Falling Star (Beautiful Chaos #2) (11 page)

I sat up and opened my eyes. Leo was gazing at me with genuine admiration. I felt my chest tighten. “Nice tats,” I told him, not knowing what else to say.

He laughed. “Don’t be sarcastic.”

“Actually, they’re kind of cool, in a weird sort of way. What do they mean?”

“Hierarchy, disgrace, achievement. Take your pick. In Ukraine tattoos tell story about convict or criminal: date and place of birth, crimes committed, camps or prisons where time is served, even psychological profile.”

I moved closer to him. “What does this cat mean?” I asked, running my finger along the curve of his bicep and around his arm, following the pussycat’s black, smudgy tail.

“It means I’m thief.”

“Is that an achievement or a disgrace?”

“You remember Robin Hood? It was
that
kind of robbery. So both, I guess.”

“Why are your tats so . . . ”

“Fucked up?” I nodded in agreement. “Tattooing is illegal in jail,” Leo explained, “so prisoners make tattoos by melting down boot heels and mixing solution with blood. The guy who did it used a sharpened guitar string attached to motor from old tape recorder. That’s why mine look like this. The way you get treated by other prisoners depends on tats you have. Sometimes guys hold you down and force them on you.”

“Like what’s considered bad?”

“Rat means prisoner who steals from other convicts. Heart inside white triangle—that’s sign of child rapist. Not cool, obviously. Those guys get raped by other prisoners all the time.”

“Did you get raped?”

“No. I had ways of protecting myself.”

“Lucky.”

He nodded. “Prison breeds violence. Nobody finds redemption there.” He hung his head. His words filled the silence of the room.
I
was now experiencing what he had gone through. Sort of. We were locked up. Unable to escape. But unlike a real prison, we didn’t even know why we were here.

I delicately traced my thumb around an image of a lion, and a torn pirate flag, edged with swords, that started on his chest and ended at the last ridged abdomen of his stomach. “And this one?”

“That means I have no-conformist philosophy. Think outside box.”

I understood that. A man who had come from a rough, terrifying world, and he’d had the balls and imagination to start afresh in film school—that made him unusual. Jake had been born into movies—it was easy for him. But Leo had had to fight for his dreams.

“You told me you have a sister. Any other siblings?” And I added, with no pause for breath, hungry for information, “What about your parents?”

“Parents are dead. Mom was not good communist. She ‘died’ in car accident just after I was born. Dad had muscular dystrophy. No joke in my country when you can’t pay medical bills. My sister—she’s all I have.”

“I’m so sorry.” The weight of his words stung me to the core. I wished I had been able to speak of my brother with such love, such compassion. “Where is she now?”

“In London. She works as
au pair
to children. She’s smart, my sister.”

“What’s her name?”

“Larissa.”

“No kidding? My shrink’s called Narissa with an N!”

“You have shrink? Why?”

“It’s no big deal. All Americans have shrinks if they can afford it. Well, therapists anyway. Someone gets paid to hear your bullshit sob stories. That way, you don’t bore your friends.”

Leo laughed. “You could never be boring, Star. Star, is that your real name?”

“No. Diane is my real name. But my agent came up with Star when I was, like, seven, and it stuck. I don’t know who Diane is anymore.”

“You can’t run away from your past though.”

“You’re right. In my heart and soul I’m still a little girl who grew up in a trailer park. Once you’ve been poor, no matter how much money you make, the feeling never leaves you.”

“Yeah, I had enough watery soup to last lifetime. Enough mugs of tea.”

“But you still like your Russian vodka.”

He laughed again. “You take the boy out of vodka but not vodka out of boy.”

“So going to film school and working on movies was a big change, huh? Being creative?” I tried to sound upbeat. Hearing his story about his dead parents, his jail time, what his sister went through, and the situation we were in now, made me want to burst into tears—I identified with him so much. But tears weren’t going to get us anywhere.

People always think that in times of trouble you should act in a certain way. Most folk would have expected me to weep. But when there is no certainty—about anything—your mind protects you. When hit with
real
adversity—something you have no control over—you have to stay calm. That’s what I was trying to do: stay calm.

“Film has saved my soul. Saved my life,” Leo said quietly.

I thought of Jake. Of how I should be on set right now and it was killing me. How he probably thought I’d let him down. With Leo gone too, I wondered if everyone was suspecting we’d run off together somewhere. I felt a lump in my throat. “So if Jake has done so much for you, giving you such a big chance in the major league, why have you been coming on to me?” I said out of the blue. The words came before I’d had time to think about what I was saying.

Leo shot me a hard look. “Because Jake has girlfriend. Not fair to have cake and eat it too.”

His words were like a knife. What Leo said was so true. Jake had a
girlfriend
and if I’d meant anything to him—anything at all, he’d have made sure that Leo kept away from me.

Leo pushed back a lock of hair from my face and traced his thumb along my jawline. “And more to point, I feel bond between us. I saw you in prison uniform and it did something to me. How you acted, Star. It was like you were
me
. Like what I went through. You
knew
. You
know
. How? It wasn’t acting, it was real.”

A chill shot up my spine and goose bumps spread over my arms and legs. What could I say? That it
was
real to me? That when I act, I feel everything from my head to the tips of my toes? I
am
my character. I transform and feel every breath my character feels, every emotion. Being an actor is no picnic. You live like a schizophrenic—you
are
multiple personalities and it can be painful and confusing.

“Isn’t just your beauty, Star. It’s deeper. I’m attracted to your soul, your heart, to what’s inside of you.”

I thought again of how I should be filming, not here in this horrendous predicament. “I’m cold,” I said, and I was.

“Come here, baby, let me warm you up.”

We lay together, and I nuzzled my nose on Leo’s warm chest. He was warm all over—another reason I needed him. He wrapped his arms around my shoulder and covered me with the sheet, while he stroked my hair. The sound of his breathing sent me into a deep sleep.

Travis is holding me down, his hands on my wrists as I’m kicking and screaming at him to let me go.

“Brad, come on, I told you, she’s yours, you can fuck my sister—be my guest.”

“Let me go, you asshole!” I screech, as close to his ear as I can. I try to kick up my knees into his back, but he slips to one side and I miss.

Brad stands there and chuckles nervously, his hands pushed into the pockets of his long, flowery-print swim shorts. He’s smoking a joint. “But she’s a virgin, dude, and she doesn’t want it.”

My leg flies up again. “Let me fucking go, you douchebag!”

“Anyone else? She’s for the taking, dudes. My sister needs to lose her virginity, first come, first served.”

“I’ll do it, Trav, she’s hot.” It’s his half-wit sidekick, Caleb. His tongue is practically hanging out, his big Dumbo ears flapping with excitement, the zits on his forehead glistening like tomatoes on fresh pizza.

I hiss at him, “You come near me, asshole, and I swear I’ll pour acid all over your new car.”

“Whoa, calm down, vixen bitch!”

“I mean it, guys. Anyone touches me and you’re dead meat.”

“Little Miss Prissy Cock-Tease!” my brother shouts in my face. “You deserve to be raped because you prick-tease guys and lead them on.”

“Let me go, Travis, or I swear I’ll run away from home and there’ll be no money for any of you! Get it?
No money
! You’ll all have to get food stamps because Star Bank Incorporated will be closed!”

He shrieks with laughter. “I don’t think so, bitch! Dad’s got control until you’re eighteen so suck on that, you whore!”

“What’s going on in here?” It was Dad, standing in the doorway, his voice trembling. “You let go of Diane, right now, young man. And you? Billy, isn’t it?”

“Brad, sir.”

“You leave this house with your . . . your
drugs,
immediately. You too, Caleb. And you also, Robby. No more horsing around.”

I look up at my father with gratitude, but he says, “And you, Diane. We’re a
family
. We all work so hard to keep you where you are. We are
all
responsible for your success. We are a
team
. I don’t ever want to hear threats like that again. We are a
loving family
and we look out for each other. Now I want you two siblings to apologize to each other.”

“But, Dad, Travis was trying to—”

“I won’t have this nonsense in my household.”

All I can think to myself is,
I’m getting the hell out of this dysfunctional nest of vipers the second I can.

WHEN I WOKE UP, it was pitch dark again. I realized that Leo and I were going to have to mark the time going by, maybe with soap on the bathroom wall, as we had nothing else to do it with. No pen. Zilch. It was the first time I’d been without my cellphone since I could remember. A tinny silence was ringing in my ears. We could hear nothing outside this room, except the odd faint siren going by, or honking of traffic, dim and low in the distance through the triple-glazed windows. All we had was each other and it made me know that I needed Leo. I
needed
him. I had never needed anyone before. Having a mother as an addict and earning all the money for the entire family can make a person pretty self-reliant. But wealth and money meant shit right now. I sat up, Leo still by my side, fast asleep. A strong smell of food caught in my nostrils.

“Leo,” I whispered. “So sorry but I’m going to have to turn on the light.” I covered his face with the sheet and felt my way to the door. Being so high up meant there were no streetlights to illuminate the room. I couldn’t work out where the strong food aroma was coming from. My imagination? Like when people see a mirage of water in the desert?

The overhead florescent light flooded the bare room and, just beside the door with no handle, were several shopping bags of groceries. Ten or so. I leaped upon them like a kid with candy, not understanding how we had missed our one opportunity to attack our visitor and get the hell out of our prison when we’d had the chance. But we still had that drug in our veins, coupled with weakness for not having eaten for so long—no wonder we’d conked out cold.

I grabbed at the groceries. Mostly tins of things—non-perishable items that would last for years. It made me nervous, the amount of food spilling out of the bags; was this to be our new home? And why? What did my brother want from me? Then I looked at the tins. They were the old-fashioned kind that you needed a can-opener for. My heart sank. Another head-game of Travis’s.

“What’s going on?” Leo groaned—his head buried under a pillow to block out the harsh light.

“Food’s arrived. But—”

“How?”

“Someone shoved it all through the door when we were sleeping.”

“How the fuck did we miss that?”

“I don’t know and it pisses me off. We could have jumped him if we’d been more on the ball.” I pulled out a ready-made roast chicken—which must have been what I’d smelled. Everything was either a tin that couldn’t be opened, or meat. No can opener. Packets of salami, ham, and turkey.

Tears—tears that I didn’t even think I had in me—began to flow out of my stinging eyes. “The bastard.” I could feel my body shake.

“Star, what’s wrong, baby?”

“I don’t eat meat. This is Travis’s power game. He wants to break me.” I sifted through the bags some more. Meat, meat, and more meat. And . . . a family-size pack of condoms. I knew well what that message meant.

Leo jumped up from the mattress. “I’m sorry, is it really that bad, Star? You’re hungry, so eat.”

“I can’t eat an animal that’s been tortured. Suffered in a tiny cage so small it can’t turn around, pumped full of antibiotics, with its beak sawn off and . . . ” I didn’t want to go on. There was nothing worse than a preaching vegan. Each to their own. But I didn’t want to be preached to either.

“You don’t have to watch me eat, but I’m ravenous,” he said. “Give me that chicken, will you? Leo tore his teeth into the cold roast chicken—delicious by his standards, but there wasn’t one single morsel for me here that wouldn’t make me vomit.