Made of Stars (16 page)

“Jeez, what’s with the inquisition here?” He holds up his hands. “What aren’t you two telling me?” In joined silence, we only stare at him. Dad finally gives up. “All right, all right. I can take a hint.”

After dinner, Ash and I get into the car and head for Chance’s house again. We stop halfway down the road because the snow is getting too thick to slog through, and no one has bothered to clear this backwater street that hardly anyone uses. In Dad’s truck, we could make it. In this little compact, it’d be risky. We sit, idled by the shoulder, staring ahead into the trees and endless white.

“We could walk it,” Ash murmurs. Any other day, I would roll my eyes at the idea. But I have the worst gnawing sensation in my gut, so I swing open the door and crawl out. I haven’t seen Chance’s bruises, which means I’m envisioning them in my head and wondering what would happen if, one day, Chance’s dad decided to just…not let him run away.

The thought leaves me cold down to my bones.

It’s a slow, arduous walk, with our hands tucked under our arms and heads bowed against the snow. If we’d been driving, we would’ve definitely missed the narrow turn-off for the trailer park in all this darkness. Junkers and abandoned vehicles in some yards are halfway buried, and the unoccupied trailers themselves look forgotten by time.

The trailer park feels empty and abandoned. All the lights are off in Chance’s house. We knock, wait a few minutes, and knock again. Repeat process. No one answers. There’s no point in sticking around in the cold for someone who might or might not show up. Defeated, we start back down the way we came. If no one is home, then I want to get the hell out of this creepy place.

Halfway down the stairs, Ash grabs my arms and says, “Look!”

I jerk around, catching only the tail end of a fluttering curtain in the window beside the front door.

“It was his mom,” Ash says. “She’s home!”

And not answering the door, it would seem. I stomp back up the steps and knock again, louder. “Mrs. Harvey, please open up!” Still, we’re met with resounding silence. What is she doing? What is she hiding from?
“Please,”
I repeat more urgently.

“We’re worried about Chance!” Ash peers through the window with her hands cupped around her face, trying to see inside. When Tabitha Harvey still doesn’t answer, I open the unlocked screen door, and Ash jerks upright, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

I go for the doorknob. It doesn’t budge. That fact snaps me out of whatever place my mind just went to. What
was
I doing? Planning on marching in there and scaring some poor woman half to death while I demanded to know where her son is? I step back. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

We linger a few seconds more, searching the windows for some sign of Chance’s mom. She doesn’t make the mistake of peeking at us again.

During the walk back to the car, neither of us says a word. It’s too damned cold. We kick away some of the snow that’s piled up around the tires in our absence and get inside to relish the heater. Ash presses her hands against the vent.

“That was productive. Why was she hiding?”

“No idea. Maybe they’re tired of us stopping by. There’s always the possibility Chance asked her not to tell us anything.”

Ash frowns. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“A week ago, would you have thought he’d fall off the face of the planet?”

“Point taken.”

“But my gut feeling tells me he isn’t home. And if he isn’t home…” I swallow a deep breath. “…then he’s out there somewhere.”

We sit, letting the heat warm us, while watching the snow fall and the blackness stretching out ahead. Just us and the snowflakes gathering on the windshield. Thinking about Chance hiding somewhere out there in the cold.

…

Dad has fallen asleep on the couch. We put our coats away and slip out of our snow-caked shoes, leaving them on the front porch so the snow doesn’t melt all over the entryway. Ash vanishes upstairs to get changed because the bottoms of our jeans are a bit on the wet side. I nudge Dad awake and help him to his room before heading upstairs as well.

He didn’t ask where we went. He never does. Maybe some tiny part of me subconsciously wishes he would, because if we said we went to Chance’s but he hasn’t been home, it would spark more questions. More inquiries. Dad’s smart; he’d pick up on the fact something was wrong. Maybe he already has and simply hasn’t said anything.

I feel lost. All my life, I’ve had Dad to stand up and take care of all the really hard stuff. This might be the hardest thing yet, and now I’m floundering, at a complete loss for what to do, for what the right answer is.

After changing into sweats and a T-shirt, I pop into Ash’s room long enough to tell her good night. She’s flipping through photos on her camera. Christmas. New Year’s. Chance, with the bow on his head. Grinning. I sit on the bed beside her.

“He borrowed my old camera,” she says without looking up. “He swore up and down I’d get it back. So if he’s missing and hasn’t brought it back, has something happened to him?”

“You’re over-thinking,” I promise, sliding an arm around her shoulders and kissing the side of her head. “He’s all right. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Ash nods mutely. Nothing I say will convince her of that, and it likely won’t make her feel better, but it’s all I have to offer when I don’t really believe things are all right myself. I stay until she sets her camera aside and crawls into bed, then I flick off her lights and return to my room, figuring sleep is probably the best and only cure for this aching anxiety eating away at my insides.

I clean up a bit. Play around online. Check my e-mail and reply to a message from Rachael. I’d written to make sure she got home all right the day after her plane left Maine. She wrote back to say she was home safe and sound. It was curt and cold, not at all like the e-mails I usually got from her. But it’s to be expected. Honestly, I’m lucky she wrote me at all. Situations reversed, I’m not so sure I would’ve been as kind.

I make a lame attempt at conversation, asking if she’s looking forward to classes starting back up after winter break. It’s the least I can do. Just because we split up doesn’t mean I don’t care about her, and it doesn’t mean I want to lose her as a friend. I don’t exactly have many of them. Not close friends. Ashlin, Chance, and Rachael were the closest I had.

It’s entirely possible and, in fact, pretty damned likely that I’ve lost Rachael as a close friend. But I’ll always have Ash. And Chance—

I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

After an hour of trying to focus on a late-night TV show, I flick off the television and slump back, sighing, staring up at the stars on my ceiling. Chance’s stupid stars. I always told myself I never took them down because Dad put so much effort into getting them up there, but in truth, I think it was more because Chance loved them so much and I never had the heart to see his face when he realized they were gone.

I trace the outlines of constellations with my fingertip, pinpointing every one of Chance’s favorites and wondering what it is about them that fascinates him so much. Is it a resemblance of freedom? Of being somewhere so very far away from where he’s at?

He’s an idiot. Not for the stars thing, but for everything else. For every lie he’s told and every time he’s avoided the help I could have—would have—
gladly
offered. As hard as I try, I can’t picture it from his side. If he were in this shitty situation for so long, wouldn’t he be
desperate
for an out? Willing to try anything? A few years ago, they would’ve taken him from his parents and put him in a foster home, but I don’t doubt for a second Dad would’ve prevented that. He would have taken Chance in himself, and the courts probably wouldn’t have told him no. Not an upstanding ex-cop like him. And now that Chance is eighteen, what’s stopping him from leaving? I can’t entertain the thought that he’s run away. Not without Ash and me. Not without telling us.

Restless, I kick off the covers and get out of bed. What if something’s gone wrong, something unfixable? Like Ash said, if he truly, honestly is
missing
, whose fault will it be? Chance’s for not coming to us for help? Or ours for not forcing our help on him when we knew he really needed it? Or am I the one over-thinking all of it?

I pace the length of my room, trying to work out the anxious itch in my legs, rubbing a tension spot from my shoulder. Passing by the window, I come to an abrupt halt and do a double take. I rub at my eyes, convinced I’m hallucinating.

Chance is on my back porch, in the snow, head tipped back as he watches my window.

When he catches my gaze, he lifts a finger to his lips, signaling me to be silent.

There’s no easy way to tear through the house without waking everyone, but I manage it. Chance is waiting at the back door, ankle-deep in snow in shoes but no socks, and without his coat. I’m going to throttle him—except it looks like someone else already has. He doesn’t say anything. I take his ice-cold hand and lead him to my room, and he goes, docile as I’ve ever seen him.

“You’re freezing.” At least for the moment, I’m too overtaken with distress and relief to start yelling about how worried we’ve been.

I’m not even entirely convinced who I’m staring at isn’t a ghost.

Chance releases my hand and sits on the bed, flexing his fingers like they’ve forgotten how to bend. The remnants of bruising cross one side of his face—they must be the bruises Ash told me about. But there’s more of it. Recent work. Bruises that are brand new and still forming along his jaw over the old ones. Bruises in the shape of fingerprints around his throat. The undeniable proof someone has hurt him. There is no way to make excuses for that. If he tries to tell me he fell, I’ll be tempted to hit him myself. As it is, Chance isn’t saying anything, and I haven’t found any words just yet.

I grab a pair of socks and a set of clothes from my dresser. When I crouch down to peel off his half-frozen shoes, I’m expecting a toe or three to come with it. His feet are solid blocks of ice. I shiver just looking at them.

First things first, I try rubbing some warmth back into his skin and get a pair of socks on to do the rest of the work. Then I stand, mumbling instructions for him to get up and change. Chance rises on command, needing my help to get out of his shirt and pants. A task that ought to be a lot stranger than it is, and yet my eyes are too busy scanning over every inch of revealed skin, taking note of the bruises. His ribs. One of his arms. Even a mark on his back when he turns away from me to put on the dry shirt.

A bruise lines one of his shoulder blades, close to but not quite touching the constellation of his dragon. He stills, shirt in his hands, and I realize I’m touching it. Touching him. Tracing a finger down the length of his tattoo because it seems to be the one piece of flesh safe from assault. Chance turns around and asks, “Do you want to know why I got a dragon?”

I open my mouth to ask him what the fuck is wrong with him. He’s been missing for days and shows up on my back porch, bruised, barely dressed in the snow, and he wants to tell me about
dragons
? But Chance’s eyes are dark and distant, his lips slightly parted. His expression is so still and calm, but I can see his fingers trembling, twitching slightly at his sides.

So I say, “It’s your favorite constellation. Always has been.”

Chance
hmm
s. “Do you remember what you were wearing the day we met?”

A lifetime ago. How could I possibly? I shake my head. This had better be going somewhere profound.

“A red shirt.” He touches a hand to my chest, just above my heart, fingers splayed out. “With a dragon on the front.”

Against his palm, my heart beats a notch too quickly. Can he feel it? “What are you—”

“And the first present you got me, do you remember what it was?”

“It was years ago, Chance.”

“A green dragon in a snow globe.”

Yes, I remember now. It was something silly and small from the dollar store. The green had reminded me of Chance’s eyes, and I used my allowance to buy it for him our second summer at Dad’s. Chance held it so delicately, as though breathing wrong would cause it to break.

“The notebook the three of us passed back and forth with stupid letters and treasure maps the summer you left had—”

“A dragon,” I finish, quiet. There are other things, too. Other things flooding to the forefront of my brain. A trip to the planetarium one year, just so Chance could learn more about the stars, but Draco in particular. The book on dragon mythology he snatched from a garage sale. A plastic lunchbox with a generic star pattern, in which Chance swore he could pick out the dragon’s design.

Was it my subconscious or his that did this? That somehow associated Draco, the stars, dragons, to Chance and me?

“Some Eastern civilizations thought dragons were protectors. Guardians of Earth and fortune and all that.” He stares at his fingers against my chest as though mesmerized. His hand has grown warm, leeching the heat from me.

Exasperated, I pull away, putting a few inches between us. He could still reach out to touch me but doesn’t try again. “Where the hell is this going?”

His gaze hardens, snapping up to my face. “When I was ten, I brought home that baby bird we found by the creek, remember? The one I thought I could save?”

The temperature in the room plummets.

I want to look at anything other than him, but his faraway, sharp stare has rendered me immobile.

“You asked me the next day what happened to it, and I told you I set it free. Actually, Dad found it in my room and had a fit. He threw it out in the woods and hit me so hard I couldn’t go swimming with you guys for weeks.” He laughs, short, weak, and turns away, hands in his hair. “It was always stupid shit like that. Because I left something where it didn’t belong. Or because I tried bringing home an animal that needed me. It was best if I stayed gone as often as I could and I thought…I’d just hang in there. I thought it would get better. Until—”

I know where this is going. I know. And I don’t want him to say it.

“Chance, please…”