming to an end, I thought it’d be a good time to go.” She gestured toward Star. “And with you here, I feel okay leaving Lucy for a bit.”

  “You trust me with Lucy?”

  “Well, as Lucy says, we hardly know one another. I figure you have as much to lose as any of us.”

  Star squinted at her. “You do know that children are the future, right? You’re supposed to lift us up with words of encouragement and praise. Tell me I can do anything I set my mind to. Fly, little bird, fly. You know, that sort of thing.”

  Jess rolled her eyes. “You can do anything you set your mind to.” She smirked and turned to walk down the stairs.

  Star hurried to the landing. “Wait, Jess! What do I do? Wake her up? Feed her with a spoon? Keep her away from sharp objects?”

  “Toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast, and knock on her door at nine o’clock. You can do this, little bird.” The door closed behind her.

  “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” Star closed the door to Lucy’s room, proud of herself for making breakfast and delivering it to her by nine o’clock on the dot. It felt good to be doing something for someone else. But when she passed the sitting room on the way to the kitchen, a whispering sound stopped her cold.

  A blast of frigid air blew against the spiky ends of her hair. She took a tentative step toward the room, gritted her teeth, and peered inside.

  Her eyes widened. A rose-patterned bedsheet stretched across the backs of the two fancy chairs where she and Lucy had sat on her first day here. It lay awkwardly over their wooden arms and seats, making what looked like a small tent. She stared at the bedsheet. Was this how Lucy did her laundry or something? But Lucy had been in her room all morning, Star was sure of it. The space between her shoulder blades tickled. She wasn’t alone. She backed slowly away until her heel hit the wall behind her, bringing her to a stop. Her eyes scanned the room. Empty. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that something watched her. Her knees weakened, and she had to press her palms against the wall to keep from sinking to the floor.

  “A fort,” came a voice from the staircase above her head. Star’s head shot up, and she found Lucy halfway down the stairs and looking over the railing.

  “What did you say?” she said.

  Lucy pointed her curved, bony finger into the living room. “It’s a fort.”

  A fort. “But, Lucy,” she said, “how did you—”

  “He thinks the other one was much better.”

  Star’s blood turned to ice. “He who?” she croaked, although a voice inside her whispered that she already knew the answer.

  Lucy had descended the stairs and stood beside her now. Her skin glowed white against the black fabric of her dress. “His fort under the stairs. He thinks it was better.”

  Her legs trembled, and she shook her head. No, no, no. Lucy couldn’t know anything about that, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Whose fort?”

  A smile lifted the corners of Lucy’s mouth, showing her teeth, small and antique like her house. “Your friend.” Lucy squinted into the sitting room. “But he’s very young.” She frowned. “Oh dear. And very dead.”

  The room began to spin, and Star gripped the wall to keep from toppling forward. The fort had been where she and Jazz met every Saturday. She pressed her palm against her chest. It had been their safe place.

  “This was in her room.” Lucy handed her a white rectangle.

  Star grasped it with her fingers and flipped it over. A picture. Her eyes widened. The small face that smiled up at her sent her stomach into free fall. Jazz. “Wh-where did you get this?” But her thoughts had already landed on the fallen drawer in Jess’s room and the picture partly hidden among her scattered clothes.

  “Jess’s room, of course. But she can’t talk about him yet, poor thing.”

  With trembling hands, Star pulled the paint-flecked rock from her sock, held it even with the picture, and memories she’d tried to bury hit her like a fist.

  It was the morning of her seventh birthday when she awoke to her father retching in the toilet of the bathroom, the open door giving her a view of him on his knees, his face disappearing beneath the plastic seat.

  She pulled a hand towel from a stack on the floor and tossed it to him, holding her nose as she did, then closed the door all the way and headed to the kitchen to make his coffee. This had been their routine for the past few months: her father with his head in a toilet or a needle in a vein, and Star trying to pretend everything was normal.

  She set a mug of coffee on the thin green carpet outside the bathroom, pulled on her shoes, and left the apartment to wander around the third floor.

  “Hey,” someone called out to her.

  She ignored the call and kept walking. She didn’t know the other kids in the building well, preferring to be on her own
most of the time.

  “Hello! Hi! Hola?”

  The voice was right behind her now, and she turned around to find a boy about her age, with skin the color of caramel syrup and light-brown hair that clung to his head in tiny curls.

  “Hola,” he said again. “¿Cómo estás?”

  “I’m sorry,” she answered. “I don’t speak Spanish very well.”

  He grinned. “Neither do I! But when you didn’t answer me, I thought maybe you did.”

  “Okay, well, bye.” She turned and pushed through the door and into the stairwell.

  “Wait!” He followed, walking beside her down the stairs.

  She kept her eyes down. The stairs echoed metallically under their feet.

  “What’re you up to?” he said.

  She didn’t answer, hoping he’d get the hint and leave her alone. She didn’t have friends in the building because friends asked questions about her dad that she couldn’t answer.

  “My mom and I just moved in,” he continued. “It’s a lot nicer than our last place.”

  Her foot hovered in midair. The Lancaster apartment complex was not nice at all.

  “Our last place was a car.”

  She nodded in understanding.

  “Anyway, so I thought we could play or something,” he said. “Except I can only play on Saturday mornings.”

  “How come?” she asked. If Star wasn’t at school she was here, in the apartment. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, not even a park close by, just miles of city and sidewalks and people.

  He rolled his eyes, giving her a goofy, gap-toothed grin. “My mom,” he said. “She has stuff for me to do every day of the week except for Saturday mornings. She says every kid gets one morning a weekend to do nothing, or watch TV, which she says is the exact same thing.”

  “Okay.” She began to walk again, taking the stairs one at a time. She didn’t want to hear about his mom.

  “So I usually watch Transformers because it’s the best show and I think robots are awesome. Jazz is my favorite.” His eyes got really big, and Star thought the show must be something she should know about, but they didn’t have a television. It didn’t seem to stop him. “Anyway, everyone always loves Optimus Prime, but I think Jazz is the best because he’s small like me but really, really brave, you know?”

  She shrugged.

  “But I know a really cool place we can hang out,” he said, keeping pace with her steps. “What’s your name? My mom says I can’t play with strangers, but if I know your name then you’re not a stranger. And plus, you’re a girl and you’re my age, so I think that makes you not a stranger. Right?” He was winded, having raced ahead of her, jumping down two stairs at a time. But when he hit the ground level, he turned away from the exit door and disappeared into the space underneath the bottom flight of stairs.

  She hesitated for a moment, curious, but then she pushed against the door handle with her hip.

  He called to her again. “Hey, come here and check out my fort. I bet you’re gonna love it!”

  She backed away from the door and walked toward his voice. A sheet had been taped to the bottom of the metal stair rail; it hung low, partially obscuring the space behind it. She pushed aside the sheet and peered in. An old comforter covered the stained cement floor, with a few books and games scattered across the top of the red-and-yellow print. The boy sat in the middle of it, his shoes pushed off to the side.

  “My name is Chance,” he said. His brown eyes were soft and warm. “But you can call me Jazz, ’cause that would be awesome. He’s the best, and my mom says he’s a real talker like me, and I think I can be brave like him.” He stopped, breathing a little heavy from all his talking. It almost made Star giggle.

  She looked back at the exit door, wondering if it was safe to go back to the apartment yet or if her father’s friends would be there. She chewed on her lip. She hated when those people came over. The boy sat very still, his eyebrows lifted high, waiting for her answer. She breathed out and stepped inside.

  “My name is Star,” she said in a voice so soft she almost couldn’t hear herself.

  “Wow! Cool name.” He stuck out his hand, and she noticed they were scrubbed clean, his fingernails white. “Hi, Star. Nice to meet you.” She settled on the blanket across from him and shoved her hands under her legs.

  But he only laughed and kept his hand hanging in the air. “We’re friends now, so we have to shake on it.”

  She pulled her hand out from under her leg and held it out, keeping her eyes lowered. He grabbed it and pumped their hands up and down until she laughed.

  “It’s my birthday today,” she told him.

  His eyes grew wide. “It is? Wow! How old are you?”

  “I’m seven years old.”

  “Just like me! Then you have to check this out! I found it outside in front of the building.” He searched behind him, pulling up the edge of the comforter, then picking up something before turning around to face her. “Look at it,” he said, extending his hand toward her.

  Nestled inside the center of his palm was a painted rock. Tiny, hand-drawn stars sparkled gold against the red.

  “Here,” he said, and raised his hand up, holding it close. “Take it.”

  He placed it in her hand. She pinched it between her thumb and index finger and flipped it over. The letters CA had been written on the back. Then she noticed the small dip in the top of the rock.

  “You see it too, don’t you?” he asked. “The heart?”

  She nodded—a perfect heart—and handed it back to Chance, but he just smiled and shook his head.

  “Keep it,” he said, closing her hand around it. “My mom said it would bring me a friend. Happy birthday, Star.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  STAR

  After giving Star a glass of water and a light squeeze on her shoulder, Lucy quietly slipped from the kitchen. Star heard her heavy tread on the stairs a moment later and released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She was grateful to be alone. She sat at the kitchen table and stared at the picture in her hands. On the back, in neat print, it read, Chance, Second Grade. She brought it to her chest. He’d asked her to call him Jazz, but Star had always loved his real name. One his mom had chosen, Jazz had told her, because she said he was her chance to be a good mom. Star wrapped her arms across her stomach and fought the urge to throw up. Jess had picked his name. Jess had been his mom. Even then, Star had been happy for him to have a mom who loved him. But now she knew that Chance had had the best kind of mom. He’d had Jess. Her head hung with the truth—she had taken everything from them.

  She stared at the picture, and something heavy settled on her chest. Chance. He’d been her best friend. Her only friend. A small voice screamed inside her, He can’t be here. He’s dead. Except a bigger part of her knew with a numbing certainty that Chance was here. Had felt it all along, even if the rational part of her brain had fought against it.

  She covered her face with her hands, still clutching the picture between her fingers. Her stomach soured, and her mind filled with images of the night he died.

  It had been a black night that froze the snot in her nose and made the street slick with puddles of slushy ice. They were running so fast her tennis shoes kept sliding across the sidewalk. Chance was crying, tears streaming down his face, and holding her hand, pulling her to her feet every time she fell. Hurry, Star, hurry! The lights were blurry through her tears. He pulled her into the intersection, but then he moaned, let go of her hand, and pushed her so hard she flew back and cracked her skull on the pavement. Her scream caught in her throat and choked her. Chance stared at her from the middle of the road, his eyes so dark they looked like black holes; a white glare painted the side of his face. Her last thought before the car came with a sickening crunch was that he looked like the moon.

  She tried to push down the sting of bile that rose into her throat. For years she’d tried to forget about what had happened, but forgetting was impossible. />
  The front door opened and closed with a heavy bang that echoed from the end of a long tunnel. Star couldn’t move. She stared at the picture, traced her finger across the curls on his head. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. He would never have been out that night if it hadn’t been for her.

  The picture was snatched from her hands, and she looked up to find Jess standing above her, face bone white, eyes wide. “Did you go through my things?” she said through clenched teeth.

  With Jess so near to her, it hurt to breathe. Star kept her eyes lowered. A trembling had begun inside her that spread out until her knees jiggled up and down. She sneaked a look at Jess, who stared at the picture with her eyebrows scrunched together.

  “Did Lucy—” She looked at Star. “I keep this in my room . . .”

  Jess’s mouth was still moving, but a roaring sound filled Star’s ears, and she couldn’t hear her anymore. She stumbled to her feet, her skin cold and tingling. Jess was Chance’s mother. The thought ran a loop in her mind, each time bringing with it another wave of coldness.

  “Star?”

  She pushed past Jess and ran upstairs to her room, closing the door and pulling the covers up and over her head while her thoughts tumbled around, getting caught on the words Lucy had repeated since the first day they met. Loose ends.

  The boy was Chance. Jess was his mom. And they were all here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  JESS

  She stood in the kitchen holding the picture of her son and staring at the spot where Star had been sitting. The girl had run away like something chased her. Why did she have the picture in the first place? Jess shook her head, confused and feeling like she had so often since arriving in Pine Lake. Like she was missing something important. She didn’t keep anything valuable in her room, except for Chance’s picture, and she doubted that Star would have pulled this out of her drawer and brought it down here. Why would the girl care about a school picture anyway?