Catch a Falling Star (6 page)

“I guess.”

“Well, you’re about to be the princess in one, if you say yes.”

He took a deep breath. “We’d like you to pretend to be Adam’s

girlfriend while he’s shooting in Little.”

Had I heard that right? “
Pretend
to be his girlfriend?”

He studied me closely, narrowing his eyes. “Just for a few

weeks.”

“From what I’ve read, Adam Jakes doesn’t have a hard time

getting girlfriends.” The normal hums and clicks of the café grew

suddenly loud around me. I gave a nervous sort of laugh. “I mean,

he’s a movie star.”

Parker’s face shifted like clouds gathering. “Then I’m sure, if

you’ve read about Adam, you know he got into a right spot of trouble

a few months ago.”

I almost laughed; from what I’d read, “a right spot of trouble”

was like saying the
Titanic
hit a bit of an ice cube. “Um, yeah.”

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Then Parker launched into what could only be described as a

sales pitch. Adam’s “people” thought it might be good for his image

if he spent some time with a “small-town girl with proper values.”

Someone, Parker explained, who’d make it look like he was mend-

ing his ways, someone people could really fall in love with. “We

think you’re the girl, Carter. You’re a perfect cast.”

“I wasn’t aware I was auditioning.” I stood, crossing to the rack

of chips and granola bars, fiddling with them just so he wouldn’t

see my hands shaking.

He leaned back in his chair, appraising me. “It’s not dirty or

inappropriate. Strictly PG stuff. Pure Disney. Hand holding. Some

walks with your dog.”

He knew I had a dog?

Standing, he slipped his iPhone back into the frayed pocket of

his jeans. I’m sure he’d paid extra for that fraying. “We’re just ask-

ing you to hang out with the bloke for a few weeks. Millions of

other birds would kill for this sort of offer.”

Ugh. Everything bad about Hollywood started with some ver-

sion of that line. “I’m not millions of other
birds
.” Okay, that also

sounded like something a girl in this exact position was supposed

to say. I crossed my arms, shrugging. “Look, this is really weird.

And . . . flattering, I guess. But I’m sorry. I’m just not interested.”

I forced myself to make eye contact with him.

The pale light swirling through the windows bathed his face.

“Might be some good connections, too. You’ll be a senior in the

fall, yes? Could be a good way to see what life has to offer outside

this place.”

Now he was just being condescending. I started collecting the

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plates someone had left on the counter. “Some people do actually

choose
to live here.”

He looked like he might say something else but thought other-

wise. “So, you’re saying no?”

“Right. I’m saying no.” I dumped the plates in a busing tray.

He gave me a look close to respect. “Well, that’s new. We’re

not used to hearing no in Adam’s world. Rather, when it’s not

coming from a studio. I mean, if they could fuel their Priuses on

the collective desperation in that town, we’d solve a major global

crisis.” He chuckled at his own cleverness. Pausing, he cocked his

head to the side. “Is it Priuses? Or Priusi?” More chuckling.

Geez. This guy was in love with himself. I migrated back to

the perfectly stacked granola bars. If he were any reflection of

Adam Jakes, I wouldn’t want to hang out with Adam for three

minutes, much less the next three weeks.

Parker nodded as if I’d asked him to leave. “Listen, love, take

the night to think about it. No need to decide now. We’ll ring you

in the morning. Or you can ring me.” He left a creamy business

card on the counter. “Oh, and we’d appreciate your discretion.”

“You don’t want people thinking Adam can’t get his own

dates?” I tried to sound glib, but my voice shook.

He heard it. With a wide smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he

told me, “I’m just asking for a little discretion. This was merely an

idea we thought we’d look into.” He looked around the café. “This

can’t be an easy place to run, and I understand you’ve had some,

well, financial trouble with your brother. Perhaps this could help

with that.”

Heat flooded my face. “I think you should go.”

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“It would be easy work, and we’d pay you quite handsomely.”

He handed me a slip of paper with a number on it. A
large

number.

I balked, staring at it. “Is this for real?”

“Please.” He frowned, slipping his sunglasses down off the top

of his head, turning his eyes to mirrors. “Of course it’s real, love.

What did you say earlier to that protester? It’s not amateur hour.”

The paper felt heavy in my hands. “You know, entire families

in Little live on this kind of money for a whole year.”

He grinned. “Not in my world. Cheers.” Then he left, the café

bell jingling behind him.

The lights in Chloe’s pool cast the world in a pale green glow.

Behind us, the drip system for her mother’s rose garden whispered

on, soaking the dirt rings around their gnarled trunks. I drifted in

the center of the pool on a clear raft, the interconnecting pockets

of the raft also glowing. Chloe had some soft indie folk I didn’t

recognize playing low on the stereo and it glazed the air around

me, putting me in a trance.

Something cold hit my back. Chloe was chucking ice cubes

from her Diet Coke at me. “Did you hear me? Earth to Moon.”

This was one of Alien Drake’s and Chloe’s favorite things to say to

me when I zoned out. Of course, with a last name like Moon, I’d

heard far worse.

“I heard you.” I flipped over, the raft swaying in the night

water.

“Okay, so you’re just ignoring me.”

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Above me, the stars arched their twinkling backs. “How long

does it take him to heat up a pizza? I told Dad I’d be home by mid-

night.” I watched the door, where Alien Drake had disappeared

almost a half hour before. We hadn’t seen him since.

“He’s probably talking to my dad about the UFO sighting in

Scotland,” Chloe said, an ice cube plunking into the pool next to

me. “Did you see him today?”

“A UFO?”

Another near miss with an ice cube, this one with more veloc-

ity. “I was at that stupid set for two hours and no sign of him.”

The night had cooled, and I shivered on the raft. I paddled my

way toward the side. “You sure it was the set that was stupid?”

Chloe was curled up on a squishy lounge chair, a huge towel

around her. She lowered her voice. “Come on, Carter, I can’t talk

about him around Drake. He gets mad.”

“Because you’re lusting after a guy who isn’t him? How dare

he.” I grabbed at the side of the pool, steadying myself.

“He’s a
movie star
. He obviously has nothing to worry about.”

“Drake or Adam?”

Chloe glared at me through the shadows. I couldn’t actually

see her, but I could feel her glaring. “Well, not everyone can be so

above it all, Ms. Small Town U.S.A.”

The back door slammed, the smell of pizza drifting across the

pool. “Right now, I’m Ms. Starving U.S.A.” I pulled myself onto

the side of the pool, the raft drifting away like a ghost to the center

again. I went over to where Alien Drake had rested the pizza on

the low brick wall that ran the length of the pool. “Mmmm. . . .

Want one?” I held out a slice to Chloe, a saucy peace offering.

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“Yes, please! Yum,” she said, taking a bite, then giggling as a

long string of cheese fastened itself between the slice and her chin.

Alien Drake handed her a napkin. He settled into a lounge chair

next to her, half the pizza in a heap on his plate.

I listened to them chewing and talking about the UFO sighting

in Scotland. In the ease of the moment, here in the night glow of

the pool, I almost told them, Parker’s offer bubbling up like lava,

but I stopped myself. I knew I couldn’t tell them. Chloe would

freak out and think I should do it, and I’d never hear the end of the

surely relentless mocking from Alien Drake.

Sighing, I chewed my piece of pizza and stared out over the

pool. Alien Drake shot me a look. “You okay?”

Before I could answer, my cell buzzed. I reached for it. Dad

calling. “Hello?”

“Where are you?”

My skin tingled at the tense tremble of his voice. “I’m at

Chloe’s.”

“Is John, by any chance, with you?”

“No.”

Dad sighed into the phone. “Okay.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Just come to the café.” He hung up.

Someone had thrown something through the front window of the

café, the part with the cream-and-black etching of LittLe eAts.

When I got there, John sat on the curb in a pool of light from the

streetlamp, his face in his hands, and Dad spoke with a dark-haired

42

policeman I didn’t recognize. Dad had turned on the lights inside

the café, but most of the outside felt shadowed and strange. It

wasn’t often I saw the café at midnight.

I sat down next to John. “What happened?”

He motioned behind him. “Someone threw a brick through

the window.”

Obviously. I forced my voice to sound patient. “Do we know

who?” I watched Dad, his face sagging, his gaze clouded and sad.

John’s eyes darted like bats away from mine. “How would

I know?”

He knew. My brother’s eyes did that every time he lied. Once,

after Halloween when I was six and he was eight, he ate every last

Snickers out of my candy bag and then lied about it, said they

hadn’t made Snickers in Fun Size that year, his eyes laser-tagging

all over the place.

Lately, I just called him on it, a recent development he did not

care for. “You’re lying.”

“Shut up, Carter.” He sank his face into his hands again.

Maybe it was the shadows. Or the dark quiet of downtown.

Maybe it was the stretch of glinting sky that didn’t change above

me no matter what was happening down here on earth, but I asked

him, for the first time, “How much money do you owe T.J. Shay?”

He pushed himself up, scowling. “Don’t get involved. This is

none of your business, and it’s not Mom and Dad’s business.”

Next to me, the moon shimmered in shattered pieces of

glass on the ground, the sky insisting on its beauty even in the

broken places. “It seems like a brick through their window is

their business.”

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I had pushed it too far. His face went slack, as if his eyes, nose,

mouth, cheeks, and chin just sort of collectively gave up, and he

turned and headed down the middle of the dark street.

At home, Dad opened a beer, slumping into a chair at the kitchen

table. I put a kettle on for tea and slipped into the chair next to

him. “Did you call Mom?”

“No.”

“No?”

He sighed. “You know how she gets.”

Over the last four years, I’d watched the situation with John

slowly deplete both of my parents. At first, they were confused,

determined. Then, angry. Neither of them yelled, so the fights

with John about his gambling, about his lying, about his stealing,

stretched into the taffy-tight air of the house, low murmurs in the

night when they thought I was asleep, John’s voice oscillating over

the years between pleading, defensiveness, apology, fatigue.

Then, after he stole from the café, something just broke, and

he was “living somewhere else” or “not around for a while.” In his

absence, our family lived in an easy space. No drama. No tension.

Just the daily rhythm of the café, of school, of regular life.

I loved my brother, but I preferred the ease of his absence.

Mostly, though, I missed our old family, the one before John

started lying, stealing. Before he started betting. We were a

different-shaped family then. When I was little, John was the sort

of big brother all my friends wished they had. He built fairy houses

with me under the shade of the old maple in the yard, hanging

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wind chimes and scattering colored drops of glass he called dragon

tears through the salt-and-pepper gravel, the light dappling him

through the feathered green leaves. All through middle school I’d

find notes in my dance bag taped to Snickers bars, Post-its on the

bathroom mirror with funny animal pictures; and every Christmas

morning, he’d wake me up early, before Mom and Dad got up, and

we’d sneak downstairs and rearrange all the presents. The first

time, it totally freaked Mom out because we both knew she’d

never really stopped believing in Santa. Not really.

Then, somewhere along the way, it just began to change shape.

Not all at once, which is why I didn’t notice it at first. Like a per-

fectly round ball of dough that sinks and flattens, he changed our

shape. I was too old for fairy houses, but everything else stopped,

too. The notes stopped. The Post-its stopped. The Christmas

mornings stopped. Every week, it seemed, he slipped out pieces of

the life he’d built with us, breaking it down like a bird’s nest in