Catch a Falling Star (30 page)

I looked sideways at him. “I deserved that. I’m so sorry I’ve

checked out on you. The last few weeks have been bizarre.”

He brushed some cheddar dust from his fingers. “Don’t worry,

I won’t hold this against you, promise, but yeah, black holes. You. I

was talking about you and your movie star.”

“I got that.” I grabbed a handful of popcorn.

“Still, you aside, it’s interesting that they used to be stars,

right? Stars that essentially collapsed under their own weight.”

I chewed my popcorn. “Especially now that I’ve had a front

row seat to a star collapsing.”

Alien Drake wiped his hands on his jeans. “Your guy doing okay?”

“Right,
my
guy.” A streetlight kept blinking on and off, the

motion sensor tripped by some neighborhood cats.

“He’s not your guy?” He opened a Diet Coke and it hissed into

the night.

I shrugged, lying on my back, staring up at the dense sky.

Now. Now could be the moment I told him everything, the deal

with Adam to pay for John’s rehab. I could come clean and stop

acting so weird.

But I chickened out. I just couldn’t handle another person’s

disappointment tonight. “Show me some stars. Real ones. I don’t

really want to talk about the other one right now.”

He paused, his stare covering me, knowing I’d just skipped

over something he couldn’t see. Then, he recapped his drink and

followed my lead, tucking his arms behind his head. “I wish I could

show you Sirius right now.”

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“The Dog Star?”

“Yeah. But you can’t see it now.” Around us, crickets sang, and

a car passed on the road below.

Alien Drake’s voice felt like part of the night air. “It has this

little companion star, a white dwarf. Its name is Sirius B, but some

people call it the Pup.”

I knew that, but I humored him. “Cute.”

“Even though Sirius is this dynamic, bright star, even though

it’s multicolored and spangled, it always needs its Pup. Doesn’t go

anywhere without it.” He sat up again, pulling his knees to his

chest. “See what I just did there.”

“Subtle.”

“More star metaphors.”

“You’re on a roll.” I sat up, too, pulling my own knees close.

The thing about the Pup was he didn’t have a choice. Besides, no

one ever asked him how he felt about all that glare.

I changed the subject. Again. “My parents just told me I

have to leave Little after graduation, do something productive,

expansive — I don’t know. Something else.” The Smiths’ dog

started barking, a beagle’s long, painful bark-howl, like he was

howling for me.

“They’re throwing you out of Little?”

“That about sums it up.”

“Right out on your butt?”

“Pretty much.”

He put his arm around me. “I’m so proud of your parents.”

Scowling, I shrank against his arm. “How can you be on

their side?”

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In that moment, the crickets seemed to take a break, and the

beagle stopped its howl, leaving behind an inky sort of silence.

Alien Drake sighed into it. “Oh, Carter, don’t be such a Hobbit.

We’re
all
on your side.” I was going to punch the next person who

called me a Hobbit.

“You ready for this?” Adam asked me the next day, leaning into

me, whispering into my hair.

We stood on the sidewalk outside Little Eats. Four o’clock.

Time for our big public fight, the first sign of trouble. Exactly three

weeks after I first saw him, a few days earlier than the original

script. The picture of Adam and Beckett didn’t get much traction,

but Parker didn’t want to take any chances. He needed this fight to

be about my issues, my distaste for Hollywood, and not about the

Butt Grab. We needed to change the story. I could see the headline

already: “Big Trouble in Little Paradise” — exclamation point.

“Ready.” So I didn’t have to look at him, I surveyed the scene,

spotting at least a dozen cameras waiting. The photo should be out

in hours somewhere on the greedy eating machine of the Internet.

He cupped my elbow, his face serious. “You’ve been amazing

through all this, by the way. I know my world’s not easy.”

My throat tightened, but I gave a casual wave of my hand. “A

million
birds
would love this opportunity.”

He frowned. “Parker?”

“Yeah.”

“What a bunch of crap.”

But Parker was right. A million girls would have loved this

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opportunity. Even if half the time I felt like an overpaid, over-

exposed prop. But the other half had felt special. Like I was

someone special.

My body tense, we walked a bit down the street, just far

enough to make sure we’d collected the photographers hanging

out in the Little Eats patio, letting them trail behind us like toilet

paper on our shoes. When Adam felt certain we had enough of an

audience, he spun around. “Could you guys leave us alone for five

seconds? We’re just trying to take a walk here.”

They perked up, the collective calamity police.

I said my lines to the photographers the way Parker and Adam

had coached me. “I hate this! You need to stop following us.” Adam

made a show of trying to calm me down until it was my turn to

lose it on him. “And
you’re
not helping. I can’t even talk to you

without someone butting in, needing you, distracting you. I’m not

cut out for all this! I just want my life back.” I personally thought

this last bit was over the top, but Parker had insisted. They’d need

sound bites, he’d assured me.

Adam pretended to look hurt, shocked, even. “We should talk

about this later.” He tossed an apologetic grin at the photogra-

phers. They were drinking us up like lemonade.

It was too easy.

Adam called Mik, who was on standby the next street over,

and within a minute, the Range Rover pulled alongside us. “Just

go,” I told Adam, tossing my words to the photographers like a

beach ball. “I’m walking home.” I turned away.

“Carter, wait —” Adam called after me, his voice the perfect

blend of pleading and hurt.

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And, just like we’d practiced, I pushed my way through the

pack of cameras, wiping at tears they would think they saw, tears

that weren’t really there, but that would make it into all the copy

they wrote later about our fight.

I walked through the dull heat up the hill until I found myself in

front of Alien Drake’s house. He wasn’t home. I leaned my head

onto the stained glass window on his front door, my legs wobbly.

The fight had been only minutes and a complete invention, but my

insides still felt hollowed out. I wasn’t a fighter, fake or otherwise.

Turning, I saw the fan still propped there from the day I’d argued

with Alien Drake, its white plastic blades dusty, and the whirl of

my life hit me.

Sitting down on the first step of Alien Drake’s porch, I cried.

For real this time.

And it wasn’t for Adam, for our fight, or for the beginning of

us ending things. Everything with Adam was too new to cry like

this. I had too many other things I’d tucked away, shelved in some

sort of dark-hearted bookshelf. My grandmother, my brother, my

dancing, my future somewhere unknown, somewhere that wasn’t

Little. A future that had always loomed, even in the easy years of

being a kid, because people imagined things for me outside of here.

Why weren’t we whole until we’d left ourselves behind?

“Carter?” Chloe stood holding Alien Drake’s hand on the walk.

“Are you okay?”

I held up my phone. “I was just about to text you, I swear.” The

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path blurred with my tears, but soon, they were both sitting on

either side of me on the steps.

“What happened?” Alien Drake asked, setting down the bag of

Burger Town he’d been holding. I could smell the grease and salt

and warmth from it.

I sniffed. “Did you get fries?”

He fished out the fries and some ketchup packets, and I dragged

a fry through the puddle of ketchup Chloe hurriedly made on some

folded napkins.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I shrugged, sipping the root beer Drake handed me through its

straw. I watched the brown liquid move up and down. “Adam and

I had a fight.”

Alien Drake unwrapped a burger and bit into it. Chloe shot

him a withering glare. “What?
She’s
eating.”

It made me laugh, how regular and expected their exchange

was, how familiar. “I’m okay, I am. I just thought . . .” I searched

for what wouldn’t feel like a lie. “I thought I might know him, but

I don’t think I do. His world’s just too different.”

“People from different worlds can work out,” Chloe insisted,

sweeping another fry through the ketchup. “I mean, what if you’re

star-crossed lovers and meant to be?”

I glanced sideways at Alien Drake, who hid a smile. Chloe’s

Shakespearean knowledge could be sadly lacking at times. “Yeah,

the whole star-crossed-lover thing doesn’t usually work out. It

more often ends with stabbing and poison.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “I meant
fated
. Don’t be such a book snob.”

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Alien Drake finished his burger. “What happened?”

As the neighbor’s sprinklers came on next door, as a woman

jogged by with a baby stroller, as all the ordinary neighborhood

movements sighed around me, it struck me that I wouldn’t have to

lie to them. What was wrong with me and Adam had nothing

to do with our arrangement. It had to do with
us
.

“I don’t ever know what’s real,” I told them. “It’s too much, all

the cameras in my face. His whole image . . . he’s being constantly

built. He doesn’t just live a life — he invents a life. Every day. For

millions of people to wonder about. He walks around as his own

reality show. And sometimes, it’s just too hard to separate the dif-

ferent versions he puts out there. Like, what I knew about him

from tabloids and stuff — for the most part that doesn’t match up

with how he’s been with me. Then, sometimes it does, and it’s so

confusing.”

Alien Drake watched a pack of teenagers drive by in a green

jeep, each dressed in some version of river clothes. “I don’t think

anyone ever knows what’s real.”

I pulled my eyes from the jeep. “What do you mean?”

“Facebook’s the perfect example.”

“You know I don’t have a Facebook page.” Parker had said that

my
not
having a Facebook page had been one reason they thought

I’d be a good fit for their plan. Other than our blog, I spent basi-

cally no time online.

Alien Drake ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, but
think
about

it. Not just Facebook. Everything. We’re all trying to post our best

features. Pictures, texting, just standing in line at the post office,

we only give people the bits we want them to see. We walk around

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updating our status so people only get a version of us. Online,

people have their own image-controlled environment. When I’m

online, I talk about our blog, or a restaurant I liked, or share a

book I’ve read or a movie I’ve seen. It’s all a part of me, but it’s not

the whole story. Adam Jakes plays that game as an extreme sport.

He’s like an Ultimate Fighter of the social media world.”

I chewed a fry. “But people get a sense of you. The real you.

Even if it’s just little bits.”

He fished around in the bag for some more fries. “Maybe. But I

only let them see certain things. Planned things. Controlled things.

The tabloids are all controlled. Reality TV is controlled. Even if it’s

not scripted, the producers make choices. They edit things together

to create whatever image they’re going for. To create a story. Maybe

you’ve only read someone else’s Adam story and now you’re getting

to know him. You’re getting to write your own story.”

“But I’m
not
getting to know him. I don’t know what’s him and

what’s his act — his actor face or his real face.” As I said it, I

thought about my brother, and how he had a face just for me. Being

two-faced was usually an insult, but maybe we all had two faces or

three or a dozen? Were there different versions of me out in the

world depending on the parts I shared at certain times? It was

weird to think one person might see me one way and another per-

son might have a totally different impression of me based on a

separate list of experiences.

“I just want to know the truth,” I said finally, watching a family

walk by on the sidewalk. The little girl with them, maybe three,

straggled behind, tugging at the end of a yellow balloon, watching

it dance above her head.

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Alien Drake watched them, too. “I’m not sure there’s such a

thing as a single truth. Just a whole bunch of different renderings.”

A sprinkler came on across the street, dotting the asphalt of

the road with tiny black specks. “That’s scary,” I told them.

Chloe tucked her dark hair behind her ears, watching me with